Obamacare Will Clog America’s Medical System

So writes Marc Siegel associate professor of medicine at NYU in today’s USA Today:

“A month ago, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius sent a letter to the president of America’s Health Insurance Plans stating that the impact on insurance premiums from “the new consumer protections and increased quality provisions” of the new health reform law “will be minimal … no more than 1% to 2%.” Sebelius warned Karen Ignagni that there would be “zero tolerance” for insurers blaming unjustified premium increases on the new law. Talk about subtle.Sebelius’ threat, though, obscures a larger problem: The new health care law mandates and extends the kind of insurance that breeds overuse, thereby driving up costs and premiums. And here I thought the reform intended to reduce costs.As the details of this massive government-led health care overhaul begin to trickle out, let me be clear (to borrow the president’s go-to phrase): The medical system is about to be overwhelmed because there are no disincentives for overuse.A free-for-all ObamaCare was lauded by many for covering all Americans with pre-existing conditions. That’s not the issue. We’re going to get into trouble because of the kinds of coverage that the new law mandates. There are no brakes on the system. Co-pays and deductibles will be kept low, and preventive services will have no co-pays at all. That sounds like a good deal for patients, yes? But without at least a pause to consider necessity and/or cost, expect waiting times to increase, ERs to be clogged and longer lead times needed to make an appointment.Patients with new Medicaid cards who can’t find a doctor will go where? To emergency rooms. The escalating costs of these visits (necessary and unnecessary) will be transferred directly to the American public, both in the form of taxes as well as escalating insurance premiums.Beginning in 2014, insurance exchanges will be set up in every state so that individuals can choose a health insurance plan. This will help control costs, right? Wrong. Don’t expect to find individually tailored plans or those with higher deductibles or co-pays. They won’t be there because they can’t receive the government stamp of approval.In the new system, my patients will be able to see me as often as they’d like. But will they get the same level of care? I don’t think so. I anticipate that more expensive chemotherapies and cardiac stents or transplants, for instance, will have a tougher time being approved, as is already the case in Canada.Over on the public side, the new Independent Payment Advisory Board — established by the health reform law to “recommend proposals to limit Medicare spending growth” — will advise Medicare that some treatments are more essential and more cost-effective than others. I believe that value judgments inevitably will have to be made, reducing my options as a practicing physician. Private insurers will follow suit, as they often do.During the battle over this reform, you often heard, even from President Obama, that you’d be able to keep the plan you have. What he didn’t say — but what we now know — is that because of this new law, the private markets will have to remake their plans, that the costs will rise and that the plan you were told you could “keep” is in all likelihood no longer available. But when your plan changes, backers of reform will simply blame it on those evil private insurance companies.The truth is, private health insurance is a low-profit industry, with profit margins of 4% compared with over 20% for major drug manufacturers. With the additional costs of no lifetime caps and no exclusion for pre-existing conditions, these companies will be compelled to raise their premiums in order to stay in business. The individual mandate is supposed to be the tradeoff by providing millions of new customers, but there is no guarantee that this additional volume will preserve profits with all the new regulations. This is what occurred in New York state in 1992, when a new law denied exclusion on the basis of pre-existing conditions.Every scratch or dent None of this is terribly surprising. I mean, imagine if your car insurance covered every scratch or dent. Wouldn’t you expect your premiums to rise to meet the expanded coverage? And wouldn’t you expect your auto repair shops to become clogged with cars that didn’t really need to be repaired, competing for time and space with other cars with broken transmissions or burnt-out motors?If we want lower insurance premiums, we will need to return to a system that favors high deductible, high co-pay catastrophic-type insurance with a built-in disincentive for overuse, such as the kind that some employers have provided as an option up until now. Patients could pay for office visits from health savings accounts or other flexible spending tax shelters. More than 10 million Americans already have such accounts.Unfortunately, the new law is taking us away from the kind of insurance that compels patients to have more skin in the game. As a result, we’ll all pay in the long run — both financially and with less efficient, perhaps even lower quality, care.The kind of insurance the new law mandates will, over the years, wear out the health care system in the same way that overuse in orthopedics wears out an elbow or knee joint. This won’t be fun for doctors or, most important, for patients.Marc Siegel is an associate professor of medicine and medical director of Doctor Radio at NYU Langone Medical Center.

Comment:  All of this from the mamoth ego of this college graduate student president.

Chaos in France….. America’s Future from Obama Economics?

The Issue:             PENSION INSANITY IN FRANCE!

“Many people in France are waking up to the reality that they cannot sustain the welfare state indefinitely.  Apparently, it isn’t economically feasible to have citizens take five weeks of vacation, produce very little and then be guaranteed pension benefits at age 60.  It just doesn’t work, says Lee Doren, communications coordinator at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

• Consequently, Nicholas Sarkozy has attempted to solve this problem by raising the standard pension age from 60 to 62 and the age of a guaranteed “full” pension from 65 to 67.
• This “extreme” measure has led to French unions striking and shutting down the French economy.

The unions claim Sarkozy is being unfair to people who enter the workforce later in life; those individuals would not be eligible for pensions until they were 67.  Ironically, the unions never question how their own policies have prevented people from entering the workforce.

• For example, unions increase demands on employers and make it virtually impossible to fire anyone.
• This increases unemployment, especially for those below the age of 25.
• However, this would not be the first time that union policy had the result of harming workers.

Overall, the problem with guaranteed pensions is that the public will never be satisfied with the reality that long-term income security can’t be created by legislation.  Only increased productivity and wealth creation can accomplish that.  Sadly, there are people in our government currently advocating that America move towards a French-style pension system.  While it may create a guaranteed political future for those who distribute these “guaranteed” benefits, it will only lead to economic disaster for the country, says Doren.   (From National Center for Policy Analysis)

Source: Lee Doren, “Pension Insanity in France,” OpenMarkets.org, October 13, 2010.

For text:   http://www.openmarket.org/2010/10/13/pension-insanity-in-france/

And the Marxist Reaction:    STRIKES ESCALATE IN FRANCE!!!

“France’s air-traffice authority said Monday that at least a third of flights to and from the nations’s airports will be canceled Tuesday, as protests against President Nicolas Sarkozy’s proposed pension ovrhaul intensified.

Hundreds of gasoline stations across France were forced to close Monday, and workers voted to extend strikes at all 12 of the country’s refineries into a second week”

Comment:  How’s that for responsible citizenry, Lefty America?

“The disruption to gas stations and to overall public services could become even more severe on Tuesday as labor unions have called on workers to participate in nationwide marches against the pension plan.”

Comment:  The French Left is skilled at marches and setting fires to vehicles.

“Less than two years before the next presidential elections, the proposed pension overhaul-which raises France’s retirement age- is a major test of Mr. Sarkozy’s capacity to govern eht country and tame the chronic budget deficits of state institutions, most notably the state-run pension system.”

Comment:  This is the Obama pension crisis in the American future.  The question is:  When will it occur that there will be no money to pay a postman his annual $150,000 government pension Obama has signed on for?   When then, will the American unions take the country down?

“Truck drivers joined protests on Monday with so-called snail operations, during which they drive very slowly to bog down traffic. 

Classes were disrupted or canceled at between 5% and 10%  of Frnce’s high schools.

Several cars were burned.

Unions which  brought more than a million people into the streets on Oct. 12 as part of the fourth nationwide march in a month – are counting on strikes that could last days to challenge the pension plans.

Some high school students took part in recent marches and have vowed to intensify their kown protests.”

Comment:  There you have the Left Wing MOB gathering, made up of the same gatherings here in Obamaland.  The Union intolerant greedy, the  pampered, spoiled rotten, elitist  student corps  egged on by their duplicitous Marxist teaching  brigades.

Social welfare bills have crippled governments in the past:  in 1995, a three-week strike forced the thenadministration to back down on a pension overhaul.

The president is tackling a shortfall in the nation’s mandatory stat-run pension system, which has been under pressure for several years as people live longer.  But the shortfall widened dramatically after last year’s recession led to a sharp drop in payroll-tax revenue.  This year’s shortfall counl reach 32 billion euros ($44.72 billion).”

Comment:  This is the French Leftist response to a reasonable government request to raise the retirement age by 2 years, from 60 years to 62 years old. 

In two years Obama has increased the American debt by $3,000,000,000,000 without even touching the Obamacare takeover of the American health industry. 

The national economic future is dark indeed.  Unemployment is iced at 9.6% of those bothering to seek work.

And the president admitted yesterday he didn’t know anything about shovel-ready jobs in which investment he spent hundreds of billions of more dollars.

1960 Pirates 10 Yankees 9: Winning Pitcher, Harvey Haddix

Paul Mirengoff of Powerline has been writing about a World Series that excited him more than any other.   He points to the 1960 series in which the usually deep down in the cellar Pittsburg Pirates wound up facing the usual New York Yankees.

I remember the series very well.   I was a fevered major league baseball fan then and had been since the Chicago Cubs lost to the Detroit Tigers in 1945.   Hank Borowy, Claude Passeau, Hal Newhouser, and Hank Greenberg still come to mind.   Actually, my memory goes back to 1944 when the St. Louis Browns and Cardinals wound up playing each other in the World Series.   Nelson Potter, Bob Muncrief, starred for the Browns who lost in six games.   One the World Series Saturday I was collecting milk weed pods for the War effort in the fields withing St. Paul city limits with twenty or so of my school mates.   One of the dads was reporting  the score to me from his auto, a 1936 Ford.  I don’t think he had a car radio, but I don’t remember the details. 

In a couple of years the Browns became the Baltimore Orioles.

It was a beautiful afternoon here in the Twin Cities, the seventh game of the 1960 World Series.  I loved underdogs….the Browns, the Philadelphia Phillies and Athletics and the Pirates.  In my childhood the Reds never amounted to anything either.  These were my favorite teams besider the St. Louis Cardinals who always had contending teams. 

The Pirates were outscored overall be something like 30 runs, but they had managed to win the close one leading up to the seventh game. 

I can’t remember where I was, but I was doing some  landscape work in some western Minneapolis suburb.  I had a 1959 Ford Fairlane auto and turned on its radio blasting so I could hear the game…..a seesaw affair.  I periodically had to turn off the radio for fear of wearing down the battery….a fairly common issue in those days of auto owning….the cheaper kind, anyway.

I judged turn-on-again  time about right.  I was and am always pessimistic about teams I root for actually winning.   When I was a kid so few of them did win, because I loved the idea of the underdog defeating all odds.  They kept doing what they were supposed to do….lose.

The Yankees were finally out at the top of the ninth.  Score was tied 9-9 which, in my way of  thinking then as now, really gave my underdog team two innings to score to, in this case, the hated Yankees one……the home team advantage.    I was glued to the game as if  the rest of the world had stopped.  Here’s Paul’s resume of the final half inning:

“Bill Mazeroski led off the bottom of the ninth inning of Game 7 for the Pittsburgh Pirates. Dick Stuart was already in the on-deck circle, ready to bat for Harvey Haddix. If the score remained 9-9, Wilmer “Vinegar Bend” Mizell presumably would pitch the tenth inning.

Mazeroski has aptly been described as the perfect hero for Pittsburgh. He had grown up in nearby Wheeling, West Virginia, the son of a coal miner. He was quiet and unassuming. And he was of Polish origin.

Yet, Mazeroski was something of the forgotten man in the Pirates line-up. His infield mates Dick Groat and Don Hoak had finished first and and second in the MVP balloting, while Mazeroski received no votes. But, all things considered, Maz probably played just about as well as they did in 1960, and just about as well as Roberto Clemente.

Mazeroski hadn’t gotten the ball out of the infield against Ralph Terry in Game 4, but Terry was laboring under several disadvantages this time out. For one thing, he reportedly had warmed up five different times in the bullpen. For another, according to some accounts, the practice mound in the pen was severely elevated and bore little resemblance to the actual Forbes Field mound (this hadn’t bothered Bobby Shantz, though). According to other accounts, and not inconsistent with the elevated mound theory, Terry had experienced problems with his slider – his best pitch – when throwing in the bullpen. Eddie Lopat, the pitching coach, advised him not to throw it in the game.

Terry’s first pitch was high. Catcher Johnny Blanchard took a few steps towards the mound and signaled that Terry should get the ball down. His next pitch was fat. Mazeroski launched it to deep left field. Yogi Berra turned looked up and then began jogging towards the dug-out. Baseball’s most dramatic game had come to a stunning conclusion.

The Yankees walked directly to the locker room. In those days, the losing players did not sit morosely in the dug-out staring blankly at the field. In any case, that wasn’t the Yankee way.

Ralph Terry entered Casey Stengel’s office to apologize. Stengel told him not to forget about it and come back strong next year. Terry would, but Stengel wouldn’t reap the benefits. Within a week, the Yankees fired him.

Blanchard would claim that Mazeroski’s homer came off of a Terry slider, the pitch Lopat had warned him not to throw. Terry would never say what pitch he threw. His stock answer to the question has always been, “the wrong pitch.”

Mickey Mantle had batted .400 for the Series with 3 home runs and 11 RBI. He had also contributed a base-running play for the ages. Now, he was disconsolate and ungracious, claiming that this was the first time the Yankees had lost a World Series to an inferior team. The Pirates were probably every bit as good as the Yankees, and had demonstrated it over the course of the full season. But given the run count for the Series – New York 55, Pittsburgh 27 – one could certainly understand Mantle’s point.

Even so, it was well known that the Yankees had never accepted that the Milwaukee Braves team that defeated them in the 1957 Series was their equal. This unyielding pride was also the Yankee way; in fact, it was one of the key things that made them the Yankees.

On the Pirates’ side, pandemonium reigned, of course. The team owner needed an eight-man police wedge just to reach the locker room. Inside, the Bucs were celebrating with even more intensity than when they won the pennant and injured Vernon Law’s ankle during the festivities.

Bobby Richardson was voted the Series MVP, becoming the first player on a losing team to be so recognized. This reflected not just the Yankees’ domination of the Series, but also the ongoing difficulty of identifying the most valuable Pirate. For my money, in the World Series the Pittsburgh MVP was either Mazeroski (.320, 2 home runs, 5 RBIs) or, more likely, Law with his two wins and courageous Game 7 outing.

The proud Yankees would bounce back with a vengeance in 1961, winning 109 regular season games and defeating Cincinnati 4 games to 1 in the World Series. The upstart Pirates would not return to the Series until 1971, when they won another seven game thriller. The only remaining Pirates from the 1960 club were Clemente, Mazeroski, and Murtaugh, in his third of four stints as Pittsburgh manager.”

Another comment:   I remember one other matter……I was a big fan of Harvey Haddix, a little fellow, long time successful pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals.   He was toward the end of his career when he pitched for the Pirates.    He was  the winning pitcher of this final game.    

Added note…..The U. S. won the Olympic Hockey championship that year.  Herbie Brooks, the coach of the greatest upset of all major sports history when his 1980 U.S. Olympic Hockey team topped the Soviets and then the Finns to win it all, had made the squad to go to Squaw Valley, but at the very last moment was dumped so Massachusetts star, Bill Clary, could bring his younger brother Bob along with him replacing Herbie on the roster.

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Thomas Sowell: “The Multi-Cultural Cult”

Along with forced equality the Modern Marxist believes deeply in Multiculturism……the return to the Tower of Babel, on the south side of anarchy.  It is designed to weaken America; to condemn it to chaos of anything goes in any language.  This pillar of leftwing propaganda is the antithesis of one of the three indispensables for American in the founder’s planning……E Pluribus Unum.  Check out your dollars and coins for the other two quotes of the American purpose.   Some of the newer productions  by the Obama administration are missing one of  them, so pull out your older money to make sure you see and read all three statements of the primary American purpose.

E Pluribus Unum means:   One, out of many…..meaning– from whereever one comes and whosoever one had been, one becomes an American, a free person equal to others in the rights guaranteed by American Law, the written Federal Constitution.

Neither American nor Canada, Germany nor France could survive multirculturalism.  Neither could the native American Indian.

Multiculturalism is the concoction of the world’s Left to diminish the influence of the West, especially the United States.  The Left demands equality world-wide…..America equal to Cuba and Uganda.

Tom Sowell writes about the Multi-cultural cult in an article at realclearpolitics:

“In Germany, as in other countries in Europe, welcoming millions of foreign workers who insist on remaining foreign has created problems so obvious that only the intelligentsia could fail to see them. It takes a high IQ to evade the obvious.

“We kidded ourselves for a while,” Chancellor Merkel said, but now it was clear that the attempt to build a society where people of very different languages and cultures could “live side-by-side” and “enjoy each other” has “failed, utterly failed.”

This is not a lesson for Germany alone. In countries around the world, and over the centuries, peoples with jarring differences in language, cultures and values have been a major problem and, too often, sources of major disasters for the societies in which they co-exist.

Even the tragedies and atrocities associated with racial differences in racist countries have been exceeded by the tragedies and atrocities among people with clashing cultures who are physically indistinguishable from one another, as in the Balkans or Rwanda.

Among the ways that people with different cultures have managed to minimize frictions have been (1) mutual cultural accommodations, even while not amalgamating completely, and (2) living separately in their own enclaves. Both of these approaches are anathema to the multicultural cultists.

Expecting any group to adapt their lifestyles to the cultural values of the larger society around them is “cultural imperialism” according to the multicultural cult. And living in separate neighborhoods is considered to be so terrible that there are government-financed programs to take people from high-crime slums and put them in subsidized housing in middle-class neighborhoods.

Multiculturalists condemn people’s objections to transplanting hoodlums, criminals and dysfunctional families into the midst of people who may have sacrificed for years to be able to escape from living among hoodlums, criminals and dysfunctional families.

The actual direct experience of the people who complain about the consequences of these social experiments is often dismissed as mere biased “perceptions” or “stereotypes,” if not outright “racism.” But some of the strongest complaints have come from middle-class blacks who have fled ghetto life, only to have the government transplant ghetto life back into their midst.

The absorption of millions of immigrants from Europe into American society may be cited as an example of the success of multiculturalism. But, in fact, they were absorbed in ways that were the direct opposite of what the multicultural cult is recommending today.

Before these immigrants were culturally assimilated to the norms of American society, they were by no means scattered at random among the population at large. On New York’s lower east side, Hungarian Jews lived clustered together in different neighborhoods from Romanian Jews or Polish Jews — and German Jews lived away from the lower east side.

When someone suggested relieving the overcrowding in the lower east side schools by transferring some of the children to a school in an Irish neighborhood that had space, both the Irish and the Jews objected.

None of this was peculiar to America. When immigrants from southern Italy to Australia moved into neighborhoods where people from northern Italy lived, the northern Italians moved out. Such scenarios could be found in countries around the world.

It was in later generations, after the children and grandchildren of the immigrants to America were speaking English and living lives more like the lives of other Americans, that they spread out to live and work where other Americans lived and worked. This wasn’t multiculturalism. It was common sense

Somebody eventually had to say it — and German chancellor Angela Merkel deserves credit for being the one who had the courage to say it out loud. Multiculturalism has “utterly failed.”

Multiculturalism is not just a recognition that different groups have different cultures. We all knew that, long before multiculturalism became a cult that has spawned mindless rhapsodies about “diversity,” without a speck of evidence to substantiate its supposed benefits.

In Germany, as in other countries in Europe, welcoming millions of foreign workers who insist on remaining foreign has created problems so obvious that only the intelligentsia could fail to see them. It takes a high IQ to evade the obvious.

“We kidded ourselves for a while,” Chancellor Merkel said, but now it was clear that the attempt to build a society where people of very different languages and cultures could “live side-by-side” and “enjoy each other” has “failed, utterly failed.”

This is not a lesson for Germany alone. In countries around the world, and over the centuries, peoples with jarring differences in language, cultures and values have been a major problem and, too often, sources of major disasters for the societies in which they co-exist.

Even the tragedies and atrocities associated with racial differences in racist countries have been exceeded by the tragedies and atrocities among people with clashing cultures who are physically indistinguishable from one another, as in the Balkans or Rwanda.

Among the ways that people with different cultures have managed to minimize frictions have been (1) mutual cultural accommodations, even while not amalgamating completely, and (2) living separately in their own enclaves. Both of these approaches are anathema to the multicultural cultists.

Expecting any group to adapt their lifestyles to the cultural values of the larger society around them is “cultural imperialism” according to the multicultural cult. And living in separate neighborhoods is considered to be so terrible that there are government-financed programs to take people from high-crime slums and put them in subsidized housing in middle-class neighborhoods.

Multiculturalists condemn people’s objections to transplanting hoodlums, criminals and dysfunctional families into the midst of people who may have sacrificed for years to be able to escape from living among hoodlums, criminals and dysfunctional families.

The actual direct experience of the people who complain about the consequences of these social experiments is often dismissed as mere biased “perceptions” or “stereotypes,” if not outright “racism.” But some of the strongest complaints have come from middle-class blacks who have fled ghetto life, only to have the government transplant ghetto life back into their midst.

The absorption of millions of immigrants from Europe into American society may be cited as an example of the success of multiculturalism. But, in fact, they were absorbed in ways that were the direct opposite of what the multicultural cult is recommending today.

Before these immigrants were culturally assimilated to the norms of American society, they were by no means scattered at random among the population at large. On New York’s lower east side, Hungarian Jews lived clustered together in different neighborhoods from Romanian Jews or Polish Jews — and German Jews lived away from the lower east side.

When someone suggested relieving the overcrowding in the lower east side schools by transferring some of the children to a school in an Irish neighborhood that had space, both the Irish and the Jews objected.

None of this was peculiar to America. When immigrants from southern Italy to Australia moved into neighborhoods where people from northern Italy lived, the northern Italians moved out. Such scenarios could be found in countries around the world.

It was in later generations, after the children and grandchildren of the immigrants to America were speaking English and living lives more like the lives of other Americans, that they spread out to live and work where other Americans lived and worked. This wasn’t multiculturalism. It was common sense.”

Comment:  Despite the multicultural policy being a disaster for any nation  who attempts it, I believe it took a bit of courage for Prime Minister Merkel to announce it so clearly and publicly.   Courage in government and political matters is not a woman’s strength.  Hoping for the impossible usually captures their attention and directs their behavior.   Liberty inspires  men.  Women prefer security and will cling to it.   Can anyone imagine men clinging to the inside of their  burqas to walk around  in public?

In 1964 Ronald Reagan Had Obama Liberals Pretty Well Pegged!

It was 1964.  Ronald Reagan was not yet governor of California, but was already hated by the pundits higher up in Democratic Party circles and their newpapers with the same names as those which today embrace America’s more Marxist politicians and their policies. 

These were my own lefty days.  I had been teaching at the University of Minnesota High School in Minneapolis, and had just  moved to the Minneapolis Public Schools to teach at a blue-collar labor community public high school.  I was not yet active in Minnesota DFL politics, but had always voted, but never for a Republican. 

In those days “learned” Americans knew the names of the major and even some minor Hollywood stars.   Jane Wyman was a better known person in this realm than her husband at the time, Ronald Reagan.   Yet, I knew the names of nearly every actor and actress in the movie set. 

I had primarily become acquainted with Ronald Reagan when he was president of the Hollywood Actors’  Guild, I think that was its name, during the House of UnAmerican Activities Committee Hearings regarding espionage and such in the American film industry.  The Soviet Union, it was suspected, had invested large sums of money to encourage, bribe, or threaten screen writers to write anti American or proCommunist plots for  their film scripts. 

Many obliged.

Ronald Reagan testified before a Congressional committee investigating   Communist influences in  the movie industry conspiring with a foreign government to overthrow the American government by any and all means necessary.  Thereafter he was forever villified by the country’s Leftwing throughout America where such people thrived……among filmdom’s leftwing, of course, and the unversity Marxist crowd being among the most rabid  villifiers.   That is when  I went to school and university.   These were the McCarthy years of turmoil  of Congress attempting to confront  the Marxist spy networks throughout  the country…..some imagined, but most were real, as it turned out when the Kremlin archives were opened to the public after the fall of the good old USSR.

Reagan was appearing on television somewhere around 1964 advertising General Electric….ironically today, one of America’s greatest Marxist supporting industries owning NBC and everything that goes with, including Keith Olberman.

So, that’s the background for the crux of this Ronald Reagan masterpiece:

In 1964, Ronald Reagan said, “The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn’t so.”

That dates to nearly fifty years ago.  It couldn’t have been said better by anyone at any time, and at any place.   He knew Marxists in the bud when he smelled them.   Ronald Reagan was the first Republican  I ever voted for in 1980 when I was a Democrat and was the first Republican  I ever voted for as a Republican, in 1984. 

The Democrat Party under Barack Hussein Obama is significantly more into government control that it was in 1964. 

Ronald Reagan was a hugely gifted American patriot  who deeply and broadly loved his country.  One sees nothing of these essential qualities in an American president which describe Mr. Obama, our cold, diffident, angry,long-time  member of the Jeremiah “Goddamn America” Wright church of Chicago and student of community organizer,  Marxist  Saul Alinsky.

Second Request for Parents of Minnesota Newborns Who Wish to Protect Their Child’s DNA

This request was sent to me by Twila Brase:

“Thanks to the efforts of many CCHC supporters (concerned parents and grandparents), the Minnesota Department of Health has received an unprecedented number of individual requests regarding the Department’s use of newborn DNA and genetic test results (newborn screening results). In fact, these may be the very first requests because the Department has kept parents in the dark.

The Department is now gathering individualized data for the parents of nearly 300 children.

Have you sent your request yet? We’re shooting for 500 parent requests by Election Day! 
(Sample Letter Below)

Parents eligible to ask:
Children born in MN on or after July 1, 1997 – Request information on newborn DNA and genetic test results (data)
Children born in MN on or after July 1, 1986 and before July 1, 1997 – request information on genetic test results only (delete references in the sample letter below to DNA, repositories and blood spots in the letter below)

The 9-parent lawsuit has recently been appealed to the Minnesota Supreme Court. Last week the Minnesota Department of Health delivered their letter asking for the case to be dismissed.

Help us secure individual DNA ownership rights by uncovering the Health Department’s baby unconsented use and sharing of newborn DNA and genetic test results.

EMAIL your request TODAY to find out what they did and are doing with your child’s DNA and genetic test results!

Twila Brase, RN, PHN
President
Citizens’ Council on Health Care
651-646-8935

P.S. If you don’t live in Minnesota, you can still make a request. Use the following letter and fill in the blanks with your state name. Find your state Commissioner of Health contact information here.

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FOUR EASY STEPS:

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1) Make sure you are qualified to send the email request. You must be a parent or guardian of a child born on or after July 1, 1997. All children born on or after July 1, 1997 have had their DNA warehoused at the MN Dept. of Health—and claimed as State government property. 

2) Use our sample letter below or create your own.  Send one email per child to:  lynn.belgea@state.mn.us DO NOT FORWARD THIS EMAIL. Copy and paste it into a new email. Type or print all the information clearly. Please refrain from making additional comments or opinions about the action of MDH in the lawsuit. Lynn Belgea is MDH’s data compliance officer and designated by the Commissioner to handle data requests.

3) Send a separate email to CCHC with the letter you sent to the Department so we can monitor the response to this critical project.

4) Once you receive a written response to your request, provide CCHC with the information you receive (including any comment about delays, lost records, denial of access, etc). Please KEEP A RECORD of EVERYTHING and then email or send it to CCHC.

MN Law Allows You to Request & Receive Data:
Under the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act, you have the legal right to request and receive this data. See the MDH data practices document (note pages 5, 7 and 10 specifically) and the state administrative rules.

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SAMPLE LETTER

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Date____________

Commissioner Sanne Magnan, M.D., Ph.D.
Minnesota Department of Health
Freeman Building
625 Robert Street North
P.O. Box 64975
Saint Paul, MN 55164-0975

Dear Commissioner Magnan,

I am making a data practices request under the authority of the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act. I am requesting a comprehensive accounting of the data and blood spots of my child that were collected through the Minnesota newborn screening program.  Specifically, I am requesting a comprehensive accounting of the collection, storage, use and dissemination of my child’s newborn blood spots, my child’s newborn screening laboratory test results, and any information (including parent information) associated with my child’s newborn blood spots and my child’s newborn screening test results.

Such accounting must include, but is not limited to, internal uses by the Minnesota Department of Health, all Department contracts and/or data sharing agreements which include the sharing and/or use of my child’s blood spots and data with government or outside entities, all internal and/or external research, public health studies, newborn studies, other studies, other testing, test development using my child’s blood spots and/or data, all linkages to my child’s data and blood spots within and outside the Minnesota Department of Health, storage of the data and/or blood spots in databases or repositories in and outside the Minnesota Department of Health, all research findings in which my child’s data or blood spots were stored, used, and/or disseminated, and any other collection, storage, use and/or dissemination of my child’s data or blood spots.”

My child’s complete name is ___________
My child’s birth data is __________
My child was born at _____________ (institution)
The mother’s name at the time of the birth was _____________

Thank you for your assistance with my request. Please let me know when I can expect to receive this information.

Sincerely,

Parent Name (Print Full Name)_____________________________________________
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NCPA: Obama Murdered Medicare!

Obama Murdered Medicare

The health care reform law will have a devastating impact on elderly and disabled Medicare enrollees if its provisions are not substantially changed, say Thomas R. Saving, former public trustee of Social Security and Medicare and director of the Private Enterprise Research Center, and John C. Goodman, president, CEO and Kellye Wright Fellow of the National Center for Policy Analysis.

The law creates a new mechanism to reduce the rate of increase in Medicare payments to doctors and hospitals.  As a result, Medicare payments will fall below Medicaid rates before the end of this decade, and they will fall increasingly behind the rates paid by all other payers in succeeding decades.

Compounding these problems is the fact that the legislation will create a huge rationing problem system wide, say Saving and Goodman.

• Although the law is expected to create as many as 34 million newly insured people, all funds to create new health care providers were zeroed out of the bill.
• Subsequently, the administration has promised new funds to increase supply, but they will be nowhere near the increase in demand.

Additionally, Medicare spending cuts will create enormous financial stress for the nation’s hospitals.

• According to the actuary’s office, more than one in seven health care facilities will be unprofitable before the end of the decade.
• That number will climb to one in four by 2030 and to 40 percent by midcentury.

One way to think about these changes is to consider the reduction in spending on Medicare beneficiaries relative to the expected path prior to the legislation.

• Under the new health care law, the average senior on Medicare will receive $2,300 less in annual benefits within 10 years and $3,844 less after 20 years.
• By midcentury, average spending per beneficiary will be $9,413 less than it would have been.

Instead of encouraging draconian price controls that will drive doctors and hospitals out of the market, we should allow the market to respond to patient needs, say Saving and Goodman.

Source: Thomas R. Saving and John C. Goodman, “Obama Murdered Medicare,” Washington Times, October 15, 2010.

For text:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/oct/15/obama-murdered-medicare

Article provided by the National Center for Policy Analysis.

Comment:  “Truthsayer” Guru Obama, you know the one…..he who practices duplicity out of his many mouths, advertised Medicare as  an institution where America could save $500,000,000,000 ONLY if Congress would pass his Obamacare package to usurp the American health industry into his Marxist government’s hands.

 The “truthsayer” Guru intimated the half a trillion dollar fraud within Medicare ranks,  over which His Highness’s  government has responsibility to keep honest, could not be ferreted out unless Congress  passed his Obamacare package…..which, apparently would absorb the “ill-begotten fortune like a sponge soaking up booze……and all will be healed, young and old alike!

And, Guru Obama added that 30 to 40 million more Americans could be added to his “Healthcare”  government takeover program with better health service   at reduced costs for all Americans. 

Wow, what a Guru man!!

Oh, how the American leftists love the golden tongues of politicians bribing for votes!