Healthcare "Reform": A "Shovel Ready" Job?

"The whole trial is out of order!" That's what Arthur Kirkland, the firebrand attorney portrayed by Al Pacino in And Justice for All, shouts in the courtroom in the classic scene that concludes the movie.

That's kind of what we felt upon hearing that a Minnesota judge ordered a 13-year-old boy with Hodgkin's lymphoma to submit to chemotherapy against his will.

Admittedly, before it happens (and hopefully it never will), no one really knows how he or she would react to a diagnosis of a life-threatening illness, including what treatment to undergo.

And memo to lawmakers of both parties: The U.S. has made incredible advances in medical technology, especially in emergency situations, thanks to the freemarket, but "healthcare" is not merely about pharmaceutical drugs or surgery.

But don't you find it disturbing that a court would force someone to take chemicals into their body? Chemotherapy can destroy the patient's immune system, so it's completely understandable that a similarly situated family would resist this treatment. And perhaps Constitutionally protected religious liberty is also implicated here. Does chemotherapy offer a better ultimate outcome for the boy? An Internet search will come up with alternative, more holistic-oriented therapies for various conditions. Ironically, some physicians and other healers who have had legitimate successes following alternative protocols wind up in the crosshairs of the regulatory authorities.

Perhaps engaging in some degree of hyperbole, Mike Adams, the self-described "Health Ranger," opines the following about this case on his Natural News website:

There is not a single cancer patient that has ever been cured by chemotherapy. Zero. They don't exist. Not a single documented case in the history of western medicine.

And why is that? Because conventional medicine operates from the false belief that there is no cure for cancer! Thus, anyone offering a cure (or assisting in the body's own natural reversal of the disease) is immediately dismissed as a quack. Meanwhile, the real quackery is found in the pushing of toxic chemotherapy chemicals that are injected into the bodies of patients and called "treatment" when they should really be called "torture." (Nancy Pelosi, by the way, was never briefed on the fact that chemotherapy is torture...)

What's most disturbing in all of this, of course, is that the state is now forcing parents to poison their own children, requiring they hand over money to Big Pharma and conventional cancer treatment centers. The concept of freedom of choice has been stolen away from parents. The idea of protecting your children from toxic chemicals has been not just nullified, but made illegal!

We have no idea of the family dynamic in this particular instance, or whether the parents have fully looked into legitimate alternatives. And who knows how this situation will eventually play out. We wish the family all the best. But leaving aside this particular controversy, the larger issue is why not explore all alternatives, aside from chemicals, perhaps proceeding on a parallel conventional-holistic track? And doesn't an oncologist have a moral if not ethical duty to explore all modalities beyond chemotherapy and radiation?

On a related subject, it seems every day there is news about pharmaceutical drugs yanked off the market by the FDA because of devastating side effects? Ironically, regardless of which administration holds power, the FDA seems to be obsessed with trying to regulate the nutritional supplement industry. Seems like they should concentrate their resources on the drug regulation.

(In general, while we're in no way, shape or form giving any kind of health advice, some supplements made by reputable companies with quality ingredients can be worthwhile, some with less potent ingredients aren't. And some alternative healing techniques work for some people and not for others. But hasn't it been established that many expensive drugs don’t work for many people?)

Doctors and insurance companies have a lot of explaining to do about skyrocketing medical costs. For a variety of reasons, health insurance costs in particular are out of control, especially for any worker who has been laid off and been forced to pay for expensive COBRA benefits. The so-called stimulus package provides temporary partial reimbursement for COBRA, but that's just a band aid. So health insurance portability must be addressed.

So there needs to be sensible, structural insurance reform, but orchestrated by and in the private sector. (Another issue for another time is whether a healthy citizen should be forced to subsidize the costs of those who have led self-destructive lifestyles, or those who are here illegally.)

Not to get too metaphysical, but there is a strong mind-body connection in staying healthy, and millions of Americans have had good results with alternative approaches. Not every effective protocol shows up in a stuffy, peer-reviewed medical journal.

Again, leaving this particular cancer case aside, if really want to help people stay healthy and prevent disease, why not provide insurance reimbursement for more holistic techniques on the front end, thereby avoiding catastrophic costs on the back end?

Government-run healthcare, a/k/a single payer or socialized medicine, is not the answer. It doesn't make sense. Why would liberals and Democrats and their compliant trained seals in the news media (those that claim to be "pro choice") want to foist a system on this country that has failed in every other country that it has been tried. In fact, many of those systems are on the verge of bankruptcy. In fact, patients from other countries under national healthcare flee their system to be treated in the U.S. The logical extension of single payer is rationing and waiting lists for both routine and non-routine services. Is that an upgrade over the current system with all its faults? As P.J. O'Rourke famously said, "If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free."

The Oscar-winning movie The Barbarian Invasions gives an unsettling glimpse of the botched nature of the government-run Canadian healthcare system. The excellent film (which somehow slipped past Hollywood's politically correct gatekeepers) centers on a Montreal college professor with terminal cancer who seeks to reconcile with his estranged son, or perhaps vice versa. In one pertinent scene, to get his father out of a chaotic hospital ward, the son must bribe sullen and corrupt union bosses to provide his father with a private room.

Government-run "healthcare"? The state, in the form of judges or other bureaucrats, intervening in family medical decisions? That's not reform we can believe in.

More on nationalized medical care here and here.

The "Deadbeats" Among Us

Welcome to the world of Orwellian economic doublespeak where responsible consumers who pay their monthly credit card bill in full become "deadbeats" and must be punished:

Credit cards have long been a very good deal for people who pay their bills on time and in full. Even as card companies imposed punitive fees and penalties on those late with their payments, the best customers racked up cash-back rewards, frequent-flier miles and other perks in recent years.

Now Congress is moving to limit the penalties on riskier borrowers, who have become a prime source of billions of dollars in fee revenue for the industry. And to make up for lost income, the card companies are going after those people with sterling credit....

“It will be a different business,” said Edward L. Yingling, the chief executive of the American Bankers Association, which has been lobbying Congress for more lenient legislation on behalf of the nation’s biggest banks. “Those that manage their credit well will in some degree subsidize those that have credit problems.”

Video: The Obama-ACORN Connection

FNC's O'Reilly airs a follow-up report on the pre-election Obama-ACORN story that was spiked by the New York Times with the ACORN whistleblower herself speaking:

Detainee Developments-- Less Hope and No Change?

France, which previously agreed to accept one Gitmo detainee, is the new home of the plaintiff in the high-profile Boumediene v. Bush case:

The United States on Friday released the Guantanamo Bay prisoner who was at the center of a Supreme Court battle giving detainees the right to challenge their confinement, an Obama administration official said.

Lakhdar Boumediene left the U.S. naval facility in Cuba Friday headed to relatives in France, said the official, who spoke on a condition of anonymity because the release was not yet cleared for announcement.

Boumediene was arrested along with five other Algerians in 2001 in Bosnia, suspected in a bomb plot against the U.S. embassy in Sarajevo. He arrived in Guantanamo in January 2002...

In June 2008, the Supreme Court ruled in a case called Boumediene v. Bush that foreign Guantanamo Bay detainees have rights under the Constitution to challenge their detention in civilian courts. On a 5-4 split, the majority said the U.S. government was violating the rights of prisoners there and that the system the Bush administration put in place to classify suspects as enemy combatants and review those decisions is inadequate.

As we noted in a previous post, the administration has made another about face in formally bringing back military tribunals:

President Obama on Friday announced plans to restart the military commissions launched under President Bush to try some suspected terrorists held at the Guantanamo Bay detention site, sparking fresh anger from liberal and human rights groups who had hoped Mr. Obama's election signaled a clean break with Bush-era policies.

Mr. Obama argued that changes he was making to the system would give detainees the due process previously unavailable to them.

And here is a related development that will also further disappoint some of the president's most fervent supporters:

The Obama administration is weighing plans to detain some terror suspects on U.S. soil -- indefinitely and without trial -- as part of a plan to retool military commission trials that were conducted for prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The proposal being floated with members of Congress is another indication of President Barack Obama's struggles to establish his counter-terrorism policies, balancing security concerns against attempts to alter Bush-administration practices he has harshly criticized.

Nancy Pelosi's "Tortured" Logic About Waterboarding

Captain Renault, the police official in Casablanca, was shocked to learn that gambling was going on in Rick's nightclub--just as a croupier handed him his winnings. Isn't that to some degree what Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tried to pull in her inept and scattered press conference?

Under pressure to explain conflicting stories, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday acknowledged for the first time that in 2003 she was told waterboarding and other tough tactics were being used on suspected terrorists and did not object to them, even as she defiantly accused the CIA of lying to her and Congress about the use of such controversial techniques during 2002 briefings.

The CIA, in an unusually curt response, defended its account that showed Mrs. Pelosi was briefed about the use of enhanced interrogation techniques such as waterboarding in a Sept. 4, 2002, meeting.

Pelosi was a placeholder who only became Speaker by virtue of seniority and being next in line after the Republicans lost control of the House of Representatives and surrendered the gavel. It is now unlikely that her credibility issues will go away anytime soon.

Pelosi is not out of the woods. She could have saved herself some trouble by admitting earlier that she had been informed that the CIA was using waterboarding. By doing what she did yesterday, she has assured that she will remain a central character in the political fight that is raging. But whether by design or accident, she also succeeded in enlarging a controversy that is no longer a sideshow.

If Congress is intent on going forward with a so-called Truth Commission on enhanced interrogation techniques, how long will it be before Pelosi decides to "spend more time with her family"?

Update: In a memo to employees posted on the agency's website, CIA Director Leon Panetta (also a California Democrat who served with Pelosi in the House of Representatives) said "Let me be clear: It is not our policy or practice to mislead Congress. That is against our laws and our values." Click here for the full statement.

The Savage Nation: Not the British Government's Cup of Tea

One of the many reasons why the formerly entrenched UK Labor Party is in shambles is the decision by politically correct Home Secretary Jacqui Smith to ban San Francisco-based talk show host Michael Savage from British soil. The idea that you would put someone who editorializes in front a radio microphone on the same list as terrorists and others who pose a physical threat to the British populace is beyond laughable.

London Mayor Boris Johnson chided members of parliament for failing to stand up for free speech and denounce Smith's action, yet at the same time condemned Savage's "ugly rantings." Well, if you've ever listened to Savage's amped-up show, The Savage Nation (and no doubt this controversy has boosted his reach both here and in Europe via Internet streaming), it can be hard to take other than in small doses, even if you agree with him on the importance of "borders, language, and culture." And he barely gives the callers a chance to get a word in edgewise, which kind of defeats the whole purpose of talk radio in the first place. But he is a very gifted and compelling--and often narcissistic--monologist, but who in "show business" isn't a narcissist? Putting politics aside, when Savage talks about his Bronx childhood or his day-to-day encounters in the "City by the Bay," he is hilarious. With Savage's scientific training, the listener can also learn about holistic health and nutrition. In a Washington Times profile, a talk radio insider aptly refers to Savage as "a political bomb thrower or a Borscht belt entertainer." So, while Savage's explosive on-the-air demeanor can be challenging to the audience especially after a hard day at work, he's definitely not a one-trick pony. And no one forces you to listen to Savage--or any other media figure for that matter.

The larger issue involving freedom of expression is far more significant. There are efforts on this side of the pond to reinstitute the so-called Fairness Doctrine, a thinly veiled way to censor conservative talk radio programming. And Smith seems to have the same level of competency as her counterpart, DHS Secretary Napolitano, who was just forced to take down a controversial and misguided report on so-called extremist groups. Oddly, Napolitano is said to be on the short list for the pending Supreme Court nomination.

Although this may be just saber rattling, Savage claimed he is consulting with attorneys about bringing a lawsuit against Jacqui Smith for defamation, but Smith may be protected for one thing by the doctrine of "sovereign immunity" for actions taken as part of her official duties.

Update: Despite the fact that Jacqui Smith has resigned from the rapidly imploding UK Labor government, Savage is going ahead with his defamation lawsuit.

Virtual Fencing Going Forward. Controversial Photos To Be Kept Under Wraps?

Campaign rhetoric notwithstanding, more apparent homeland security continuity between the Bush and Obama administrations:

In announcing the resumption of a "virtual fence" on the U.S.-Mexican border yesterday, the Obama administration sent a powerful message of continuity with President George W. Bush, who included a pledge to secure the border as part of a 2006 effort to persuade Congress to overhaul the nation's immigration laws.

Much as Bush aides did three years ago, administration officials in the Department of Homeland Security described a five-year, multibillion-dollar plan yesterday to link a chain of tower-mounted sensors and other surveillance equipment over most of the 2,000-mile southern frontier. As before, the network of cameras, radar and communications gear is intended to speed deployment of U.S. Border Patrol officers to intercept illegal immigrants, drug smugglers and other violators, yielding greater "operational control" over the vast and rugged area.

Meanwhile, according to ABC News, it seems that the Obama administration is having second thoughts about releasing those photos depicting detainee mistreatment:

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs was today asked about a letter from Sens. Joe Lieberman, D-Ind., and Lindsey Graham, R-SC, asking him to reverse the decision, saying the "release of these old photographs of past behavior that has now been clearly prohibited can serve no public good, but will empower al-Qaeda propaganda operations, hurt our country’s image, and endanger our men and women in uniform.

Gibbs said "obviously, the president has, has great concern about any impact that pictures of detainee -- potential detainee abuse in the past could have on the present-day service members that are protecting our freedom either in Iraq, Afghanistan, or throughout the world. That's something the president is very cognizant of. And we are working to -- we are working currently to figure out what the process is moving forward."

The Weekly Standard goes out on a limb to suggest that a reversal of the decision is imminent. Stay tuned.

Update: It's official--the administration has backpedaled and will now fight to prevent the "extradition" of the photos.

President Obama said Wednesday that he told government lawyers to object to a court-ordered release of additional images showing alleged abuse of detainees because the release could affect the safety of U.S. troops and "inflame anti-American opinion.