1/30/2009

Government takeover of health care in "Stimulus" bill

I have been complaining about this to some of my friends, but it is nice to see others recognizing this.

Tom Daschle is still waiting to be confirmed as secretary of health and human services, not that he's in any rush. Democrats are already enacting his and Barack Obama's agenda of government-run health care -- entirely on the QT.

This was the real accomplishment of this week's House vote for the $819 billion "stimulus," and is the overriding theme of Congress's first month. With the nation occupied with the financial crisis, and with that crisis providing cover, Democrats have been passing provision after provision to nationalize health care.

If Democrats learned anything from the HillaryCare defeat, it was the danger of admitting to their wish to federalize the health market. Since returning to power, they've pursued a new strategy: to stealthily and incrementally expand government control. "What no one is paying attention to in the [stimulus]," says Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, "is that Democrats are making a big grab at the health-care sector."

It began one week after the swearing-in, when Nancy Pelosi whipped through a big expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program. The Schip bill was Democrats' first stab at stealth expansion, unveiled in 2007, though vetoed by George W. Bush.

Initially designed for children of working-poor families, this new Super-Schip will be double in size, and even kids whose parents make $65,000 a year will be eligible. The program will also now cover pregnant women and automatically enroll their new arrivals. The Congressional Budget Office estimates 2.4 million individuals will drop their private coverage for the public program. . . . .

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2 Comments:

Blogger Mark Baird said...

The sky is falling, the sky is falling. Sounds no different then the other side.

Mr. Lott, do you believe in the power of the free market? Millions of people making decisions based on information.

The free market is excellent at providing information and aggregating the decisions of millions.

Millions spoke during the election. If those millions made the wrong decision then they must have had incorrect information. So what do we do about that, given everybody is to busy in their lives to find good balanced information.

Read your blog and only your blog? Watch Fox News and only Fox News? Listen to just your interpretation of the facts?

Look if you believe in the power of the markets then you must believe in the wisdom of the crowd, a diverse crowd.

So what are you doing to ensure that happens in the media market place except making your millions like everyone else that has an opinion.

1/30/2009 3:09 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thank God people like you (and even little ole me) are concerned. As a cancer patient and the daughter (primary care-giver) of an elderly father with cancer, nothing concerns me more than Daschle being in a position to bring the idiocy of his book Critical to fruition.

I don't know in what world the liberals/obama-ites live. Can you imagine the horror of a US Federal Health Board (like UK's NICE)?

The purpose of the Federal Health Board would be to take (their word, not mine) "the hope" out of medicare care and focus on what medical care would be cost effective.

Needless to say, treating my my retired, elderly father with cancer would not be cost effective.

Doctors would be forced to comply with the Board. If they failed to comply, the docs would simply not get paid! (And of course the "tort reform" would be that the doctors would be held harmless and be immune from law suits so long as the doctors followed the Board's treatment mandates!!!)

This is crazy. But IMHO, it will be implemented under the radar the same way the Hospitalist Program Model was implemented. Under the hospitalist system, patients do not even know who their doctors are in the hospital!

Who on earth would even want to be a doctor or surgeon these days?

I blog too about this and patient empowerment generally.

http://advocateyourself.blogspot.com

2/01/2009 10:36 PM  

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