Socialized garbage for the little people but not for elected officials? WTF?
ObamaCare specifically exempts members of Congress along with federal employees; the exemptions are in section 3116. If nationalized medicine is good enough for us then they have have to suffer as well.
What makes this scam on the American people all the more Obama-disgusting? Who could forget when Obama was telling everyone he wanted the people to have a health care program just like Congress has? Remember that? But Congress knows it's crap: it exempts itself and federal employees from it.
The US is becoming more like the old USSR, where the old good jobs are government jobs and the only way to get something done is to have a "friend" in the government. The USSR or Chicagoland gangsta politics.
If Obama and his goons are going to destroy the best healthcare
system in the world, they should be first on line for dirty scalpels
and euthanasia. Or perhaps the left wing mainstream media should be first, as they are an embarrassing shill for dear leader.
Check out out this embarrassing propaganda fest.
ABC has made the unprecedented move of giving prime-time programing air time to President Barack Obama for a health care reform special to be aired next week. Perhaps it is not too surprising that Obama has landed himself some prime viewing time on ABC. After all, former ABC News correspondent Linda Douglass is now the Director of Communications for the Obama White House Office of Health Reform. Coincidence? One would be excused to suspect it.
ABC’s biased “Prescription for America” will be giving Obama a free platform to promote his health care reform plan. However, no opposing viewpoints will be presented, as the station is not featuring any Republicans on the program to balance the president’s proposals. ABC’s Charlie Gibson and Diane Sawyer are to ‘moderate’ the nationally televised infomercial. In an interesting ‘coincidence’, former ABC News correspondent Linda Douglass is now the Director of Communications for the Obama White House Office of Health Reform. The mainstream media is working hard for the Democrats America.
Even more disturbing is that ABC will not allow any advertisements that offer a differing point of view. Rick Scott, chairman of Conservatives for Patients Rights, submitted an ad to ABC that offers a free-market alternative to President Obama’s $1 trillion plus health care reform plan, but the ad was rejected. A spokesperson for ABC said the ad was rejected because the network does not accept “advocacy advertising.” This is absurd, as ABC is itself advocating state-run health care.
Do you believe ABC's special on Obama's health-care plan will be a "glorified infomercial"?
Over at Perfect World:
In Friday’s (6/30/3009) Wall Street Journal, a former lieutenant governor of New York state, Betsy McCaughey, notes that even if you like your current health plan, you won’t be able to keep it, unless you are a federal employee or member of Congress. She points to the exemptions in section 3116. Here’s an excerpt:
Last September Sen. Barack Obama promised that under his health-care proposal “you’ll be able to get the same kind of coverage that members of Congress give themselves.” On Monday, President Obama repeated that promise in a speech to the American Medical Association. It’s not true.
The president is barnstorming the nation, urging swift approval of legislation that is taking shape in Congress. This legislation — the Affordable Health Choices Act that’s being drafted by Sen. Edward Kennedy’s staff and the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee — will push Americans into stingy insurance plans with tight, HMO-style controls. It specifically exempts members of Congress (along with federal employees; the exemptions are in section 3116).
Members of Congress “enjoy the widest selection of health plans in the country,” according to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. They “can choose from among consumer-driven and high deductible plans that offer catastrophic risk protection with higher deductibles, health saving/reimbursable accounts and lower premiums, or fee-for-service (FFS) plans, and their preferred provider organizations (PPO), or health maintenance organizations (HMO).” These choices would be nice for all of us, but they’re not in the offing. Instead, if you don’t enroll in a “qualified” health plan and submit proof of enrollment to the federal government, you’ll be tracked down and fined (sections 3101 and 6055).
For a health plan to count as “qualified,” it has to meet all the restrictions listed in the legislation and whatever criteria the Secretary of Health and Human Services imposes after the bill becomes law. You may think you’re in a “qualified” plan, but the language suggests that only plans with managed-care controls such as the “medical home” will meet the definition (sections 3101 and 2707).
“Medical home” is this decade’s version of HMO-style insurance, according to the Congressional Budget Office, with a primary-care provider to manage your access to costly services such as visits to specialists and diagnostic tests. Medical home providers in “qualified” plans, states the Kennedy bill, will have a “payment structure” based on “incentives” rather than payments for each doctor visit or procedure (section 3101).
These requirements are reminiscent of the unpopular controls HMOs imposed two decades ago that caused public outrage and led to state laws reining in abuses. In December 2008, a Congressional Budget Office report evaluating early drafts of major federal health insurance proposals noted that “medical homes” were likely to resemble the HMO gatekeepers of 20 years ago if cost control is a priority.
(You can download the 615 page bill [PDF] here; the exemption for federal employees and the Congress starts on line 22 of page of 115).
In a nutshell we all lose our plans unless we are federal employees or members of Congress, so it must really be bad. In fixing healthcare, are the only answers bad?
Is former Obama Campaign Manager David Plouffe breaking the law promoting health care? Plouffe is engaged in specifically designated deceptive practices.
