I had high hopes after the fall elections that things would change. I expected once the Republicans took power that they would make a concerted effort to reverse the downslide of our health care system into the hole that is created by Obamacare. Apparently, it is just business as usual on Capitol Hill… big surprise.

The House rules committee voted against the amendment by Rep. Steve King that would defund Obamacare thus clearing the way for the mandatory self-funding provisions initially written into the bill by Pelosi et al to take effect.

Either the Republicans are playing politics by allowing this fiasco to drag on into the election season so that they can use it as ammunition against Obama and the Democrats, or they actually like the bill and only pretended to oppose it to increase their chance of getting elected. Whichever scenario is true the outcome is still the same. The further down the road to implementation Obamacare gets, the harder it will be to reverse.

While the Republicans dither there are a few truths that are becoming quite clear.

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Last week on the PBS NewsHour, Judy Woodruff asked Nancy Pelosi if the GOP would take back the house.  Pelosi replied “We take it one district at a time.”

“Will the Republicans take back the House?” is perhaps the most frequently asked question in Washington, and is usually followed up with “By how much?”  Regardless of what you think about Speaker Pelosi, the lady didn’t get to be Speaker of the House by not being able to count votes. So lets have a look “…one district at a time.”

Republican challengers and open seat candidates lead in at least 51 House districts currently held by Democrats, according to public polling.

Following Nancy’s methodology, if the election were held on October 9 instead of November 2, the GOP would gain back the majority with 230 seats, assuming all tied races and races where Dems cling to a narrow lead break against the Republicans. Note that 17 more seats are within the margin of error of a standard poll.

Thanks, Nancy, for the vote of confidence.

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Remember Schoolhouse Rock, that civic-minded Saturday morning cartoon short from the 1970s? It’s time to update it for the Obama Era.

”I’m Just a Law”

LAW (singing): I’m just a law, yes I’m only a law,
And I don’t know why they passed me at all.
Cause — no — one — knows what is in me
No one’s read a darn word,
I was typed up last night
By a 20-year-old nerd,
But Pelosi twisted elbows all day.
How I hoped and prayed they would stall
But today, all in all, I’m a law.

BOY: Hello, Law, why so glum?

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As it becomes more difficult to round up Congressman willing to end their political careers by voting for ObamaCare, House Democrat Leadership is actually considering a “rule” that will allow the health care bill to pass without being voted on. Putting a positive spin on such a desperate and unconstitutional act defies the laws of physics. Michael Ramirez at Investors Business Daily perfectly captures the “through the looking glass” world we now inhabit:

It’s time to stop playing along with this ridiculous game called, “The government says the health care bill will cost…” It’s always wrong. And it’s always wrong by underestimating the cost. Why don’t the Republicans point this out? (Probably because they’ve been big government spenders, too.)

Look back at when Medicare was first created:

At its start, in 1966, Medicare cost $3 billion. The House Ways and Means Committee estimated that Medicare would cost only about $ 12 billion by 1990 (a figure that included an allowance for inflation). This was a supposedly “conservative” estimate. But in 1990 Medicare actually cost $107 billion.

In 2007, total Medicare spending was $431 billion! That isn’t even close to the costs predicted in 1965. Why do we act like the numbers coming out of Congress and the CBO have any basis in reality?

The predictions for Medicaid were just as wrong:

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Disgusted by President Obama’s liberal agenda, voters in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts went to the polls and replaced Democrats with Republicans to send a message to Washington. That message is: Stop.

Stop the rampant spending that threatens to send our country spiraling toward insolvency. Stop the rapid expansion of government that continues to encroach on our essential freedoms. And most of all stop trying to shove a radical health care “reform” bill designed to fundamentally restructure the U.S. economy down our throats.

The American people have spoken. The White House hasn’t heard their message.

Now Harry Reid is promising to pass a health care bill through the Senate in sixty days. President Obama is continuing to arrogantly push this radical legislation in the hope of creating a new entitlement program that will continue to nurture America’s dependency on Big Government. When America’s leadership has become so disconnected from Americans’ interests, the American people must stand up boldly in defense of their livelihoods and their liberties.

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Attempting to enact his big-government health care scheme, President Obama and his supporters frequently claimed that a “majority” of doctors supported his health-care plans.  When the American Medical Association – which had opposed HillaryCare – signed onto Obama’s plan last year, the organization seemed to make the President’s case.  Most people assumed that the AMA represented most of the doctors in the country.  But in fact, the AMA represents less than 20 percent of all physicians in the United States.  And yet as the organization’s leadership moved more to the left, it held a near monopoly on media attention on issues pertaining to public health.   No longer.

As the AMA has become increasingly politicized in recent years – issuing a statement in support of climate change, for example, in 2008 – a new group of doctors has risen to challenge them.  Like other anti-statist groups that have risen in opposition to the Obama-Reid-Pelosi agenda, Docs4PatientCare are challenging the AMA’s stranglehold on health care matters, just as other groups once challenged the right of the left-leaning American Bar Association to determine what judges are and are not qualified for the United States Supreme Court.  How Docs4PatientCare managed to barge its way into the closed-door meetings of Washington offers a lesson to other groups seeking to have a voice in their federal government.

Founded by Dr. Hal Scherz, a prominent Atlanta physician, the group of doctors expressed concern that like so many other professional groups, the AMA’s leadership have been  thoroughly “Washingtonized” – caring more about the pleadings of other lobbyists on K Street, White House invitations and Capitol Hill committee appearances than the professions they are supposed to represent.  As doctors have taken a battering over several decades from insurance companies, HMOS, and government agencies, Scherz says the AMA was a bystander.

“As the insurance companies become more and more impossible and government intrusion keeps growing, we’ve seen our delivery of care to our patients compromised and our incomes decrease,” he said.

But it was the AMA’s support for ObamaCare that really troubled Scherz and others in his field.

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Last week, Congressman Thad McCotter introduced a Bill HR 4500, The Freedom From Rationed Health Care Act, that invalidates a little known, hidden part of the Stimulus Bill. That hidden part of The Stimulus Bill created the rationing and enforcement boards.  Significantly, this “minor” fiscal trim makes the first part of ObamaCare null and void.

On November 7th, 2009, Speaker Pelosi marched to the podium and paraded her lap dogs to the microphone to proclaim “Victory” for herself, her Democratic House colleagues, and President Obama.  What about every other American? The “Victory” was the passage of the second part of ObamaCare, “The Health Care Bill.”  That’s right, the second part of ObamaCare is the 1,990 page bill that created 118 new boards, commissions, offices and bureaus. The same bill that will be paid for with (1)  $740 billion in tax increases,  (2)  a cut in Medicare to Seniors by $500 Billion, and (3)  a cost shift of $34 Billion to States in unfunded mandates.

This “Victory” was Pelosi’s and President Obama’s second victory on the health care front.  The first occurred under the cloak of darkness and obfuscation, in February 2009.  Hidden in The Stimulus Bill and passed into law were the ominous Obama, Pelosi, Reid rationing and enforcement health boards.

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It is mentioned, almost in passing, that the “healthcare reform” on the verge of becoming law starts collecting premiums and taxes immediately, and promises benefits only in about four years.

What kind of emergency is that?

It’s not a healthcare emergency. It’s what might be called a Madoff emergency.

Whether starry-eyed utopians or cynical malefactors, the unnamed, possibly unnameable they have high ambitions for Washington to achieve their objectives. The stars are aligned for their coup d’etat, but there is one little problem: the country is out of money.

This problem threatens to stop not only their agenda, but the whole game. Washington has 2 million employees on the payroll, earning on average twice as much as those in the private sector. And probably more than a hundred million dependents—recipients of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and grants and subsidies of all types. What happens if the checks stop coming?

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Suddenly, all the condescending ‘tea-bagger’ jokes must not be quite so funny in liberal circles.  Serves them right.

Losing the seat formerly held by the champion of socialized medicine – in the bluest of states – apparently hasn’t phased the radical left.  SEIU president Andy Stern put the blame on the fact that Democrats in Washington, DC, who the union spent tens of millions of dollars electing, haven’t done enough to pass the progressive agenda.  From a SEIU statement:

“The reason Ted Kennedy’s seat is no longer controlled by a Democrat is clear: Washington’s inability to deliver the change voters demanded in November 2008. Make no mistake, political paralysis resulted in electoral failure,” Stern said.

“During the past year, Republicans refused to do anything but stand in the way of change and Democratic Senators took too long to do too little. And tonight, the Senate bears the consequences for its failure to act decisively but the American people are the ones left paying the price…

“The Senate may have squandered the trust the American people gave to Washington in 2008. But now, every member of Congress and the Administration must act with a renewed sense of purpose to show working families whose side they are on and deliver meaningful change to every American. This is not the time for timidity. It starts by passing health insurance reform and giving Pat [DeJong] and millions of people like her the security and peace of mind they deserve.”

Massachusetts voters stood at the borders of their state – and the polling places – with virtual pitch forks telling politicians, to paraphrase Johnny Paycheck, “take this agenda and shove it.”

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In Massachusetts, where 97% of us have health insurance by mandate since 2006, we have learned a few things about health care reform.

We have learned that universal coverage does not mean universal access to a doctor.  The Massachusetts Medical Society reports that there is a critical shortage of family physicians and severe shortage of internal medicine doctors.  Seven physician specialties are also operating in critical or severe physician labor markets.

A recent study by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation showed that 75% of non-emergency ER visits occurred because a regular physician was not available after hours, and half of these visits occurred because a timely appointment was unavailable.  With more than half of all the doctors trained in Massachusetts leaving the state, citing the practice environment and low salary levels, and one out of every four currently practicing doctors considering a career change, it does not appear that access issues are going to improve soon.

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From Tim Carney in today’s Examiner:

With Democrat Martha Coakley in trouble in the Massachusetts special election to fill Ted Kennedy’s seat, Democrats could lose vote No. 60 for President Obama’s health-care bill. In response, an army of lobbyists for drug companies, health insurance companies, and hospitals has teamed up to throw a high-dollar Capitol Hill fundraiser for Coakley next Tuesday night.

COAKLEY –

Of the 22 names on the host committee–meaning they raised $10,000 or more for Coakley–17 are federally registered lobbyists, 15 of whom have health-care clients. Of the other five hosts, one is married to a lobbyist, one was a lobbyist in Pennsylvania, another is a lawyer at a lobbying firm, and another is a corporate CEO. Oh, and of course, there’s also the political action commitee for Boston Scientific Corporation.

All the leading drug companies have lobbyists on Coakley’s host committee: Pfizer, Merck, Amgen, Sanofi-Aventis, Eli Lilly, Novartis, Astra-Zeneca, and more. On the insurance side of things, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Cigna, Humana, HealthSouth, and United Health all are represented on the host committee.
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Just before New Year’s, C-SPAN Chairman and CEO Brian Lamb sent a letter to Congressional leadership, requesting permission to televise negotiations around the final health care reform legislation. The letter was addressed to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, GOP Leader Rep. John Boehner, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and GOP Senate Leader Mitch McConnell.

The letter notes:

Now that the process moves to the critical stage of reconciliation between the Chambers, we respectfully request that you all the public full access, through television, to legislation that will affect the lives of every American.

C-SPAN Health Care Letter –

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Rationing Medicare will not require clandestine meetings in smoke filled rooms. Simply reduce physician reimbursement to below the cost of delivering quality care, and free market forces will take care of the rest.

Medicare has already begun the process of backdoor rationing. Facing overwhelming budget shortfalls, Medicare needs to trim its books. Washington found a clever solution: eliminate the billing code for “physician consults.”

As a hospital physician, I often admit Medicare patients with chest pain or shortness of breath. If my patient needs urgent help from a cardiologist, I call a colleague for assistance.

Until December 31, 2009 the cardiologist could charge a “physician consult” fee for getting out of bed, coming to the hospital, and evaluating a patient with a potentially life threatening problem. Medicare paid $195.76 for this middle-of-the-night work (the same rate as when done during the day).

By eliminating the “physician consult” billing code, Medicare now advises the specialist to charge for a “hospital admission.” For two more months, Medicare will pay $175.67 for this service. However, without a change in current law, the physician’s reimbursement for a “hospital admission” will drop to $141.63 on March 1. This is why the “Doc Fix” is so important for working physicians and their Medicare patients.

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“Ever since Teddy Roosevelt first called for reform in 1912, seven presidents — Democrats and Republicans alike — have taken up the cause of reform time and time again,” President Obama said in a statement hailing the Christmas Eve Senate vote to take over 1/6 of the nation’s economy.  “Such efforts have been blocked by special-interests lobbyists who have perpetrated the status quo that works better for the insurance industry than it does for the American people.”

Note the date of TR’s “calling” for reform. It’s 1912.  Nationalized health care was part of the platform of the Progressive Party that year and every year thereafter. Americans are more familiar with the name Theodore himself gave to that third party bid. After being shot by a would-be assassin in Milwaukee, TR said it takes more than a single bullet to stop a Bull Moose. Instantly, the colorful sobriquet was applied to the Progressive Party.

What did Theodore himself think of his new-found allies, the Progressives? He was sincerely committed to reform. And he certainly thought he had been cheated out of the Republican Party presidential nomination in 1912. After all, he had won all the state party primaries in the limited number of states that held them. But TR also recognized that some of his Progressive supporters went over the top. For them, he coined the wonderful phrase, “the lunatic fringe.”

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There is on YouTube an hilarious video, drawn from C-SPAN2, of Max Baucus on the Senate floor denouncing his Republican colleagues and even more emphatically the Republican leadership for squelching attempts at what he piously describes as bipartisan healthcare reform.

The senior Senator from Montana has obviously had a snootful; he is having considerable difficulty in managing the English language; and he is evidently as mad as a wet hen.

I do not blame Baucus – neither for the excessive imbibing nor for being angry. He is now in a pickle. He was the point man for the Democrats’ healthcare initiative in the Senate, and for perfectly predicable reasons his constituents out in Montana are none too happy with him.

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Across the country, families are gathering to celebrate the holidays. They will reconnect, reflect on the year past and voice their hopes and dreams for the future. At the same time, the United States Senate meets in a rare Christmas Eve session to pass legislation that, if enacted, will forever change the relationship between Americans and their government.

If you want to see how Obamacare will hit you and your family in the wallet, look no further than the inside of your medicine cabinet.  Open the cabinet door and you may see an antihistamine such as Claritin for allergies, pain relief medicine such as Tylenol or Excedrin, Pedialyte to prevent your kids from becoming dehydrated when they are sick, and prenatal vitamins if you and your spouse are expecting another one.

All of these items in your cabinet have two things in common.  One is that they are classified as “over the counter” (OTC) medicines and available without a doctor’s prescription. The other is that if you pay for any of these items with money in your flexible spending account (FSA) or health savings account (HSA) – and according to this guide from FSA administrator Benesyst , all of these are eligible expenses  — you will face an effective tax increase of up to 40 percent on these items in the health care bill that passed the U.S. House of Representatives and is poised to pass the U.S. Senate.

Both bills restrict individuals with these pre-tax accounts to buying a “medicine or drug only if such medicine or drug is a prescribed” one. And ironically, this tax that will raise health care costs substantially by creating incentives for the use of more expensive prescription drugs even when OTC drugs are just as safe and effective.

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From FoxNews:

Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson, who has faced a heap of criticism for appearing to trade his vote on health care for millions in federal Medicaid money, said he’s considering asking that the Nebraska deal be stripped from the bill. But he said other senators are looking for special treatment in light of his success.

Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson, after securing a sweetheart deal for his state as part of the health insurance reform bill, said Tuesday that three other senators have told him they want to bargain for the same kind of special treatment.

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