Thread: Obama outlines health care plan for all

Planned Parenthood ‘Stung’ By Lila Rose

http://www.religiondispatches.org/ar...9_by_lila_rose

I'm not gonna post the whole article, it's a very interesting read though, but I do see a pattern with the "do away with Planned Parenthoods" responses here today & I think I found suspect....
All the we'll save us tax payers lots of money doing away with Planned Parent Hoods, so sleasy bible beating politicians can have lavish affairs on our tax money instead...

“Efforts to strip funding from Planned Parenthood,” notes Amie Newman, managing editor of RH Reality Check, “are actually just a continuation of massive anti-choice campaigns against contraception, family planning, annual exams and pap smears, STI checks for low income women (and men!). It's stunning, really, to wage a campaign against PPFA as they are the most well known reproductive health provider.”

I thought the Democrats’ plan was all about enhancing “choices” and “options”…

“Democrats and President Obama have denied that the creation of a new government-run health care plan would be a Trojan Horse for single-payer health care, but a new report by the Lewin Group (comissioned by the Heritage Foundation) finds that the House Democrats’ health care bill would shift more 83.4 million Americans from private health care coverage to the government plan. To put that in perspective, that would mean that nearly half (48.4 percent) would lose their private health coverage.”

– Philip Klein, TAS

http://spectator.org/blog/2009/07/20...ld-lose-privat


Read Cliff Asness on health care mythology. http://stumbleontruth.com

The government does not co-exist or compete fairly with private enterprise. It does not play well with others. The regulator cannot be a competitor at the same time. It cannot compete fairly while it owns the armed forces and courts. Finally, it cannot be a fair competitor if when the “public option” screws up (can’t pay its bills), the government implicitly or explicitly guarantees its debts. We have seen what happens in that case and don’t need a re-run.

The first thing the government does is underprice the private system.

You can easily be forgiven for thinking this is a good thing. Why not, cheaper is better right?

Wrong.

They will underprice private enterprise by charging less to the purchaser of health insurance, not by actually creating it cheaper. Who makes up the difference? Well, you and your family do if you pay taxes, or your kids will pay taxes, or their kids will pay taxes. The government can always underprice competition, not through the old fashioned way of doing it better, they never do that, but by robbing Peter to pay for Paul. They are taking money from your left pocket and giving you a small portion of it back in your right pocket. They do it every day before breakfast, and take a victory lap for the small portion they return.

Second, the government ultimately always cheats when it’s involved in “honest” competition. Try mailing a first class letter through Fed-Ex, or placing an off-track bet with a bookie, or playing a lottery through a private company. Uh, you can’t, so please stop trying. I don’t want you to hurt yourself. Once the government discovers it cannot win, it changes the rules. You see, the government has the power to legislate, steal, imprison, and kill. Those are advantages most private firms do not have, save Google, and you didn’t hear that from me (we all know the Google guy with one eye-brow would crush your larynx for creating a competing search engine).

I have friends who say that I can’t compare doctors to postal workers or truck drivers or bookies as doctors are tireless altruists (pretty damn arrogant no?). I respect the skills of doctors, but they are the kids in college who wanted good jobs with prestige and money, and worked damn hard to attain them, but barely a one was more altruistic than the average truck driver (ever have a doctor drive you from Cleveland to Spokane for nothing but your participation in a duet?) And anyway, those who want socialism want to enslave these altruists while I want to free them, so I am not sure I need to argue this point.

Perhaps the best example of the destructive “public option” is our nation’s schools. Here we clearly have a government provided “public option” competing with (and in fact dominating in size) private schooling. But, is it fair? Does it work well? Not by a long-shot. To send your kids to private school (i.e., a school that competes with the government) you need to first pay your taxes. Absent vouchers or tax credits, the bête noirs of the “socialism in education” set, if you eschew the “public option” you have to pay for education twice. Double payment is not only unfair, but the quality of the product without competition is inhuman and a catastrophe to a generation of children the Left weeps tears over, but actively works to destroy (after all, the Left needs future customers). That the schools provided by the government pale next to the private options, which themselves pale next to what we would have with a full private system (even if publicly funded) is beyond sad, but not the direct point here. The direct point is a “public option” cannot exist without cheating – in this case making you pay for it even if you don’t use it (I’m pretty sure if a private company tried that it would be called stealing).

With a “public option” things inevitably would go the horrific way of our public schools. Instead of existing to please customers (patients and students respectively) the “public option” in schools exists largely to benefit empowered stakeholders of the system (health administrators and unionized school employees respectively), who will shamelessly pretend to give a darn about sick people and children. Watch the analogy play out if we go this route in health care. It will be like looking in a funhouse mirror and seeing a doctor where you used to see a teacher. All else will be the same.

Team Obama’s gaffetastic moments are their most honest ones. Here is the president warning that the government health care take over will create “inefficiencies.”

Uhhhh, you can say that again, champ (click to watch video ): http://www.realclearpolitics.com/vid...to_system.html




Snort: Obama invokes the Mayo Clinic to bolster his health care takeover plans…but Mayo doesn’t support Obamacare. http://hotair.com/archives/2009/07/2...macare-stinks/



More from Mary Katharine Ham: Obama Loves Mayo, But Mayo Does Not Love Him (Update: Gibbs Responds, Badly) http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblog..._mayo_does.asp

Jimmie Bise gives you a preview of the obituaries that will be written if Obamacare passes. http://www.americanissuesproject.org...obamacare.aspx

…to drive home the real cost to real people, I decided to do some quick “back of the envelope” calculations to see just what kinds of businesses might have to start firing people if the President’s health care scheme becomes law.

Consider Company A, which employs seven people: a manager, an assistant manager, and five workers. The owner pays himself a salary of $70,000 per year (about $35/hour), the manager $52,000 ($25/hour), the assistant manager $35,000 ($20/hour), and the five employees $21,000 (about $10/hour). That makes a payroll of $262,000. Now, the article doesn’t say how much the fine for a payroll that size would be, so I’ll assume either 6 percent ($15,720) or 4 percent ($10,480). The lowest total, as you can see, is more than half the salary of one of the worker bees and the higher figure is even worse. If I were running that business, I’d say the easiest way to solve my problem would be to fire one of the worker bees. That would reduce my payroll to escape the fine and it would leave me with more money as well. Sure, my business would be less productive, but it’s not terribly difficult to get make up for that one lost employee by having my other six work a little bit harder.

So what kind of businesses might fit Company A’s profile? How about a small restaurant or a neighborhood grocery store? Many franchised convenience stores could meet that description, as could any number of local insurance companies, construction companies, and contractors.

Prices will go up too. Indirectly, the consumer will pay for all these programs. Not a tax (and the libs will insist on reminding us), but it will still reduce the buying power of the paycheck and force more people to cut back or get into credit problems. You end up with a endless circle of economic disasters, including unemployment as companies cut back and sales drop. The end result may be exactly what this radical government wants: more people relying on Pelosi, Reid and Obama.


Read also Obama, you’re a politician, it’s always about politics!
http://moniquestuart.com/2009/07/20/...bout-politics/

It’s never about politics for President Obama:

President Obama accused Republicans of playing political games with health care reform Monday, taking aim at South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint for suggesting a defeat on health care could be a “Waterloo” moment for Obama.

“If we’re able to stop Obama on this, it will be his waterloo. It will break him,” Obama quoted DeMint as saying. “Think about that. This isn’t about me. This isn’t about politics. This is about a health care system that is breaking American families, breaking America’s businesses and breaking America’s economy. We can’t afford the politics of delay and defeat.”

DeMint made the remarks on a call organized by the group Conservatives for Patients Rights.

In his statement, Obama also said the need for “health care reform is “urgent and it is indisputable,” but he did not repeat his August deadline, instead saying it needed to be done by the end of the year.

This health care bill is only about politics. It’s about advancing a liberal political agenda the Dems have been trying to push through for years. How does the guy in the highest political office try to argue that nothing he does is political? This is Washington, DC. America knows that everything is about politics. You’re politicians. That’s what you do. Our president sounds like an idiot when he tries to claim otherwise.

Look, neither political party may be very popular at the moment, but people understand the game we’re playing. They aren’t stupid enough to believe that Democrats are never being political and the Republicans are only about politics. When did Democrats corner the market on wanting to do what’s best for America? I must have been out that day.

UPDATE: Just picked up this little gem off of the White House blog, it is the paragraph that preceded what is quoted up above:

Now, there are some in this town who are content to perpetuate the status quo, are in fact fighting reform on behalf of powerful special interests. There are others who recognize the problem, but believe — or perhaps, hope — that we can put off the hard work of insurance reform for another day, another year, another decade.

What about those people who believe there is a problem, but don’t think that more government is the way to fix it? What about those people who think government tinkering is what cause the problem in the first place? What about those people who have read the Constitution and knows that our government does not have the authority to impose this monstrous health care “reform” on us?

I am one of those people. I don’t consider myself to be a powerful special interest. Is it possible that some politicians oppose your method of health care reform because they are representing other people like me? I know you all think this Tea Party thing is a joke. Well, all of us involved in the Tea Parties think you are the joke, but we’re not laughing.

July 20, 2009
Nancy Pelosi and the “Millionaire’s Tax”
http://moniquestuart.com/2009/07/20/...lionaires-tax/

Pelosi wants to “drain” more “savings” from the medical industry and institute a “millionaire’s tax”in order to support their un-Constitutional health care bill:

Trying to sell a historic health bill to a balky caucus, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told POLITICO in an interview that she wants to soften a proposed surcharge on the wealthy so that it applies only to families that make $1 million or more.

The change could help mollify the conservative Democrats who expect to have a tough time selling the package back home. Their support is the single biggest key to meeting the speaker’s goal of having health care reform pass the House by the August recess.

The bill now moving through the House would raise taxes for individuals with annual adjusted gross incomes of $280,000, or families that make $350,000 or more.

“I’d like it to go higher than it is,” Pelosi said Friday.

The speaker would like the trigger raised to $500,000 for individuals and $1 million for families, “so it’s a millionaire’s tax,” she said. “When someone hears, ‘2,’ they think, ‘Oh, I could be there,’ because they don’t know the $280,000 is for one person.

“It sounds like you’re in the neighborhood. So I just want to remove all doubt. You hear ‘$500,000 a year,’ you think, ‘My God, that’s not me.’”

Pelosi also told POLITICO she will push to “drain” more savings from the medical industry — hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and health insurers — than they have given up under current health-reform agreements with the Senate and White House.

Asked whether she believes the industry players will wind up contributing more to the package, Pelosi replied: “I don’t know. I know they can, to the extent that the special interests are willing to cooperate. … They could do much better. … Frankly, I think all the money [to pay for health reform] could be drained from the system, if they were willing to do that.”

First of all, can anyone tell me where it says in the Constituion that Congress has the authority to tax specific groups in order to pay for another groups health care? I must have missed that part because I don’t remember seeing it in there.

I would also like to understand why people should be penalized just because they make more money. It’s always about taxing the rich. When did we become such a petty society? Why do we want to punish people just because they’re rich? Is it because we have lost faith in being rich ourselves so we want to punish those who have done better than us financially? It just makes no sense to me.

And, how much can we possibly drain from the medical industry before we break it? When it’s government versus industry only the government can survive. It’s as if McDonald’s were allowed to “drain” money from Burger King in order to expand themselves. At some point, Burger King will disappear.

Well, that’s what the government wants to do with health care. Private industry cannot survive when competing against a government with limitless ability to outspend them and fund the spending by stealing them from the very industry they’re in competition with.

This is not the American way. It is the responsibility of the American people to stop this. Once this beast is unleashed, there will be no going back. Washington doesn’t repeal laws. Government is continuously expanding and it will not contract. Call your representatives today and tell them if they vote yes to this bill you’ll vote no to them in the next election.

Comments »

Great posting and reflects exactly how I feel. What is Congress doing? Why are they involved in all this, and how did it come to be that they think they have a right to tax anyone? It is a duty to keep taxation low and not burden anyone. For some reason the Federal gov’t thinks they can reach in and tax everything as if it is their right. There was a time the Federal gov’t could not tax your wages. Now it is as if everything should be taxed. If I have a health plan from work - why do they need to tax that? Why my benefit? I wish someone would do an investigative piece on Pelosi and her vineyards and real estate and let’s see what she is paying and if she is using union labor. This is the land of opportunity, not the land of gov’t hands redistributing wealth.

Tuesday, July 21, 2009
The elderly should be very afraid
http://www.punditandpundette.com/200...ry-afraid.html

I don't normally encourage fear in people, but there is absolutely nothing good in the Democrat healthcare reform proposals for the elderly. Medicare, itself already unsustainable, is going to be slashed to help pay for this much larger, unsustainable system. That means a cut in benefits.

From Dick Morris and Eileen McGann:
http://www.dickmorris.com/blog/2009/...peal-medicare/

Obama’s health care proposal is, in effect, the repeal of the Medicare program as we know it. The elderly will go from being the group with the most access to free medical care to the one with the least access. Indeed, the principal impact of the Obama health care program will be to reduce sharply the medical services the elderly can use. No longer will their every medical need be met, their every medication prescribed, their every need to improve their quality of life answered.

It is so ironic that the elderly - who were so vigilant when Bush proposed to change Social Security - are so relaxed about the Obama health care proposals. Bush’s Social Security plan, which did not cut their benefits at all, aroused the strongest opposition among the elderly. But Obama’s plan, which will totally gut Medicare and replace it with government-managed care and rationing, has elicited little more than a yawn from most senior citizens.
[/quote]

When medical treatments (surgeries, drugs, therapies) are rationed, as will be necessary, who will be seen as more of a drain on the system than the elderly? Who will be judged less worthy of investments of resources than the elderly? We in the US will have our NICE board of "ethicists, doctors, and citizens" who will measure the value of human beings according to their "quality adjusted life year."

"...quality adjusted life year...."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124692973435303415.html


And (though I repeat myself), this, via Betsy McCaughey, is extremely ominous: http://www.nypost.com/seven/07172009...ses_179667.htm

"One troubling provision of the House bill compels seniors to submit to a counseling session every five years (and more often if they become sick or go into a nursing home) about alternatives for end-of-life care (House bill, p. 425-430). The sessions cover highly sensitive matters such as whether to receive antibiotics and 'the use of artificially administered nutrition and hydration.'

This mandate invites abuse, and seniors could easily be pushed to refuse care. Do we really want government involved in such deeply personal issues?"

From Hot Air, Obama's words are not comforting: Let them eat painkillers. http://hotair.com/archives/2009/07/2...t-painkillers/

From Doug Ross: http://directorblue.blogspot.com/200...uthanasia.html

In other words, faceless bureaucrats in Washington -- not your family -- will decide whether your grandparents live or die.

And the AARP, in running ads for ObamaCare, has betrayed its members big time. Dick Morris again:

But the interest groups that usually speak up for the elderly, particularly AARP, are in Obama’s pocket, hoping to profit from his program by becoming one of its vendors. Just as they backed Bush’s prescription drug plan because they anticipating profiting from it, so they are now helping Obama gut the medical care of their constituents.

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See also :
http://www.gaypatriot.net/2009/07/21...ons-for-obama/

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Video via Kevin Jackson, who asked – without getting an answer – if the plan is so good, why don’t members of Congress get on it?

Here’s more on how Senate Democrats reacted to Sen. Coburn’s amendment to the healthcare bill that would have required all Senate members and their staffs to enroll in whatever government healthcare plan that may come out of the debate:

In the health debate, liberals sing Hari Krishnas to the “public option” — a new federal insurance program like Medicare — but if it’s good enough for the middle class, then surely it’s good enough for the political class too? As it happens, more than a few Democrats disagree.

On [last] Tuesday, the Senate health committee voted 12-11 in favor of a two-page amendment courtesy of Republican Tom Coburn that would require all Members and their staffs to enroll in any new government-run health plan. Yet all Democrats — with the exceptions of acting chairman Chris Dodd, Barbara Mikulski and Ted Kennedy via proxy — voted nay.

In other words, Sherrod Brown and Sheldon Whitehouse won’t themselves join a plan that “will offer benefits that are as good as those available through private insurance plans — or better,” as the Ohio and Rhode Island liberals put it in a recent op-ed. And even a self-described socialist like Vermont’s Bernie Sanders, who supports a government-only system, wouldn’t sign himself up.

Of course, they also qualify now for generous Congressional coverage. Most Americans won’t have the same choice. Some will be transferred to the new entitlement as it uses its taxpayer bankroll to dominate insurance markets. Others work for businesses that will find it easier to dump their policies and move employees to the federal rolls. Democrats also know that the public option will try to control health spending by squeezing payments made to doctors and hospitals, and by not paying for treatments that Washington decides are too expensive, which will result in inferior care.

No doubt Mr. Dodd acceded to the Coburn amendment to blunt such objections, and in any case he’ll strip it out later in some backroom. Judd Gregg was the only GOP Senator to oppose it, on humanitarian grounds. As he told us in an interview, the public option “will be so bad that I don’t think anyone should be forced to join.”

‘Nuff said?

http://sistertoldjah.com/archives/20...-enroll-in-it/

Philip Klein tosses the politics card back at the White House:

Obama’s health care push is hitting a rough patch because moderates in his own party are skittish about the price tag and tax increases. The Congressional Budget Office determined that none of the Democratic bills do anything to rein in costs — the primary rationale for his health care drive. And the Mayo Clinic, which Obama has routinely praised as a model for the health care system, has blasted the House legislation. Yet Obama wants to rush legislation through so he has a victory going into an election year.

In fact, as CNN reported, “The Senate Democratic leadership and the White House are putting heavy pressure on the Finance Committee to adopt its health care plan before the president speaks to the nation (on Wednesday).” So in other words, Obama is trying to pressure the Finance Committee not to write the best legislation its members can, not to reach a bipartisan compromise, but to pass whatever bill they can before he goes in front of the television cameras to give a prime-time news conference.

Yes, it is about him.



The State Medical Associations of Texas, Georgia, and other states have broken with the AMA over Obama’s health care plan: http://www.star-telegram.com/804/story/1496890.html

“A group of 17 state medical associations and three specialty physicians groups, led by the Medical Association of Georgia, have also balked at endorsing the legislation, and were drafting a letter last week to circulate on Capitol Hill, according to Congress Daily. Key among the concerns was the public insurance option.”

The Texas group has formed a task force to review the 1000+ page House bill and has already expressed concern about the bill’s “failure to fix Medicare funding formulas, the ‘long-term consequences’ of the government’s plan to offer a public insurance option and a prohibition on physician ownership of healthcare facilities.” The bill also reportedly omits caps on medical liability that have been included in Texas law since 2003.

On a related topic, Allen J. Favish notes the House bill establishes incentives for racial preferences at medical schools. http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/...he_demo_1.html

The Obama Administration may be trying to fast-track healthcare to avoid answering questions about provisions like these, or maybe they think the public just doesn’t care what the bill says. After all, Congress doesn’t read its bills anymore and even Obama admits he’s not sure what it says, even though that hasn’t stopped him from promising what it will do. http://www.heritage.org/2009/07/21/m...th-house-bill/

Obama proves that it is indeed all about him: http://www.nationaljournal.com/congr...90722_6620.php

Grassley said he spoke with a Democratic House member last week who shared Obama’s bleak reaction during a private meeting to reports that some factions of House Democrats were lining up to stall or even take down the overhaul unless leaders made major changes.

“Let’s just lay everything on the table,” Grassley said. “A Democrat congressman last week told me after a conversation with the president that the president had trouble in the House of Representatives, and it wasn’t going to pass if there weren’t some changes made … and the president says, ‘You’re going to destroy my presidency.’”

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Shouldn’t the public know which health care CEOs the White House is courting in its desperate attempt to save Obamacare?

Didn’t the president promise the dawn of the greatest era of sunlight and open records and transparency — and an end to the dark days of George Bush?

Uhhhhh, never mind: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...,1752248.story

Invoking an argument used by President George W. Bush, the Obama administration has turned down a request from a watchdog group for a list of health industry executives who have visited the White House to discuss the massive healthcare overhaul.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington sent a letter to the Secret Service asking about visits from 18 executives representing health insurers, drug makers, doctors and other players in the debate. The group wants the material in order to gauge the influence of those executives in crafting a new healthcare policy.

The Secret Service sent a reply stating that documents revealing the frequency of such visits were considered presidential records exempt from public disclosure laws. The agency also said it was advised by the Justice Department that the Secret Service was within its rights to withhold the information because of the “presidential communications privilege.”

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics said it would file suit against the Obama administration as early as today.

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Uhhhhhh, demonizing doctors doesn’t exactly seem the best way to shore up support for the ailing, failing government health care takeover.

But the fear-mongerer-in-chief can’t seem to help himself.

Allah’s got the vid of Obama blabbering about greedy doctors removing your children’s tonsils instead of giving them allergy medicine.

Or something.

http://hotair.com/archives/2009/07/2...-or-something/

That bit about about the tonsils needs to be repeated endlessly on the airwaves and the internet until every doctor in America has seen it. Demonizing doctors along with insurance companies and pharmaceuticals is not a good strategy.Obama is his own worst enemy and shoots himself in the foot every time he opens his mouth without TOTUS and this is a perfect example.

I can’t believe the MSM will cover for this guy much longer. Even they must be starting to see that he is a complete fraud and has a very limited understanding of the country is so intent on changing. At some point they are going realize that the fool in that clip will destroy our health care system and it will not leave them untouched (unless they manage to get elected to congress.)


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Walter Olson has the scoop on how Dems tried to stuff goodies for trial lawyers in the House Democrats’ health care takeover bill.

Republicans apparently stymied those efforts last week, but like the Terminator, they’ll be back.

Keep an eye on this one:

Just before the House leadership’s 794-page health care reform bill went to a Ways & Means markup last Thursday, a remarkable provision was slipped in that amounts to one of the more audacious and far-reaching trial lawyer power grabs seen on Capitol Hill in a while. Republicans managed to fend it off for the moment–but don’t be surprised if it shows up again down the road in some form.

The provision would have drastically widened the scope of lawsuits against what are known as Medicare third-party defendants…

…The language slipped into the health bill would greatly expand the scope of these suits against third parties, while doing something entirely new, namely allow freelance lawyers to file them on behalf of the government–without asking permission–and collect rich bounties if they manage thereby to extract money from the defendants. Lawyers will recognize this as a “qui tam” procedure, of the sort that has led to a growing body of litigation filed by freelance bounty hunters against universities, defense contractors and others alleged to have overcharged the government.

It gets worse…

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Your health, as I now tell my children, is not something to fool around with. Read the labels. Don’t take unnecessary risks. Look before you leap. The devil is in the details.

Why would it be different for a health care plan?

I’m glad no one is calling me to ask whether I “support” health care reform. At this point, the question — and the polls measuring people’s answers to it — is utterly meaningless. What is health care reform?

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/publ...her_knows_best

Obamacare for illegal aliens
July 22, 2009

Big Nanny Democrats want to ration health care for everyone in America – except those who break our immigration laws. Last week, the House Ways and Means Committee defeated an amendment that would have prevented illegal aliens from using the so-called “public health insurance option.” Every Democrat on the panel voted against the measure.

Nevada GOP Rep. Dean Heller’s measure would have enforced income, eligibility, and immigration verification screening on all Obamacare patients. Unlike most everything else stuffed into the House Democrats’ plan, the citizenship vetting process would not have required building a new bureaucracy. Rep. Heller proposed using existing state and federal databases created years ago to root out entitlement fraud.

If the congressional majority were truly committed to President Obama’s quest to wring cost savings from the system, why won’t they adopt the same anti-fraud checks imposed on other government health and welfare beneficiaries? Maybe an intrepid reporter can ask the president at his next Obamacare show to explain.

The Democratic leadership denies that an estimated 12-20 million illegal immigrants will receive taxpayer-subsidized health insurance coverage. Senate Finance Committee Chair Sen. Max Baucus (D-Montana) calls the proposition “too politically explosive.”

But President Obama lit the fuse in February when he signed the massive expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). That law loosened eligibility requirements for legal immigrants and their children by watering down document and evidentiary standards – making it easy for individuals to use fake Social Security cards to apply for benefits with little to no chance of getting caught. In addition, Obama’s S-CHIP expansion revoked Medicaid application time limits that were part of the 1996 welfare reform law. Immigration activists see the provisions as first steps toward universal coverage for illegals.

“Explosive?” The applause certainly was. President Obama’s praise of the weakened immigrant eligibility rules drew the strongest claps and cheers from members of Congress at the SCHIP signing event.

Immigration analyst James R. Edwards, Jr. reported last week in National Review that “no health legislation on the table requires federal, state, or local agencies — or private institutions receiving federal funds — to check the immigration status of health-program applicants, so some of the money distributed via Medicaid and tax credits inevitably would go to illegal aliens.” Moreover, the Senate Finance Committee plan creates a new preference for illegal aliens by exempting them from the mandate to buy insurance.

That’s right. Law-abiding, uninsured Americans would be fined if they didn’t submit to the Obamacare prescription. Law-breaking border-crossers, visa-overstayers, and deportation fugitives would be spared.

The solution is not to give them health insurance, but to turn off the magnets that draw them to enter illegally in the first place.

For years, advocates of uncontrolled immigration have argued that illegal aliens are not getting free health care and that even if they were, they are not draining government budgets. The fiscal crisis in California gives lie to those talking points. In March, the Associated Press reported that Sacramento and Contra Costa counties were slashing staff and closing clinics due to the prohibitive costs of providing non-emergency health services for illegal immigrants.

“The general situation there is being faced by nearly every health department across the country, and if not right now, shortly,” Robert M. Pestronk, executive director of the National Association of County and City Health Officials, told the AP. Indeed. The Texas state comptroller put the price tag for illegal alien hospital care at $1.3 billion in 2006. USA Today reported that from 2001 to 2004, spending for emergency Medicaid for illegal immigrants rose by 28% in North Carolina alone. Clinics across the Midwest have also been shuttered under the weight of illegal immigrant care costs.

At a time when Democrat leaders are pushing rationed care in a world of limited resources, Americans might wonder where the call for shared sacrifice is from illegal immigrant patients like those in Los Angeles getting free liver and kidney transplants at UCLA Medical Center. “I’m just mad,” illegal alien Jose Lopez told the Los Angeles Times last year after receiving two taxpayer-subsidized liver transplants while impatiently awaiting approval for state health insurance.

Now, multiply that sense of entitlement by 12-20 million illegal immigrants. Welcome to the open-borders Obamacare nightmare.

http://michellemalkin.com/2009/07/22...iens/#comments

Opposition has grown from 45% in late June to 49% two weeks ago and 53% today.

As in earlier surveys, those with strong opinions are more likely to oppose the plan rather than support it. The current numbers: 24% strongly favor and 37% strongly oppose.

- Rasmussen

The sleeping center of America is waking up.

Polls show confidence in this administration is eroding very quickly, and across the board.

We need to keep up the process of educating our friends, neighbors and families.

The fact that our government ignores other countries’ unsuccessful health coverage programs and continues to push for universal health care and includes illegal aliens in the plan for us tells me this is not about health care or the economy. This is a power grab.

Common sense left the federal government long ago.

If the congressional majority were truly committed to President Obama’s quest to wring cost savings from the system, why won’t they adopt the same anti-fraud checks imposed on other government health and welfare beneficiaries?

It’s all about power. Shovel benefits to a large and growing demographic and the (illegal) votes will keep on comin’.

I’m SICK of it.