On Fri, 21 Aug 2009 12:41:33 -0700, ~ RHF wrote:

On Aug 21, 9:14Â*am, WQGT447 wrote:
On Aug 20, 4:23Â*pm, "~ RHF" wrote:



On Aug 19, 6:03Â*pm, No ObaMao wrote:

There was a time when rushing a thousand-page bill through Congress
so fast that no one has time to read it would have provoked public
outrage. But now, this has been attempted twice in the first 6
months of a new administration.

The fact that they got away with it before, with the "stimulus"
bill, may have led them to believe that they could get away with it
again.

But the first bill simply spent hundreds of billions of dollars.
The current "health care" bill threatens to take life-and-death
decisions out of the hands of individuals and their doctors,
transferring those decisions to Washington bureaucrats.

People are taking that personally-- as they should. Your life and
death, and that of your loved ones, is as personal as it gets.

The mainstream media are again circling the wagons to protect
Barack Obama, but this time it may not work. One of those
front-page editorials disguised as a news article in the New York
Times begins: "The stubborn yet false rumor that President Obama's
health care proposals would create government-sponsored 'death
panels' to decide which patients were worthy of living seemed to
arise from nowhere in recent weeks."

Nowhere? Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel is "Special Advisor for Health Policy"
for the Obama administration. That's nowhere? He is also co-author
of an article on Americans' "over-utilization" of medical care in
the June 18, 2008 issue of the Journal of the American Medical
Association. Is that nowhere?

Why do some people call Prez Obama's
"Special Advisor for Health Policy"
Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel - 'The Doctor Death' ?

Was Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel responsible for End-of-Life
{Ending-Your-Life} Counseling in Obama-Care© ?

Dr. Emanuel's article points out that Americans do not visit
doctors or go into hospitals more than people in other
industrialized countries. In fact we go to both places less often
than people do in those other countries, which include countries
with government- controlled medical care.

As the article points out, "It is more costly care, rather than
high volume, that accounts for higher expenditures in the United
States."

There are more Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) devices per capita
in the United States, more coronary bypass operations and Americans
use more new pharmaceutical drugs created within the past 5 years.

Americans also have more of what the article calls "amenities" with
their medical care. "Hospital rooms in the United States offer more
privacy, comfort and auxiliary services than do hospital rooms in
most other countries."

In other words, it is not quantity but quality that is different--
and more expensive-- about American medical care. This is what Dr.
Emanuel's "over-utilization" consists of.

At one time, it would have been none of Dr. Emanuel's business if
your physician prescribed the latest medications for you, rather
than the cheaper and obsolete medications they replaced. It would
have been none of his business if you preferred to have a nice
hospital room with "amenities" rather than being in an unsanitary
ward with inadequate nursing care, as under the National Health
Service in Britain.

The involvement of government gives Dr. Emanuel the leverage to
condemn other Americans' choices-- and a larger involvement of
government will give him the power to force both doctors and
patients to change their choices.

As for a "death panel," no politician would ever use that phrase
when trying to get a piece of legislation passed. "End of life"
care under the "guidance" of "some independent group" sounds so
much nicer-- and these are the terms President Obama used in an
interview with the New York Times back on April 14th.

He said, "the chronically ill and those toward the end of their
lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health
care bill out there." He added: "It is very difficult to imagine
the country making those decisions just through the normal
political channels. That is why you have to have some independent
group that can give you guidance."

But when you select people like Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel to give
"independent" guidance, you have already chosen a policy through
your choice of advisors, who simply provide political cover. The
net result can be exactly the same as if those providing that
guidance were openly called "death panels."

http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2009/08/18/
whose_medical_...

Whose Medical Decisions? Part II

When famed bank robber Willie Sutton was asked why he robbed banks,
he said: "Because that's where the money is."

For the same reason, it is as predictable as the sunrise that
medical care for the elderly will be cut back under a
government-controlled medical system. Because that's where the
money is.

My experience is probably not very different from that of many
other people in their seventies. My medical expenses in the past
year have been more than in the first 40 years of my life-- and I
did not spend one night in a hospital all last year or go to an
emergency room even once.

Just the ordinary medical expenses of keeping an old geezer going
along in good health are high. Throw in a medical emergency or two
and the costs go through the roof.

So long as my insurance company and I are paying for it, it is
nobody else's business what my medical expenses are. But once the
government is involved, everything is their business.

It is not just a question of what the government will pay for. The
logic of their collectivist thinking-- and the actual practice in
some other countries with government-controlled health care-- is
that you cannot even pay for some medical treatments with your own
money, if the powers that be decide that "society" cannot let its
resources be used that way, or that it would not be "social
justice" for some people to have medical treatments that others
cannot get, just because some people "happen to have money."

The medical care stampede is about much more than medical care,
important as that is. It is part of a whole mindset of many on the
left who have never reconciled themselves to an economic system in
which how much people can withdraw from the resources of the nation
depends on how much they have contributed to those resources.

Despite the cleverness of phrases about people who "happen to have
money," very few people just happen to have money. Most people
earned their money by supplying other people with goods or services
that those people were willing to pay for.

Since it is their own money that they have earned, these people
feel free to spend it to give their 80-year-old grandmother another
year or two of life, or to pay for a hip replacement operation for
their mom or dad, even If some medical "ethicist" might say that
the resources of "society" would be better used to allow some
20-year-old to talk over his angst with a shrink.

Barack Obama has talked about the high costs of taking care of
elderly or chronically ill patients in terms of "society making
those decisions." But a world in which individuals make their own
trade-offs with their own money is fundamentally different from a
world where third parties take those decisions out of their hands
and impose their own notions of what is best for "society."

Calling these arbitrary notions "ethics" doesn't change anything,
however effective it may be as political spin.

More is at stake than the outcomes of medical decisions, extremely
important as those are. What is also at stake is freedom and the
dignity of individuals who do not live their lives as supplicants
of puffed-up power holders who are spending the money taken from
them in taxes.

One of the many phony arguments for government-controlled medical
care is that Americans do not have any longer life expectancy than
in other countries, despite much higher medical expenditures.

This argument is phony because longevity depends on health-- and
"health care" and "medical care" are not the same, no matter how
many times the two are confused in the media or in politics. Health
care includes things that doctor cannot do much about.

Homicide affects your longevity but there is not much that doctors
can do about it when they arrive on the scene after you have been
shot through the heart, except fill out the paperwork. Rates of
homicide, obesity and narcotics usage are higher here than in many
other countries, reducing our longevity.

But in the things that medical care can do something about-- like
cancer survival rates-- the United States ranks at or near the top
in the world. But that can change if we give up the real benefits
of a top medical system for the visions and rhetoric of
politicians.

http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2009/08/19/
whose_medical_...

http://townhall.com/Columnists/ThomasSowell/

http://www.tsowell.com/-Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

- Are you on dope or something?

Why do some people think Prez Obama's "Special Advisor for Health
Policy"
Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel -is- 'On Dope or Something' ?

- This is all unadulterated nonsense, reading - in all sorts of baloney
that just ain't there.

Was Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel responsible for the 'unadulterated nonsense' of
End-of-Life {Ending-Your-Life} Counseling in Obama-Care© ?

Have you stopped beating your wife?

The subject section (section 1233) of HR 3200 says that medicare WILL PAY
FOR A CONSULTATION BETWEEN AND PERSON ON MEDICARE AND THAT PERSON'S
CHOSEN PHYSICIAN CONCERNING END OF LIFE DECISIONS SUCH AS LIVING WILLS
AND THE LIKE IF THE ELDERLY PERSON CHOOSES SUCH A CONSULTATION. THERE IS
NO REQUIREMENT FOR ANY CONSULTATION. ONLY AN INSURANCE COVERAGE FOR IT
IF THE PERSON WANTS IT.

Obama-Care© full of 'all sorts of baloney that just ain't there' . . .
except higher Taxes and Limiting Medical Treatment for All.
.
that's obama-speak© right back-at-you ~ RHF
.

Yet, you can't find anything in HR 3200 that actually raises taxes on
people who's income is less than $250,000 except for a "punitive tax"
levied against those who refuse to carry ANY insurance at all. (NO
different than the government requiring people to have auto liability
insurance). You will not fine _*ANY*_ limitation to Medical Treatment in
HR 2300 anywhere.

YOU ARE A LYING REPUBLICAN PIG!

surprise, surprise, surprise

--
"Those are my opinions and you can't have em" -- Bart Simpson