Thread: Do you support Obama Care ?

Yep, they can still get into the voting booth with their walkers and vote their butts out. LOL


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeaRJfvJokU

2 million eager for health care on parents' plans
By Carla K. Johnson, Ap Medical Writer Thu Apr 1, 4:15 pm ET

CHICAGO – Congress voted to overhaul the health care system on a Sunday. On Monday, Patti Lawson e-mailed her employer's human resources office to ask how soon she could get her 22-year-old daughter back on her health insurance.

In about six months, the new law will allow at least 2 million young adults to be covered under their parents' policies. These are the "millennials," those who came of age in the new century and now are struggling to get on their feet during the worst slump since the Depression.

Many can't find jobs, and many who are employed don't have health coverage from their employers.

The law will allow young adults to stay on or return to their parents' insurance until age 26. To qualify, young people must be "dependents" of their parents. They don't necessarily have to live under the same roof.

Lawson, a Gettysburg College administrator in Pennsylvania, said she is hoping to get her daughter back on her health plan because she is tired of playing "a roulette game." Her daughter has just a temporary job that doesn't provide insurance.

"You're banking on your child staying well," said Lawson, who has been a single parent since her husband died of cancer three years ago.

Regulations still have to be written, but here are some of the crucial specifics of the new law, based on a reading of the measure and interpretation by various experts:

_It applies to young adults up to their 26th birthday who don't have access to insurance through their employer.

_There is no dispute the measure applies to young people away at college. It is widely assumed the law also covers other young people living on their own.

_It will include married children but not their spouses or their kids.

_It is unclear whether parents must wait until their health plan's next open enrollment period to sign up their uninsured older children.

_Young adults who live in a different state from their parents should check to see if their parents' health plan covers medical services where they live.

This is the first time the federal government has forced insurance companies to let young adults stay on their parents' policies. More than half the states already have laws that extend the age of dependent coverage. New York and New Jersey push it all the way to age 30 and 31 and would be allowed to keep those provisions.

The new federal law "provides a minimum, not a maximum," said law professor Timothy Jost of Washington and Lee University. Also, while many state laws do not apply to coverage from self-insured employer plans, the federal law will, experts say.

Much will depend on regulations to be written by federal health officials.

Among other things, Health and Human Services will have to decide what constitutes "dependent," and the definition will not necessarily be the same one used by the Internal Revenue Service for tax purposes. Also, HHS will have to clear up the issue of whether young people who live far from home can stay on their parents' plans.

Young adults in their 20s are the most likely age group to be uninsured, and nearly 30 percent of them lacked insurance in 2008.

"Given the downturn in the economy and the unemployment rate among young adults, it's a really important provision in the bill," said Sara Collins of the nonpartisan Commonwealth Fund.

Since 2003, the group has written a report titled "Rite of Passage?" about uninsured young adults and how they often lose health coverage at age 19 or upon high school or college graduation.

"It's a problem that spans the income spectrum," Collins said.

Before the law takes effect, some young adults who are graduating from college or otherwise becoming ineligible to stay on their parents' plans may want to buy insurance through COBRA to bridge any gap in coverage. But that can be expensive; there are also short-term plans that can be found through Web sites like http://www.ehealthinsurance.com.

The law will help Portland, Ore., mother Jessie Edwards sleep better at night. The nurse practitioner will be able to get both her young adult children covered as dependents on her insurance. Her 23-year-old son is losing his insurance this month, and her 25-year-old daughter has been uninsured for two years.

What frightens Edwards most is the possibility of one of them getting into an accident, she said. "What would we do? How would we cover that?"

Pat and John Curry of Augusta, Ga., have two daughters, ages 23 and 21. Without the new law, the older daughter would lose coverage on the family health plan at her next birthday.

"It would be a tremendous relief to us if we could keep them on our insurance," Pat Curry said. "This is something that would give them just a little more time to get their feet under them with the economy the way it is."

Lawson bought her college graduate daughter, Katie Byrne, catastrophic coverage on the independent market, so she wouldn't be completely uninsured while she searches for a job with benefits. But the $100-a-month plan does not include doctor visits. Meanwhile, Lawson's 19-year-old son is still covered.

"My son can go to a doctor if he twists his knee playing soccer and it's a $15 copay," Lawson said. "Then I have a daughter who does not have the same benefits. It illustrates for me what a lot of Americans face."

Under Pennsylvania law, Lawson's employer could choose to offer coverage for dependents up to age 30, but her employer has decided not to do so.

In the meantime, Lawson plans to fill an Easter basket with dental floss, medications and other health items for her daughter.

She is encouraging her daughter to stay healthy while they wait to get her back on Lawson's plan.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100401/...NsawNwcmludA--

On the Net: FAQs on young dependent coverage: http://www.younginvincibles.org/cover.html

Originally Posted by dv8grl

"If you voted for Obama … seek urologic care elsewhere. Changes to your healthcare begin right now, not in four years."
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/...,5593120.story

Doctor tells Obama supporters: Go elsewhere for health care

MOUNT DORA — A doctor who considers the national health-care overhaul to be bad medicine for the country posted a sign on his office door telling patients who voted for President Barack Obama to seek care "elsewhere."

"I'm not turning anybody away — that would be unethical," Dr. Jack Cassell, 56, a Mount Dora urologist and a registered Republican opposed to the health plan, told the Orlando Sentinel on Thursday. "But if they read the sign and turn the other way, so be it."

The sign reads: "If you voted for Obama … seek urologic care elsewhere. Changes to your healthcare begin right now, not in four years."

Estella Chatman, 67, of Eustis, whose daughter snapped a photo of the typewritten sign, sent the picture to U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson, the Orlando Democrat who riled Republicans last year when he characterized the GOP's idea of health care as, "If you get sick, America … Die quickly."

Chatman said she heard about the sign from a friend referred to Cassell after his physician recently died. She said her friend did not want to speak to a reporter but was dismayed by Cassell's sign.

"He's going to find another doctor," she said.

Cassell may be walking a thin line between his right to free speech and his professional obligation, said William Allen, professor of bioethics, law and medical professionalism at the University of Florida's College of Medicine.

Allen said doctors cannot refuse patients on the basis of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation or disability, but political preference is not one of the legally protected categories specified in civil-rights law. By insisting he does not quiz his patients about their politics and has not turned away patients based on their vote, the doctor is "trying to hold onto the nub of his ethical obligation," Allen said.

"But this is pushing the limit," he said.

Cassell, who has practiced medicine in GOP-dominated Lake County since 1988, said he doesn't quiz his patients about their politics, but he also won't hide his disdain for the bill Obama signed and the lawmakers who passed it.

In his waiting room, Cassell also has provided his patients with photocopies of a health-care timeline produced by Republican leaders that outlines "major provisions" in the health-care package. The doctor put a sign above the stack of copies that reads: "This is what the morons in Washington have done to your health care. Take one, read it and vote out anyone who voted for it."

Cassell, whose lawyer wife, Leslie Campione, has declared herself a Republican candidate for Lake County commissioner, said three patients have complained, but most have been "overwhelmingly supportive" of his position.

"They know it's not good for them," he said.

Cassell, who previously served as chief of surgery at Florida Hospital Waterman in Tavares, said a patient's politics would not affect his care for them, although he said he would prefer not to treat people who support the president.

"I can at least make a point," he said.

The notice on Cassell's office door could cause some patients to question his judgment or fret about the care they might receive if they don't share his political views, Allen said. He said doctors are wise to avoid public expressions that can affect the physician-patient relationship.

Erin VanSickle, spokeswoman for the Florida Medical Association, would not comment specifically.

But she noted in an e-mail to the Sentinel that "physicians are extended the same rights to free speech as every other citizen in the United States."

The outspoken Grayson described Cassell's sign as "ridiculous."

"I'm disgusted," he said. "Maybe he thinks the Hippocratic Oath says, ‘Do no good.' If this is the face of the right wing in America, it's the face of cruelty. … Why don't they change the name of the Republican Party to the Sore Loser Party?"

Urologic care is not a civil right
By Michelle Malkin • April 5, 2010 09:35 AM
http://michellemalkin.com/2010/04/05...a-civil-right/

Someone please just get Democrat demagogue Alan Grayson an MSNBC show and be gone with him.

The Florida congressman is trying to make a federal case out of one urologist’s exercise of political free speech. Via Fox News over the weekend: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010...-obama-doctor/

An outspoken U.S. congressman is planning to file a complaint against the central Florida urologist who posted a sign on his office door warning supporters of President Obama to find a different doctor.

A spokesman for Rep. Alan Grayson, who angered Republicans last year when he said they wanted sick Americans to “die quickly,” told FoxNews.com that Florida Democrat is helping a constituent who was affected by the sign to file a complaint next week with the proper authorities. Grayson will also file additional complaints with all relevant boards or agencies, Grayson spokesman Todd Jurkowski said.

The notice on Dr. Jack Cassell’s Mount Dora practice says, “If you voted for Obama, seek urologic care elsewhere. Changes to your healthcare begin right now, not in four years.”

Cassell told Fox News on Friday he wasn’t refusing care to patients but wanted to educate them on how the new health care law would affect them. “I came across the timeline for implementation of Obamacare and I got a little discouraged when I got to next year when I found that most of the ancillary services and nursing homes and diagnostic imaging, all these things start to fade away,” he told Fox News’ Neil Cavuto. “And I felt that my patients really need to know about this. And the more I thought about it, the angrier I got until I finally felt like I’m going to put a little splash page on my front door and just get people thinking a little bit.”

Cassell, 56, also provides Republican reading material in the waiting room — probably not a risky move, given that Mount Dora’s 10,000 residents and the surrounding area lean heavily conservative. Above a stack of GOP health care literature, a sign reads: “This is what the morons in Washington have done to your health care. Take one, read it and vote out anyone who voted for it.”

Grayson’s attempt to racialize Cassell’s sign was so over-the-top that even CNN’s chief Tea Party-basher Anderson Cooper wasn’t biting, via Newsbusters: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sh...nti-obama-sign

ANDERSON COOPER: Democratic Congressman Alan Grayson — a woman whose daughter took a picture of the sign sent it to the Congressman complaining. He’s filing a formal complaint with the Florida Department of Health and the Florida Medical Board. Congressman Grayson joins us now.

Does it make sense what the doctor is saying? I mean, he’s claiming he’s not turning any patients away.

REP. ALAN GRAYSON (D), FLORIDA: He’s a very confused individual, that much is obvious. But what he’s doing clearly is a violation of the ethics rules that you cited earlier, the Hippocratic Oath, the rules of the AMA and it’s at the expense of his patients in care.

What he is doing is no different from saying I will not treat a black person, I will not treat a Catholic.

COOPER: But wait, wait, wait a minute. I mean, I’m not taking a side, I’m not taking anybody’s side in this, but just for accuracy’s sake, he had said nothing about race and race is a protected category, I mean, there are — it’s illegal to discriminate someone based on race, but it’s not illegal to say you don’t want to treat somebody because you don’t like their politics. Politics is not a protected class.

GRAYSON: Well, in fact, where he lives in Mount Dora (ph) which is in my district many, many of the Democrats who live in Mount Dora (ph) happen to be African-Americans. So by saying that he will not treat somebody who supported Obama, he’s saying that he’s not going to treat a large number of African-Americans in this community.

For the record, according to liberal-leaning Wikipedia, Mount Dora is “75.1% White, 12.3% African American, 0.9% Native American, 3.6% Asian, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 5.5% from other races, and 2.4% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race [represent] 12.5% of the population.”

COOPER: But — so you’re saying race is at the core of that? Come on there is no evidence of that all.

GRAYSON: No, I’m saying — I’m saying that it shows poor judgment. And the effect — the effect of this will set us back as a country. That’s why I’m disgusted by it.

COOPER: But again, he’s not doing anything illegal.

Urologic care is not a civil right. Neither is medical treatment from a politically correct doctor. For now, anyway.

Stunts like Grayson’s will just accelerate the pace at which medical professionals abandon their practices and hang even more troublesome signs on their doors:

CLOSED FOR BUSINESS.

Aren't most "children" grown and on their own with their own jobs by the age of 26? Isn't this meaningless?


_It will include married children but not their spouses or their kids. HUH?

Originally Posted by janelle

Aren't most "children" grown and on their own with their own jobs by the age of 26? Isn't this meaningless?


_It will include married children but not their spouses or their kids. HUH?

I was about to quote that one too......married and 26 but not responsible to get a job with healthcare?

Mark Steyn on the endangered productive adult:

http://www.steynonline.com/content/view/3129/28/

I see some young people in the audience,” said President Obama in Ohio the other day. Not that young. For he assured them that, under Obamacare, they’d be eligible to remain on their parents’ health coverage until they were 26.

The audience applauded.

Why?

Because, as the politicians say, “it’s about the future of all our children”. And in the future we’ll all be children. For most of human history, across all societies, a 26-year old has been considered an adult, and not starting out but well into it. Not someone who remains a dependent of his parent, but someone who might well have parental responsibilities himself. But, if we’re going to remain dependents at 26, why stop there? Why not 36? An Italian court ruled recently that Signor Giancarlo Casagrande of Bergamo is obligated to pay his daughter Marina a monthly allowance of 350 euros – or approximately 500 bucks. Marina is 32, and has been working on her college thesis (“about the Holy Grail”) for over eight years.

America is not yet as “progressive” as Italy, so let us take President Obama at his word – that, for the moment, your 27th birthday marks the point at which a boy becomes a man and moves out of his parents’ health insurance agency. At what point then does an adult re-enter dependency?
Well, in Greece, a female working in a “hazardous” job can retire with a full government pension at 50. “Hazardous” used to mean bomb disposal, and mining. But, as is the way of government entitlements, the category growed like Topsy. Five hundred and eighty professions now qualify as “hazardous”, among them hairdressing. “I use a hundred different chemicals every day — dyes, ammonia, you name it,” 28-year old Vasia Veremi told The New York Times. “You think there’s no risk in that?” Not to mention all those scissors. TV and radio hosts can retire at 50, because they use microphones which could increase their exposure to bacteria. Is column-writing also “hazardous”? It used to be, what with the significant risk of paper cuts. Takes its toll over the years.

So working life is now an ever shrinking window of opportunity between adolescence and retirement. These two happy conditions are the contribution of the advanced social democratic state to the traditional life cycle. In the old days, you were a child until 13 or so. Then you worked. Then you died. And that’s it. Now the interludes between childhood and adulthood and between adulthood and death consume more time than the main acts.

So, if adolescence ends somewhere between 27 and 32 in advanced western nations, when does it begin? We turn for guidance to The Daily Mail in London:

Girls as young as 11 are to be offered pregnancy tests at school.

They will also have access to contraception, the morning-after pill and advice on sexually transmitted infections.

Whatever it takes to get you through recess. So a Sixth Grader can be taught oral sex – “outercourse”, as British teachers call it – and given the abortion helpline number without parental consent. Because, as everyone knows, our bodies “mature” earlier so it would be unreasonable not to expect our grade-schoolers to be rogering anything that moves, and the most we can hope to do is ensure there’s a government-funded condom dispenser nearby. But, evidently, our minds mature later and later, pushing into what less evolved societies regarded as early middle age, so it would be unreasonable to expect people who’ve been fully expert in “sexual transmitted infections” for the best part of two decades to assume responsibility for their broader health care arrangements.

And, if retirement begins at 50, when does it end? Life expectancy in most advanced nations is nudging 80. When Bismarck introduced the Old Age Pension in 1889, you had to be 70 to get it at a time when life expectancy was 45. We haven’t precisely inverted that equation, but we’re getting there. So the “death panel” has a certain rationale. The Dutch, pioneers in medically assisted suicide, are now debating whether to let non-medical persons assist in dispatching people who don’t have anything wrong with them: For citizens who’ve reached the age of 70 and “consider their lives complete”, well, don’t let us stop you.

The economic impact of an aging populace has been well aired, even if not much has been done about it. But European politicians are frantically trying to wean their citizens off unsustainably early retirement on lavish public pensions that, in Greece and elsewhere, will swallow the state if not rolled back. The impact of an ever extended adolescence is also economic – and demographic: The longer you stay in school, the longer you delay forming a family, the fewer children you’ll have to pay taxes to fund your third-of-a-century-long “retirement”. When American politicians promise airily a future in which every child can go to college they presumably haven’t thought through all the ramifications.

Yet the impact of an endlessly deferred adulthood is, I’d say, primarily psychological. What kind of adults emerge from the two-decade cocoon of modern adolescence? Even as the western world atrophies, not merely its pop culture but its entire societal aesthetic seems mired in arrested development. In Men To Boys: The Making Of Modern Immaturity, Gary Cross asks simply: “Where have all the men gone?” Like George Will, Victor Davis Hanson and others who’ve posed that question, Professor Cross is no doubt aware that he sounds old and square. But in a land of middle-aged teenagers somebody has to be

Scary and ridiculous stuff.....

April 8th, 2010 11:58 am
Great Moments In Health Care Analysis

Here’s the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's detailed explanation of what’s in the bill we had to wait until passed before we could see: http://www.kcbs.com/bayareanews/Pelo...-in-SF/6743503

“It’s like the back of the refrigerator. You see all these wires and the rest. All you need to know is, you open the door. The light goes on.”

Yes, and it’s an incandescent bulb, which you’re planning to ban in 2014, powered by electricity produced by a coal plant that you’re trying to regulate into bankruptcy. And the fridge is filled with food, half of which you’re trying to ban, the other half you’re trying to tax.

(And that doesn’t even get into the flashbacks to fellow Democrat William Jefferson and his fridge full of cash.)

Brilliant analogy, Nancy.

Come November, hopefully the refrigerator door will be closed so that Congress can be put on a regulatory diet.

Update: In the comments below, a reader suggests, “We can no longer ‘kill the bill,’ but we can take a hint from the last Indiana Jones movie and ‘Nuke the Fridge!’”

Heh.™