A Few Friday Shockers

Does anyone else think that what's going on in America these days is strangely similar to an insane asylum?

For example, since when to American school children sing praises to the President? Since Obama came on the scene. Not once...not twice...but three times now:

How many other school-aged children are coerced into singing religious-style praises to Barack Obama? How many other videos are out there? And when are we going to start worrying about the influence the Obamessiah has on our kids?

Let's shift over to the ObamaKennedyDeathCare debate. There's a lot more information that I need to post sometime soon, but here are a few shockers for you to chew on over the weekend:

Death panels by proxy

Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee have refused to allow the final text of their health care bill to be posted online prior to their vote on it. They claim the language is too technically difficult for ordinary people to understand, so that releasing the text would just sow confusion.

More likely, the Dems don't want people to see language like that which appears at pages 80-81 of the bill. There it says: " "Beginning in 2015, payment [under Medicare] would be reduced by five percent if an aggregation of the physician's resource use is at or above the 90th percentile of national utilization." Thus, in any year in which a particular doctor's average per-patient Medicare costs are in the top 10 percent in the nation, the feds will cut the doctor's payments by 5 percent."

This Washington Times editorial explains the consequences:

if a doctor authorizes expensive care, no matter how successfully, the government will punish him by scrimping on what already is a low reimbursement rate for treating Medicare patients. The incentive, therefore, is for the doctor always to provide less care for his patients for fear of having his payments docked. And because no doctor will know who falls in the top 10 percent until year's end, or what total average costs will break the 10 percent threshold, the pressure will be intense to withhold care, and withhold care again, and then withhold it some more. Or at least to prescribe cheaper care, no matter how much less effective, in order to avoid the penalties.

This is certainly a form of rationing. And the editors of the Times don't exaggerate when they say that, while there are no formal death panels, the Democrats' bill will give us the functional equivalent, except that the accountants who serve as the "proxy" panel won't know whose deaths they are causing.

The only thing that could be worse than death panels is death panels manned by people who never have to face their victims.

A new crime

Under ObamaKennedyDeathCare, everyone will be required to purchase insurance. Those who choose not to will pay a stiff penalty. So...what if people refuse to pay the penalty?

Senator John Ensign (R-NV) wanted to get an answer on the implications of the individual mandate in the ObamaCare bill floated by Max Baucus (D-MT) during the markup session. Ensign asked Thomas Barthold, chief of staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation, what would happen if a taxpayer refused to buy health insurance and then refused to pay the subsequent fine, which could run to $1900 for an individual. Barthold replied that one shouldn’t do the crime if one doesn’t want to do the time:

Violators could be charged with a misdemeanor and could face up to a year in jail or a $25,000 penalty, Barthold wrote on JCT letterhead. He signed it “Sincerely, Thomas A. Barthold.”

See the note for yourself here. This should come as no surprise. Thanks to Baucus, the IRS would enforce the individual mandate, and a failure to comply would impose the fine, which in Baucus’ own words is called an “excise tax.” Those who refuse to pay their taxes will eventually go to prison for it, unless the person is someone like Tim Geithner, who then gets to run the agency that puts people in prison for failing to pay their taxes.

So, if you don't like the idea of Obama's government controlled health care, you can take a nice vacation to the big house! How's that hope-n-change working out now?

And how about that promise that you can keep your doctor? Well, just try to keep up:


Hey, what's the problem? That shouldn't be too tough to follow through, should it?

Sorry to potentially spoil your weekend with all this, but I suspect that you're like me in that you'd rather hear the ugly truth than a pretty lie. Get informed and get active. More to come next week...the votes are coming soon.

There's my two cents.