Free Republic

Who cares about the U.S. Constitution, when Barack Obama’s vision for America is weighing in the balance? Don’t count on the U.S. Congress to care. In the aftermath of the Senate’s passage of an Obamacare bill, Attorney’s General from multiple states have begun to announce that they are launching investigations into the legality, and constitutionality of the Senate legislation. Chief among their concerns is the possibility that that the bill places Americans outside the state of Nebraska at a significant disadvantage, financially and otherwise, to residents of the state of Nebraska. South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster, along with the...

They are objects of derision.  Influential government officials refer to them as unproductive, of less value than others in society. The political party running the government aggressively denies them access to health services while putting in place bureaucracies devoted, in effect, to ending their lives. The Jews in Nazi Germany?  In the Soviet Union of Stalin? In a socialist paradise set up by the rabidly anti-Semitic United Nations? No, seniors in a United States governed by the party of President Barack Obama and his allies on the Democratic left. The Democratic Party senate healthcare bill makes it official: Seniors are...

"For all of America's cherished belief in choice and freedom, it remains an astonishing fact that the U.S. government forces citizens over the age of 65 into a subpar health plan of its choosing. And so it is with some hope that we greet a new federal lawsuit that aims to allow senior citizens to flee Medicare. The suit comes courtesy of Kent Masterson Brown, a lawyer who has previously tangled with the government over Medicare benefits. Mr. Brown represents three plaintiffs who are suing the federal government to be allowed to opt out of Medicare without losing their Social...

WASHINGTON -- Senate Democrats are poised to pass a landmark health care bill that could define President Barack Obama's legacy and usher in near-universal medical coverage for the first time in U.S. history. Ahead lie complex talks with the House to reach final legislation in the new year. "We stand on the doorstep of history," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat. "We recognize that, but much more importantly, we stand so close to making so many individual lives better." The vote Thursday on the bill extending health care coverage to some 31 million uninsured Americans brings Obama...

University of Chicago Law Professor Richard A Epstein has brilliantly argued that the Reid bill unconstitutionally turns private health insurers into public utilities. Luckily for those who haven't time to study his detailed argument, he's now summarized it nicely in the Wall Street Journal: "As Harry Reid's 2,000 page health-care bill is being rammed through the Senate, most of the public debate has been focused on its expanded coverage, its now defunct public option, and its high taxes. Lost in the shuffle has been its intensely coercive requirements on health insurance issuers, especially in the individual and small group markets....

What's happening with ObamaCare this week in the Senate is raw, rank politics at its worst. PASSING LAWS has been compared to making sausage. But in the case of the mammoth health care bill expected to pass the Senate on Christmas Eve, that's an insult to employees at the Jimmy Dean plant. It's also a slap at Americans who want Congress to take its time to make thoughtful changes that will affect one seventh of the U.S. economy. President Obama campaigned on "change we can believe in." Most voters believed him. Yet many polls show that only a minority of...

Self-Evident Truths: Sen. Dianne Feinstein says it comes under the Commerce Clause. Rep. Steny Hoyer says it's mandated by the "general welfare" clause. Despite liberal wishes, health care is not a right. The "living Constitution" that Democrats and their court appointees have given us may be the death of our freedoms. Their constitution adapts to the times and serves the whims of the elitists. The Constitution is supposed to limit government powers. It does not allow government to do anything it feels like doing. Cass Sunstein, the head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, is the author of...

Tuesday, December 22, 2009 "Democrats Ensure America Will No Longer Be the Last Best Hope of Earth" by Dennis Prager SNIPPET: "As the passage of the bill that will start the process of nationalizing health care in America becomes almost inevitable, so, too, the process of undoing America's standing as The Last Best Hope of Earth will have begun." SNIPPET: "Just as the left has waged war on America's Judeo-Christian roots, it has waged war on individual liberty and responsibility." SNIPPET: "Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are right about one thing -- they are indeed making history. But...

Health Care: Democrats on the take and in the dead of night pass an execrable piece of legislation that they haven't read, the public doesn't want and only socialists could love. What has happened to this country? If we hadn't stayed up past midnight Sunday, we wouldn't have known what was going on. Here we thought a vote on the proposed health care overhaul wasn't going to take place until Thursday night — Christmas Eve. But there they were, the United States Senate, at 1 a.m. Monday, rushing to vote in the middle of a snowstorm to close debate on...

At least common thieves don't destroy an entire health care system and socialize the American economy when they commit their felonies. Too bad we can't say the same for our illustrious Democratic senators who sold out the nation. In exchange for criminally unconstitutional favors for their respective states, they voted to pass the Senate health care bill just 38 hours after it had been made available to the public for review. Everyone knows about Sen. Mary Landrieu's negotiating $300 million for her state in non-guaranteed Medicaid payouts. She was even cocky about her institutionalized larceny. Sen. Bernie Sanders finagled $10...

Barack Obama's quest for historic health-care legislation has turned into a parody of leadership. We usually associate presidential leadership with the pursuit of goals that, though initially unpopular, serve America's long-term interests. Obama has reversed this. He's championing increasingly unpopular legislation that threatens the country's long-term interests. "This isn't about me," he likes to say, "I have great health insurance." But of course, it is about him: about the legacy he covets as the president who achieved "universal" health insurance. He'll be disappointed. Even if Congress passes legislation -- a good bet -- the finished product will fall far short...

A quick search of the Interwebs for the term “political suicide” will return a significant number of stories on the pending Democrat-pushed healthcare “reform” legislation and their seemingly inexplicable political death spiral. Virtually every poll says that the public rejects the bills in the Senate and House, Barack Obama’s popularity is tanking, and virtually no one on the Right OR the Left is happy with them. So the natural question is: Why are the Democrats pushing this? The characterization of the Democrats’ actions as “political suicide” is somewhat inaccurate. It would be more apt to call it “political hari-kari”, as...

Politics: If the Democrats' stitched-together Frankenstein monster of health care reform gets the 60 votes to get through the Senate, it will have been done through an assortment of bribes and brass knuckles. (snip) Sen. Ben Nelson, a Nebraska Democrat, has also been critical of the buy-in and public option, but he has an additional issue about whatever comes out of the Senate not involving public funding of abortion in any way. Michael Goldfarb on the Weekly Standard blog quotes a Senate aide as saying the White House is now threatening to put Nebraska's Offutt Air Force Base on the...

I am black. I am a woman. And, with all due respect, I think Harry Reid has lost his mind. Yesterday, on the Senate floor, Majority Leader Reid compared those who oppose his healthcare reform package to those who opposed ending slavery, fought against women's suffrage, and thwarted civil rights. What's next, Holocaust comparisons? Many assume that given my race and gender, I would support the Senate health reform bill as a savior of the masses. I do not. And thousands, if not millions, of blacks, Hispanics, women, low-income, and at-risk communities feel the same. There are many reasons why...

Well, it's not quite as bad as Paul Krugman critiquing the Fox Business Network, but a little troubling because tax dollars are being spent to undertake such an effort. A Nov. 27 post by incoming White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer on the The White House Blog attempted to fact check a Nov. 27 column by Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, proving the left-wing noise machine isn't the only shop in Washington, D.C. criticizing conservative voices (h/t Amanda Carpenter of The Washington Times). "In today's Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer takes great pains to paint a bleak picture of health care...

Reform: Only a Bernie Madoff could believe the Senate's health care bill will extend coverage to 31 million Americans while cutting deficits by $127 billion over 10 years. It would be the first profitable entitlement. But that's what Majority Leader Harry Reid, citing Congressional Budget Office estimates, tells us the 2,074-page bill — said to cost only $849 billion over a decade — would do. Like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, he seems to be following Vice President Joe Biden's admonition at an AARP town hall meeting that "we've got to spend money to keep from going bankrupt." We suspect Reid's...

Health Care: A government task force has decided that women need fewer mammograms and later in life. Shouldn't that be between patient and physician? We have seen the future of health care, and it doesn't work. We have warned repeatedly that the net results of health care bills before Congress will be higher demand, fewer doctors, more cost control, all leading to rationing. New recommendations issued by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) regarding breast cancer and the necessity for early and frequent mammograms do not convince us otherwise. Just six months ago, the panel, which works under the...

Health Care Reform: Failure to buy health insurance in the just-passed health care bill could get you five years in jail with a $250,000 fine. How can violating a law that's unconstitutional be a felony? The passage last Saturday night of the House health care measure by a fragile 220-215 margin may well prove to be a Pyrrhic victory. In polls, townhall meetings and tea parties, Americans have shown they don't want a "reform" that costs a staggering $1.2 trillion yet fails to meet the left's desire of insuring all the uninsured. And they certainly don't want a bill that...

The U.S. House of Representatives narrowly passed a massive overhaul of the American health care system Saturday night by a vote of 220 to 215. One Republican, Rep. Joseph Cao of Louisiana, crossed the aisle, while 39 Democrats joined the Republicans in opposing the measure. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called passage of the bill "an historic moment for our nation and for America's families," while Republicans warned that the bill will raise taxes, increase insurance premiums and make cuts to Medicare. An enormous round of applause broke out throughout the House chamber when the crucial 218th vote was cast to...

Note: The following text is a quote: Home • Briefing Room • Speeches & Remarks The White House Office of the Press Secretary For Immediate Release October 26, 2009 Excerpts from Remarks by Christina Romer to the Center for American Progress WASHINGTON, DC- Christina Romer, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers will deliver remarks this afternoon at the Center for American Progress. The following are excerpts from her remarks. “In recent months, many have expressed concern about the budget deficit. This is a concern that President Obama and his entire economic team share.” *** “(Economists) Auerbach and Gale calculate...

Poring over the details of the 1,501-page health care bill that came out of Sen. Max Baucus' Finance Committee, it's clear that the financing is so full of smoke and mirrors that one has to wear a respirator and hard hat to get through it. But by the time one gets to the end of the bill, estimated to cost $829 billion over 10 years, clarity emerges — the Democrats plan to finance their expanded government care on the backs of America's middle-class taxpayers. Baucus and company have decided to tax what the press calls "Cadillac" health plans. Prior to...

Health Reform: House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer says it's constitutional to mandate insurance coverage. Congress, he insists, has "broad authority" to make us buy things to provide for the "general welfare." Democrats' Alice In Wonderland interpretation of what they consider to be a "living Constitution," where words mean what they say they mean based on political considerations, gets more bizarre by the minute. (snip) We've been down this road before. In 1994, Hillary Clinton's secretive health care task force was trying to nationalize health care. "A mandate requiring all individuals to purchase health insurance would be an unprecedented form of...

Politics: The administration stages a photo-op with handpicked doctors who support its health care reform. Fortunately, most doctors still believe that the first rule of medicine is to do no harm. It would seem some doctors still make house calls. Some 150 of them made one at the White House Monday in an attempt to give a booster shot to the administration's chaotic and stalled health care reform drive. Rather than a grass-roots uprising of physicians, this was a classic case of AstroTurfing. Attendance was by invitation only, and 40 of the 150 were said to be members of Doctors...

Health Care Systems: A return to private health care is rising from the grass roots north of the border. While we rush headlong toward socialized medicine, Canadians are saying, "No, thanks — been there, done that." We recently told the story of Ava Isabella Stinson, born 13 weeks premature at St. Joseph's hospital in Hamilton, Ontario. She weighed all of two pounds and had no time to be put on a waiting list. But there were no open neonatal intensive care beds for her at St. Joseph's or anywhere else in the entire province of Ontario it seems. Canada's perfectly...

Medical Care: A leaked report shows that Vancouver's health authority is considering cutting thousands of surgeries to balance the budget. However organized, government-run health care inevitably leads to rationing.Defenders of ObamaCare continually point out that their plan is not like Canada's, that holding that country's system up as an example of impending medical doom is invalid. Canada's system is different. Instead of having a single national plan, Canada's national health insurance, a kind of public option, is composed of 13 interlocking provincial and territorial plans, all framed under the Canada Health Act. But based on a report leaked to the...

SNIPPET: "Speaking in College Park to the University of Maryland, the President saw some of the same passion for change that consumed much of the country for the years leading up to his election. Make no mistake, health insurance reform is something every young person should care about for themselves. As HealthReform.gov detailed in a new report this morning, young people entering the workforce are more and more getting the short end of the health insurance stick. We also launched a Facebook version of our "What’s In Reform for You?" quiz, which is guaranteed to surprise you no matter how...

Father of ‘Public Option’ Says It's Not a ‘Trojan Horse’ for a Single-Payer Health-Care System (CNSNews.com) – SNIPPET: "Hacker said that he hopes the public option, if adopted, would eventually lead to a government-managed system--but it wouldn't happen overnight. In a 2008 video obtained and aired by Fox News Channel, Hacker not only suggested that his plan would lead to a single-payer system, but said it would do so openly, in a gradual way, he admitted. “Someone once said to me, ‘Well, this is a Trojan horse for single payer.’ I said, ‘Well, it’s not a Trojan horse, right? It’s...

Two scandalous news stories about Swedish medical care -- both from taking the cheapest way out -- by not doing routine brain scans. Story 1, today: Doctors miss fist-sized brain tumour. "A Swedish woman has reported four physicians to a national body that assesses medical negligence after they missed a brain tumour the size of a fist." The docs told this poor woman that it was just her usual headaches, and gave her pain pills. Story 2. Doctors missed pencil in Swedish boy's brain Published: 17 Dec 08 12:38 CE "Two doctors from Karlskrona in southern Sweden have been reprimanded...

I have been sitting quietly on the sidelines watching all of this national debate on healthcare. It is time for me to bring some clarity to the table by explaining many of the problems from the perspective of a doctor. First off the government has  involved very few of us physicians in the  healthcare debate.While the American Medical Association has come out in favor of the plan, it is vital to remember that the AMA only represents 17% of the American physician workforce. I have taken care of Medicaid patients for 35 years while representing the only pediatric ophthalmology group...

THE BRIEFING ROOM • THE BLOG THE BLOG TUESDAY, AUGUST 4TH, 2009 AT 6:55 AM Facts Are Stubborn Things Posted by Macon Phillips Opponents of health insurance reform may find the truth a little inconvenient, but as our second president famously said, "facts are stubborn things." Scary chain emails and videos are starting to percolate on the internet, breathlessly claiming, for example, to "uncover" the truth about the President’s health insurance reform positions. In this video, Linda Douglass, the communications director for the White House’s Health Reform Office, addresses one example that makes it look like the President intends to...

Note:The following text is a quote: THE BRIEFING ROOM THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary ________________________________________________________________________ For Immediate Release July 29, 2009 REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT AT TOWN HALL Broughton High School Raleigh, North Carolina 12:05 P.M. EDT THE PRESIDENT: Hello, North Carolina! (Applause.) Thank you so much. All right, please, everybody have a seat. I am so excited to be back in Raleigh, to be back in North Carolina. (Applause.) This is a community and a state that has been so good to me. (Applause.) And I know that part of the reason is because I travel...

Oddly enough, as the nation considers ObamaCare, the press is completely uninterested in the experience of Massachusetts and Hawaii, both of which have ambitious, and failed, experiments in trying to provide universal health care. Mitt Romney, the architect of the Bay State's health care plan, which is costing far more than expected, is largely absent from the airwaves, despite his legitimate claim to be an expert. The Boston Globe calls the plan a "failure" and notes "The state's plan flunks on all counts." Spending for the Commonwealth Care subsidized program has doubled, from $630 million in 2007 to an estimated...

ON Tuesday, July 14, House Democrats unveiled a health-care-reform bill that was 1,018 pages long. The next day, after all of eight hours of debate, the House Ways and Means Committee passed it. Does anyone believe they actually read the bill? But apparently, that doesn't matter because, as Ways & Means Chairman Charlie Rangel (D-Harlem) said: "There's an urgent need to get something done because real lives are at stake." Now House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is insisting that the full House vote on the bill before they go home for August recess, less than a week from now. House Energy...

If the House of Representatives passes the health-care bill approved by the Ways and Means and Education committees, midwives--who sometimes deliver babies in place of doctors--will receive the same level of government reimbursement as obstetricians. Section 1304 of the Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 (H.R. 3200) would raise government Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement for certified nurse midwives to the same level as the reimbursement for doctors who perform the same services. Under current law, midwives only receive 65 percent of what a doctor receives for equal services. Originally introduced in February as the “Midwifery Care Access and Reimbursement Act...

Letters: California Representative Henry Waxman responds to It's Not An Option, IBD's recent editorial on the impact pending health care legislation would have on private medical coverage. Read IBD's follow up editorial, Still Not An Option.Your July 16 editorial, "It's Not an Option," was factually incorrect and highly misleading. The editorial incorrectly states that "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." The editorial also falsely claims that the bill "will kill...

President Obama on Monday rejected a claim that stopping health care reform could mark his "Waterloo," accusing his critics of peddling the "politics of delay and defeat" in an effort to preserve the status quo.

Betsy McCaughey exposes several horrors in Obamacare bill, and Obama's lies about "keeping your health insurance," etc. Elderly will be FORCED to undergo "counseling" designed to pressure them to DIE.

Notes: The following text is a quote: THE BRIEFING ROOM THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary ________________________________________________________________________ For Immediate Release July 15, 2009 Statement by the President on the Health Care Reform Legislation Passed Today by the Senate HELP Committee "Today, thanks to the unyielding passion and inspiration provided by Senator Edward Kennedy, the HELP committee he chairs has produced a proposal that will finally lower health care costs, provide better care for patients, and ensure fair treatment of consumers by the insurance industry. Like the legislation produced by the House of Representatives, this proposal would offer Americans...

FOR THOSE WHO seek health reform that is effective, bipartisan and fiscally sound, the past few days have been unsettling. ... Third, a new gimmick has been designed to pretend that health reform is fully paid for. The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions adopted a measure, endorsed by the Obama administration, to have the government provide long-term care insurance in which workers would be automatically enrolled unless they opt out. Premiums would flow into the system beginning in 2011, but benefits would not begin to be paid out until five years later; consequently, over the 10-year budget...

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said Tuesday that the health-care reform bill now pending in Congress would garner very few votes if lawmakers actually had to read the entire bill before voting on it. “If every member pledged to not vote for it if they hadn’t read it in its entirety, I think we would have very few votes,” Hoyer told CNSNews.com at his regular weekly news conference. Hoyer was responding to a question from CNSNews.com on whether he supported a pledge that asks members of the Congress to read the entire bill before voting on it and also...

Note: The following text is a quote: THE BRIEFING ROOM THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary ______________________________________________________________________ FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE July 7, 2009 Statement from the President on Health Care Reform "I am pleased by the progress we're making on health care reform and still believe, as I've said before, that one of the best ways to bring down costs, provide more choices, and assure quality is a public option that will force the insurance companies to compete and keep them honest. I look forward to a final product that achieves these very important goals." ###

Note: The following text SNIPPET is a quote: News Release FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Monday, July 6, 2009 Secretary Sebelius Announces Availability of $40 Million in Grants to Help Insure More Children HHS Secretary, Colorado Governor Bill Ritter Encourage Community Organizations, State and Local Governments to Apply HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius today announced the availability of up to $40 million in grants to help reach families whose children qualify but are not yet enrolled in state Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Programs (CHIP). Sebelius was joined for the announcement by Colorado Governor Bill Ritter. Colorado has been a leader in the...

Harry Reid Won't Commit to Giving Public a Week to Read Health-Care Bill Before Senate Votes on It Friday, June 26, 2009 By Monica Gabriel and Marie Magleby Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) at a pen-and-pad news conference, June 25, 2009. (CNSNews.com photo/Penny Starr) (CNSNews.com) – Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D- Nev.) will not commit to giving senators and the public a full week to read and review the final version of a health-care reform bill before he holds a final vote on it. Reid confessed at his Thursday news briefing that he did not have “a lot...

Health Reform: A critically ill premature baby is moved to a U.S hospital to get the treatment she couldn't get in the system we're told we should emulate. Cost-effective care? In Canada, as elsewhere, you get what you pay for.Ava Isabella Stinson was born last Thursday at St. Joseph's hospital in Hamilton, Ontario. Weighing only two pounds, she was born 13 weeks premature and needed some very special care. Unfortunately, there were no open neonatal intensive care beds for her at St. Joseph's — or anywhere else in the entire province of Ontario, it seems.

 GOP.COM/LIVERESPONSE  Starting at 1:15 PM EDT tomorrow (Wednesday, July 1, 2009), the RNC will be live-blogging from GOP.com/LiveResponse during President Obama's online discussion of his government-run health care plan. Because Obama did not directly answer many of the questions posed to him during last week's primetime town hall event on ABC News, the RNC is offering this service as a resource for members of the media, bloggers and other Americans interested in getting the facts and direct answers to the questions posed to the President. In the meantime, click here to compare Obama's myths to reality on health care reform.    A Product...

Pelosi Won't Give Public a Week to Review Text of Health-Care Bill Before House Votes on It SNIPPET: "At her press briefing on Thursday, Pelosi was asked whether the health-care bill would be handled differently than the stimulus bill, which came up in February. The 1,071-page final text of that bill was posted on the House Appropriations Committee’s Web site late on a Thursday night and then voted on the next day. “When the stimulus bill came out earlier this year, members and citizens had less than two days to review the final version that came out of the conference...

Quote: THE BRIEFING ROOM • THE BLOG SATURDAY, JUNE 27TH, 2009 AT 3:40 PM Your Turn: Join the National Online Discussion on Health Care Reform Posted by Macon Phillips The weather isn't the only thing heating up in DC this summer. Health care reform is already a hot topic, and as legislation moves through Congress, Americans across the nation have questions about how costs will be brought under control to make quality affordable health care accessible to everyone. That's why the White House is taking another step to connect with people outside of Washington and answer some of the most...

SNIPPET: "Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Sally Pipes, the president and CEO of the Pacific Research Institute and author of "The Top Ten Myths of American Health Care" (Pacific Research Institute , 2008)." SNIPPET: "The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has priced the health care plan introduced by Senator Ted Kennedy at $1 trillion over 10 years. It will probably be a lot more expensive than that and their will still be 17 million uninsured. We will all face increased taxes and rationed care." SNIPPET: "Pipes: We all know that the government is not efficient at providing any service whether it...

In a rare moment of candor, President Obama explained to an audience how government-run healthcare would work in America....Obama suggested at a town hall event Wednesday night that one way to shave medical costs is to stop expensive and ultimately futile procedures performed on people who are about to die and don't stand to gain from the extra care.

Researchers found that Americans had better memories, were quicker witted and were generally smarter than their English counterparts. And the older the pensioner, the greater the difference, claimed researchers. The gap was so wide that a 75-year-old American had a similar brain to a 65-year-old Englishman, the tests proved.