California Conservative

Steve Findlay’s op-ed in Tuesday’s USA Today contains a fatal flaw in it. Let’s see if you spot it:

Socialized medicine. Government-run health care. Rationing. Bureaucrats in charge. “Cookbook” medicine. Waiting lines. It’ll break the bank.

Welcome to the health care debate 2009. Sound familiar? These notions aim to instill fear. And once again, they bear no more relation to the reality of what is being debated in Washington than was the case when the Clintons had a go at health reform in the 1990s. Don’t be misled this time. In fact, far more bipartisan agreement exists on many core elements of reform than you might think.

Socialized, government-run health care? Nothing President Obama or Congress is proposing would replicate the Canadian, British, or French systems or remotely resemble nationalized medical service. Rather, the proposals offer repairs to an American system that is both broken and going broke. Those proposals build on our current private system where most people younger than 65 get coverage through their employers and treatment through private-sector doctors and hospitals.

What would be new is that people who don’t have access to such coverage (and some who do) would be able to get coverage through insurance “exchanges.” They’d be able to choose from a batch of private plans and policies that would have to accept all comers, offer comprehensive coverage, and be barred from “cherry-picking” only healthy people.

Guess what? Democrats and Republicans embrace the idea of exchanges and broad new federal insurance rules. They also agree that this new proposed system would be a boon to private insurers, doctors, hospitals, nursing homes and drug companies. That’s because tens of billions of dollars of government funds would help many of the 46 million uninsured get coverage. (more…)

Last Friday, I did a breakfast interview with Dave Borgert. Dave is the director of Government Relations at CentraCare Health System here in St. Cloud. For over 90 minutes, Dave fielded my questions and King’s questions. The wealth of information I gained from this interview left me overwhelmed. Processing that much information is difficult enough. (Storing that much information takes it to an entirely different level.)

Several things must be shared with you so you can better understand the health care debate.

1. When Medicare decides how much they’re paying for a procedure, it doesn’t have anything to do with whether that payment covers the cost of that procedure. The principle of supply and demand doesn’t play a significant role in determining payments. Medicare totals up how many angioplasties were done, how many MRIs were done, etc. Then they look at how much money Congress appropriated for Medicare. Once the Medicare budget is set, then a cost per procedure is established.

2. The ‘Medicare is more efficient than private insurance’ meme is a myth. Dave said that the way that Medicare can say that only 2% of the Medicare budget is spent on administrative costs is because billing is the only thing that’s counted as an administrative costs. Things like processing referrals, doublechecking what was done, whether it’s dispensing medication or IVs or whatever, are counted as patient care.

While it’s true that dispensing medication or IVs genuinely is patient care, having an administrator verify what supplies were used shouldn’t be counted as patient care. The best way to describe the administrative cost comparisons is that it’s an apples to green beans comparison. They’re that dissimilar.

3. The way that CanadaCare works is that each province is given a “global budget.” Their global budget doesn’t all go to patient care and administration. Part of their budget goes to nursing and medical schools. Another part goes to research grants. There are other things that must be paid for from this global budget, too. After these things have been paid for, what’s left is what’s actually spent on patients. (more…)

When you strip away all the peripheral stuff, health care reform comes down to choosing what our priorities are. Would we put a higher priority on good accessability and great quality in health care or do we prefer a system that features universal coverage and price controls. We know that President Obama chose the high quality option:

Dr. Orrin Devinsky, a neurologist and researcher at the New York University Langone Medical Center, said that elites often propose health care solutions that limit options for the general public, secure in the knowledge that if they or their loves ones get sick, they will be able to afford the best care available, even if it’s not provided by insurance.

Devinsky asked the president pointedly if he would be willing to promise that he wouldn’t seek such extraordinary help for his wife or daughters if they became sick and the public plan he’s proposing limited the tests or treatment they can get.

The president refused to make such a pledge, though he allowed that if “it’s my family member, if it’s my wife, if it’s my children, if it’s my grandmother, I always want them to get the very best care.

(more…)

After decades of decline, the war on infectious disease was all but over by 1981. Faced with severe budget cuts, scientists had to make up a pandemic or sell shoes at Macy’s. So when a tiny group of gay men succumbed to their toxic misbehavior the scientists had their pretext.

After nearly three decades of self-serving research and a trillion wasted tax dollars, AIDS has never been identified as a leading cause of death and two large prizes for proof of HIV and AIDS causation remain unclaimed.

In the latest sign that the wheels are falling from NIAID’s little red propaganda wagon, Apartheid’s mercenary offspring are starting to get reckless.

In the past 45 days I have reported that:

• HIV/AIDS drug cocktails are comprised of two components; 1) Zidovudine (AZT), a poison that compromises immune function and kills, and 2) Efavirenz (Sustiva), a powerful hypnotic that is so powerful that addicts now smoke it like crack. When stopped, Efavirenz also produces withdrawal symptoms that clinicians identify as the onset of AIDS.

• After years of unanswered criticism and questions about the alleged co-discoverer of HIV, Robert Gallo MD hired part-time security guard and filter salesman Nick Kontaratos to write Gallo’s definitive defense – a book praised by esteemed Nature and Science writer/editor Barbara Culliton as well as three of Gallo’s own research scientists. Either Kontaratos is the savant-like James Bond of filter-hawking security guards or Gallo’s well-funded enablers helped him promote a fake investigation – just as they promoted all of his other fake research.
• Groups like Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) and AIDSTruth have nothing to do with AIDS or truth but are actually malevolent South African mobs that help these 1600+ international mining companies sack Africa of its mineral wealth by misdiagnosing the majority of mine-related lung diseases as a sexually-transmitted virus. In this way, these mining companies avoid billions of dollars in liability that would otherwise shut down strategic mining operations throughout the African Continent by killing off their dying laborers before they and their impoverished families can sue for compensation.

Because of these revelations, investors who support groups like TAC and AIDSTruth are pressuring other financially-compromised university researchers like Seth Kalichman, Steven Siegelbaum and Cornell’s John Moore to promote the propaganda.

In the latest attack, TAC-funder George Soros directed Jonny Steinberg (one of Soros’ well-paid but scientifically incompetent South African shills) to propagandize AIDS in the pseudoscientific magazine New Scientist. Soros appears to have chosen Steinberg and NS for the same reasons that Gallo picked a security guard to investigate his career in HIV research.

NS’ reporting is so sloppy that when science fiction writer Greg Egan noted its combination of a sensationalist bent and a lack of basic knowledge by its writers, the editor admitted that NS is “an ideas magazine (that writes) about hypotheses as well as theories.” Unfortunately, NS rarely makes that distinction for readers who must speculate about the accuracy of its reports and the qualifications of its guest writers.

Like Nick Kontaratos, Kalichman, Bergman and the rest, Steinberg parrots the milk-fed propaganda – this time blaming the death of Christine Maggiore and her daughter on her scientific skepticism. It was no surprise that the truthers reflexively praised Steinberg – just as Gallo’s esteemed scientists praised Gallo’s security guard.

This incompetence was NOT an “accidental oversight” by NS.

Although the story and shills like Kalichman and truther Nick “Snout” Bennett accused Maggiore of killing her baby (160+ comments now), investigative journalist Liam Scheff posted a comment that NS viewed as unfit for its pages.

Ask yourself what was inappropriate about Scheff’s remarks?

I am wondering why the writer, Jonny Steinberg, focuses on one mother, who may have simply been a bad mother, or someone who didn’t know much about health, instead of focusing on the dozens to hundreds of deaths buried in the AIDS drug Uganda trials?

Or in the death by AIDS drug of tens of thousands of people over the years, as the drugs have been cycled down and down and down in dose, (often to no improvement in health, that is they still kill the patient)? Mr. Steinberg, will you try, for your next article, to contact Jonathan Fishbein, who lost his job and career for blowing the whistle on the NIH fraud in Uganda? Will you talk to the family of Joyce Ann Hafford, who was killed by Nevirapine, or by anyone whose friend or relative died on any AIDS drug?You paint a one-sided picture, and it reeks of pay-for-play. You have no previous articles in New Scientist, and one is left to wonder what your motives are?The political attack arm of the AIDS industry infiltrates media and creates smear campaigns in order to deflect from the hundreds and thousands of tragedies, errors and crimes perpetrated by the AIDS pharma industry, in selling its wares to the public.

Journalism is supposed to serve the public good by putting a light on the dishonesty of institutions. You have uncovered, badly, what was already in public view - a woman with some health issues and many enemies has died. There are sufficient political reasons to think that she was killed, but that question is never raised.

She was hounded by the AIDS pharmaceutical industry, and many prayed loudly and openly for her demise and downfall, and death, for over a decade.What effect will that have on a human body?

I do not have the details necessary to answer the questions of Christine Maggiore’s fitness or lack of fitness as a parent. I would say she was perhaps too zealous or highly naive in taking such a political stand against such a juggernaut.

On the other hand, please see the cases of the tens of thousands who died on high dose AIDS drugs in the 80s and 90s. Please review the Uganda trial. Please review the case of Joyce Ann Hafford, among others, and put some perspective in your histrionic and political article.

Dangerous words indeed.

In this case, NS found it easier to kill Scheff’s comment than admit their magazine posts unproven and unscientific hypotheses and theories.

If HIV/AIDS was a scientific disease, the proof would speak for itself. But as a political disease, US Government agencies like NIAID refer inquiries to AIDSTruth in the land of Apartheid, where the mountains of Africa’s dead miners continue to grow. So much is at stake that hedge fund managers like Soros now pay the offspring of Apartheid to beat the dead woman with her dead child.

The role of the Ford and Tides foundations and Soros Hedge Fund also explains why pro-Soros websites like Huffington, Daily Kos, TruthOut and MoveOn entirely ignore this 30-year controversy and their complicity in the mine-related genocide of Africa’s poorest and most vulnerable people.

Yesterday, President Obama held a press conference in which he recited the same tired litany of rationalizations that he always gives. After President Obama’s snoozer, House GOP Leader John Boehner used the opportunity to contrast President Obama’s fiscally irresponsible plan with the House GOP’s plan to re-invigorate the economy:

Our nation has lost nearly three million jobs this year, yet the President did not lay out a clear path for how his Administration will keep its promise to create jobs for middle-class families and small businesses. House Republicans have offered better solutions to create jobs, control spending, and curb the debt. Unfortunately, Democrats have taken a go-it-alone approach, choosing old-style Washington politics over the new way Americans expected after the last election.

Today the President again claimed that the Democrats’ government takeover of health care would not force Americans off of their current plans, yet independent analysts have reported that at least 23 million Americans would lose their coverage under the bill drafted by Senate Democrats. House Republicans have introduced a better alternative to make health care more affordable and accessible, ensure that Americans can keep their health plan, and keep doctors and patients, not government bureaucrats, in charge of critical and personal medical decisions. (more…)

Max Baucus and his allies are attempting to shove the most expensive ‘reform’ down our throats. They must be defeated because we can’t afford it. Former Rep. Asa Hutchinson, (R-AR), is skeptical of the single-payer plan:

Former Rep. Asa Hutchinson warned those at the event of the costs of some proposed health care reform bills. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that one bill drafted by Sen. Max Baucus of Montana would cost more than $1.5 trillion to implement.

“They talk about a $1 trillion price tag, and then they try to…tell you they’re not going to raise taxes but will save $1 trillion by increased efficiencies,” Hutchinson said. “Do you all believe that can happen with a government-run program? I don’t think that can happen.”

The Obama administration has already buried us in tons of debt thanks to his budget, the omnibus spending bill and with his stimulus bill. Now he wants to dump several more tons of debt on us for health care reform that will deliver an inferior product to the American people?

Only in Washington, DC could something be called reform when it delivers an inferior product at a higher price. That’s what’s happening here. This isn’t speculation, either. That’s what Rep. Charles Boustany told me about his dealings with the Medicare and Medicaid bureaucracies when he was a heart surgeon.

Another thing that’s guaranteed with any health care bill that Ted Kennedfy or Nancy Pelosi writes: tons of costly mandates. When I interviewed Rep. Paul Ryan, I asked him about the negative impact that government mandates have. Here’s what he said on that: (more…)

Sometimes, House Democrats have the tinniest of tin ears. After reading this post by Philip Klein of the American Spectator, I’m certain we’re looking at a prime example of the Democrats arrogance. Here’s what I’m talking about:

The bill also calls for the creation of a national, government-run insurance exchange, in which individuals would receive government subsidies to purchase either the government plan or chose among government-designed private plans.

The common theme in my interviews with Rep. Charles Boustany and Rep. Paul Ryan was their advocating giving people the option to design their own custom health care policies. That’s why the House Republicans’ plan is titled the Patients’ Choice Act.

This is the biggest philosophical difference between conservatives and progressives. Generally speaking, conservatives want to give people the freedom to choose what works best for them. Generally speaking, progressives think that they have to design policies because people aren’t capable of thinking things through and finding the best solutions.

TRANSLATION: Conservatives trust people and put a high priority on sustaining a high level of personal liberty. On the other hand, progressives trust only wonks, which naturally means that they try controlling everything as much as possible.

QUESTION: What makes progressives think that they know what’s best for me in terms of health care policies?

One of the central themes to Rep. Boustany’s thinking was that the doctor-patient relationship was important in the patient getting the highest quality health care possible. Rep. Boustany said that anytime a DC bureaucrat gets in between a doctor and his patient, there’s cause for concern. He’s absolutely right. That’s precisely when the patient should start worrying. (more…)

Thursday night, Fred Barnes coined a fitting new phrase to describe President Obama’s problem when he talked about President Obama’s persuasion gap problem. Fred said that President Obama is great at selling himself but he isn’t good at selling his policies. I agree. More importantly, others are noticing. Check out this article:

WASHINGTON — After a fairly smooth opening, President Barack Obama faces new concerns among the American public about the budget deficit and government intervention in the economy as he works to enact ambitious health and energy legislation, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll finds. These rising doubts threaten to overshadow the president’s personal popularity and his agenda, in what may be a new phase of the Obama presidency.

“The public is really moving from evaluating him as a charismatic and charming leader to his specific handling of the challenges facing the country,” says Peter D. Hart, a Democratic pollster who conducts the survey with Republican Bill McInturff. Going forward, he says, Mr. Obama and his allies “are going to have to navigate in pretty choppy waters.”

Ed’s citing of Michael Barone’s article tells the same story:

• 69% say they have a great deal or quite a bit of concern about government ownership of General Motors and a 56%-35% majority opposes government aid to General Motors in return for a share of its stock.
• 58% say the president and Congress should concentrate on keeping the budget deficit down, even if it takes longer for the economy to recover.
• By a 52%-41% margin they prefer reducing the budget deficit to stimulating the economy.
• Only 30% think Obama has developed a clear plan for dealing with the budget deficit, while 60% believe he hasn’t.

The trend is so noticeable that even Dan Balz is noticing:

Polls show concern about the size of government and the mushrooming deficits under Obama’s policies. For some time, the polls also have shown public skepticism about the president’s efforts to use federal money to save General Motors. Obama’s effort to include a public health insurance plan as part of the overall health care reform package has become a flash point in that debate.

Those findings represent flashing yellow lights for the administration, which is why the president has moved, symbolically and rhetorically at least, to counter any suggestions that he is a big-government Democrat. His rhetoric has consistently emphasized his commitment to restoring fiscal discipline as quickly as possible. But his efforts have been minimal in comparison to what he’s done to grow government, and there is little he can do in the short run.

President Obama can talk until he’s blue in the face about restoring fiscal discipline but people won’t buy his happy talk until he does something to actually restore fiscal sanity. Nothing that President Obama has done indicates that he’s even willing to consider anything that doesn’t consist of dramatically bigger government. (more…)

I just finished interviewing Rep. Charles Boustany, (R-LA), on the subject of health care in general and the ‘private option’ provisions. Let’s start with a little bit of background on Rep. Boustany.

Before he became Rep. Boustany, he was Dr. Boustany. Rep. Boustany was a practicing physician for over 20 years, with the last 14 years specializing in heart surgery.

The first thing that I asked Rep. Boustany about was what he was hearing in terms of the pace at which health care hearings would be proceeding. He said that he’d heard that Sen. Baucus had delayed his initial hearing until next week, mostly because they were balking at the high price tag, which was estimated at $1,300,000,000,000.

The word is that they won’t get far with this bill until it’s trimmed below $1,000,000,000,000.

Rep. Boustany said that he’s hearing that the House Ways and Means Committee is having difficulties getting their act together. He said that they’re having trouble figuring out which taxes to increase to pay for the high pricetag for the public option.

Another question I asked was whether there was increased public pressure being put on Blue Dog and swing district Democrats by John Q. Public. Rep. Boustany said that that’s definitely happening. He reported, too, that there’s alot of grumbling behind the scenes because they aren’t willing to openly criticize House leadership.

The next subject we talked about was whether government was capable of efficiently administering the changing world of health care. Rep. Boustany said that, based on his personal experiences dealing with government regulators, that the answer to that question was a definite no. Rep. Boustany said that the government is incapable of the type of flexibility that’s needed. (more…)

Yesterday, ABCNews responded to the RNC’s request for equal airtime for President Obama’s ‘townhall’ meeting with this letter. Here’s a part that I thought needed monitoring:

Second, ABC News prides itself on covering all sides of important issues and asking direct questions of all newsmakers, of all political persuasions, even when others have taken a more partisan approach and even in the face of criticism from extremes on both ends of the political spectrum. ABC News is looking for the most thoughtful and diverse voices on this issue. ABC News alone will select those who will be in the audience asking questions of the president. Like any programs we broadcast, ABC News will have complete editorial control. To suggest otherwise is quite unfair to both our journalists and our audience.

Saying that they’ll run an hourlong infomercial for the president, then deny the RNC time to have their say, is bad enough. To say that they’ll ask hard-hitting questions of President Obama was worse. This report suggests that ABCNews isn’t being honest:

ABC is refusing to air paid ads during its White House health care presentation, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned, including a paid-for alternative viewpoint!

The development comes a day after the network denied a request by the Republican National Committee to feature a representative of the party’s views during the Obama special.

Conservatives for Patients Rights requested the rates to buy a 60-second spot immediately preceding ‘Prescription for America’.

Statement from Rick Scott, chairman of Conservatives for Patients Rights: (more…)