Polls, Taxes, And Other ObamaKennedyDeathCare News

Here's the latest on Obama's government takeover of health care.

First, let's see how our friends across the pond are handling their government-run health care. It's not good:

AN 80-year-old grandmother who doctors identified as terminally ill and left to starve to death has recovered after her outraged daughter intervened.

Hazel Fenton, from East Sussex, is alive nine months after medics ruled she had only days to live, withdrew her antibiotics and denied her artificial feeding. The former school matron had been placed on a controversial care plan intended to ease the last days of dying patients.

Doctors say Fenton is an example of patients who have been condemned to death on the Liverpool care pathway plan. They argue that while it is suitable for patients who do have only days to live, it is being used more widely in the NHS, denying treatment to elderly patients who are not dying.

And...

Matthew Millington, 31, died at home in Brown Lees, near Stoke-on-Trent, after receiving the organs from a donor who is believed to have smoked between 30 and 50 roll-up cigarettes a day, an inquest heard.

Following the death, an investigation at Papworth Hospital, in Cambridge, pinpointed a string of problems, including issues with communication, record-keeping and patient handover. It found that a radiographer had failed to highlight the growth of a cancerous tumour.

Of course, not everything is death and destruction. There's also plenty of crazy, too:

This is the insanity to which government medicine inevitably leads: a British transsexual is suing for the "right" to breast enlargement surgery:

The legally aided gender dysphoria sufferer, who has been living as a woman for over 10 years, says breast augmentation is essential to her female identity and emotional well-being and the refusal to give her the op amounts to sex discrimination.

Her unique test case against the West Berkire Primary Care Trust (PCT), in which the the Equality and Human Rights Commission will also be playing a part, is now set for hearing at the High Court on October 20.

Any government medicine system suffers from a fatal contradiction: health care is a "right," but a right that must be rationed.

Man, I just can't figure out why we wouldn't want this sort of health care system in America...! And, even better, we'll get to pay for all of these 'rights' ourselves! Cool, huh?

The American people are smart, are they not? So what do the American people think about all this? Well, it's nothing new: we don't want it. A full 54% would rather see tax cuts than more spending on health care reform. Even more, 67% disapprove of the Democrats' idea of a national sales tax to pay for all of their government expansions. If the Dems insist on pushing these policies, there will be political hell to pay.

A long-overdue awakening of the medical industry appears to finally be happening:

The industry heavyweights President Obama neutralized through the summer are agitating that the health-care bills in Congress violate agreements they made with the White House, leave 25 million Americans uninsured and have the potential to increase medical costs.

One day after Democrats celebrated the news that a bill drafted in the Senate Finance Committee would not increase the deficit, the prospects for speedy enactment of landmark reform grew murkier. Industry leaders, who have held their tongues for months, spoke in increasingly dire tones Thursday about the impact of the Democratic proposals, raising the specter of an eleventh-hour lobbying campaign to defeat Obama’s centerpiece domestic policy goal.

Many lobbyists and independent analysts underlined what they called major flaws in the Finance Committee’s bill, saying it probably would draw the sickest, most expensive patients into the health coverage system without balancing the insurance risk with more young, healthy people. The result, they predicted, would be ever-rising premiums for the people, businesses and governments that pay for medical care. …

The American Medical Association is concerned because the 10-year $829 billion cost of the Senate bill does not include $200 billion in promised higher Medicare payments.

Hospital executives, meanwhile, complained that the legislation would leave 25 million people without coverage in 2019. The uninsured place a high burden on hospitals, which are required by law to treat everyone who arrives at an emergency department, regardless of citizenship or ability to pay. Those costs result in debt for hospitals and higher fees for people with insurance.

Better late than never, I suppose, but it's pretty mind-boggling how naive -- or willfully blind -- these people have been. Still, I'm sure they can still be bought off somehow.

Those concerns are echoed by Jeffrey Anderson:

1. Seniors have nothing to gain and everything to lose. The Baucus bill pays for itself largely by shifting hundreds of billions of dollars out of Medicare. The last thing seniors want is to have their representatives steal from Medicare to pay for Baucuscare. Seniors were surprisingly loud at the August town-hall meetings, and that was before anyone took such clear aim at them and their coverage. The Baucus bill would gut Medicare Advantage and would cut a total of $404 billion from Medicare and related federal health programs in its first ten years alone. And if it didn't actually follow through on these cuts, then it would be a colossal deficit bill, and the New York Times's green light would turn to red.

2. It would raise Americans' taxes dramatically. The tax numbers are not yet getting out there widely, but the bill would raise taxes and fines by $507 billion in its first ten years alone. Crossing the $500 billion barrier is a lot like crossing the $5 barrier for a box of cereal. People are generally reluctant to go there. The Democrats have done so, but the American people may not bite.

3. It would raise Americans' insurance premiums dramatically. The bill would require people to buy government-approved insurance and would fine them if they don't. That's not a terribly politically appealing message in a free country, particularly among younger voters — who would also be required to subsidize the premiums of older Americans under the bill (as insurers would not be allowed to vary the rates between policies sold to those of different ages as much as the true economic costs of those policies have generally caused them to do).

But just how much will this thing cost you, the normal American citizen? It's pretty astounding:

For individuals making $34,140 or three times the Federal Poverty Level, the Baucus health care proposal could mandate up to $4,097 in annual premiums, a sum which could have been spent on over nine months of food, almost four months of housing or well over a year of utilities. For a family of four making $69,480 or 300% of poverty, a mandated annual premium of $8,338 would be worth the equivalent of over ten months of food, four months of housing or almost two years of utilities. Is this change to the health care system actual “reform”, or something else?

These numbers become even more staggering for insurance purchasers at the upper threshold of the price cap. Individuals earning $45,520, four times the Federal Poverty Level, would be required to pay $5,462 for their health insurance, when they could have used this same money on over a year of food, four months of rent or a year and a half of utilities. A family earning $92,640, 400% of poverty, would be on the hook for $11,117, the equivalent of over a year of food, five months of housing or two years of utilities. This is quite a burden to place on middle-class Americans.

How does that tax burden grab you? And that's just the beginning.

The trick here is that the Democrats know they're skating out on a thawing lake. The entire month of August was one giant not-just-no-but-hell-no shout-out from the American people, and things have only gone downhill from there:

Among seniors, opposition to ObamaCare hit 63% in last month's Economist/YouGov Poll. But the number from that poll that should spook Democrats is this: 47% of seniors said they "strongly" oppose health-care reform, just 27% "strongly" support it. Seniors are the biggest consumers of health care, and their family members will probably take their concerns seriously. Seniors will likely cast about 20% of the votes next year.

The trend behind these numbers is that voters are turning away from Democrats. In 2006, the year the GOP lost control of Congress, Democrats enjoyed a double-digit lead in several "generic ballot" polls-a measure of voters' party preference. Democrats held that lead until this year. Today, Gallup's generic ballot shows Democrats have a razor thin 46% to 44% edge. According to Gallop's numbers, independents now favor Republicans by nine points.

Seniors and Independents were what gave the Dems their big victory in 2008. Now, they're rapidly losing those two groups.

The bottom line is that they know they're going to suffer big losses in 2010, but they're counting on accomplishing their agenda while still retaining their majority, even if it's a slim one. What we've got to do is to paint the bulls-eye and deliver the knockout punch so hard that the 2010 losses are staggering. Like, lose-your-majority-staggering.

It's going to be hard enough to bring this country back from two years of liberal control...if we allow two years to become four, the damage could be irreparable.

It starts now.

There's my two cents.