Recently in Health Care Category

Just look northward to Canada for a death panel example that will give any honest person reason to doubt the wisdom of enacting Obamacare.

A decent opening shot, but somehow I suspect my congresscritter Rep. Betty Sutton (D-OH) is not listening any more now than she usually does. When it comes to confronting the vast majority of Americans who don't want anything to do with Obamacare, she's been a bit, um, timid.

Any comment, Tom Ganley? Justin Wooden?

If you really, truly oppose Obamacare as you claim, and if you want to set yourself apart from Betty Sutton, click on this logo ...

... and sign the pledge. I did!

P.S. -- Justin Wooden, call your office!

Just got a 30-sec robocall from Americans United for Change, spouting class warfare talking points and urging me to tell my congresscritters to vote for Obamacare.

Please, progressive geniuses, spend more of George Soros' money on annoying robocalls. It's bound to help your side. Really.

I love blunt conservative honesty, especially from a politician!

Under Nancy Pelosi's version of ObamaCare,

Americans who do not maintain "acceptable health insurance coverage" and who choose not to pay the bill's new individual mandate tax (generally 2.5% of income), are subject to numerous civil and criminal penalties, including criminal fines of up to $250,000 and imprisonment of up to five years.

By what authority can Congress require people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States? Please refer to this previous question to aid your answer.

This is what Congress plans to ram down your throat before you have a chance to stop them.

More information:
Doctors For Patient Care
Fix Health Care Policy
Horror Stories
Patients First
Patients United Now
GOP Health Care Solutions

That's what it's like when you find yourself debating an ObamaCare supporter.

It's frustrating to constantly drag the conversation back to the key question, no matter how many times the ObamaBot switches topics. We have to try anyway, since these mush-brained emotion-ruled leftists elected our current Congress. If we can't pin them down to a single logical conclusion, we must at least shame them into silence.

I did what I could.

Sure, Rep. Joe Wilson's outburst against President Obama would once have been thought rude. Thirty years ago, shouting such an accusation at a president addressing a joint session would have been nearly inconceivable ... but this ain't 1979.

American popular culture is much coarser and cruder these days, and our politics mirror our culture. The blame lies almost exclusively at the feet of Americans who occupy the farthest reaches of the statist left wing. They've brought us the Sexual Revolution, rampant drug use, violent and sexually explicit entertainment, abortion on demand, disregard for our Judeo-Christian roots, militant atheism, and moral relativism. The left's utter disregard for anything standing between them and complete political power leads to the rise of political opportunists like our current president. He and his ilk will say and do anything to advance their agenda. Lying is just another tool in the toolbox, to be used whenever it will accomplish the left's goals.

The left bemoans the supposedly inappropriate and rude outburst by Joe Wilson for one reason only: they hope to advance their agenda by doing so. Period. Never mind that they've done far worse. Never mind that moral disapproval is supposedly evidence of the cardinal sin of "intolerance." The left will scream and wail as long as faux victimhood helps them extract money and power from American citizens.

Given that fact, I refuse to join in the Tut-Tut Chorus. We're close to enacting an irreversible government takeover of close to one fifth of the American economy, by people who have more in common with Stalin and Mussolini than with Madison and Jefferson. I'd much rather have inappropriate and rude outbursts in defense of the truth than polite silence in the face of blatant and dangerous lies.

The truth hurts the statist, so shout it if you must.

Jim Towey's editorial touched off the debate over the VA Death Book, so here's a copy to read for yourself.

This pamphlet's clearly quite slanted toward the euthanasia side of the scale, so pay it no mind. Instead, educate yourself about advance directives before you make any end-of-life decisions.

Call in and ask tough questions.

Have you wondered why SEIU and the rest of Obama's union thug buddies have been pushing the House's version of Obamacare so avidly? Thanks to Warner Todd Huston's and Ed Morrissey's digging, I've cut and pasted Section 164 for you to examine. Take a look at this $10 billion payoff (look at the red text on the second page):

Those are your tax dollars being shoveled into the pockets of union bosses. You can thank people like Rep. Betty Sutton (D-OH) for slipping this fat bribe to the unions that have been ruining American productivity for decades. She was intimately involved in drafting this bill, and you can bet your last wrinkled dollar that her union friends will repay her richly with kickbacks campaign contributions.

Apparently, Betty's $3 billion Cash-For-Clunkers pet project wasn't enough. The previous multibillion-dollar bailouts of GM and Chrysler (with the unions getting great gobs of common stock) weren't enough. The minimum wage increase (which boosts union members' pay, according to their contracts) wasn't enough. Even this $10 billion payoff isn't enough. It's just another in a long line of juicy sops thrown to the labor lobby. Before long, she'll resume her push for card check and its stacked-deck-arbitration companion.

How long will Ohio voters in the 13th District tolerate this legalized corruption? How high must unemployment go? How many tax hikes will we tolerate?

According to the Lorain County 912 Project, our most left-wing U.S. Senator has an event scheduled this evening:

Health Insurance Reform - Town Hall (Let's Get It Done: Health Insurance Reform Now Events)

Sen. Brown town hall - Mansfield w/ State Director John Ryan.

Monday, August 24, 2009
7:00 - 9:00 PM

Mansfield Senior High School
124 North Linden Road
Mansfield, OH 44906

Associated Groups: Worthington Ohio for Obama: Join Organizing for America members across the country in sending their members of Congress back to D.C. with a clear message about health insurance reform: Let's Get It Done!

2:45 PM Update: Senator Brown won't be there.

Yoo hoo! Betty Sutton, where are you?

We aren't going away.

This e-mail from Rep. Betty Sutton (D-OH) just landed in my inbox. She's hiding behind a telephone conference call to avoid facing her constituents in the 13th District.

August 21, 2009

Dear Mr. Konsen,

Thank you for contacting my office regarding my schedule of events for the month of August concerning health care. I will be hosting a tele-town hall meeting for my constituents on August 26th at 6:30 pm to discuss the America's Affordable Health Choices Act. A tele-town hall meeting will enable me to discuss this important bill with you by telephone. The call in number and identification code is provided below. I look forward to providing you with a legislative update about the bill and hearing your thoughts and questions regarding it.

Please contact my office at 202-225-3401 with any question you might have regarding this event.

HOST: Congresswoman Betty Sutton (OH-13)
WHAT: Tele-Town hall meeting on America's Affordable Health Choices Act
WHEN: Wednesday, Aug. 26, at 6:30 p.m. - p.m.
PARTICIPATE: Dial 1-877-229-8493. When prompted, enter I.D. code "15125."

Sincerely,

Betty Sutton
Member of Congress

Please do not respond to this email as this is an unattended mailbox. Please return to our website to respond (http://sutton.house.gov).

Betty's chief of staff, Nichole Reynolds, assured me unequivocally that Betty would hold public meetings with her constituents. So much for keeping one's word.

It's targeted at Zack Space for being a servile little toady to Nancy Pelosi.

Has anybody heard it on the air down there?

Hat tip: Campaign Spot

Courtesy of the Chronicle-Telegram:

An Elyria woman said a member of Congresswoman Betty Sutton's staff asked her to leave a public meeting held Tuesday in Lorain because the woman wanted to know if she could ask the congresswoman questions during the talk.

Nichole Reynolds, Sutton's chief of staff, said the staff member who spoke to the woman denied telling her that the meeting was private, as the woman alleges, and also denies telling her she had to go.

Jane Grimm, 58, said she had wanted to speak with her congresswoman about health care reform and called her Washington, D.C., office last week to see when Sutton would be coming to town.

...

She and her husband walked into the clinic and wanted to confirm with staff people in the front whether this was a meeting where questions could be asked. Grimm said a man wearing a name tag identifying him as a Sutton staff member approached them. This is where the stories differ.

"He said, 'I was told I'd see you here,' and 'I understand you wanted this to be a town-hall meeting,' and I told him that I wanted to ask a few questions," Grimm said.

She said the staffer told her it was not that kind of meeting.

"I said, 'All right, well, I'd still like to sit and listen to what the congresswoman has to say,'" Grimm said. "Then he said, 'No, I'm not going to allow you in because this is a private event.' "

That's our Brave Betty!

For months now, President Obama has been insisting that Obamacare will not come between you and your doctor. He's claimed over and over that if Obamacare passes and you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. Period. End of story. All claims to the contrary are malicious lies told by mean ol' poopyheads.

Uh, except when he changes his mind.

Health & Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius began retreating ever-so-subtly from that unequivocal language this weekend. Now it's "highly likely" that you'll keep your doctor. Watch from about the 5:55 point onward (ABC won't allow me to embed the video here, so you'll have to follow that link).

Here's the transcript from ABC, with my emphasis added:

TAPPER: OK, I'll -- I'll take that as a "yes" and then we'll move on. The president often -- and he did last night in Colorado -- says to the American people that, if they like their doctor, they can keep their doctor. If they like their insurance plan, they can keep their insurance plan. But according to the Congressional Budget Office, if a public plan, if a public option is introduced, at least 2 million Americans will be switched by their employer from a private plan to the public plan.

Now, that doesn't get into the whole issue of employers dropping health care coverage in general and all the people that will be added to the rolls, and I understand that. But how can the administration make the promise that if you like your insurance plan you can keep it, when CBO and other analysts estimate that some people will be switched from private to public?

SEBELIUS: Well, I think, Jake, if you -- if you think about a marketplace option and new plans being created in Toledo, Ohio, or in California or in Florida, the network of doctors is likely to be pretty identical. A lot of plans exist in the same marketplace, and doctors are part of a variety of networks. So the idea that you would keep your own doctor is highly likely.

Was her characterization just a fluke? Before you answer, pay close attention to what President Obama says from about 46:50 onward in this town hall meeting on Saturday:

Here's the transcript from the White House, with my emphasis added:

Now, what the opponents of a public option will argue is, you can't have a level playing field; if government gets into the business of providing health insurance, they will drive private insurers out of the health insurance market. That's the argument that's made. (Applause.) And I -- that is a legitimate, it's a fair concern, especially if the public option was being subsidized by taxpayers, right? I mean, if they didn't -- if they could just keep on losing money and still stay in business, after a while they would run everybody else out. And that's why any discussion of a public option has said that it's got to pay for itself, it's not subsidized by private insurers.

The only point I want to make about this is whether you're for or against a public option, just understand that the public option is not a government takeover of health insurance. Everybody here who still has -- who has currently private insurance, you would more than likely still be on your private insurance plan. Employers wouldn't stop suddenly providing health insurance. So that is where this idea of government-run health care came from. It is not an accurate portrayal of the debate that's going on in Washington right now. All right?

Were these just "slips of the tongue" from the Obama administration? Or were they a stealthy shift in language, much like the recent change from "health care reform" to "health insurance reform"?

Obama's bunch does a good job of maintaining message discipline. I don't think these two changes were accidental. Words mean things, folks. Pay close attention to see if this wishy-washy waffling continues.

Bravo to Zach Lahn, for having bigger balls than 99% of the media! I hope this young man's ready for the Joe The Plumber treatment, courtesy of ACORN and SEIU.

President Obama spent the majority of his "answer" restating the question, then talked about "opposing" the exact kind of public option that's in the House bill. ABC transcribed some of it:

"Certainly they can't compete if the taxpayer is standing behind the public option just shoveling more and more money at it," Obama said. "That's certainly not fair. And so I've already said I would not be in favor of a public option of that sort, because that would just mean more expenses out of our pockets and we wouldn't be seeing much improvement in quality."

...

"I think there are ways that we can address those competitive issues," he said. "And you're absolutely right, if they're not entirely addressed, then that raises a set of legitimate problems. But the only point I wanted to make was the notion that somehow just by having a public option you have the entire private marketplace destroyed is just not borne out by the facts."

Read the whole thing; ABC interviewed Zach afterward, and he kept the pressure on the president for regurgitating nothing but vague talking points. Ten bucks says Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck are all over this within a week. Oh ... notice that Obama didn't accept Zach's challenge, either (wuss).

More coverage:
Politico

Unless I'm missing something obvious, Rep. Betty Sutton (D-OH) still has not released a schedule of her public events for this month. We're 15 days into the U.S. House's summer recess, and there are 23 days left.

Where's Betty?

Her constituents in the 13th District have questions for her, and if we have to fork over $30 to get them ... so be it.

Stephen Glover admits that the truth hurts:

In treating almost every cancer, America apparently does better than Britain, sometimes appreciably so. According to a study in Lancet Oncology last year, 91.9 per cent of American men with prostate cancer were still alive after five years, compared with only 51.1per cent in Britain.

The same publication suggests that 90.1 per cent of women in the U.S. diagnosed with breast cancer between 2000 and 2002 survived for at least five years, as against 77.8 per cent in Britain.

So it goes on. Overall the outcome for cancer patients is better in America than in this country. So, too, it is for victims of heart attacks, though the difference is less marked.

If you are suspicious of comparative statistics, consult any American who has encountered the NHS. Often they cannot believe what has happened to them - the squalor, and looming threat of MRSA; the long waiting lists, and especially the official target that patients in 'accident and emergency' should be expected to wait for no more than four - four! - hours; the sense exuded by some medical staff that they are doing you a favour by taking down your personal details.

Most Americans, let's face it, are used to much higher standards of healthcare than we enjoy, even after the doubling of the NHS budget under New Labour. Of course, the U.S. is a somewhat richer country, but I doubt its superior health service can be mainly attributed to this advantage.

In other news: jumping into water leads to wetness, rocks fall downward, and there's no way to pick up a turd by the "clean end."