Using Sex or Reason: Where do you stand on health care reform?

Rock the Vote suggests young voters use flirting and sex to persuade opponents of the Obama/Reid/Pelosi health-care-reform bill to change their position.

As a young person, I find such a video degrading to suggest my political philosophy is as whimsical as sexual attraction or that sex should be used as method of political persuasion.

How Americans obtain and pay for health care is an important topic that deserves open and honest debate about the real costs of adding hundreds of pages to the law books.

It's too bad that Rock the Vote is probably encouraging young people to disengage from this important debate because it's over-the-top desperate attempt to garner support for an unpopular bill.

Dick Morris points to a study by Oliver Wyman that suggests that the proposed health care reforms will increase premiums for young people by as much as 35 percent.

He writes:

"These increases will stem from the bill's provisions that bar insurance companies from raising rates on sick people and from excluding people based on pre-existing conditions. Both of these mandates will mean higher costs for the younger and healthier population. This bill is, in effect, a tax on the young."

Instead of engaging young voters on the topic, Rock the Vote reveals how weak the Obama/Reid/Pelosi health-care-reform bill really is in terms of helping reduce the inflated costs of health and medical care in America.

I think more young people would engage in politics if they weren't treated like sheep. People respond to expectations...

We need more intelligent discussions about what can be done to help improve our current system, which happens to be better than any system in the world.

For example, why aren't we looking at how the Federal Reserve Banks' "lending" affect health care costs?

Obama says it will keep America from going Bankrupt; Howard Dean says kill it

FEE sent out a great link to an VPR interview with Howard Dean on the lack of support for the monstrous health-care-reform Senate bill means its death. Dean suggests that "the best thing to do right now is kill the Senate bill and go back to the House and start the reconciliation process, where you only need 51 votes and it would be a much simpler bill."

Ok, so Howard Dean isn't suggesting that the recent polls showing opposition to health care reform (almost 56% oppose it; only 19% strongly favor it) makes it a dead duck, but that certain characteristics of current 'reform' plans aren't really 'reform' to make it real 'reform' to get public support. Congress should just start over in the House, he suggests, and make it more simply--a.k.a. more centrists and get rid of the bribes.

Meanwhile, Obama said during an ABC interview that if we don't spend trillions of dollars on this 'reform,' the government will go bankrupt. He's built a straw-man case for passing costly reform. Is it possible that there are other ways that new government programs to "rein in" health and medical costs? Maybe the free market?

Both are half way right. Dean is picking up on the fact that Americans--right or left--don't really trust +2000 page monstrosity of health care 'reform' and Obama's picking up on the fact that our unfunded liabilities--medicare, medicate, and social security--are on the brink of bankruptcy.

Baby steps.

Comments on the Stupak Amendment

So, what's all the chatter in the "pro-life" arena about the Stupak amendment to Obama's health care transformation plan?

Basically, the Stupak amendment means that taxpayer money can't be used to pay for abortions for women who are insured through the health insurance "exchange." So, what's the problem? (besides the obvious conflict in moral values between various groups...)

Some say that the Stupak amendment gave cover to the pro-life Dems to vote for nationalized health care since the amendment made it "pro-life."

But, as a friend of mine said, the "Stupak Amendment didn’t go far enough," as it didn’t address end-of-life issues, rationing, protection of conscience and all the other life-aspects involved in the long 2,000 page transformation.

Moreover, some argue, why try to improve a bad bill? Why not just let it die?

So, I suppose the question is why was the amendment offered? Maybe in reaction to the fake "pro-life" amendment offered previously. If that amendment had passed, it probably would have given same glitzy appearance virtue of the Stupak amendment, but not as good.

As it stands, it's a question of whether pro-choice Dems will be able to strip the Stupak amendment, or vote for the health care transformation despite the amendment. Sen. Claire McCaskill doesn't seem to think the amendment is a deal breaker...or maybe she does.

As Phyllis Schlafly wrote in 1964: "The strategy of politics, like an iceberg, is eight-ninths under the surface."

And she wasn't saying how it should be...but merely how it is.

"Healthcare is a good, not a right"

Ron Paul's weekly column opens with an important distinction between "goods" and rights."

Political philosopher Richard Weaver famously and correctly stated that ideas have consequences. Take for example ideas about rights versus goods. Natural law states that people have rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. A good is something you work for and earn. It might be a need, like food, but more “goods” seem to be becoming “rights” in our culture, and this has troubling consequences. It might seem harmless enough to decide that people have a right to things like education, employment, housing or healthcare. But if we look a little further into the consequences, we can see that the workings of the community and economy are thrown wildly off balance when people accept those ideas.

First of all, other people must pay for things like healthcare. Those people have bills to pay and families to support, just as you do. If there is a “right” to healthcare, you must force the providers of those goods, or others, to serve you.

What I think is the most disturbing about Obama's nationalize healthcare plan is that it is moving us towards the most inefficient possible why to distribute the "good" of healthcare.

A friend once said to me, "Healthcare shouldn't be about efficiency." I didn't know how to respond at the time. Now I'd say, "Of course it is. If it's not efficient, then less people get cared for. Isn't the whole point of the reform is that more people should have access to healthcare?"

Read Dr. Paul's entire column.

No Pain, No Gain

The socialist health-care expansion in the so-called "stimulus" plan "will not be pain free," according to Daschle.

The provisions include:

-creating more bureaucracy called the "Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research" to determine when to replace costly treatments with a "hopeless diagnoses" and produce federal guidelines to reduce costs and “guide” your doctor’s decisions

-keeping your health care records electronically in a federal database and penalties for doctors and hospitals that do not share your records with the federal government

Read more in an article by Betsy McCaughey posted on Bloomberg.com.

Do you want our Federal bureaucracy writing a "guide" to help your doctors make cost effective decisions concerning your health?

Bloomberg.com

"One new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective. The goal is to reduce costs and “guide” your doctor’s decisions (442, 446). These provisions in the stimulus bill are virtually identical to what Daschle prescribed in his 2008 book, “Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis.” According to Daschle, doctors have to give up autonomy and “learn to operate less like solo practitioners.” "