3
POPSThe Ruling Elite Not having government run health care gives these people even more reason to get re-elected. Leave no incumbent in office.
3
POPSKucinich: Why I voted NO I'm so torn. I think we should have fought harder for a single-payer bill, even though I know that would have been a much harder battle. But I don't think that voting no on this was the solution, either. As much as I would like BIG CHANGE, I know that can't happen in one fell swoop. Baby steps, unfortunately, will get us to that final goal. Hopefully, the public will realize, soon, that we need single payer!
1
POPSPublic option If we let public option pass. we will destroy our health programs. we need reform but not this one
6
POPSOwens Breaks 4 Campaign Promises in First Hour in Congress
Mr. Owens also indicated during his campaign that he was firmly opposed to cutting Medicare benefits, taxing health care benefits, and increased taxes on the middle class in any way as you can see clearly in the screenshot taken directly from Mr. Owens' campaign website. http://www.gouverneurtimes.com/images/stories/2009/11/06/oewns-screenshot.jpg The House Health reform bill contains sections that cut Medicare benefits, tax existing health care benefits, and increases taxes on the middle class, yet Mr. Owens stated today that he will now vote in favor of those things contrary to what he had promised the voters of NY's 23rd Congressional District that he would vote against. Mr. Owens indicated in his press release today that "This legislation will reform the insurance industry and provide increased access to affordable healthcare without taxing healthcare benefits, cutting Medicare benefits or raising taxes on the middle class, and that is exactly the direction.....
3
POPSCoerciveCare Bill Passes House 220-215, Sat Night Mandatory health care insurance reform bill passes House. Socialist Security 2.0. Never mind that half the population opposed this. And the "public option" is not optional--it is now mandated that you must buy health insurance. How is it that the Federal government can force you to buy something? Private property rights are trampled, the government thinks it can tell you to buy something or face jail and/or tax penalties. This also then means every American's private and personal health information will be put into a data-base system, the end of privacy. Your health care, and body, will belong to the Collectivist Society now and the Government , which will no doubt link this to your National ID Card (REAL ID and PASS ID system) --increasing the Electronic Leash on "free" Americans.
4
POPS Uncle Sam’s Collections Continue Their Steep Drop It is ironic to say the least that Congress and the Obama administration are glorifying the idea of a “public option” that would ultimately lead to government-run health care while Treasury receipts continue to shrink. If the private health insurance market disappears, so will its taxes. To name just one example, Aetna’s recorded income tax expense on its financial statements for 2005-2008 (including state and local taxes) averaged roughly $900 million per year. Put the company’s health insurance segment out of business, and a large portion of those taxes would stop coming in, digging the country’s and various states’ debt holes that much deeper. The establishment press has paid very little attention to fiscal 2009’s drop of 19.5% in receipts from economic activity, so I expect similar treatment of October’s continuation of the trend. It would appear that they don’t want any unsettling news getting in the way of the statist agenda.
4
POPSPublic Health Plan Covers FEW
"The public option is a significant issue, but its place in the debate is completely out of proportion to its actual importance to consumers," said Drew Altman, president of the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. "It has sucked all the oxygen out of the room and diverted attention from bread-and-butter consumer issues, such as affordable coverage and comprehensive benefits." The Democratic health care bills would extend coverage to the uninsured by providing government help with premiums and prohibiting insurers from excluding people in poor health or charging them more. But to keep from piling more on the federal deficit, most of the uninsured will have to wait until 2013 for help. Even then, many will have to pay a significant share of their own health care costs. The latest look at the public option comes from the Congressional Budget Office, the nonpartisan economic analysts for lawmakers. It found that the scaled back government plan in the House bill wouldn't overtake
8
POPSThe First 500 Pages of Obamacare • Page 91: Government mandates linguistic infrastructure for services; translation: illegal aliens • Page 95: The Government will pay ACORN and Americorps to sign up individuals for Government-run Health Care plan. • Page 102: Those eligible for Medicaid will be automatically enrolled: you have no choice in the matter. • Page 124: No company can sue the government for price-fixing. No "judicial review" is permitted against the government monopoly. Put simply, private insurers will be crushed. • Page 127: The AMA sold doctors out: the government will set wages. • Page 145: An employer MUST auto-enroll employees into the government-run public plan. No alternatives. • Page 126: Employers MUST pay healthcare bills for part-time employees AND their families. • Page 149: Any employer with a payroll of $400K or more, who does not offer the public option, pays an 8% tax on payroll • Page 150: Any employer with a payroll of $250K-400K or more, who does not offer the public option,
1
POPSJoe Lieberman must go. Sen. Lieberman has indicated he plans to join with Republicans to filibuster any health care bill that contains a public option. Alone, the Republicans don't have the votes for a filibuster. So by joining with them, Lieberman would be tipping the balance of power in order to sink health care reform. We need to push the leaders of the Democratic caucus to take a tough stand against Lieberman. "We need every vote. He's with us on everything but the war." Sign the petition
1
POPSCost of War versus Health care reform with public option. Joe Lieberman (Democrat ?!?) and his Republicans' friends are talking about of the high costs of the health care reform with public option? It nauseates me. Stop the wars! Bring our troops at home! Use our money for the health care! Save lives! Remember Joe Lieberman? YOU VOTED FOR THE WAR.
4
POPSSEIU Needs Socialized Medicine To Stoke Its Underfunded Pensions and union employees at the expense of the rank-and-file. To regain some semblance of fiscal stability, the SEIU has wagered heavily on forcing other employees to help fund its drying pension reserves. That was the motivation behind the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) ("Card Check"), a major Democrat initiative for 2009, and one on which the SEIU spent tens of millions of its members' money. Since Card Check is in serious trouble with lawmakers, state-run health care would be a suitable alternative. • The public option could force hospital and other health care workers into underfunded pensions, putting their retirements at risk • The average union pension has resources to cover only 62% of what is owed to participants • Less than one in every 160 union-represented workers is covered by a union pension with required assets • The PBGC already supports upwards of 30,000 pension plans • Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation (PBGC), the governmental pension insurer,
5
POPSI'll Pass On Opting Out It's like a movie theater offering a "money back guarantee" and then explaining, you don't get your money back, but you don't have to stay and watch the movie if you don't like it. That's not what most people are thinking when they hear the words "opt out." The term more likely to come to mind is "scam." While congressional Democrats act indignant that Republicans would intransigently oppose a national health care plan that now magnanimously allows states to "opt out," other liberals are being cockily honest about the "opt out" scheme. On The Huffington Post, the first sentence of the article on the opt-out plan is: "The public option lives." Andrew Sullivan gloats on his blog, "Imagine Republicans in state legislatures having to argue and posture against an affordable health insurance plan for the folks, as O'Reilly calls them, while evil liberals provide it elsewhere." But the only reason government health insurance will be more "affordable" than private health insurance
3
POPSWhy does Joe Lieberman oppose healthcare reform? Ask his wife
But her stint at Hill & Knowlton was merely one episode in a professional lifetime devoted to the corporate health sector. For most of the past three decades, Hadassah Lieberman has been employed by either pharmaceutical companies or the lobbying firms that represent them -- starting with nearly a decade in the "public affairs department" at Hoffman-LaRoche from 1972-81, followed by stints at Pfizer, where she spent four years as "director of policy, planning and communications," and APCO Associates, a major lobbying firm where she served as a "senior associate" in its large healthcare division before retiring in 1998. She went back to work when she joined H&K, an outfit that became notorious for its billion-dollar defense of the tobacco industry. Not long after her contract began, Sen. Lieberman introduced legislation vastly extending patent protection for pharmaceutical companies -- notably including GlaxoSmithKline, a top client of his wife's firm.
3
POPSMedical Insurance Fat Cats Working to Fleece Regular Citizens
In the election Obama promised comprehensive and affordable health care to every citizen including the 47 million people without medical insurance. But when he came into office after seven months his concessions to medical insurance companies and drug companies are so glaring that the White House has to conceal the details of what is health care plans are really about from supporters because he doesn’t dare tell those who are organizing for his healthcare reform the details of his exceptions and bailouts for Insurance agencies. No longer is there talk of a public option, now the administration just mumbles about a purposed health co-op. If you think about it health care should be a basic responsibility of society. In a system where profit is at the heart of what rulers and regulators are trying to do then people don’t have a right to get their medicals needs met. There are 45,000 unnecessary deaths in America because people don’t have health insurance. And the for profit system of h
2
POPS ResponsibleHealthReform.org The red balloon expands and eventually explodes. Washington's health reform? $1 Trillion Health Plan Government-run "public option" Tax increases Even on Health Benefits Congressional Budget Office: $239 Billion in Deficits Inflated Taxes Swelling Deficits Government Control Tell Congress slow down. Reform health care the right way.
0
POPSObama’s Media Control Strategy The new plan: federal government would define a “new public square” with a “common space with shared facts.” The only reason I can see why the federal government wants to “define a new public square” is so it can have some control over the flow of information. Am I being too paranoid? If the internet is to remain a truly free-flow of information, we need to keep it free from any type of control. Sure, there will always be misinformation, but having multiple sources of info is the checks-and-balances system to identify that misinformation as bogus. This new system sounds suspiciously like the “new public square” is the “public option” for the media and this extreme makeover is not only for media but our system of government.
8
POPSLipstick on a Pig Nancy also babbled something about how any taxpayer money being used to pay for the public option would be repaid and how the public option would drive down costs. Because, you see, government is famous for paying taxes back to us and decreasing the cost of stuff. It’s what they’re known for. Wasserman-Schultz said that Pelosi plans to “go and test drive” the new term “competitive option” when she heads back to DC. Goody!!! I’m sure all of us feeble-brained Americans will fall for it, and think it’s a brand spanking new plan. Ya gotta love our leadership’s faith in us!
3
POPSGood Intentions with Disastrous Effects
But fraud and corruption are only part of the failed system that is Medicare – the other is basic accounting. In this morning’s Washington Post, Robert J. Samuelson compares the troubles with Medicare to the “public option,” which he calls a “mirage,” that is gaining strength in Congress. While Medicare is a monopoly, the proposed government-run health insurance plan seeks to attract investment capital to subsidize the enormous costs that it will incur (such as marketing campaigns). If this fails, which it undoubtedly would, Congress would step in to bail it out. When asked why it has taken Medicare so long to figure out they were being scammed, Attorney General Eric Holder told CBS’s Steve Kroft, "I think lack of resources probably. And then I think people I don't think necessarily thought that something as well intentioned as Medicare and Medicaid would necessarily attract fraudsters. But I think we have to understand that it certainly has." Good Intentions maybe but...
1
POPS AHIP for The Public "Option", The Musical This is much more fun and better sung than traditional protests! And given that *AHIP would benefit from a public option, I suspect Karen Ignagni hired them. It looks like it happened in the closing session of this AHIP conference on Friday although having sat in many of these conferences I do need to tell the protestors that no plotting is done in these Forums. That happens elsewhere… (AHIP AmericanHealthSolution.org) October 16, 2009 * Why AHIP needs the public option By Matthew Holt It’s been a fun week. After years of THCB explaining that neither could AHIP do genuine research nor could its venerable President open her mouth without lying, the rest of the world has caught on. I won’t rehash the blow by blow here"Jonathan Cohn is among many who’s done that already"but essentially AHIP commissioned PWC to include the half of the analysis about the Baucus bill that was favorable to them and leave the rest out.
7
POPSFirst, Do No Harm BU Med student accused of Craigslist killing and robberies. Gender-bending Harvard-educated rifle-wielding wife-murdering dermatologist Richard Sharpe ends it all in prison. Hooker-frequenting hammer-and-slash wife-murdering prominent allergist Dirk Greineder seeks a new trial. Harvard-trained doc who walked away from surgery does time on drug charges but skates on child rape charges when witness refuses to testify. You’ve got your nursing Angel of Death du jour. Nursing assistant accused of terrorizing elderly. Drug docs to the stars! A rash of them are staring at charges related to buried mistakes Jacko and Anna Nicole. All that’s before you get to the little remarked-upon regular run of docs who believe in hands-on examinations … whether their patients need it or not. In a lot of those cases, the oath should have been “First, Do No Pharm.” But howbout, “First, Weed Out Barmy.” I know, I know, for every murderous, abusive wackjob there are thousands of caring,
1
Pops
Newest Clips
Latest Comments
Most Pops
Print
Save
Turn on live update