Health Care Reform: Trouble in Paradise

Congress may or may not vote on the job killing (if not people killing), privacy destroying government healthcare takeover bill until the Fall--at least in the Senate:

Senate Democratic leaders on Thursday abandoned plans for a vote on health care before Congress' August recess, dealing a blow to President Barack Obama's ambitious timetable to revamp the nation's $2.4 trillion system of medical care.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., delivered the official pronouncement on what had been expected for weeks, saying, "It's better to have a product based on quality and thoughtfulness rather than try to jam something through."

His words were a near-echo of Republicans who have criticized the rush to act on complex legislation that affects every American.

In the other chamber, although House of Representatives leadership claim they have the votes to go forward now, so-called moderate Democrats--who generally talk a good, fiscally responsible game, but then for example ultimately capitulated on the stimulus bill and cap-and-trade among others--apparently refuse to be railroaded this time:

House healthcare negotiations dissolved in acrimony on Friday, with Blue Dog Democrats saying they were “lied” to by their Democratic leaders.

In advance of a subsequent press conference called by House leadership, Blue Dog liaison Rep. Dennis Cardoza (D-Calif.) said the healthcare bill should be staying in committee.

"I expect the committee process to proceed," Cardoza said.

The seven Blue Dogs on the Energy and Commerce Committee stormed out of a Friday meeting with their committee chairman, Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), saying Waxman had been negotiating in bad faith over a number of provisions Blue Dogs demanded be changed in the stalled healthcare bill.

“I’ve been lied to,” Blue Dog Coalition Co-Chairman Charlie Melancon (D-La.) said on Friday. “We have not had legitimate negotiations....

Melancon said there would be 40-45 “solid no” votes from the 52-strong Blue Dogs, among other problems throughout the caucus. And Melancon said there are more Democrats who will vote against the bill.

Congress needs to get a clue: For one thing, there are any number of YouTube videos available online where ordinary, non-ideological Americans register their strong opposition to this bill during town meetings with lawmakers, administration officials, and other Obama apologists. So far, absolutely none of these officials have committed to giving up their current insurance coverage in favor of the public option. In the meantime, the House majority seems to be engaging in a most undemocratic form of censorship:

Democrats are preventing Republican House Members from sending their constituents a mailing that is critical of the majority’s health care reform plan, blocking the mailing by alleging that it is inaccurate.

House Republicans are crying foul and claiming that the Democrats are using their majority to prevent GOP Members from communicating with their constituents.

The dispute centers on a chart created by Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas) and Republican staff of the Joint Economic Committee to illustrate the organization of the Democratic health care plan..a closer look at the image reveals a complicated menagerie of government offices and programs that Republicans say will be created if the leading Democratic health care plan becomes law.

Economist and actor Ben Stein (most recently seen in those tedious and unfunny commercials with NBA star Shaquille O'Neal) is not a fan of socialized medicine either:

The American people have already awakened to the truth that the stimulus bill -- a great idea in theory -- was really an immense bribe to Democrat interest groups, and in no way an effort to help all Americans.

Now, Americans are waking up to the truth that ObamaCare basically means that every time you are sick or injured, you will have a clerk from the Department of Motor Vehicles telling your doctor what he can and cannot do.

The American people already know that Mr. Obama's plan to lower health costs while expanding coverage and bureaucracy is a myth, a promise of something that never was and never will be -- a bureaucracy lowering costs in a free society. Either the costs go up or the free society goes away.

DOJ Offficial: Bush Used Wartime Authority

Law professor John Woo, the former Justice Department official who helped write the harsh interrogation memos, thereby making the enemy-combatants lobby very upset, responds in the Wall Street Journal about the recent Inspector Generals report alleging possible FISA violations by the Bush administration:

Under [the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act], to obtain a judicial wiretapping warrant the government is supposed to show probable cause that a specified target is a foreign agent. Unlike, say, Soviet spies working under diplomatic cover, terrorists are hard to identify. Yet they are vastly more dangerous. Monitoring their likely communications channels is the best way to track and stop them. Building evidence to prove past crimes, as in the civilian criminal system, is entirely beside the point. The best way to find an al Qaeda operative is to look at all email, text and phone traffic between Afghanistan and Pakistan and the U.S. This might involve the filtering of innocent traffic, just as roadblocks and airport screenings do.

In FISA, President Bush and his advisers faced an obsolete law not written with live war with an international terrorist organization in mind. It was to meet such emergency circumstances that the Founders designed the presidency...

Clearly, the five inspectors general were responding to the media-stoked politics of recrimination, not consulting the long history of American presidents who have lived up to their duty in times of crisis....Now, according to the inspectors general, those of us in government following the 9/11 terrorist attacks should have assumed that the usual peacetime rules for domestic wiretaps applied and interpreted FISA in a most curious way -- to delete the president's traditional authority as commander in chief to collect signals intelligence in wartime.

Click here for the full text of the Unclassified Report on the President's Surveillance Program prepared by the Inspector Generals of DOD, DOJ, CIA, NSA, and DNI.

AmeriCorps Inspector General Files Wrongful Termination Action

The AmeriCorps federal watchdog sacked by the White House for investigating the Sacramento corruption scandal is going to court:

Gerald Walpin, the AmeriCorps inspector general who was summarily fired in June amid controversy over his investigation of a politically-connected supporter of President Obama, has filed suit alleging that the firing was "unlawful," "politically driven," "procedurally defective" and "a transparent and clumsily-conducted effort to circumvent the protections" given to inspectors general under the Inspectors General Reform Act of 2008.

Walpin's suit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, is against the Corporation for National and Community Service, which oversees AmeriCorps. Also named are Nicola Goren, the acting CEO of the Corporation, Frank Trinity, its general counsel, and Raymond Limon, the Corporation's "chief human capital officer." The suit asks the court to declare Walpin's firing unlawful and restore him to his position as the Corporation's inspector general.

At the time of his firing, Walpin was involved in a dispute with the Corporation's board over his handling a case involving the misuse of hundreds of thousands of dollars in AmeriCorps funds by Kevin Johnson, the former NBA star who is now mayor of Sacramento, California and a prominent supporter of President Obama.The board disapproved of Walpin's aggressive probe of Johnson, and the investigation also sparked conflict with the acting U.S. attorney in Sacramento, because of fears that the probe -- which could have resulted in Johnson being barred from ever winning another federal grant -- might stand in the way of the city receiving its part of billions of dollars in federal stimulus money.

In other hope-and-change news, the "healthcare" deadline is not the only initiative that is experiencing slippage according to Newsweek:

An Obama administration task force set up to develop a plan for the closure of the U.S. detention facility at Guantánamo Bay will miss its first deadline this week—and put off a key report—amid continued divisions over how to resolve one of the president's thorniest policy dilemmas.

The task force, set up on Obama's second day in office, was charged with preparing a report to the president by Tuesday, July 21, outlining a long-term detention plan for detainees captured in counterterrorism operations after Sept. 11. But continued debate within the task force over the legal basis for holding detainees who are not charged with any crimes—and where to house them once they are moved from Guantánamo—has forced the task force to postpone its report by a "few months," a senior administration official told NEWSWEEK.

An update to this story has it that Gitmo is still on schedule for a January 2019 closure "even as officials acknowledged that two key reports on the issue—which were due to be delivered this week—have been delayed for months." The New York Times has more.

A Grand Social Experiment...

In contrast to the high-and-mighty political rhetoric from "spin doctors" (pardon the pun), click here for a line-by-line analysis by the Economic Policy Journal of the House bill that would lead to a government takeover of the "healthcare" system. And Investor's Business Daily re-confirms its analysis of the reform plan moving through the House that essentially outlaws the private individual medical insurance market.

Not fully trusting our own interpretation, we asked for confirmation from the House Ways and Means Committee. Sources there agreed: The bill would indeed shut down the individual private health care insurance market.

Our impression was further confirmed Monday when Rep. Dave Camp, the ranking member on Ways and Means, told us that "any existing plan will not be able to enroll members." There will be "a prohibition," the Michigan Republican said, "on enrolling individuals in private health plans" after the bill becomes law in 2013.

It was also confirmed by Ways and Means staff director Cybele Bjorklund, who, in response to questions from Republican Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin during a committee markup session, admitted last week that insurance providers "cannot create new policies outside of that window outside of the exchange."

Alternative perspective: For a point of view that eloquently conveys support for the current legislation, visit the Painespeak blog.

The Sotomayor Tap Dance

With the ongoing economic turmoil and the looming possibility of socialized medicine, the Sotomayor hearings became an afterthought, a sideshow. Understandably so--in these difficult times, the focus is on job security and family finances. According to online media reports (we didn't bother watching the event on TV), the judge fared well in the boring proceedings--although she apparently back-pedaled furiously on some of her previously stated beliefs. But as a practical matter, and leaving politics aside, can we fault her--or any similarly situated person (to use lawyer-speak)--for that? In any job interview, everybody is on their best behavior. The name of the game is to get the gig--and when it comes to a high-profile federal appointment, that's what all nominees (and their handlers) generally try to do, regardless of their political party or ideology.

In addition to the prestige, being elevated to the U.S. Supreme Court is a cushy, lifetime sinecure--with great medical benefits! And once Judge Sotomayor is safely confirmed to the Supreme Court bench (which is a foregone conclusion), she can revert to her leftist judicial philosophy.

The judge did have to field some tough questions from some Judiciary Committee members, but unlike the horrible ordeal of Judge Bork, Justice Thomas, or Justice Alito among others, she received polite, respectful treatment, without the partisan character assassination that those jurists faced. And unlike Miguel Estrada (who probably was on the fast-track to the Supreme Court had he made it to the D.C. Circuit) and other highly qualified judicial selections whose nominations were sabotaged by bad-faith Democrat parliamentary trickery, she will of course get a vote before the full Senate after the nomination is rubber-stamped out of the committee. (The short-circuited Estrada nomination was also the result of the inexplicable failure of the Bush White House and the Justice Department under Alberto Gonzales to use their political megaphone.)

Even among her natural supporters, however, not everyone is enamored of Judge Sotomayor. Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen, who usually follows the liberal playbook down the line, had this to say:

She is fully qualified. She is smart and learned and experienced and, in case you have not heard, a Hispanic, female nominee, of whom there have not been any since the dawn of our fair republic. But she has no cause, unless it is not to make a mistake, and has no passion, unless it is not to show any, and lacks intellectual brilliance, unless it is disguised under a veil of soporific competence until she takes her seat on the court. We shall see. In the meantime, Sotomayor will do, and will do very nicely, as a personification of what ails the American left. She is, as everyone has pointed out, in the mainstream of American liberalism, a stream both intellectually shallow and preoccupied with the past

And the reliably liberal Connecticut Law Tribune editorial board also has reservations about the nomination:

In short, although the addition of Judge Sotomayer would assure that the Supreme Court “looks more like America,” appearances can be deceiving. Beneath the surface, the court will be more homogenous than ever before. It will consist of professional federal judges, nearly all with Ivy League educations, mostly from the Northeast, and disproportionately Catholic. If diversity on the court is valuable because a wide range of backgrounds and experience strengthens collective decision making, then the court is becoming an increasingly impoverished decision maker...Whatever the explanation, we should pause before getting too carried away celebrating the increasing diversity of the Supreme Court. True diversity is, of course, not inconsistent with demographic diversity. But it requires more. And true diversity may be difficult to attain unless we somehow manage to extricate ourselves from a politically-charged confirmation process that demands nominees cut from the same safe mold.

Mexico Celebrates Democracy

The "election" of Al Franken--a/k/a Stuart Smalley--in Minnesota is yet another example of contemporary vote stealing in the U.S., something that should never be tolerated in the world's foremost democracy. As reported by FrontPage Magazine, the U.S. has a lot to learn from our neighbor to the south to ensure clean elections:

Every registered Mexican voter has a Voter ID card, complete with photograph, fingerprint, and a holographic image. It’s not just the existence of the card that’s important, but how it is used. At the Mexican polling station, there is a book containing the photographs of every voter in the precinct. When a Mexican voter presents his card, the poll worker looks up his photo to see if it matches up. If it does, a mark is made next to the photo in the book, and the voter is allowed to cast his ballot.

When I was there on July 5th, a voter’s photo ID didn’t match up with her photo in the book, because she brought her previous voter ID and not her current card. She wasn’t allowed to vote, and had to go home to get her current ID.

After voting, ink is applied to the Mexican voter’s thumb. That way, if he shows up at another polling site to vote, they know he’s already voted elsewhere. (The ink wears off after a few days.)

In contrast, U.S. voter registration is a joke. In many states, it’s not even necessary to prove one’s citizenship or identity. Registrars have been instructed not to be inquisitive about applicants’ citizenship, or lack thereof.

It should come as no surprise then, that the last few years have seen more and more examples of voter fraud coming to light, including the casting of ballots by non-citizen voters.

Whenever Americans try to require photo ID, it typically gets opposed by Hispanic activists who say it’s discriminatory. That’s ironic, since photo ID is a requirement in Mexico, which is the world’s biggest Hispanic country. The solution for U.S. states is to adopt a Mexican-style photo voter ID system, at government expense.

Socialized Medicine Making People Sick

Privacy advocates and civil libertarians who have raised a ruckus over electronic surveillance or harsh interrogation tactics haven't made a peep over a government-run healthcare system. Doesn't heavy-handed bureaucratic control over the doctor-patient relationship--in other words, socialism as Michael Steele correctly described this gargantuan federal apparatus--also violate a fundamental element of freedom and/or privacy? And as a practical matter, how does a budget-exploding, paper shuffling monolith--which will cause even more job loss and overseas outsourcing--improve the health of ordinary Americans?

There are plenty of problems with the way the current healthcare system operates and reform is needed. To be sure, insurance companies, medical providers, drug corporations, and trial lawyers (as well as individuals who adopt a self-destructive lifestyle) have contributed to runaway healthcare costs, but the ideologically driven proponents of socialized medicine (which has failed everywhere it has been tried) have been less than candid over what the legislation actually requires. Unlike members of Congress, some people are actually taking the time to read the legislation. From the New York Post:

President Obama promises that "if you like your health plan, you can keep it," even after he reforms our health-care system. That's untrue. The bills now before Congress would force you to switch to a managed-care plan with limits on your access to specialists and tests.

Two main bills are being rushed through Congress with the goal of combining them into a finished product by August. Under either, a new government bureaucracy will select health plans that it considers in your best interest, and you will have to enroll in one of these "qualified plans." If you now get your plan through work, your employer has a five-year "grace period" to switch you into a qualified plan. If you buy your own insurance, you'll have less time.

And as soon as anything changes in your contract -- such as a change in copays or deductibles, which many insurers change every year -- you'll have to move into a qualified plan instead (House bill, p. 16-17).

When you file your taxes, if you can't prove to the IRS that you are in a qualified plan, you'll be fined thousands of dollars -- as much as the average cost of a health plan for your family size -- and then automatically enrolled in a randomly selected plan (House bill, p. 167-168).

It's one thing to require that people getting government assistance tolerate managed care, but the legislation limits you to a managed-care plan even if you and your employer are footing the bill (Senate bill, p. 57-58). The goal is to reduce everyone's consumption of health care and to ensure that people have the same health-care experience, regardless of ability to pay.

From Investor's Business Daily:

So we can all keep our coverage, just as promised — with, of course, exceptions: Those who currently have private individual coverage won't be able to change it. Nor will those who leave a company to work for themselves be free to buy individual plans from private carriers.

And this from the American Spectator:

Democrats and President Obama have denied that the creation of a new government-run health care plan would be a Trojan Horse for single-payer health care, but a new report by the Lewin Group (comissioned by the Heritage Foundation) finds that the House Democrats' health care bill would shift more 83.4 million Americans from private health care coverage to the government plan. To put that in perspective, that would mean that nearly half (48.4 percent) would lose their private health coverage. In all, the government plan would have 103.4 million members once implemented, according to the Lewin analysis. President Obama has repeated the mantra that anybody who likes their health insurance plan can keep it, but in reality about 63 percent of covered Americans get their health care through their employers, and if employers decide to drop their current health plans in favor of the government plan, workers won't have any choice but to sign up.

The nation wants costs reigned in, but the anxiety average Americans are feeling and will feel over a government-run system will make people even more sick--even before the rationing and waiting lists start (and have you read any articles about the decrepit condition of VA hospitals--the precursor to nationalized healthcare?). As Michelle Malkin writes, the Obama plan is also apparently designed to cover illegal aliens, yet most Americans don't want undocumented persons to get drivers' licenses, let alone medical insurance:

Democrats want to ration health care for everyone in America -- except those who break our immigration laws.

Last week, the House Ways and Means Committee defeated an amendment that would've prevented illegal aliens from using the so-called "public health-insurance option." Every Democrat on the panel voted against it.

Nevada GOP Rep. Dean Heller's measure would've enforced income, eligibility and immigration-verification screening on all ObamaCare patients. The citizenship-vetting process would not have required building a new bureaucracy, but used existing state and federal databases to root out entitlement fraud.

If the congressional majority is truly committed to President Obama's quest to wring out cost savings, why won't it adopt the same anti-fraud checks imposed on other government health and welfare beneficiaries?

A healthy citizenry is an important part of homeland security, but a rationing based, government-controlled program is simply inconsistent with our freedom and opportunity based society, especially since it could drive the U.S. to near bankruptcy with its $1 trillion or more price tag according to the Congressional Budget Office. Layer upon layer of job-killing taxes and regulations presided over by overweight, overpaid public sector bureaucrats (perhaps some of whom smoke cigarettes like Obama) aren't going to promote wellness. How could it? Free-market structural reforms (of which there are many sound proposals) must be the primary component of the cost-savings solution. This from RealClearPolitics:

...A handful of people who probably never even ran a small business actually think they can reinvent the health care system....How do these arrogant, presumptuous politicians believe they can know enough to plan for the rest of us? Who do they think they are? Under cover of helping uninsured people get medical care, they live out their megalomaniacal social-engineering fantasies -- putting our physical and economic health at risk in the process.

And as we wrote in a prior post, if the nation wants to treat the causes rather than the symptoms of illness, conventional medicine and insurers must move towards less costly and more holistic, alternative approaches rather than total reliance on pharmaceutical drugs and surgical interventions. (Yet it is often government bureaucrats who have conducted an ongoing push-back against legitimate alternative healers and healing modalities.) As Mike Adams, the self-designated "health ranger," writes:

Even now, the FDA (under the Obama administration) continues its outright war against the natural products industry, censoring truthful information about the health benefits of dietary supplements in a tyrannical effort to eliminate Big Pharma's competition. This has the effect of eliminating choice for consumers, ultimately driving up monopoly health care costs under the system of western medicine that (laughingly) claims to provide health care today.

In a separate editorial, Adams echoes our concern that health is a national security issue as well as one that goes to the essence of personal privacy:

There's nothing in the Obama plan that protects health freedom, or provides consumers with more choice, or teaches people a single strategy for preventing disease through nutrition, sunlight, exercise and informed self-care...No nation can economically survive if its people are not healthy.

And if a nationalized program is so wonderful, why is Congress exempting itself and its labor union cronies from enrolling in the so-called public option?

Update: National Review Online Columnist Deroy Murdock has the right idea:

Rather than endorse such big-government overkill, pro-freedom members of Congress should promote a simple concept: Let every American own and control an individual health-insurance policy that can be transported among jobs, self-employment, graduate school, and life’s other twists and turns...

What Americans need is a thriving market in individually owned and controlled health-insurance plans. When you book an airline flight, PriceLine.com does not ask, “What is your group number?” You decide when and where to fly, and then buy your ticket. At least with personal travel, your boss does not fund this. The same is true for car insurance, home insurance, and often life insurance. Why must Americans shop for health insurance at work, rather than online or through independent agents?

By the way, the Obama/Congressional plan will make it illegal to go to a private doctor for care and pay out of your own pocket and will even rule out using your own money to buy a supplemental insurance policy (which is what many seniors currently do to augment their Medicare coverage). Is that freedom--or fascism?