Thread: Obama outlines health care plan for all

Originally Posted by speedygirl

Apparently the new plan isn't so new at all. lol.

Most medical professionals that took the oath to heal wouldn't turn away any human being regardless of who they are or where they come from in an emergency.
I personally don't think that non-citizens of the US should be afforded the same things that US citizens receive. I've said it before, if I lived and worked in another country (and I have) I'd have none of the same privileges that their citizens have.

Ok, 'proposed' plan.....

The 'problem' is not 'healthcare'...but immigration and 'government assists'.....if those problems are solved, that amount of people left 'uninsured' would be minimal.....

We're attacking this problem from the wrong angle.......attack the problem, not the symptoms.

The other thing is to 'chip' citizens....which is truly a slippery slope....

I'm not willing to go there nor watch someone who's undocumented die.

Originally Posted by pepperpot

I'm not willing to go there nor watch someone who's undocumented die.

I actually think we're agreeing on this point, lol. I mentioned taking an oath and I would not refuse to help any human being in an emergency. It should be that way.

Conn Carroll at Heritage gives you a very helpful rundown on how Obamacare is moving through Congress.

Read about the “Vapor Bill” here http://blog.heritage.org/2009/10/02/...macare-update/ — and keep melting those phones.

President Barack Obama’s push for a sweeping health care overhaul edged closer to a major victory in the Senate Finance Committee. Early next week, the Senate Finance Committee will vote on final passage on the “Vapor Bill” being debated and marked up in Committee. The term “Vapor Bill” is used to describe the legislation, because the Senate Finance Committee has been debating the outline of a bill and not actual bill text in Committee. Senator Jim Bunning (R-KY) offered an amendment to allow a reading of the bill for 72 hours before final passage, so that members could read the bill they were voting upon, yet liberals in the committee blocked this amendment. We have mapped out one scenario for Senate consideration before, but we now have more details on the secret plan to pass Obamacare.

The Senate floor debate on health legislation could start as early as next week, but more likely they will consider Obamacare starting on October 13th. The Senate Finance Committee has been held up and will not have a final vote on the Committee bill until next Tuesday, therefore the Senate will have to wait another week before the debate starts.

Here is what we know. Sources on K Street and on Capitol Hill have confirmed the following scenario:

Senate staffers from the Senate Finance Committee and the Senate HELP (Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee) are in the process of writing the bill RIGHT NOW that the Senate will consider the second full week of October;
Senator Reid will have to move to proceed to a House passed tax measure to avoid a “Blue Slip” problem. The term blue slip describes the procedure the House uses to stop the Senate from originating a tax bill. The Constitution states “All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives.” The House passed tax measures that are on the Senate Calendar are as follows:

- H.R. 1664 The AIG Bonus Bill;

- H.R. 2751 A tax bill promoting fuel efficient cars;

- H.R. 2454 House passed Global Warming bill; and,

- Any other tax measure that comes from the House in the next few days.
Senator Reid uses all the procedural tactics in his toolbox to shut down debate and control the Amendment process to get this Senate debate completed by the end of October. They can add the Public Option as an amendment on the Senate floor with a simple majority if they have the will.

Our sources further tell us that moderate Democrats are experiencing heartburn over the cost aspect of the bill. If the bill gets a big score from the Congressional Budget Office, moderate Democrats in the Senate are going to rebel. Also, the “Read the Bill” movement in the heartland is having an effect inside the halls of the Capitol. This bill is going to come back over to the House and they are going to have to consider taking up and passing the Senate passed bill or bounce it back to the House. Worst case scenario, a bill may be on the President’s desk by November 1st, because the House will have the opportunity to take up and pass the Senate passed bill to get it to the President.

October 2, 2009, 10:25 am
Debating Done, Now Comes a Budget Work-Up Before Voting on the Baucus Bill
By David M. Herszenhorn

It wasn’t pretty at times, but at 2:15 a.m. Friday, the Senate Finance Committee finished debating amendments to its sweeping health care legislation. The bill will now be delivered to the Congressional Budget Office for a crucial cost estimate. A final vote on the measure is expected next week.

And while the committee adopted a number of important amendments in its final marathon session, just as critical may be the issues that the panel chose not to address.

The outstanding issues could be handled when the majority leader, Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, works to meld the Finance Committee bill with an alternate measure approved by the Senate health committee back in July. Or these issues could wait until floor debate by the full Senate later this month.

The Finance Committee’s work, in the end, is just a dress rehearsal for the floor debate. And many of the big amendments that failed in committee debate, including a proposal by liberal Democrats to add a government-run insurance plan, or public option, will probably be proposed again for the entire Senate to consider.

My colleagues, Robert Pear and Jackie Calmes, who followed the committee proceedings through the wee hours of the morning, report some of the crucial changes that were made to the bill in the final session, including an easing of penalties the new law would require for people who fail to obtain health insurance.

The committee, in its homestretch, also adopted a proposal by Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West Virginia, to retain the Children’s Health Insurance Program as a stand-alone benefits package — rather than shift children and families onto plans to be offered through new state-run insurance marketplaces.

Mr. Reid’s office has already started working on combining the two bills.
Attention will also now shift back to the House, where Democrats are still wrangling over their version of the health legislation.

That effort should get a lift from the completion of the Finance Committee’s work, allowing lawmakers to take into account with greater certainty the Senate’s position on crucial issues, particularly how to pay for the health care overhaul.

House Democrats are still proposing a surtax on high-income Americans as a way to generate revenue. But the Senate shunned that idea, choosing instead to tax high-cost health insurance plans.

That proposal, which is opposed by labor unions that have negotiated generous benefits packages for their members, is viewed more warily in the House — where organized labor is a crucial constituency for many rank-and-file Democrats.

House leaders are considering whether they can incorporate some version of the tax on costly insurance policies into their bill.

As the process wrapped up on the Finance Committee, Republican senators sought assurances from the Finance Committee chairman, Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, that they would have sufficient time to study the completed bill and also to review the cost analysis that will be prepared by the nonpartisan budget office.

Mr. Baucus said, “I will make, in good faith, make sure there is a reasonable time in which senators, staffs, the public, can review the score by C.B.O.” He also said senators would be able to review the bill while the budget office completes its work, which could take three to four days.

If the cost analysis produces an acceptable price tag – lawmakers are hoping for no more than $900 billion over 10 years, fully offset by new taxes or reductions in government spending – Mr. Baucus said the panel would vote to send the bill to the full Senate.

“If the bill scores, then we vote on the bill, if it scores well,” he said. “On the other hand, if we have got a problem. We’ll have to make some adjustments.”

The Finance Committee is next scheduled to meet on Tuesday.

As exhausted, bleary-eyed staffers looked on, Mr. Baucus applauded the panel for its work and cheered the outcome.

“We have a product here that accomplishes our objectives,” he said. “It’s fiscally responsible. We can all be very proud of what we have achieved here.”

President Obama who was traveling in Europe, quickly issued a statement praising the Finance Committee’s efforts. “Thanks to the unyielding commitment of Senator Baucus and members of the Senate Finance Committee, we have reached another milestone in our effort to pass health insurance reform,” Mr. Obama said in the statement.

Mr. Obama added: “We have a long way to go, but I am confident that as we move forward, we will continue to engage with each other as productively as the members of the Finance Committee, and will get reform passed this year.”

Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the senior Republican on the Finance Committee, warned that most if not all of the Republicans on the panel would vote against the bill next week. But he praised Mr. Baucus for conducting a fair process.

Keep an eye on Prescriptions as we begin to comb through all of the amendments and bring you more news and analysis of the Finance Committee’s work.

http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.c...e-baucus-bill/

Essay : Obama now links job growth to Healthcare Reform
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sh...lthcare-reform

MM's column today skewers the Democrat doctors’ lab-coat stunt on Monday — just the latest example of Obamacare stagecraft that we’ve seen over the last nine months. You’ll remember well the illustrated guide to Obamacare stage props, the Kabuki town halls orchestrated with the MSM, and Obama’s wildly exaggerated health care anecdotes. Obama’s last-ditch appeal to authority (using Center for American Progress-backed partisans dressed up as experts acting in their patients’ best interests) demonstrates the depths of White House desperation. As the NYPost editorial board put it this morning: “Glitz, charm and oratory may have won Obama last year’s election, but they’re not enough to run America.”


Spin doctors for Obamacare
By Michelle Malkin • October 7, 2009 09:55 AM
http://michellemalkin.com/2009/10/07...for-obamacare/

Lights, camera, agitprop! The curtains opened on yet another artfully-staged performance of Obamacare Theater this week. One hundred and fifty doctors took their places on the plush lawn outside the West Wing – many acting like Twilight groupies with cameras instead of credible medical professionals. The president approved the scenery: “I am thrilled to have all of you here today, and you look very spiffy in your coats.”

White House wardrobe assistants guaranteed the “spiffy.” As the New York Post’s Charles Hurt reported, the physicians “were told to bring their white lab coats to make sure that TV cameras captured the image.” President Obama’s aides hastily handed out costumes to those who came in suits or dresses before the doc-and-pony show began.

But while Halloween came early to the Potomac, these partisan single-payer activists in White House-supplied clothing aren’t fooling anyone.

Obama’s spin doctors belong to a group called “Doctors for America” (DFA), which reportedly supplied the white lab coats. The White House event was organized in conjunction with DFA and Organizing for America, Obama’s campaign outfit. OFA and DFA are behind a massive new Obamacare ad campaign, letter-writing campaign, and doctor recruitment campaign. The supposedly “grass-roots,” non-profit DFA is a spin-off of Doctors for Obama, a 2008 campaign arm that aggressively pushed the Democrats’ government health care takeover. DFA claims to have thousands of members with a “variety of backgrounds.” But there’s little diversity in their views on socialized medicine (98 percent want a taxpayer-funded public insurance option) – or in their political contributions.

DFA president and co-founder Dr. Vivek Murthy, an internal medicine physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and an Instructor at Harvard Medical School, served as a member of the Obama Health Policy Advisory Committee and the Obama New England Steering Committee during the 2008 presidential campaign.

DFA vice president Dr. Alice Chen of Los Angeles is an Obama donor and avowed supporter of Organizing for America, Obama’s campaign shop run by the Democratic National Committee. On Monday, she posted on the OFA website with an appeal to Democrat activists for letters to the editor in support of Obama’s “health care reform.”

DFA “senior adviser” Jacob Hacker is an Obamacare architect who laughed at criticism of the plan being a Trojan Horse for single payer coverage. “It’s not a Trojan Horse, right” he retorted at a far Left Tides Foundation conference on health care. “It’s just right there! I’m telling you. We’re going to get there.”

And here’s a brief political donation history of other top DFA docs compiled by Brian Faughnan at http://theconservatives.com:

Dr. Hershey Garner (who stood on stage with Obama at the White House event): more than $10,000 in donations to Democratic candidates since 2001.

Dr. Winfred Parnell: More than $5,700 in donations to Democrats since 2001.

Dr. Michael Newman: $4,550 in donations to Democrats since 2001.

Dr. Boyd Shook: $3,500 in donations to Democrats since 2002.

Dr. Jan Sarnecki: $3,400 in donations to Democrats since 2004.

Dr. Amanda McKinney (who also flanked Obama at the White House event): $2,750 in donations to Democratic candidates since 2001.

Dr. Tracy Nelson: $1,500 in donations to Barack Obama.

Dr. Stanton McKenna: $1,000 in donations to Democrats since 2001.

Dr. Jason Schneider: $600 in donations to Democrats since 2001.

Dr. Biron Baker: $500 donated to Barack Obama last year.

Dr. Nick Perencevich: $500 in donations to Democrats since 2008.

Dr. Elaine Bradshaw: $500 in donations to Barack Obama last year.


Who unveiled “Doctors for America” earlier this spring? No, not ordinary citizens outside the Beltway. The decidedly un-grass-roots sponsors of the Doctors for America launch were Democrat Sen. Max Baucus, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, and the left-wing Center for American Progress (which is run by liberal operative John Podesta and underwritten by far Left billionaire George Soros).

As I’ve noted before, CAP is a lead organization in the Health Care Action Now coalition, the Astroturfed “grass-roots” lobbying group for Obama’s health care takeover legislation run out of 1825 K Street in Washington, D.C. with a $40 million budget. CAP is also the parent group of Think Progress, the far Left website leading the smear campaign against fiscal conservative activists who protested at congressional town halls this summer. And several CAP alumni are now leading the Obamacare push at the Department of Health and Human Services, including special HHS assistant Michael Halle and HHS director Jeanne Lambrew, a former senior fellow at the Center for American Progress who worked on health policy in the Clinton Administration. CAP/HCAN’s most recent initiative? Bussing protesters to the private homes of health care executives last week to bully them over the public option — even as many health care executives line the pockets of Obama administration officials and allies lobbying on their behalf.

It’s all in keeping with the elaborate Kabuki productions that have marked Team Obama’s efforts to manufacture support for government-run health care. They’ve been doctoring it up from Day One.

That poster, “Health Care is a Right”, perfectly sums up what’s wrong with the Left’s mentality.

“Health Care” is not some naturally occuring thing like oxygen or sunshine. It’s a collection of goods and services produced by people, by their work and ingenuity.

Saying “health care is a right” is saying that you have the right to force other people to work for you. I’m pretty sure we settled the legality and morality of that back in the 1860s.

No one has a right to be provided something by someone else.

The government health care takeover tab: $829 billion/10 years
…for starters
By Michelle Malkin • October 7, 2009 04:40 PM
http://michellemalkin.com/2009/10/07...-for-starters/

So, the CBO scoring of the Senate Finance Committee’s health care bill has just been released: $829 billion over 10 years.

For starters.

Don’t forget the Obama administration’s shining examples of efficiency so far.

Jeff Emanuel also reminds us: “They also said Medicare would cost $12 billion by 1990. It ended up being $107 billion – eight times the government estimate.

Note: The CBO score is preliminary — “because the bill ‘has not yet been embodied in legislative language.’”

Philip Klein at the American Spectator blog adds:

this is good news for the Democrats because they now have a bill that they can point to that, according to the official scorekeeper, is deficit neutral and costs under $900 billion. The question is what happens when this gets merged with the more liberal and costly Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee bill.”

Voila! The Great Cost-Shifting Scheme: Medicaid spending by states would increase by about $33 billion over 10 years.


The Vapor Bill plans are moving full steam ahead. The Foundry reports:

Leaders in the House and Senate have a plan to pass President Barack Obama’s sweeping health care plan by Thanksgiving without any significant participation by the American public. CNS News has confirmed the details in our September 22nd titled “Passing a Shell of A Bill: Congress’ Secret Plan to Ram Through Health Care Reform.” Nicholas Ballasy reports “a senior aide to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) told CNSNews.com that it is ‘likely’ that Reid will use H.R. 1586—a bill passed by the House in March to impose a 90-percent tax on bonuses paid to employees of certain bailed-out financial institutions—as a ‘shell’ for enacting the final version of the Senate’s health care bill, which Reid is responsible for crafting.”

This story confirms the four part scenario that would railroad the bill through the Senate using a very unusual closed door procedure to craft the bill with no input from the American people.

Read the whole thing. Be prepared.
http://blog.heritage.org/2009/10/07/...are-confirmed/
***

RedState hears that the Senate GOP is going wobbly.

Tell them to man up.

Capitol switchboard: 202-224-3121.

Originally Posted by janelle

Plus the ones who are passing the bill will not be affected by it. No way do they want to be in this health care bill on the receiving end. Tells you something ....

I wonder why all those who try to defend this travesty always seem to ignore that fact ? The politicians want to cry : [i]" ... but it's for the children..."[/u] but ignore that they put themselves above and beyond the law they want applied to everyone else.