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1.4 million dollars is the amount of money spent each day by the health care industry to quash health care reform or to alter it in such a way as to be even more beneficial to the health care industry.
While I'll cite from the article on this specific issue, it makes one wonder just how effective anyone can be in progressing change or reform in government on behalf of the citizenry as opposed to various special interests and corporate interests.
With an almost unlimited treasure chest of funding to shower upon government officials, it is no wonder so many citizens feel abandoned by government. It makes no difference if you are an anti-war protester, a tea party protester, writing your Congressman to vote a certain way on a given piece of legislation, without cash, you mean nothing.
At the recent Friends of America rally near Logan, Ted Nugent said, "Today's the day when the American worker takes back this country."
Not exactly. Had the 70,000 workers at the rally passed the hat and had every person there tossed in a $20 bill, they would have had $1.4 million. For one day they could have matched the lobbying efforts of the health insurance industry. They could have rented the country from the health insurance industry for that day. On the following day, and the day after that, and the day after that, the health insurance industry would have continued to spend its $1.4 million while those American workers stood shouting in the wilderness.
Even though this op ed was published before the CBO report of yesterday I see a bias in the mind of the writer and I doubt he will accept much of what the CBO reported yesterday, although Dems have been very happy with the number of $829 billion for ten years as what the cost would be from 2013 to 2023. Why the money taken from Medicare will nearly pay for that so taxes won't have to go up, much. I guess the promise about taxes was only for next year, huh?
Lets just accept the $829 billion as the number and you tell me how the remaining $329 billion won't require higher taxes. Yes, the Baucus bill calls for higher taxes on employers to help pay, but won't that result in higher prices we pay for goods we want or need? No matter who pays the price it is always the consumer, in the end. If the public option that is being pounded so hard by Dems won't result in socialized medicine I need someone better than has come forward to explain it to me. At that point bureaucrats do have control of who gets what and when and I just haven't found any supporter of socialized medicine who could point out how I am wrong about that.
CBO says that only 25 million uninsured of today will be insured under the Baucus bill. What about the other 25 million? I guess they are mostly illegal aliens and they will only be covered after amnesty which will certainly be the next big push from Oba mao and the Dems. Am I wrong about that?
I must take the UN numbers to task in many respects. This article reports that we rank 33 in infant mortality rates. However, no mention is made of the fact that the US counts every birth as a live birth unless is it stillborn and other countries have various rules for counting purposes. Things like severely underweight babies that probably wouldn't survive outside the US aren't counted as infant mortality cases. Some countries above us don't count many live births until they have survived a number of months and we count all live births and subtract those that don't survive. The fact that we can keep many of those with little chance to live alive costs us tremendously in counting infant mortality rates.
That 38th life expectancy rate is one that socialized medicine may well improve. You know, force people to cut out smoking, overeating, eating unhealthy foods that promote overweight and so forth. Yes, I do see that kind of thing coming at which time the people of this nation lose all kinds of rights to live as they choose. Even more important, how many months difference in life expectancy is there. So many things to consider in that comparison that UN members love so much.
To say that the US is ranked 37th in quality of care is taking in too much territory. Yep, the UN likes to use that number just as most lefties in this country do. However, I have found the quality of care in my heart ablation surgery and my by pass surgery to have been beyond excellent. Such well prepared and giving nurses just can't be common in all countries that are ranked above the US.
One more item in the op ed that I must take up. The normal left leaning crap about how public option is not the first step toward socialized medicine is nothing but crap. Even Barney Frank, one of the biggest supporters of single payer healthcare, says it is a very important first step toward that kind of healthcare. All the talk in that article about lobbyists makes me wonder a whole lot. Didn't I hear Obama say more than once in the campaign and even after the election that lobbyists wouldn't be allowed in his DC? Why he did say that and now he is griping about lobbyists when he promised that they wouldn't be taking part in his administration. He lied about that topic knowing he couldn't deliver without the Congress being involved and I doubt there are 50 completely honest Congress critters in the city, where lobbyists and their money are concerned.
Do you suppose that we should get the Congress to settle the lobbyist problem and then go after healthcare reform? This garbage isn't supposed to come into existence till 2013 so surely there is time for some continued debate about it. I wonder if there isn't something a bit nefarious involved in all this haste to get this bill passed. There is a possibility and I think it has something to do with getting headed down that road to socialized medicine before the Dems lose the control they have in DC for another year. Am I wrong in thinking that way?
You are right. Corporations should not have a vote. But neither should anyone who benefits from the warfare or welfare state either. They have all been effectively bribed for their vote. It is the power to enact special interest legislation that is the source of the evil. Those who attempt to manipulate the power of government are simply behaving naturally. It is the unnatural and immoral power of centralized government that needs to be minimized first! If that happens than there will be no incentive to manipulate the system.
This is old, but still relevant -- as long as we never learn.
Great eye-opening chart here; Im sure there's a modern update somewhere - same game, different names.
If a mutual fund returns 20% a year, that's considered unbelievably good. But in the low-risk, high return world of legislation, a 20% return is positively lousy. Why, there's no reason why your investment dollar can't return 60,000, 70,000, even 80,000%!
Here's how it works: With the help of a professional legislation broker (called a Lobbyist), you place your investment (called a Campaign Contribution) with a carefully selected list of legislation manufacturers (called Members of Congress). These manufacturers then go to work writing legislation: crafting industry-specific subsidies, inserting tax breaks into the tax code, extending patents, or giving away public property for free. In an assembly-line process that would make Henry Ford proud, the legislation is produced, and you (and your favorite industry) reap the benefits!
Now there is a very apt description to how legislation happens from the ground up, but it falls short of how so much this year has been done. Let me take a swing at the Stimulus bill that was written by the Apollo Alliance. The Apollo Alliance is not just a bunch of lobbyists for corporations but it does represent a very specialized grouping of Americans. You know what it is or you can find out with some googling. I will just suggest that the head man up there is named Jeff Jones and he is an old time good friend of Bill Ayers of Obama and Chicago fame. Hell, the Congress people didn't get any chance to read that thing and didn't have any hand in writing it but it passed on purely partisan voting.
Am I wrong in any of this? Please point out where if I am since I surely do accept you on most things just not on this part of most things.
Not exactly. Had the 70,000 workers at the rally passed the hat and had every person there tossed in a $20 bill, they would have had $1.4 million. For one day they could have matched the lobbying efforts of the health insurance industry. They could have rented the country from the health insurance industry for that day. On the following day, and the day after that, and the day after that, the health insurance industry would have continued to spend its $1.4 million while those American workers stood shouting in the wilderness.
That's what we need to do -- organize. But we let our own fears screw us up so badly that we let ourselves be led around by the nose by these people -- to the point where we find we've been taught to fear words - that goes triple for words that would benefit us -- such as "organize" and "for the common good".
I think the last time there was a good cleaning of Congress was post-Watergate time.
The corporate welfare state dwarfs the human welfare state, which was drastically cut in 1996 and is now cut to the bone.
Will the human welfare group grow any when taxpayers and employers get to pay for those who don't have insurance because they don't want it? Look ahead beyond the first year of this bill that is not what it should be. Healthcare needs to be improved but this bill is aimed at getting down the road to single payer which will be nothing but socialized medicine. How can that possibly cause better care? Our economy has been tapped out and now we want the government to pay for the whole thing? It is not going to work.
I would say that you have all that in about the proper order and that there are more than just a few people in this country who will accept the whole thing if they think their healthcare is "FREE".
For anyone on either "side" to accept this is wrong. We have to stop it. That means we both -- our own two illusory "sides" -- have to come together on this issue and force change.
I am in total agreement with you on this post. See there, I usually agree with you although not on some of this.
I don't understand your point. Corporate Fascism and bribery is not a prerequisite for a healthy and functioning democracy...on the contrary. Lobbying for a cause or an issue is legitimate, but when corparate big money is buying representatives, it is detrimental to our best interests, fair and competitive Capitalism and democracy.
OMG, I have to agree with a left leaner. Good post, even if it causes me pain to agree with you.
1.4 million dollars is the amount of money spent each day by the health care industry to quash health care reform or to alter it in such a way as to be even more beneficial to the health care industry.
While I'll cite from the article on this specific issue, it makes one wonder just how effective anyone can be in progressing change or reform in government on behalf of the citizenry as opposed to various special interests and corporate interests.
With an almost unlimited treasure chest of funding to shower upon government officials, it is no wonder so many citizens feel abandoned by government. It makes no difference if you are an anti-war protester, a tea party protester, writing your Congressman to vote a certain way on a given piece of legislation, without cash, you mean nothing.
At the recent Friends of America rally near Logan, Ted Nugent said, "Today's the day when the American worker takes back this country."
Not exactly. Had the 70,000 workers at the rally passed the hat and had every person there tossed in a $20 bill, they would have had $1.4 million. For one day they could have matched the lobbying efforts of the health insurance industry. They could have rented the country from the health insurance industry for that day. On the following day, and the day after that, and the day after that, the health insurance industry would have continued to spend its $1.4 million while those American workers stood shouting in the wilderness.
It isn't about health care, and it never has been.
The current debate that has been taken over by front groups for various special interests like Pharma, unions, AMA, AARP and the hospital industry that have lobbied and bought off our government to create health care reform that suits their fancy. They have happily contributed millions upon millions of ad dollars to their Democrat partners in crime to get the reforms passed. Democrats know that only a public option will lead to the access to our paychecks they desire. With that unprecedented ability to seize our assets, they will be able to divert premiums, taxes and penalties associated with the program to future electioneering efforts. The new program will be severely underfunded justifying even higher taxes, premiums and fines in an endless cycle of confiscation, diversion and manipulation.
The breakdown estimates that the industry would receive an additional $171 billion over 10 years as a result of the expansion of health insurance, $16 billion more than would be sacrificed. Further, it says, most of the $155 billion given up is backloaded into the later years, and $103 billion of it is in reductions to the growth of certain reimbursements that might have taken place anyway.
Some of the Healthy Economy Now ads began airing in June, around the time PhRMA was negotiating with the Senate Finance Committee on an eventual agreement to win the drug lobby’s support for a health care overhaul by capping the costs the drug industry would absorb to $80 billion over 10 years.
Pharma, AMA Front Groups Making Huge Health Care Reform Ad Buys Through Axelrod's Old PR Firm | ProsperityAgenda.US (http://www.prosperityagenda.us/node/1373 - broken link)
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