American Spectator | by Walter Williams | Dec. 30, 2009

Sen. John Rockefeller, D-W.Va., chairman of the Senate Finance Subcommittee on Health Care, and Rep. Joe Courtney D-Conn., a member of the House Education and Labor Committee, have introduced the Pre-existing Condition Patient Protection Act, which would eliminate pre-existing condition exclusions in all insurance markets. That’s an Obama administration priority. I wonder whether President Obama and his congressional supporters would go a step further and protect not just patients but everyone against pre-existing condition exclusions by insurance companies. Let’s look at the benefits of such a law. more »

Make no mistake about it. Health care reform is coming. But what’s the best way to fix our health care system, which is an inefficient, complicated mess of private actors, third-party payers, public subsidies, and innumerable state and federal regulations? Should we place our faith in the government or in the free market? more »

Townhall | by Charles Krauthammer | Nov. 27, 2009

The United States has the best health care in the world — but because of its inefficiencies, also the most expensive. The fundamental problem with the 2,074-page Senate health-care bill (as with its 2,014-page House counterpart) is that it wildly compounds the complexity by adding hundreds of new provisions, regulations, mandates, committees and other arbitrary bureaucratic inventions. more »

Wall Street Journal | by Jeffrey S. Flier | Nov. 17, 2009

As the dean of Harvard Medical School I am frequently asked to comment on the health-reform debate. I’d give it a failing grade.

Instead of forthrightly dealing with the fundamental problems, discussion is dominated by rival factions struggling to enact or defeat President Barack Obama’s agenda. The rhetoric on both sides is exaggerated and often deceptive. Those of us for whom the central issue is health—not politics—have been left in the lurch. And as controversy heads toward a conclusion in Washington, it appears that the people who favor the legislation are engaged in collective denial. more »

Wall Street Journal | by Betsy McCaughey | Nov. 7, 2009
Here are some important passages in the 2,000 page legislation.

The health bill that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is bringing to a vote (H.R. 3962) is 1,990 pages. Here are some of the details you need to know.

What the government will require you to do:
• Sec. 202 (p. 91-92) of the bill requires you to enroll in a “qualified plan.” If you get your insurance at work, your employer will have a “grace period” to switch you to a “qualified plan,” meaning a plan designed by the Secretary of Health and Human Services. If you buy your own insurance, there’s no grace period. You’ll have to enroll in a qualified plan as soon as any term in your contract changes, such as the co-pay, deductible or benefit. more »

JCT Confirms Failure to Comply with Democrats’ Mandate Can Lead to 5 Years in Jail

Ways and Means | Nov. 6, 2009

Today, Ranking Member of the House Ways and Means Committee Dave Camp (R-MI) released a letter from the non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) confirming that the failure to comply with the individual mandate to buy health insurance contained in the Pelosi health care bill (H.R. 3962, as amended) could land people in jail.  The JCT letter makes clear that Americans who do not maintain “acceptable health insurance coverage” and who choose not to pay the bill’s new individual mandate tax (generally 2.5% of income), are subject to numerous civil and criminal penalties, including criminal fines of up to $250,000 and imprisonment of up to five years. more »

DennisPrager.com | by Dennis Prager | Nov. 3, 2009

Those of us who are not true believers in expanded government are certain of the following:

If the 1,990-page House Health Care Bill becomes law, the average American will receive worse health care, American physicians will decline in status and income, American medical innovation will dramatically slow down and pharmaceutical discoveries will decline in number and quality. And, of course, the economy of the United States will deteriorate, perhaps permanently. more »

Wall Street Journal | by HOLMAN W. JENKINS, JR. | Sep. 29, 2009

The public wasn’t dumb enough to believe the public option would save money.

Someday this country will have a health-care debate that’s not abject in its idiocy. It will involve a term used by Congressional Budge Office chief Doug Elmendorf, who has become a notoriety for harping on the word “incentives.” The same word was used the other day by Warren Buffett, about what’s missing from the health-care plan on Capitol Hill. more »

American Thinker | by Geoffrey P. Hunt | Sep. 19, 2009

Despite steady progress in achieving their ambition, lefties have acquired neither clue nor interest in how things actually work. Imagine the destruction when the revolucion has transferred power from the oppressor class to them. Suffice that whatever works now isn’t controlled by lefties, which is why whatever does work, works.

The lefties’ only work experience has been organizing protests, crafting slogans and manipulating the media. But regular Americans, in addition to their day jobs in building America and making it work have now also learned the stagecraft of protesting, sloganeering and leveraging the alternative media, while upstaging the mainstream media. more »

Big Hollywood | Joseph C. Phillips | Sep. 15, 2009

The message began to pop-up all over my Facebook page: “No one should die because they cannot afford health care or insurance and no one should go broke or bankrupt because they get sick.” Let us set aside the fact that no one in need of emergency life-saving medical care is denied because they do not have insurance and that there are state and federal programs already in existence that provide medical coverage for those of lesser means. I agree with the sentiment. I dare say I know of no one that doesn’t agree. There is simply no questioning the potential calamity that awaits those without some form of medical coverage.

There is also no questioning that in life there are a great many things for which “no one should.” For instance it is equally tragic when people lose their homes due to unemployment, go hungry because they can’t pay for a meal or shiver at night because they lack adequate clothing. more »

American Thinker | Mark Wauk | Sep. 6, 2009

The 9/2/09 issue of the Wall Street Journal, in its Notable and Quotable feature, calls attention to an important article that Roman Catholic Bishop R. Walker Nickless of Sioux City, Iowa, published in his diocesan newspaper on the subject of health care and health care reform. The article is important for two reasons: first, because there has been and continues to be a certain amount of confusion regarding Catholic social teaching as it affects health care; second, because Bishop Nickless goes to great lengths to base his discussion on principles, and not merely on tactical considerations. more »

American Thinker | Robin of Berkeley | Aug. 19, 2009

If you live in your heart, you look around and see the kaleidoscope of humanity. People of different abilities, ages, challenges all trying to live happy and meaningful lives. But if you don’t live in your heart, if you live in your ideology, then your eyes see a different reality. You divide the world up into those who can serve the state and those who cannot.

In the world of Obama and his friends, there are able bodied people who can be used. Then there are the clunkers, the parasites and sponges. The welcome mat has been pulled out from under us; the Statue of Liberty is sinking. more »

American Thinker | James Lewis | Aug. 19, 2009

Federal “healthcare” must inevitably turn into “Death Care,” because the bureaucracy will have the sole power to determine the rules under which you and I will live and die. The bureaucrats will have a fixed pot of money, and money spent to save your life comes from the same kitty that is used to give prenatal care to some poor woman from Mexico or Bangladesh. That is what they think is moral — and this is an argument about morality above all. Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, Rahm’s brother and big advisor to Obama, considers fee-for-service medicine immoral, because it allows richer people to pay more. more »

American College of Surgeons | Aug. 13, 2009

Statement from the American College of Surgeons Regarding Recent Comments from President Obama

The American College of Surgeons is deeply disturbed over the uninformed public comments President Obama continues to make about the high-quality care provided by surgeons in the United States. When the President makes statements that are incorrect or not based in fact, we think he does a disservice to the American people at a time when they want clear, understandable facts about health care reform. We want to set the record straight. more »

Wall Street Journal | Peggy Noonan | Aug. 7, 2009
Voters send a message to Washington, and get an ugly response.

We have entered uncharted territory in the fight over national health care. There’s a new tone in the debate, and it’s ugly. At the moment the Democrats are looking like something they haven’t looked like in years, and that is: desperate.

They must know at this point they should not have pushed a national health-care plan. A Democratic operative the other day called it “Hillary’s revenge.” When Mrs. Clinton started losing to Barack Obama in the primaries 18 months ago, she began to give new and sharper emphasis to her health-care plan. Mr. Obama responded by talking about his health-care vision. He won. Now he would push what he had been forced to highlight: Health care would be a priority initiative. The net result is falling support for his leadership on the issue, falling personal polls, and the angry town-hall meetings that have electrified YouTube. more »

more »

More reasons to oppose the government’s take-over of the health care system.
Breitbart | Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar | Aug. 5, 2009

Health care legislation before Congress would allow a new government-sponsored insurance plan to cover abortions, a decision that would affect millions of women and recast federal policy on the divisive issue.

Federal funds for abortions are now restricted to cases involving rape, incest or danger to the health of the mother. Abortion opponents say those restrictions should carry over to any health insurance sold through a new marketplace envisioned under the legislation, an exchange where people would choose private coverage or the public plan. more »

More of Obama’s totalitarian and Marxist dreams are revealed!
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Townhall.com | Ann Coulter | July 21, 2009

All the problems with the American health care system come from government intervention, so naturally the Democrats’ idea for fixing it is more government intervention. This is like trying to sober up by having another drink.

The reason seeing a doctor is already more like going to the DMV, and less like going to the Apple “Genius Bar,” is that the government decided health care was too important to be left to the free market. Yes — the same free market that has produced such a cornucopia of inexpensive goods and services that, today, even poor people have cell phones and flat-screen TVs. more »

Washington Examiner | David Freddoso | July 23, 2009

“If there’s a blue pill and a red pill, and the blue pill is half the price of the red pill and works just as well, why not pay half price for the thing that’s going to make you well?” — President Obama

In last night’s press conference, President Obama seemed to be reliving that famous scene from The Matrix. The main character is offered a choice between a red pill that makes him see reality for what it is, and a blue pill that allows him to continue living in a pleasant world of illusions.

Last night, President Obama appeared to have taken the blue pill before his press conference. How else could he convince himself, the Congressional Budget Office’s numbers notwithstanding, that his health care reform bill will not increase both health care costs and the federal deficit? more »