The Senate Version Of The Socialized Medicine Bill Exempts Congress From Socialized Health Care

You can look at it on-line here:

Affordable Health Choices Act

Strange name since it limits choice rather than expands it.

I haven’t had a chance to go through it yet, but something worth noting here in Section 3116 on Page 111. Subsection (a)(5) defines an “Eligible Individual.” It says the following:

(5) QUALIFIED INDIVIDUAL.— (A) IN GENERAL.—The term ‘qualified individual’ means an individual who is— (v) not eligible for coverage under— (III) the Federal employees health benefits program under chapter 89 of title 5, United States Code.

Similar language exists on Page 116 under the “Qualifying Coverage” subsection.

What is the upshot of all this? It means that Congress will be exempt from the provisions of this bill. Instead of Congress holding itself to the same standards that they will be voting for other Americans, Congress and Federal Employees will get to keep the sweetheart deals offered under the Federal Employee Health Benefits (FEHB) Program.

Sure wish we regular Joe and Jane Average Americans could get onto that one.

If this socialized medicine plan is so great, why doesn’t Congress jump onto it? Why do they feel the need to exempt themselves from it?

Mr. Deeds Goes Confederate

Creigh Deeds is nothing short of a God-send for the GOP in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The Republicans could not have asked for a more idiotic candidate for Bob McDonnell to run against.

When the arguments about the economy were not working, Deeds wanted to make abortion his winning issue. Having forgotten (and then remembering) that 51% of Americans now identify themselves as pro-life, he quickly changed his focus from that to the Confederate flag.

It all started when someone found a picture and then proclaimed that Bob McDonnell was flying a Confederate flag at the Virginia Outdoor Sportsman Show.

Well, Joe Abbey, the Deeds campaign manager ultimately lost his job because of it.

From Erick Erickson over at Human Events:

Why? Because the story blew up in their faces. The confederate flag in question was at the adjacent booth, “which was selling confederate flags and other paraphernalia, though the angle of the photo makes it appears as if the flag was McDonnell’s,” the Washington Post reports.

But this gets even better. The Washington Post reminded everyone of something that Deeds said in 1999:

According to a 1999 Roanoke Times article, Deeds told legislators during that debate that: “I grew up in a house with a portrait of the Confederate flag on the wall. I grew up in a house with a portrait of Robert E. Lee on the wall over my bed.”

Now Deeds only wants to talk about increasing taxes on Virginians in the middle of a recession.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

Mr. Deeds Goes Confederate
Erick Erickson
Human Events Online
August 14, 2009

Democrat Senators: Cap And Trade Should Be Delayed Until Next Year

I wholeheartedly agree. Let’s postpone debate on Cap-And-Tax until the 2010 election year. It will be one of the next big fights after we’ve defeated Obamacare.

From Daniel Whitten and Simon Lomax of Bloomberg:

The U.S. Senate should abandon efforts to pass legislation curbing greenhouse-gas emissions this year and concentrate on a narrower bill to require use of renewable energy, four Democratic lawmakers say. “The problem of doing both of them together is that it becomes too big of a lift,” Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas said in an interview last week. “I see the cap-and-trade being a real problem.”

Lincoln isn’t the only one. Anyone who has read the Cap-And-Tax bill knows that it will cause energy prices to “skyrocket” which is exactly what Obama said he wanted to see happen.

More:

Ben Nelson of Nebraska and North Dakota Senators Kent Conrad and Byron Dorgan joined Lincoln in suggesting that the climate measure be put off. “We should separate the energy bill from the climate bill,” Conrad told reporters this month. ‘It needs to be done as soon as we can get it done,” he said, referring to the energy legislation. Climate legislation would require 60 votes in the Senate. Most Republicans have said they oppose the cap-and-trade measure, and at least 15 of the Senate’s 60-member Democratic majority have said the House-passed version would hurt the economy and needs to be revamped to win their support.

You have to wonder if all the pressure we are putting on Congress over socialized medicine is starting to force some sanity on these people.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

Climate Change Measure Should Be Set Aside, U.S. Senators Say
Daniel Whitten and Simon Lomax
Bloomberg.com
August 14, 2009

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel Tries To Tap-Dance His Way Out Of His Own Writings

Jake Tapper isn’t a hard-core leftist, but he is easily manipulated by the left. Tapper looks at the responses that Dr. Emanuel gives for the recent criticism of his writings about rationing of health care and the “complete lives” philosophy for determining who gets what health care and how much.

According to Tapper at ABC News:

One of the passages written by Emanuel and used as evidence by Palin and others that he would favor withholding medical care from those who aren’t productive members of society include a 1996 contribution to the Hastings Center Report, in which he said that under the “civic republican or deliberative democratic” construct, “services provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens are not basic and should not be guaranteed. An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia. A less obvious example is guaranteeing neuropsychological services to ensure children with learning disabilities can read and learn to reason.” Is he saying, as Palin and others have suggested, that those who aren’t “participating citizens” should have no guarantee to health care? “No,” Emanuel says, “and I think I made it pretty clear I wasn’t endorsing that view, I was analyzing that perspective and what it might mean in practical terms. The rest of the text around that quote made it made it pretty clear I was trying to analyze it and understand it, not endorse it.”

But, from the text of Where Civic Republicanism And Deliberative Democracy Meet as published in a 1996 Hastings Center Report, we see the following:

Thus, it seems there is a growing agreement between liberals, communitarians, and others that many political matters, including matters of justice- and specifically, the just allocation of health care resources–can be addressed only by invoking a particular conception of the good. … Procedurally, it suggests the need for public forums to deliberate about which health services should be considered basic and should be socially guaranteed. Substantively, it suggests services that promote the continuation of the polity-those that ensure healthy future generations, ensure development of practical reasoning skills, and ensure full and active participation by citizens in public deliberations-are to be socially guaranteed as basic. Conversely, services provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens are not basic and should not be guaranteed. An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.

Nowhere did Dr. Emanuel say that his thinking was hypothetical. This last paragraph excerpt made it pretty clear what his stance on the issue is. His conception of “the good” is policies that “ensure healthy future generations, ensure development of practical reasoning skills, and ensure full and active participation by citizens in public deliberations-are to be socially guaranteed as basic.” In layman’s terms, that means that only those who are deemed “productive” should be getting medical coverage.

Tapper goes on to present another misleading explanation of the January 31, 2009 article published in The Lancet that Dr. Emanuel co-authored:

The oncologist suggests that his words are being twisted because opponents “don’t have a solution” to the health care reform debate. “Maybe the only tactic is to sow fear and use whatever means you have to attack whether that’s grounded in reality or not… If you don’t have good arguments you use whatever you got, I guess, to say things that are distortive and untrue.” He says “there have been previous attempts to come after me and after some of my colleagues, but this is certainly on a completely different scale and magnitude. I’ve never been mentioned on Sunday shows in this light and certainly never on the floor of Congress. The distortions are much larger than I’ve ever seen or would have believed could happen.”

But, let’s see what he wrote in that article and whether or not it jibes with his current claims:

When implemented, the complete lives system produces a priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most substantial chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated. … Strict youngest-first allocation directs scarce resources predominantly to infants. This approach seems incorrect.

No twisting there at all. Dr. Emanuel is clear and unambiguous as to what he believes. And the following graph shows where he believes resources should be rationed:

(Source: Principles for allocation of scarce medical interventions; Govind Persad, Alan Wertheimer, Ezekiel J Emanuel; The Lancet, January 31, 2009)

You can clearly see where Dr. Emanuel believes that the very young and the very old should fall in the priority curve. We can assume that such low priorities will also be held for Special Needs patients as well.

You can cross reference this with Sections 1162 and 1177 of HR3200. The parallels are undeniable.

When Gov. Palin voiced her concerns about Trig and her parents being denied medical care based on their “productivity,” she was very justified.

Conculsion: Dr. Emanuel can spin and tap-dance all he wants. But he cannot run and hide from what he has written and published. And we should not allow him to even try.

People work hard their entire lives to ensure that their families are taken care of and to ensure that they themselves are taken care of in their twilight years. HR3200 would only serve to undo all that work and allow the government to come in and change the plans that people had made for themselves years before.