Lefty Begone: Wrong for Judge to Suspend Rules for Child Needing Lung Transplant
A difficult situation presented itself to the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, and it starts with 10-year-old Sarah Murnaghan.
Sarah has cystic fibrosis and needs a lung transplant or she will die. Federal law puts those who are under 12 years of age at the bottom of the waiting list to receive adult lungs. Sarah’s family has been lobbying Sebelius at the HHS to make an exception for her. According to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network, Sebelius does have that authority but refuses to get involved.
Many Republicans and conservatives are calling for Sebelius to make an exception, but—and this is where it gets hard for me—that’s not rational. I like Sebelius just as little as the next conservative, but I must sympathize with her desire not to get involved and make special rules for people just because they make public, and insert more emotion into, their requests for favors.
It’s painful to know that without intercession by the government into a scenario they themselves created (and which liberal voters created, who support such regulations as have led to Sarah being relegated to the bottom of the list), a little girl will probably die. But think how much more pain will be caused, not to mention anger, when we have a government that actively decides who to exempt from which rules; who lives and who dies.
That’s what we have currently: a federal judge has now ordered a 10-day respite of the regulation in order to allow Sarah, and only Sarah, to be considered an adult for organ donations in order to give her at least a slightly better chance at survival. This is what’s called legislating from the bench. Judges do not make laws; they are not allowed to. Even if the law he makes is a good law, it still opens the door for bad laws to be made by judges in the future, without answering to voters. If a judge can grant life to one person, he can refuse life for another.
I suspect the only reason Republicans were raising their voices to urge Sebelius to suspend the laws for Sarah was because it was an opportunity to challenge Sebelius. I’d hate to think any Republican, and certainly any conservative, would be using emotion as the basis of policy, but that’s the only conclusion I can come to.
The real villain in this situation is not Sebelius; it is the federal government, which created the regulation that created this scenario for Sarah. It’s one more reason why the government should not be involved in such life-affecting industries has health care. Hospitals should be the ones deciding what their organ-recipient policies are, and they should be the ones figuring out how to handle the situation with Sarah.
(via leftybegone)
Poor Richard's News: South Carolina House passes bill to criminalize Obamacare
In a bold move, the South Carolina house of representatives has voted overwhelmingly (65-39) to criminalize the implementation of Obamacare. This act, appropriately named the “Freedom of Health Care Protection Act”, is apparently broadly written to include a nullification of any attempt by the federal government to take control of South Carolina’s health insurance industry or force South Carolinians to purchase health insurance.
From the AP (via CBS Charlotte):
The South Carolina House approved a bill Wednesday criminalizing the implementation of President Obama’s health care law in the state.
The Republican-controlled House voted 65-39 on the Freedom of Health Care Protection Act.
The act renders “null and void certain unconstitutional laws enacted by the Congress of the United States taking control over the health insurance industry and mandating that individuals purchase health insurance under threat of penalty.”
“This kind of victory occurs when the grassroots across the State come together and coalesce,” Chris Lawton, spokesman for the Greenville Tea Party, told The Greenville Post. “I could not be prouder.”
The bill declares “Obamacare” unconstitutional – despite the Supreme Court ruling last year that the Affordable Health Care Act was constitutional — and that there will be criminal penalties for enforcing the law.
Gov. Nikki Haley earlier this year said that the state will not implement the nation’s health care law.
This is federalism in action, folks. It’s why our founders wrote the 10th amendment. It is, in fact, the entire point of states.
If states can’t choose to exempt themselves from an overreaching oppressive federal law, then why do we have states? What’s the point?
This act will most certainly go the Supreme Court but if I were Nikki Haley, I would ignore any decision that didn’t uphold it. South Carolina is autonomous. Its people have the right do whatever they please. Individual states are not ruled from Washington D.C. and it’s high time that we recognized that truth again. Just because there are 5 supreme court justices who either lack the ability to reason or the ability to read, is no reason that the people of South Carolina should be oppressed.
Maybe this will inspire other states to join in the fight against Obamacare. If we are to have a bright future as a nation, Obamacare must go.
Parents of autistic children battle bureaucracy of health system - Canada - CBC News
An Ottawa mother’s decision to leave her severely autistic son in the hands of a provincial services office has highlighted frustration among parents with the governmental support system. One Ontario woman sank $80,000 of her own money into building a business to help disabled individuals and their caregivers navigate the health care system.
Poor Richard's News: Great News! Lawmakers considering giving themselves Obamacare exemption
Isn’t this just like the government? Now that Obamacare is starting to show itself for just how terrible it is, the Politico is reporting that lawmakers want out. No, not to get everyone out. They just want to be exempt from it, themselves.
From Politico:
Congressional leaders in both parties are engaged in high-level, confidential talks about exempting lawmakers and Capitol Hill aides from the insurance exchanges they are mandated to join as part of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, sources in both parties said.
The talks — which involve Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), the Obama administration and other top lawmakers — are extraordinarily sensitive, with both sides acutely aware of the potential for political fallout from giving carve-outs from the hugely controversial law to 535 lawmakers and thousands of their aides. Discussions have stretched out for months, sources said.
A source close to the talks says: “Everyone has to hold hands on this and jump, or nothing is going to get done.”
Yet if Capitol Hill leaders move forward with the plan, they risk being dubbed hypocrites by their political rivals and the American public. By removing themselves from a key Obamacare component, lawmakers and aides would be held to a different standard than the people who put them in office.
This is truly unbelievable. The Republicans I understand. To their credit, no Republican voted for this miserable legislation (although I wish they’d try a little harder to repeal it). But Democrats? You voted for it! If it was such a great law, why would you want to be exempt? And if it’s not such a great law, why did you vote for it? The only rational explanation of this is that this law was never about helping anyone. It was about power. It was about government control. Those on the right have been ridiculed for leveling that accusation. But if lawmakers go through with this, I defy anyone to come up with a different explanation.
This law must be repealed.
Obama gives us a preview of his next endeavor: government-run dental insurance.
Poor Richard's News: Congressional Report: Obamacare could raise premiums more than 200%
If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know what a cataclysmic disaster Obamacare will be. And of all the problems associated with it, perhaps the worst will be the increase—not decrease—in the cost of health care and health insurance. With over 20,000 pages of regulations (so far), how could premiums not rise?
From Newsmax:
An exhaustive study by three congressional committees delivers startling news about the dire effects of Obamacare: President Barack Obama’s signature legislation could increase health insurance premiums by over 200 percent and render insurance coverage unaffordable for millions of Americans.
Broadly, the new report declares that Obamacare “breaks its core promise” to make healthcare coverage affordable.
The report, “The Price of Obamacare’s Broken Promises,” was prepared by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, Majority Staff; Senate Committee on Finance, Minority Staff; and Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, Minority Staff.
Here’s a copy of the report: “The Price of Obamacare’s Broken Promises” (PDF)
Here’s a chart from the report that lists the estimated increase in insurance premiums by state:
Repeat this to yourself: Obamacare raises the cost of health care, not lowers it.
A Not So Free Market in Health Care
In our book Free Market Revolution, Yaron and I spend an entire chapter detailing the way in which Americans do not have a free market in health care.
Americans are understandably worried about the rising cost and deteriorating quality of health care. And they’ve been told that the explanation of this health care crisis is our free market in medicine. As Lyndon B. Johnson’s deputy assistant secretary for health put it in 2004, “Today’s dysfunctional health care system is a palpable example of the lessons that come from our national obsession with markets at all costs.”
But markets don’t lead to mounting bureaucracy and skyrocketing prices—they lead to ever-improving customer satisfaction and steadily declining prices. It’s no accident that we don’t have a computer crisis, or a hair salon crisis, or a veterinary crisis. Nor is it an accident that we did have a housing and financial crisis. Along with housing and finance, medicine is one of the most regulated industries in the United States, and those regulations take center stage in precipitating the health care crisis.
So it was with high hopes that I started reading a recent piece by conservative health care experts Douglas Holtz-Eakin and Avik Roy, “The Future of Free-Market Health Care.” And they started out well enough:
Over nearly a century, progressives have pressed for a national, single-payer healthcare system. When it comes to health reform, what have conservatives stood for?
For far too long, conservatives have failed to coalesce around a long-term vision of what a free-market healthcare system should look like. Republican attention to healthcare, in turn, has only arisen sporadically, in response to Democratic initiatives.
Obamacare is the logical byproduct of this conservative policy neglect.
All of that is true. What is badly needed is a vision of free-market health care—and a powerful intellectual defense of that vision. Sadly, what Holtz-Eakin and Roy offer is nothing of the sort.
After praising George W. Bush’s massive prescription drug entitlement as a “market-oriented” reform, the authors write, “While most Americans view their healthcare system as ‘free-market,’ Switzerland actually has the most market-oriented healthcare system in the West.”
Switzerland? A free market? Really? Listen to their description of the Swiss system:
Swiss government entities spent about 3.5 percent of gross domestic product on healthcare in 2010, compared to 8.5 percent in the United States. That’s a difference of more than $5 trillion over 10 years: real money, especially relative to our $16 trillion debt.
There is no “public option” in Switzerland. Instead, citizens qualify for means-tested, sliding-scale subsidies and choose among a variety of regulated, private-sector insurance products.
Whatever the virtues of the Swiss system, here we have a giant government entitlement program with insurance regulation. Does that sound like a “free market”?
To be fair, the authors do not outright call the Swiss system a “free market.” But they do offer the Swiss system as their model for what “a long-term vision of what a free-market healthcare system should look like.”
Problem is, their vision of a free-market isn’t free. Less controlled? Maybe. But how inspiring is a crusade for “a less controlled healthcare system”?
Poor Richard's News: UK Independent Councilor: Disabled children should be 'put down'
A local Independent Councilor in Great Britain was recently quoted as saying that disabled children are costly and should be “put down.” And while he later apologized for the outrageous statement, public pressure forced him to resign his post as councilor.
From Life Site News:
Disabled children place too great a burden on the country’s nationalized health care and other services and ought to be “put down” to save money, an independent councillor for Wadebridge East in North Cornwall has said. The comments, made to a member of the Disability Cornwall charity at County Hall in Truro in 2011, have cost Collin Brewer his position. He announced yesterday that he will resign.
At an event organized to help councillors meet and speak with various charities, Brewer approached a stall run by Disability Cornwall. When told about the work of the charity, he responded, “Disabled children cost the council too much money and should be put down.”I could give you a long diatribe filled with righteous indignation regarding this unbelievably offensive statement but I’d rather leave you with this thought:
Morality aside, as I ponder his horrific statement, it is clear to me that his opinion is truly dangerous because, in his country, those responsible for governing are also responsible for the health care of the people and the costs associated with it. In other words, in a free society where every individual has God-given rights, including that of life, these types of atrocities can’t happen (not legally anyway). However, in a place where the government is god, where individual rights come from the state and where health care is distributed per the discretion of bureaucrats, anything is possible. And this man’s vote counts as much as a mother with a boy who has Down syndrome. That, to me, is why his opinion is that much more tragic.
Countdown to 2014: Obamacare and the states
As of January 2014, every state will have a new consumer marketplace for health insurance, and states that want to expand coverage for the poor will get federal support to pay for it. But the Affordable Care Act gives the states a lot of maneuvering room
(Image source: Kaiser Family Foundation)
Poor Richard's News: Dunkin' Donuts, the latest company not very happy with Obamacare
Look, nobody is happy with Obamacare. Nobody. The people that say they are, are lying. Because the vast majority of “benefits” haven’t kicked in yet. The few that have are already out of money and are wreaking havoc in the business world. It’s so bad for some that Obama had to issue waivers to more than 1,000 companies just to postpone the law’s disastrous effects. It’s costing waaay more than anyone said it would (even the CBO has admitted it), and the taxes that were implemented years before the actual “benefits” in order to offset the cost of Obamacare so that a majority of lawmakers would vote for it, is crippling our economy. One aspect of the law, however, seems to be even worse for business than even many of the law’s detractors predicted: The 30-hour-a-week work maximum.
From Newsmax:
Dunkin’ Brands — the owner of Dunkin’ Donuts — is working to overturn a major provision of Obamacare.
The company, based in Canton, Ohio, is lobbying the White House to change its definition of full-time work from at least 30 hours a week to 40 or more per week, CEO Nigel Travis told the Financial Times.
The change would leave Dunkin’ and other companies with fewer workers to insure under President Barack Obama’s healthcare reform law.
Under the Affordable Care Act, large employers must provide health coverage to all full-time workers and their dependents or face a penalty.
The Obamacare mandate applies to all companies with 50 or more full-time employees.
The penalty for not providing coverage is $2,000 per worker, The Financial Times reports.
According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the nonpartisan policy group based in Washington, employers would end up paying an average of $4,664 for insurance for a single worker and $11,429 for a family.
Obamacare is terrible for everyone. CEOs, the middle class and the poor will all be worse off because of it.
So while I fully understand why there are congressmen who want the medical device tax repealed, christian companies who want the abortion pill mandate repealed and other companies (Dunkin’ Donuts, Denny’s, Papa John’s, and others) who want the 30-hour-a-week work maximum repealed, it just all seems so fractured. We need to all come to the conclusion that the entire law is horrible and needs to go. Not just parts of it. All of it.
Southwestern Pennsylvania hospital to stop baby deliveries | Fox News
“In a lengthy statement posted to its website Wednesday, the hospital cited several reasons for the decision — including a claim that the population of women of child-bearing age is dropping and that the number of births the hospital would be called upon to perform isn’t enough for it to provide the service in the face of lower reimbursements under the federal Affordable Care Act.”
So because of Obamacare, people can no longer go to that hospital (which may be the nearest to some people). Lovely. God forbid anything happens on the way to the next hospital that could have been prevented with the right equipment.
Photo: MSF medical staff treats a patient after an airstrike in Azaz city. Syria 2013/MSF
Syria: Airstrike on Market Kills and Injures Scores
At least 20 people were killed and 99 injured when warplanes bombed a market in the northern Syrian city of Azaz on January 13, the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said today. Twenty of the wounded, all civilians, were treated in an MSF medical facility.
The attack in Azaz, a city near the border with Turkey, was particularly devastating. It followed earlier airstrikes that hit health facilities in the city, making it almost impossible for local medical staff to cope with the scale of the latest emergency. The injured were transported to medical facilities elsewhere in the region, including to an MSF field hospital in the Aleppo area.
“The cars and ambulances kept on coming and patients flooded the hospital,” said Adriana Ferracin, an MSF nurse in Syria. “We received many patients with limb amputations, head injuries, and bleeding eyes and ears.”
“Even after the airstrikes on medical facilities in the Aleppo region, local doctors and nurses remained committed to providing medical care, and they are doing their best to help the population,” said Shinjiro Murata, MSF head of mission in Syria.
MSF’s field hospital in the Aleppo region—one of three run by MSF in Syria—provides emergency, obstetric, and primary health care, focusing on pregnant women, children, and the most vulnerable.
Violence is hitting an already vulnerable population with limited access to medical care and food. Escalating prices of essential supplies, such as bread, wood, and clothing are further worsening the population’s living conditions. As in Azaz, many people prefer to seek medical care in clandestine structures for fear that hospitals will be targeted in airstrikes.
Today, President Obama announced sweeping set of policies, including 23 executive orders, aimed at reducing gun violence. The unveiling was the result of the Joe Biden-led task force Obama formed last month in the wake of the Sandy Hook shootings, and proposed policies include an assault weapons ban, universal background checks, and improved access to mental health care. The Washington Post calls it “the most expansive gun-control policies in a generation,” and the fact that the president issued no less than 23 executive orders suggests that he wants to avoid congress as much as possible with this (which, given his first term, is understandable). Here’s the flashy White House document outlining the proposals, here’s a list of the executive orders (one of which, somewhat amusingly, is “Nominate an ATF director”), and here’s audio of the event (courtesy of Matt Keys). Photo credit: AP source
In 2013, Millions Of Americans Face Obamacare Tax Hikes - http://bit.ly/TnYown
