Posted on 09/18/2011 9:07:34 AM PDT by Nachum
WASHINGTON (AP) — It's a massive health care entitlement with unfunded future costs over $7 trillion. Many conservatives are still upset at the way it was rammed through Congress. But when the Republican presidential candidates were asked last week asked if they would repeal the Medicare drug benefit, they said no way. After all, Republicans created it. Republicans want to pull the plug on the health care overhaul they call "Obamacare," but that law is arguably less a deficit driver than the Medicare drug plan they are defending.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
SCOTUS will do what most of these idiots will not do. Bet. =.=
This is not 0bamacare, this is the prescription drug plan.
There is some momentum to overhaul Social Security. If that can be done, then we can move on to other entitlements.
But, you have to win on one front before taking on other fronts.
Medicare Plan D, was the first volley of Gov’t healthcare. After that got passed, it was easy to see RomObama care would as well.
More crony capitalism. Throw them all out.
The GOP House already voted to repeal it...as they said they would. But the Senate and the Obama admin nixed that. We need to double down on 2010 in 2012 and get the votes to make it happen in the House and the Senate...and then it will happen.
I can imagine if the Republicans tried to kill the prescription drug program. The Democrats would scream that Republicans were trying to kill old people. Never mind the fact that the Democrats screamed that Republicans were trying to kill old people when they enacted it.
WASS. Ditto.
As if the system wasn’t broken Enough already!
Brought to you by the Same Interests who bought themselves, Obamacare.
http://www.fiercehealthfinance.com/story/cms-considers-coverage-depression-screenings/2011-07-26
Virtually Everyone who gets Screened will come up positive with depression to become a lifelong consumer of antidepressants.
Here’s from the last set of ‘Depression Screening’ questions.
http://www.teenscreentruth.com/teenscreen_facts.html
TeenScreen wants to implement their screening on all school children throughout the nation
Simply put, TeenScreen considers that it and “mental health experts” know how to raise your children better than you do. TeenScreen’s plan is to implement its screening program throughout the entire U.S. school system to detect problem behavior before it shows up. The unfortunate difficulty with the TeenScreen program is that students can be incorrectly diagnosed as having a “mental illness” when they don’t have one 84% of the time — as admitted by TeenScreen’s founder, Dr. David Shaffer. This is worse than flipping a coin. Once a student is labeled with one or more “disorders” he is referred to some type of mental health practitioner and in most cases will be given psychiatric drugs such as Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Xanax, Celexa, Ritalin, Luvox, Thorazine or several other antidepressants that the FDA KNOWS can cause suicidal thoughts—and repeated evidence has shown that violence, murder and suicide can often result.
Psychiatrists state that mental illnesses are caused by a “chemical imbalance” in the brain. However, to date there are no blood tests, no chemical tests or any valid biological process that is used to determine what this supposed imbalance is—and no person who is currently taking psychiatric drugs has EVER been proven to have any type of imbalance. Yet this is the “reason” that is promoted, and this is the basis on which drugs are prescribed by psychiatrists and health practitioners around the world, to the tune of BILLIONS of dollars in profits for pharmaceutical companies.
Antidepressant Induced Murder?
Seventeen days after taking his first dose of Prozac, Kurt Danysh shot and killed his father, the one person he loved most in the world, by firing a shotgun blast into his head. The shooting was a complete shock and made no sense to anyone who knew Kurt and his father. Kurt had no history of violence prior to taking Prozac. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to 22.5 to 60 years in prison. Finally, in 2004, eight years after Kurt’s conviction, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has recognized that SSRI antidepressants, including Prozac, can cause suicidal and/or violent behavior particularly in adolescents and children, and in 2005 has required a “black box” warning on all antidepressants. Additionally, it has been discovered that Eli Lilly & Co. (manufacturer of Prozac) knew about and concealed information as far back as 1988 linking Prozac to violent behavior.
More on Drugs & Violence »
TeenScreen Violates Federal Law by Using “Passive Consent” on Parental Consent Forms
TeenScreen doesn’t want to reveal the methods they use to screen students
TeenScreen is being very tight-lipped on the screening materials and the questions they ask students. Why is this? This is actually against the law called the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment.
The Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment
Parents need to know this Federal law exists (commonly referred to as PPRA), that says you have a right to inspect those questions and materials before consenting to any screening of your child and that this screening requires written parental consent. Even so, in a TeenScreen newsletter (see page 3) they discuss making screening a matter of the schools curriculum as a method to bypass this law and use passive consent instead. This is a purposeful method of avoiding parental complaints against their children receiving highly controversial and potentially dangerous psychiatric testing and drugging.
Attempting to skate past the radar with “passive consent”
In some areas, TeenScreen currently uses what they call “passive consent” or “opt-out consent”, which requires no written parental approval to screen their child. Instead, a passive consent form is sent home to parents with the child and if they don’t return it, signed by their parents, TeenScreen considers that the parents approve. But what if a parent never sees the form? What if the child never delivers it? Leslie McGuire, TeenScreen’s Co-Director, says: “Unless we hear from you that we can’t screen your child we assume we have your permission and we’re gonna’ screen them.” TeenScreen officials discovered that using (illegal) passive consent boosted the number of teens to be tested from 50% to over 95%.
Has your child received a mental health screening without your written permission? Please contact us with the details of what occurred.
The federal U.S. Code Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (PPRA) TITLE 20 > CHAPTER 31 > SUBCHAPTER III > Part 4 > § 1232h, states in part:
(a) Inspection of instructional materials by parents or guardians —
“All instructional materials, including teacher’s manuals, films, tapes, or other supplementary material which will be used in connection with any survey, analysis, or evaluation as part of any applicable program shall be available for inspection by the parents or guardians of the children.”
The law goes on to state that schools and contractors must obtain prior written parental consent before minor students are required to participate in any survey, analysis, or evaluation that reveals information concerning:
1. political affiliations or beliefs of the student or the student’s parent;
2. mental and psychological problems of the student or the student’s family;
3. sex behavior or attitudes;
4. illegal, anti-social, self-incriminating, or demeaning behavior;
5. critical appraisals of other individuals with whom respondents have close family relationships;
6. legally recognized privileged or analogous relationships, such as those of lawyers, physicians, and ministers;
7. religious practices, affiliations, or beliefs of the student or student’s parent; or
income (other than that required by law to determine eligibility for participation in a program or for receiving financial assistance under such program).
more on the PPRA »
The TeenScreen Procedure
Withholding report cards and using movie passes, food & videos to coax teens to participate
TeenScreen offers children “incentives” like free movie passes, food coupons, “I completed TeenScreen” stress balls, BlockBuster rental coupons and pizza parties, if they consent to the procedure or bring back the parental consent form. Some schools are withholding your child’s report cards if the permission slips are not brought back to school.
One tactic TeenScreen officials use is to sell the child on the suicide survey first and after they have the child’s agreement, they later contact parents. Leslie McGuire, co-director of TeenScreen, told listeners at the 2005 NAMI Convention held in Texas, that while only around 54% of parents would consent to a mental health screening for their child, when you asked the children themselves, nearly 98% of the children agreed with the idea of being screened. The key, therefore, was to sell it to the children and let them sell the parents. She said: “Getting the kids to buy in is such an essential thing because for the most part, you’re distributing the consent forms to the kids to bring home to their parents and bring them back. So you have to get their buy in….”
TeenScreen’s Parent Consent Form
Below are two links showing actual Parent Consent forms used by TeenScreen. One is an Active Consent Form where parents have to sign that it’s OK to have their children screened. The second is the illegal Passive Consent Form, where if the form doesn’t come back, TeenScreen considers the parents have approved the screening.
Click to view Active Consent Form
Click to view Passive Consent Form
Student Assent Form
The assent form is the “permission to screen” form that the child fills out before being screened. It’s important to note that on part of this form TeenScreen states: “d) I have been told that participation in this program is voluntary and that I am not required to do any of these things if I don’t want to. I may also refuse to answer any and all questions.”
Click here to view the Student Assent Form
Through inquiries to schools around the nation, it has been discovered that the computer test is set up so that you can not skip any questions, you must answer them all. If you refuse to answer or if you refuse to assent to the screening that the parent has said “yes” to, TeenScreen says that is an indication, in and of itself, of a positive screen and you are then carted off to the clinician immediately!
“A score is ‘Positive’ if: Youth refuses to answer question(s) after screener calls attention to unanswered item(s)”
—from TeenScreen’s web site
The Screening Questions
Before you see some of the questions that TeenScreen asks, think back to your childhood and remember...
1) Did you ever have a song stuck in your head and you just couldn’t stop “singing” it? Did it ever last for days? Did you ever try to think of something else?
2) Was there ever a time you didn’t feel like playing outside or couldn’t find anything to do? (”Mom! I’m bored!, There’s NOTHING to do!”)
3) Were you ever nervous or anxious when you knew you had to give a presentation in front of the whole class?
4) Did you ever worry before taking a test and then during the test check and recheck your answers?
5) Did you ever want to sleep in until noon?
6) Did your parents ever get worried about you for any reason?
Now that you have that mindset, the questions you are about to read are taken from the screening questionnaire that the children take.
• Have you often felt very nervous or uncomfortable when you have been with a group of children or young people - say, like in the lunchroom at school or at a party?
• Have you often felt very nervous when you’ve had to do things in front of people?
• Have you often worried alot before you were going to play a sport or game or do some other activity?
• Has there been a time when you had less energy than you usually do?
• Has there been a time when you felt you couldn’t do anything well or that you weren’t as good-looking or as smart as other people?
• Has there been a time when nothing was fun for you and you just weren’t interested in anything?
• Have you had to count things over and over again? Or make yourself do things a certain number of times?
• Have you often felt you should check on things over and over again?
• Has there been a time when you couldn’t think as clearly or as fast as usual?
• How often did you parents get annoyed or upset with you because of the way you were feeling or acting?
• Are you Hispanic or Latino?
This is not about Obamacare. People need to read the actual story. This is about the Medicare prescription drug benefit.
This was the new Republican entitlement added by Bush and a Republican congress in 2003. The GOP House will never, ever, vote to repeal this.
Some say it is a success simply because its costs have come in lower than expected completely ignoring the fact that we have no way of paying for it.
“I’m perfectly willing to say I was wrong,” said Robert Moffit, a senior fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation who fought the 2003 bill as an inevitable boondoggle. “I projected these costs would go through the roof on prescription drugs. I also did not believe private plans would come and offer their wares. Frankly, I’m perfectly willing to say I was wrong.”
“This is not about Obamacare. People need to read the actual story. This is about the Medicare prescription drug benefit. “
the headline will trick a lot of people into thinking GOP gave up on repealing obamacare
What Bush and the GOP did with this prescription plan was equally unconstitutional, IMHO...just like Bush not vetoing the campaign finance laws.
I still believe if we get the right people, ie Tea Part people, in congress, we have a shot at turning this over too.
I pray we will do all in opur power, individually and collectively, to make that happen.
“Some say it is a success simply because its costs have come in lower than expected completely ignoring the fact that we have no way of paying for it. “
The National Economic Bureau of Research, a truly non psrtisan think tank of of mostly Nobel winners of Economocs published a study saying Part d had a “ salutory effect” on medicare saying for every $1.00 spent on prescriptions with part d save over $2.00 in medicare costs.
which makes sense as it is cheaper to treat many conditions with drugs rather than let them spiral down to the point of needing expensive medical care.
a 2 for 1 savings seems like a pretty good benefit
I have also heard quite a bit on the depression drugging of America. I wonder if it is a precurser to ‘assisted suicide’ to reduce the senior population.
It's not really about getting the right people, it is about public attitudes changing on these issues. We can never "get the right people" so long as the public overwhelmingly supports these programs and don't want them tampered with. Tea Party candidates running to end the Medicare prescription drug program would just lose their elections - so they'd never get a chance to enact such changes.
People are making a mistake thinking that it's only a matter of getting courageous conservatives and Tea Party folks in office. The problem is public attitudes about these entitlements. That has to change before the environment will ever shift enough to allow the kind of Tea Party types that you mention to ever get elected. As of now, even existing Tea Party conservatives are not going to mess with the Medicare prescription drug program.
Respectfully, when did the GOP House vote to repeal Public Law 108-173?
This article is about H.R. 1 from the 108th Congress, passed by Congress in 2003 and signed into law on December 8, 2003 by President George W. Bush.
If I remember, this bill was passed through the Congress so quickly that members did not have time to read the bill before the final vote was scheduled. It was one of those, "You have to pass the bill so you can see what's in it." votes. Pelosi refined the technique, but it was used several times by Republicans in the 2001-2006 time frame.
You are right. Longbow already informed me of this and I apologized in post 9 for jumping to conclusiopns.
At least, I pray there is.
Time will tell...but 2012 is going to be a bell weather.
Ooops. Longbow’s post was number 9. My response was post 13.
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