h/t Hot Air
“B…b…but I thought you loved me!”
OK, so it’s in small print in the sidebar and not the main article but, hey, any time a member of the MSM plays Betta fish and jumps out of the Obama tank it’s newsworthy.
The president has been filling his town halls with more plants than a commercial greenhouse so he is able to blather on with made-up facts that the bobble-heads in the audience just eat up without question.
The paper still didn’t call Obama out on his lie about never having favored a single-payer system (apparently they don’t get YouTube at the White House). Baby steps, people, baby steps.
Some highlights, with the president’s assertions in italics, then the correction.
Under the reform we’re proposing, if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.
Not necessarily. In an analysis of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee bill, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that 10 million workers could lose employer-provided benefits and would have to find other insurance.
How about that mythical AARP endorsement?
AARP would not be endorsing a bill if it was undermining Medicare, OK?
The AARP issued a press release to make it clear that it has not endorsed any particular health care proposal. “Indications that we have endorsed any of the major health care reform bills currently under consideration in Congress are inaccurate,” AARP said.
He does have a staff that checks things out and briefs him, right?
The rumor that’s been circulating a lot lately is this idea that somehow the House of Representatives voted for ‘death panels’ that will basically pull the plug on Grandma. … (T)he intention. .. was to give people more information so that they could handle issues of end-of-life care when they’re ready, on their own terms. … (O)ne of the chief sponsors of this bill originally was a Republican … (Sen.) Johnny Isakson from Georgia.
Isakson issued a press release saying Obama misused his name. A provision he attached to a Senate health care bill would allow seniors to obtain help in formulating a living will something Isakson said is different from House language. The House bill would require Medicare to pay for end-of-life counseling sessions, but it would not mandate that anyone use the benefit.
OK, maybe a death panel isn’t being set up but the whole “here’s an easy way for you to get out of here” counseling thing is still creepy.
This debate isn’t made less civil by the noise level of the protesters. It’s in the toilet because the chief proponent of the plan refuses to be honest with us.
If Marc Ambinder Was “Any Easier To Spin, He’d Be A Dreidl”…
Your quote of the day (so far) is by Mickey Kaus, found via a post by Mark Hemmingway on NRO’s Corner:
Regarding Marc Ambinder’s thoughts posted below, Mickey Kaus somewhat persuasively picks apart what he’s saying. Read the whole thi…
Barry says we can’t trust the insurance companies, so why should we trust a government run insurance company/plan? Who will have oversight of a government run insurance Company? The government needs to stay out of private enterprise and just be the oversight which protects people from injustices of private enterprises rather then the perp.
Please bear with the following paragraph.
When Dorothy asked Glinda, the good witch, why Glinda didn’t tell Dort any sooner about how her ruby slippers could have saved her from having to shoot a few scenes with the wicked witch, Glinda answered that Dorothy wouldn’t have believed her about the slippers. Glinda also pointed out that Dort had been paid overtime for those scenes so Dort could pay off her loan from Glinda, so quit whining. That being said…
Given that the federal Constitution is silent about public healthcare, the 10th A. automatically reserves government power to regulate and lay taxes for healthcare to the states, not the Oval Office and Congress.
In fact, Chief Justice Marshall had established the following case precedent, now wrongly ignored, which appropriately limits the power of the power of the fed to lay taxes.
“Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States.” –Chief Justice Marshall, GIBBONS V. OGDEN (1824) http://supreme.justia.com/us/22/1/case.html
So not only are Obama’s Stimulus Package and proposed healthcare constitutionally unauthorized, but based on Justice Marshall’s official words, the corrupt feds never had the power to lay taxes for these programs in the first place.
Sadly, misguided Obama and Congress are not the main problems with the government, IMO. The main problem is that US citizens have not been teaching the Constitution and its history to their children for many generations now, particularly state sovereignty. Consequently, constitutionally ignorant voters have shot themselves in the foot with big, corrupt federal government. The following link is an analysis as to how this happened.
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=199792
What the federal Constitution does allow concerning healthcare is the following.
First, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere in this blog, given that the federal Constitution is silent about public healthcare, the 10th A. automatically reserves government power to regulate and lay taxes for healthcare to the states, not the Oval Office and Congress.
So for starters, tax dollars should not be leaving any state in the name of federal healthcare. And when state lawmakers and federal senators actually start doing their jobs to protect state sovereignty by protecting citizens from unlawful federal healthcare taxes, we could see the following situation.
We could see up to 50 independent state-run healthcare programs. And practically speaking, some states are going to be praised for the way that they run healthcare while other states are going to struggle with healthcare. But there’s no law that says that the states who really know what they’re doing concerning healthcare can’t give some good advice to the struggling states to try to help improve their programs.
Also, given two states with similar healthcare programs, identifying corruption in one state’s healthcare program could be as simple as comparing the state’s books.
You really do hear what you want to hear. Medicare advantage is in fact redundant. Not completely redundant, but redundant and costly to the taxpayer. And think about it, why would the President completely make up something negative about Medicare at the same time he holds it up as an example? I’m mean, I think it would be cool if he would do that, conservatives do it all the time, but he didn’t do it here. As for Isakson, the President was accurate there as well. Just a few short days ago he said of the death panels “I just had a phone call where someone said Sarah Palin’s web site had talked about the HOUSE BILL having death panels on it where people would be euthanized. How someone could take an end of life directive or a living will as that is nuts. You’re putting the authority in the individual rather than the government. I don’t know how that got so mixed up. [...] It empowers you to be able to make decisions at a difficult time rather than having the government making them for you.” Seems like we are talking about the same thing and Iskason says its nuts. He also supports a public option. Next, the proposed legislation does appear to allow you to keep your present insurance so tha is accurate as well. What employers might not do is a secondary and speculative effect. They might drop some employees, but it is just as likely that a public option will force prices down to a level where employers might not have to. Either way, that’s not the plan, that’s just a potential response to it. The proposed bill does allow you to keep your current insurance. I do agree that the record appears to support the fact that the President did support single payer at some point, but then a few months ago, Newt Gingrich supported death panels and George Bush made them law in Texas, so I guess people can change.
Anyway, thanks for lobbying for the insurance agency for free, that is at least keeping my rates down.
Repudiate-I didn’t “hear” anything. I merely linked to an article in a paper that hasn’t exactly made a name for itself by being critical of this president. The hat tip link also featured a personal story about Medicaire Advantage. The two combined seem to make a compelling enough case for me. Why would the president make something up? Because he’s spent 2+ years with the freest pass from an uncritical press of any politician in modern history. That’s why he can keep talking about how many jobs the stimulus has “saved” when it’s a number that isn’t, and can’t, be measured. He says it, the bobblehead press nods and reports it and that’s that.
Why is he lying about having supported single payer in the past? And I mean lying. You’re being most generous when you say “the record appears to support” when “there’s video of him supporting” is what’s accurate.
Why are the president’s supporters being disingenuous about the end game here? You know as well as anyone that the public option is nothing more than a baby step to single payer (Russ Feingold says so). Your ridiculous “lobbying for the insurance industry” brain fart at the end showed your true colors. This is all about the demonizing private industry and finding a way for the federal bureaucracy to expand and replace that industry. It’s a blatant federal power grab. I don’t believe that there’s an altruistic motivation to be found in any of the people pimping this “reform”. It’s all about power drunk politicians expanding that power and sucking the life out of the American taxpayer.
As for Gingrich and Bush, I don’t know what they have to do with the conversation. I don’t give a rat’s ass about what they think. I care about what I think.
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