“Gifted Hands” Surgeon Rips Into Obamacare

As the Senate Finance Committee completed its work on a bill that would greatly expand the government’s role in health care – requiring nearly everyone to buy insurance, and designing that insurance through subsidies and mandates – President Obama is trying to rally doctors to his side. At an event last week at the Rose Garden, phalanxed by doctors wearing their white coats (as well as some that White House staffers had handed out), Obama declared, “nobody has more credibility with the American people on this issue than you do.”

Dr. Benjamin Carson receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom

Yet one of the nation’s top surgeons, with credibility and acclaim the world over for the pioneering surgeries he has and his personal story of overcoming hardship, recently ripped the dominant health care legislation before Congress in a critique similar to that of conservatives and libertarians. Benjamin Carson, director of pediatric neurosurgery at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions in Baltimore, Md., and recipient of numerous awards including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, criticized in a recent interview the approach of the current bills for their mandate, creation of a “public option,” and lack of malpractice liability reform. 

“My biggest problem is I feel it’s going in the wrong direction,” Carson told reporters at TV station WLOS in Asheville, N.C. (Video here.)“It’s giving us more government and less autonomy. And I think we should be going in exactly the opposite direction. We should be having more autonomy and less government. And that is the kind of thing that brings the prices down.”  (more…)

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Tags: Canadian Health Care, Cuba Gooding, Dr. Benjamin Carson, English Health Care, Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story
Posted Oct 14th 2009 at 5:45 am in Congress, Featured Story, Healthcare, Obama, Politics | 1609051 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/jberlau/2009/10/14/gifted-hands-surgeon-rips-into-obamacare/%E2%80%9CGifted+Hands%E2%80%9D+Surgeon+Rips+Into+Obamacare2009-10-14+12%3A45%3A32John+Berlau

The Baucus Prescription: Higher Taxes and Higher Premiums (Updated)

Today, the Senate Finance Committee is scheduled to vote on Senator Max Baucus’ health care overhaul.  Like most Americans, I believe that our health care system needs to be reformed.  However, this bill is a tax and spending bill masquerading as a health reform bill.  It gives government bureaucrats far too much power and encroaches on freedom more than any legislation since LBJ’s Great Society experiment.  It is bad for the country and bad for the economy.

 Senate Democrats are pushing a vote on the 1,000-page bill now because the Congressional Budget Office recently estimated that the bill cost “only” $829 billion over the next 10 years. In truth, the bill raises taxes immediately, but the benefits do not kick in for another four years, so the 10-year numbers are distorted. This is an expensive experiment that cuts Medicare, and exacerbates state government budget problems by dramatically expanding Medicaid without providing additional funding.

How do the Democrats propose to pay for the rest of the new spending? There are a massive amount of tax increases in the bill, including over $200 billion in tax increases on insurance premiums, new taxes on individuals and employers, and over $120 billion in new taxes on medical device makers and other health care businesses.  All of these tax increases concern me, but the latter category does so especially: My state is the home of Medtronic, Boston Scientific, 3M, St. Jude Medical and other medical technology makers that employ 60,000 Minnesotans and save and improve countless lives. Increasing taxes on these businesses would not only be an unwise burden on these employers, but would siphon money otherwise spent on research and development.  It would also risk the cost of increased taxes being passed on, directly or indirectly, to those who rely on such devices or who cover their cost.

(more…)

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Tags: 3M, Boston Scientific, Congressional Budget Office, Great Society, health care outcomes
Posted Oct 13th 2009 at 5:00 am in Congress, Featured Story, Healthcare, Politics, State Politics | 1586277 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/tpawlenty/2009/10/13/the-baucus-prescription-higher-taxes-and-higher-premiums/The+Baucus+Prescription%3A+Higher+Taxes+and+Higher+Premiums+%28Updated%292009-10-13+12%3A00%3A36Gov.+Tim+Pawlenty+%28R-MN%29

Milbank: The Forest, the Trees and ACORN

The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank weighs in on Bertha Lewis’ theatrical show at the National Press Club:

Bertha Lewis, the head of ACORN, is one tough nut.

She came to the National Press Club on Tuesday, ostensibly to report on the community group’s “internal probe” into the ACORN workers who were caught on tape advising people posing as a pimp and a prostitute. But Lewis made it clear that, far from apologizing, she was on a “set-the-record-straight tour” — and a tour de force it was.

The internal review by ACORN’s board, disclosed this week by the Louisiana attorney general, that $5 million had been embezzled from the group rather than the $1 million previously alleged? “This is speculation, completely false and not based on any documentation or any audit or anything other than two disgruntled former board members,” Lewis reported.

Accusations of voter fraud after ACORN workers filled out voter registrations for Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys? “An utter fabrication and a work of fiction that was created by the people who wrote it.”

The report by Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee that ACORN created a “shell game that funneled charitable funds to for-profit organizations”? “Another stretch of allegations of how to pound on ACORN. . . . It’s just false.”

And, of course, the secretly recorded videos of ACORN workers providing help to people claiming they wished to set up an underage-prostitution business? “These highly edited tapes,” Lewis said, “don’t tell the whole story.” ACORN’s accusers “have to stoop to break the law in order to create something sensational,” she added.

In creativity, the ACORN boss’s denials were matched only by her assignments of blame. She blamed her predecessor: “I don’t think it’s fair to judge me, as I’m cleaning up a previous administration.” She blamed the powerful: “We’ve seen this play before, whether it was the civil rights movement or whatever, when you organize poor people to have real power, what you do is often turned against you.” And most of all, she blamed Republicans: “The RNC . . . because we’ve been inflated as the boogeyman, raises almost $2 million a day, every day, and this form of modern-day ACORN McCarthyism has got to stop.”

Assigned only a minor role in this orgy of blame were ACORN and Lewis herself. “My biggest weakness is a certain naivete about folks coming after you,” she said in a moment of self-interested introspection. “I guess maybe others might have known and could have set up some other barriers and could’ve been better with media and PR.”

Read the whole story here. But, first savor this quote. Perhaps one of the best Big Media comments during this breaking saga:

But Lewis, in playing the victim, is her own worst enemy. Forget the film of the pimp and prostitute: Watching a film of Lewis’s performance yesterday would probably be enough to cause lawmakers to cut off ACORN’s federal funding.

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Tags: ACORN, ACORN embezzlement, acorn scandal, ACORN videos, ACORN voter fraud
Posted Oct 7th 2009 at 1:43 am in ACORN, Culture, News, Politics | 1403424 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/publius/2009/10/07/milbank-the-forest-the-trees-and-acorn/Milbank%3A+The+Forest%2C+the+Trees+and+ACORN2009-10-07+08%3A43%3A25Publius

Senate Finance Dems: 10% Error Rate in Medicaid is Just Fine

Yesterday, Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee torpedoed efforts to require Mediciad applicants to show IDs. We noted that, with fraud running at around $100 billion in Medicaid and Medicare, this might not have been the wisest vote. Well, it turns out Democrats on the Senate Committee are perfectly fine with a 10% fraud rate.

Today, the Committee voted on an amendment from Sen. Cornyn which would have delayed expansions in Medicaid until steps had been taken to get its error/fraud rate down to 3.9%, the average of all government programs. Details below:

Cornyn Amendment #C30 to America’s Healthy Future Act of 2009

Short Title: Reducing waste, fraud, and abuse in the Medicaid program.

Description of Amendment: Prior to implementing the mandatory Medicaid program expansions in the Chairman’s Mark, the Secretary of Health and Human Services must certify that states have implemented program integrity and quality improvement measures specified in the Chairman’s Mark and that the Medicaid program’s average Payment Error Rate Measurement is less than 3.9 percent.

Offset: No offset needed.

 Republicans

CHUCK GRASSLEY -yes, ORRIN G. HATCH -yes, OLYMPIA J. SNOWE -yes, JON KYL -yes, JIM BUNNING -yes, MIKE CRAPO -yes, PAT ROBERTS -yes, JOHN ENSIGN -yes, MIKE ENZI -yes, JOHN CORNYN -yes

Democrats

MAX BAUCUS -no, JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER -no, KENT CONRAD -no, JEFF BINGAMAN -no, JOHN F. KERRY -no, BLANCHE L. LINCOLN -no, RON WYDEN -no, CHARLES E. SCHUMER – no, DEBBIE STABENOW -no, MARIA CANTWELL -no, BILL NELSON -no, ROBERT MENENDEZ – no, THOMAS CARPER -no

Not Agreed to (10-13)

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Tags: Health and Human Services, Medicaid, medicaid fraud, Medicare, Sen. Ben Nelson
Posted Oct 1st 2009 at 2:50 pm in Congress, Healthcare, Politics | 1127081 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/capitolconfidential/2009/10/01/senate-finance-dems-10-error-rate-in-medicaid-is-just-fine/Senate+Finance+Dems%3A+10%25+Error+Rate+in+Medicaid+is+Just+Fine2009-10-01+21%3A50%3A32Capitol++Confidential

Breaking (**Final Update**): Hill’s Leading Nonprofit Watchdog Sen. Charles Grassley Demands ACORN Probe

FINAL UPDATE 9/24/2009 6:50 PM Eastern time

The senior Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), asked the IRS to probe ACORN – and asked that ACORN be dropped from the Combined Federal Campaign, a charitable program for government workers.

Grassley, long known as Capitol Hill’s foremost policeman of the nonprofit community, is expected to make his formal announcement this evening. In a letter the senator indicated he has been concerned about ACORN since at least 2006.

Grassley sent a letter to IRS Commissioner Douglas H. Shulman earlier today and a separate, shorter letter to John Berry, Director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Both letters are available here.

In the letter to Berry, he asks that the ACORN Institute “and any other ACORN affiliates, particularly any of those reviewed by my staff, be prohibited from participating in the CFC. The acts perpetrated by ACORN employees were impermissible and should not be supported with CFC dollars.”

CFC refers to the Combined Federal Campaign, which bills itself as “the world’s largest and most successful annual workplace charity campaign.” CFC is a federally administered program that channels donations from federal civilian, postal and military employees into causes deemed worthwhile. It is unclear how much money the ACORN network receives through CFC. (more…)

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Tags: ACORN, Charles Grassley, Senate Finance Committee
Posted Sep 24th 2009 at 1:53 pm in ACORN, Exclusives, Featured Story | 818656 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/mvadum/2009/09/24/breaking-hills-leading-nonprofit-watchdog-sen-charles-grassley-demands-acorn-probe/Breaking+%28%2A%2AFinal+Update%2A%2A%29%3A+Hill%27s+Leading+Nonprofit+Watchdog+Sen.+Charles+Grassley+Demands+ACORN+Probe2009-09-24+20%3A53%3A33Matthew+Vadum