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By Cassandra Effect, August 12, 2009 12:45 am

So much to tell  from the only town hall meeting that had people shout “Yes We Can!”  No boos, no jeers, no outraged Americans.?  Is it possible that thare are no Katy Abrams in New Hampshire? ( Townhall to Senator Arlen Specter: This is about the systematic dismantling of this country)

Lets the Obama obfuscations begin!

“I don’t want people thinking I just have a bunch of plants in here”

Except there was a little girl who was a PLANT -  we’ve seen this before  (Plants found in Obama’s Online Healthcare Town Hall!). 

Does he really think the American people are this stupid? Answer = Yes, because he said this whopper of a lie:

“I have not said that I was a single-payer supporter” 

Really Mr. President?  How about when you DID say you support a single payer system?

So I don’t want anybody saying somehow that I’m pulling the bait- and-switch here. I said very specifically I thought we should roll back Bush tax cuts and use them to pay for health insurance. That’s what I’m intending to do. All right? (Applause.)

Who applauds a tax increases?  I hope you don’t have any capital gains or plan on making money – because Obama WILL raise taxes on more people than those making $250,000 a year. 

Point number two: In terms of these expert health panels — well, this goes to the point about “death panels” — that’s what folks are calling them. The idea is actually pretty straightforward, which is if we’ve got a panel of experts, health experts, doctors, who can provide guidelines to doctors and patients about what procedures work best in what situations, and find ways to reduce, for example, the number of tests that people take — these aren’t going to be forced on people, but they will help guide how the delivery system works so that you are getting higher-quality care. And it turns out that oftentimes higher-quality care actually costs less.

Explain to me how the government as a single payer (Medicare, Medicaid and now a “public plan”) would not have an incredible chilling effect on peoples care by issuing recommendations to “guide how the delivery system works.”  If you are a doctor you won’t want to risk being on the outlier list for the biggest (only?) payer.  You willtow the company line to avoid being censured, or dropped as a provider.  MAKE NO MISTAKE that this is what it will come to.

Finally, there is this disturbing Q+A that PROVES THE POINT that government controlled health care means you will replace the insurance company decisions with the Government’s decision – and I hope you like the kind of service this man received, because Obama called it a good result!  Read on! (bold my emphasis)

Q Good afternoon, Mr. President. Bill Anderson from New Hampshire. In reference to what you just said — I’m presently under the New Hampshire Medicaid system and I have to take a drug called Lipitor. When I got onto this program they said, no, we’re not going to cover Lipitor — even though I’d been on that pill for probably 10 years,based on the information my doctor feels is right for me. And I had to go through two different trials of other kinds of drugs before it was finally deemed that I was able to go back on the Lipitor through the New Hampshire Medicaid system. So here it is, the Medicaid that you guys are administering and you’re telling me that it’s good — but in essence, I’m dealing with the same thing, and you’re telling me the insurance companies are doing. Thank you.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think that’s a legitimate point. I don’t know all the details, but it sounds to me like they were probably trying to have you take a generic as opposed to a brand name. Is that right? And it turned out that you did not have as good of a reaction under the generic as the brand name, and then they put you back on the brand name. Is that what happened?

Q Correct, to save money.

THE PRESIDENT: Well — right. Look, there may be — in nine out of 10 cases, the generic might work as well or better than the brand name. And we don’t want to just subsidize the drug companies if you’ve got one that works just as well as another.

The important thing about the story that you just told me was — is that once it was determined that, in fact, you needed the brand name, you were able to get the brand name. Now, I want to be absolutely clear here: There are going to be instances where if there is really strong scientific evidence that the generic and the brand name work just as well, and the brand name costs twice as much, that the taxpayer should try to get the best deal possible, as long as if it turns out that the generic doesn’t work as well, you’re able to get the brand name.

Note how it becomes the TAXPAYERS money, not YOURS!  This is the fundamental problem with  the debate – they think its THEIR MONEY when it should be yours buying your own private policy.  Once it becomes THEIR money you are SCREWED!

So the basic principle that we want to set up here is that — if you’re in private insurance, first of all, your private insurance can do whatever you want. If you’re under a government program, then it makes sense for us to make sure that we’re getting the best deal possible and not just giving drug makers or insurers more money than they should be getting. But ultimately, you’ve got to be able to get the best care based on what the doctor says.

READ THAT SENTENCE AGAIN!  ….. focus on the word ULTIMATELY.  This is a weasel word – it means EVENTUALLY.  After you file your appeals and prior authorizations and try five other drugs that don’t work but are cheaper.

And it sounds like that is eventually what happened. It may be that it wasn’t as efficient — it wasn’t as smooth as it should have been, but that result is actually a good one. And you think about all the situations where a generic actually would have worked — in fact, one of the things I want to do is to speed up generics getting introduced to the marketplace, because right now drug companies — (applause) — right now drug companies are fighting so that they can keep essentially their patents on their brand-name drugs a lot longer. And if we can make those patents a little bit shorter, generics get on the market sooner, ultimately you as consumers will save money. All right? But it was an excellent question, so thank you.

I somehow don’t think this man though that his experience dealing with side effects was a GOOD THING!  And note Obama’s enthusiasm to reduce drug patents to speed generics along.  Sounds like a great plan until the drug industry loses its profit motive and spends less on R+D to find amazing new cures.  I WANT the drug companies making money so they keep developing new medicines.

The complete text of the Obama Portsmouth town hall can be found HERE

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By Cassandra Effect, July 31, 2009 12:49 am

from OneGuy – starts a little slow but picks up steam – heed the powerful voice of the American people.  See all his videos HERE

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By Cassandra Effect, July 2, 2009 10:43 am

From Forbes – Read it all HERE:

Lie One: No one will be compelled to buy coverage.

Lie Two: No new taxes on employer benefits.

Lie Three: Government can control rising health care costs better than the private sector.

Lie Four: A public plan won’t be a Trojan horse for a single-payer monopoly.

Lie Five: Patients don’t have to fear rationing.

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By Cassandra Effect,

 Obama held an online town hall meeting on healthcare Wednesday.  Weirdly enough – I can’t find anywhere to actually watch it  - only questions were used in the “online” portion of the title.

The President uses his favorite debate team tactic – the Straw Man argument throughout the speech.  “Some believe…..but I believe”  This tactic is used to great effect by him to frame the debate to his advantage, and misrepresent the opposing point of view or simply cloud the argument with bad logic.

Obama played  on peoples economic fears by threatening that our economy will sputter if we don’t adopt his socialist plans.

He misrepresents statistics; first claiming insurance premiums have risen at 3 times the rate of wages.  The real story is that since most people receive insurance as a PART of their employment package, the rate of increases on wage has been lowered BECAUSE of the premiums.  You can’t lay these two statistcs side by side.  Rather you must trend wages + benefits = Total Compensation.  The VALUE of total comp has been increasing, but its been WEIGHTED on the BENEFITS side of the equation rather than the wages side.  You can see that quite clearly here:

From the Bureau of Labor and Statistics:

75% of  private industry and government workers  had access to medical care    

Employers paid 83% of the premium cost for single coverage and 71% of the cost for family coverage

This is one reason a major reform should de-link the employer based coverage and allow individuals to buy their own policies.  People would shop around for the best policy for themselves. They will have a greater interest in getting the maximum value out of their healthcare dollars.  This solution would also allow for portability and free people to make career changes without fear of losing their healthcare.

This solution will allow market forces to drive down the cost of care, as it is likely more people will buy higher deductable policies rather than the current first dollar coverage that so many people have right now.  First dollar coverage in essence becomes pre-paid healthcare.   No one expects first dollar coverage for their car or home insurance.  In fact you are wise to buy a policy with as high a deductable as possible since that drives down the premium costs.  The fact is healthcare INSURANCE should be just that – INSURANCE designed to protect you against catastrophy.  There is no reasonable expectation that is should pay for your very first doctor visit or prescription.  THAT is why healthcare INSURANCE costs as much as it does. 

Naturally existing law would have to change to expand cross state sales of insurance to create this greater level of competition. 

The Healthcare “crisis” allegedly affects 46 Million people.  With the majority of workers covered, it makes no sense to blow up the system by putting the government in competition with private insurance.  It would only lead to employers dumping healthcare so people would go on the public plan.  What is needed is a simple elegant solution to allow those people without insurance who wish to PAY for insurance to be able to get it.  Obama claims that we are already apying for these uninsurable folks – if that is the case, then insurance companies should be able to cover them for a normal fee.   If they won’t then perhaps we really weren’t paying for it, or we will ALL have to pay a little more otherwise.  Pick your poison.

Obama does finally admit that it is MEDICARE that is the problem when he states that 90% of the projected increased in entitlement program costs are from Medicare.  Could it be the baby boomers maybe getting old?  Gee they might live a long time now that we have good medical practices and drugs that make cancer a manageable condition versus a life sentence.

“Already we’re seeing that when we put pressure to reform the system, then these industries are going to have to respond.”

Imagine that – companies who have watched other firms get taken over by the feds or simply allowed to go out of business are desperate to keep the evil Fed at bay – whatever it takes.  It’s Atlas Shrugged come to life!

“Now, one-third of it we’re going to have to pay for by increased revenues.  And what I’ve proposed is, is that if we capped the itemized deductions that very wealthy people do — the top 2 percent use on their income tax — so that they’re getting the same tax breaks as everybody else, as opposed to getting higher tax breaks because they’ve got a bigger house, then we can pay for the rest of reform.”

Obama will pay for this by taxing “the wealthy”  no specifics on who qualifies as wealthy.  Must be you and me.  Got to love how he doesn’t say tax – rather “increase revenues”.  WEASEL!

“And if we can do that, then, A, we can cover more people with the savings; and, B, we have more leverage over the insurance companies and the drug companies so that they give a better deal.  That’s what we’re trying to do.” 

THE GOVERNMENT NEGOTIATIES AT THE POINT OF A GUN!  HOW DOES A COMPANY SAY NO THANKS?

He then misrepresents John McCain’s health care proposal but suggesting  that “…. if you completely eliminated the exclusion, there is no doubt that what would happen is, is that a lot of employers would stop providing health care.  And so a lot of people who currently get health care through their employers wouldn’t be able to get it.”

 Somehow I doubt that employers will be able to willy nilly drop benefits, which are a part of compensation without having people move to employers who DO continue to offer benefit.  What a BS argument.  

Continuing ..”The second thing — remember what I told you earlier about how if you are on your own shopping for health care you’ve got no leverage with the insurance company.  Well, the problem is, is that if suddenly now you get a tax credit for $5,000 or $7,000, you try to go buy some health insurance for your family, and it costs $14,000, you’re a lot worse off than you would have been.  You’re out of luck.  And you’ve got no leverage; they’ve got no incentive to give you a lower price because you’re on your own”

The leverage people have is the ability to SHOP AROUND.  There is MORE THAN ONE insurance company.  Does Obama not understand how the free market works?

There’s so much nonsense here, but the average person doesn’t understand or pay atrtention.  This is why his messaging is focused around “YOU CAN KEEP YOUR DOCTOR.”

Of course – only so long as your doctor is willing to run his business under the new rules.

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By Cassandra Effect,

So much to talk about in Dear Leader’s “online town hall meeting on healthcare” Wednesday in Annadale, so I will break it into several posts.

For starters, how about a 75 minute long town hall with only 7 questions – all of whom were PRE SELECTED and SCREENED. 

Beyond the usual cattle call of sad sack stories, one of the “questioners” was a man named Jason Rosenbaum who said he was with a group called Health Care for America NOW! 

Their stated purpose:

“Our government’s responsibility is to guarantee quality affordable health care for everyone in America and it must play a central role in regulating, financing, and providing health coverage by establishing…”

Somehow I did not ever notice the health care guarantee in the Constitution, only a guarantee of Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Jason is a left wing writer and webmaster of the seminal.com which claims to be an independent blog, but if you look at their “Required Reading” you will find some pretty wackadoodle left wing notions presented under the usual guises of “common sense.”

What an amazing coincidence that he was called on – what an incredibly lucky fellow – what were the odds?

Their “Coalition” consists ENTIRELY of left wing organizations like ACORN, Moveon.org, and what appears to be every union in the country.

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By Cassandra Effect, June 30, 2009 4:20 am

Last week the Congressional Budget Office released their budget forecast documents.  It speaks for itself.

“The higher debt results in permanently higher spending to pay interest on that debt (unless the debt is later paid off).”

We know, of course, that we will never pay off this debt.  The best we can hope for is for the economy to grow large enough that the debt as a percentage of GDP shrinks back to manageable levels.  This strategy would require that we slow our spending in the future.  Like Wimpy, our government will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.