Inadvertantly Correct Headline: Sacrifice Jobs for Obamacare

In a most inadvertantly correct Headline award:

"Pelosi: Lawmakers Should Sacrifice Jobs for Health Care"

Because it is certain that if we pass Obamacare, we will sacrifice a LOT of jobs in this country. Not just the democrats in congress who should be fired for their incompetence.

But for Pelosi and the democrats, it's all about them, not about what havoc they will wreak on the rest of us:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urged her colleagues to back a major overhaul of U.S. health care even if it threatens their political careers, a call to arms that underscores the issue's massive role in this election year.

Lawmakers sometimes must enact policies that, even if unpopular at the moment, will help the public, Pelosi said in an interview being broadcast Sunday the ABC News program "This Week.""We're not here just to self-perpetuate our service in Congress," she said. "We're here to do the job for the American people."

More like doing A JOB on the American people. But if we are lucky, they'll fail to pass this monstrosity, and still lose their jobs in November.

Bipartisans agree, Pelosi is an idiot.

At least, by her definition of bipartisan, which apparently has nothing to do with two parties working together. From the Hill:

"Bipartisanship is a two-way street. A bill can be bipartisan without bipartisan votes. Republicans have left their imprint."

The public option, for example, has been stripped from the bill because Republicans were so adamantly against it, she said.

Actually, the public option was never in Reid's Senate bill, because the 60 DEMOCRATS in the Senate didn't want it. The house has never removed a single thing from a bill because of the objection of republicans only -- there's no need, unless the republicans get democrats to join them in bipartisan DISAGREEMENT.

But for Pelosi, the mere fact that Republicans have said they hate the bill would make the bill "bipartisan". Of course, she lives in a fantasy world were people will LOVE health care once it is passed:

"When the public sees what is in this bill...when we show them what the priorities are and what it's been boiled down to, what it means to them sitting around their kitchen table rather than us sitting around a table at Blair House, the response will be positive," Pelosi said.

In other words, the problem is that the great communicator, having made 400+ speeches, simply hasn't done enough to let people know what is in the bill. Or more accurately, that the american people are just too stupid to know what is good for them. John McCain rightly denounces that belief:

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said on "Meet the Press" that Americans are much better informed about the healthcare plan and reiterated the GOP platform that the process should be started from scratch.

To show how deluded Pelosi is, here is what she claims the health bill is about:

Pelosi outlined the top priorities for the legislation: affordability for the middle class, accountability of insurance companies and accessibility for more people.

But the bill will raise health care spending, raise the cost of health care coverage for individuals in the middle class, and will require huge government subsidies for people to pay for their own care. It forces everybody to buy insurance, making insurers LESS accountable because they won't have to compete for business. After taxing people for all sorts of health care purchases, and for having too much insurance, accessability will be the least of our problems.

THere is bipartisan opposition in the house to this bill. There is widespread bipartisan public opposition to this bill. Polls show americans of all political persuasions want congress to stop the charade, and put together a bill that will actually help people get better health care.

ObamaCare in a nutshell

Obamacare is all about forcing people to pay more for insurance they don't need, so the government can tell everybody what health care they should get.

Nothing is better at illustrating this principle of Obamacare than Obama's own bizarre story of his ignorance over car insurance. From the Thursday Health Care Obama-Talk-Fest:

When I was young, just got out of college, I had to buy auto insurance. I had a beat-up old car. And I won’t name the name of the insurance company, but there was a company — let’s call it Acme Insurance in Illinois. And I was paying my premiums every month. After about six months I got rear-ended and I called up Acme and said, I’d like to see if I can get my car repaired, and they laughed at me over the phone because really this was set up not to actually provide insurance; what it was set up was to meet the legal requirements. But it really wasn’t serious insurance.

Now, it’s one thing if you’ve got an old beat-up car that you can’t get fixed. It’s another thing if your kid is sick, or you’ve got breast cancer.

Now, there's all sorts of lessons here. Like why was Obama paying monthly payments for insurance, instead of 6 month or yearly payments? Or why he would buy insurance that wasn't really insurance, or why he didn't know that the legal requirements would only be for liability coverage. Or that if someone hits your car, you are supposed to call THEIR insurance company.

But the real lesson is this. The guy bought what, by his own admission, was a "beat up old car". No doubt, if he had bought collision, his deductable would be higher than the value of the car. Probably he was lucky not to have collision insurance, since it would never pay off on his clunker.

But Obama's message was this: "Now, it’s one thing if you’ve got an old beat-up car that you can’t get fixed. It’s another thing if your kid is sick, or you’ve got breast cancer." In other words, he is saying that he was stupid not to have collision insurance that wouldn't really pay off, and that someone should have forced him to buy useless insurance, just like they forced him to buy liability insurance.

And likewise, Obamacare will force us to buy insurance we don't need, like coverage for your sick child when you don't have children, or coverage for breast reconstruction for men.

House operations are "A Mystery"

Remember how the Democrats promised that they would run the House with such transparency that nobody would ever be surprised by something in a bill anymore? 72 hours of public viewing before they voted on anything? Remember the promises?

Thursday, the House was taking up what should have been a fairly routine intelligence bill (routine except that it was months late). Well, it shows up on the house floor, all ready to vote on, but with nobody apparently having read it yet. And what do we find in the bill? A provision to criminalize the intelligence service.

As told by the washington posts castoffs, the Politico:

“It’s a mystery how that language got in there,” Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) said of the controversial intelligence bill provision backed by Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.). “I think there are a lot of issues about the drafting of the McDermott amendment.”

A Mystery? You send a bill through the committee, where there are public hearings, and a public vote on each item in the bill. When done, the committee holds a final vote, and the bill comes to the floor of the house.

On the floor of the house, members offer up amendments, each of which are read by the clerk, debated, and voted on. After all amendments are voted on, there is a final vote on the bill.

So how could any words in the bill be "a mystery"? How could the former ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee have no idea how a clause criminalizing interrogation made it into an intelligence bill?

The answer is simple -- Under democratic rule, the house no longer works as a democratic body. Instead, backroom deals, ignoring the rules, bills written in secret and voted on without any public hearing -- that's the norm. I'm sure Pelosi would skip the whole voting thing if she could figure out whether the media would go along with it.

Hopefully, the people are getting tired of the dictatorial, elitist leadership of the house and senate. We will have to suffer for a few more months, but come November, the people can have their congress back. Our brief dark night can end, and a new day dawn.

Sure, we'll still be stuck with an incompetent socialist President, but he's pretty much demonstrated that, apart from lying, he's not really committed to anything.

Pre-existing conditions in a nutshell

With all the talk about pre-existing conditions in health care, it's important to understand what exactly we are talking about.

There are actually two separate issues that are interchangeably discussed as "pre-existing conditions", and since they are very different, and have different solutions, it confuses a lot of people.

The first is an actual "pre-existing-condition". Meaning I have a chronic disease, for which there is a known cost of treatment. I then go to an insurance company, and ask to be insured. If they cover the condition I already have, and if my payments don't include the total cost of the known treatment for the chronic disease, the insurance company is being stupid. "I'll pay you $20 if you give me back $30" is not a viable business strategy.

Now, a lot of people want to be able to force insurance companies to cover such pre-existing conditions, because they don't think of insurance as insurance, but rather as a pre-paid medical debit card. Imagine though going to a car insurance company and asking for a policy for the car you just crashed. Or to State Farm to ask them for a homeowner's policy for your house that is underwater because of a flood?

Oh, sometimes people do this -- it's called insurance fraud, and we put people in jail for it. But for some reason, we want insurance companies to take less money than they KNOW it will cost to provide care. And the insurance companies are actually on board -- so long as we also force healthy people to pay the same insurance premiums. So under this new system, a person who the insurance company knows will cost $500,000 over the next 10 years pays $100,000, while 10 other people who are most certainly only going to cost $50,000 average also pay $100,000, and it all works out.

Except that the 10 people who don't need coverage are forced to get it, and are forced to pay way more than what that coverage is worth. We tax the healthy to treat the sick.

OK, the 2nd "pre-existing-condition" is not an actual illness, but rather the propensity for the need of treatment. Really, this is a "risk" issue. Maybe it's a genetic marker which indicates a greater risk of illness. Or you had one disease, which makes it likely you could get another. You had a heart attack, so you could have more heart attacks. You had a transplant, so now you are compromised and likely to get sick. You have high blood pressure, so it might lead to other problems.

In these cases, the insurance company doesn't have a known cost of putting you on their books, but they know that if they take 10 people like you, it will cost them say twice as much as 10 people who are NOT like you. In the real world of insurance, you and the other 9 like you would pay twice as much in premiums as the other 10, and you would still come out ahead if you got sick, because your cost of treatment would be spread across others with similar changes of illness.

Now, in one sense, the 1st case is just the logical end-point of the 2nd, where the "risk probability" is 100 percent. most risks probabilities don't come close to certainty, and how we handle risk pools is a fundamentally different problem than how we handle known costs.

Of course, on Thursday the democrats attacked the idea of having "risk pools" for medical insurance. I'm betting though that they would be the first to say that smokers should have to pay more for coverage than non-smokers. I'm betting that because it isn't a "probability", it is a pre-existing condition.

Meaning: Democrats have already put large taxes on tobacco, to cover the "increased risk of medical treatment" needed by smokers. The state offers "health insurance", and they collect taxes to pay for it, and they add taxes to things that they think will make the health care the state pays for cost more. Democrats are also pushing to tax candy and soda, because those two lead to higher medical costs.

But apparently, if an insurance company wants to charge a person more because that person is likely to cost more, they are being evil.

Decent explanation of risk pools.

From a National Review post:

If your car gets vandalized, it’s not your fault, but your insurance company may suspect you’re parking in a neighborhood prone to crime. You thus might see your premium rise upon renewal. The same logic applies to home insurance. Undoubtedly, this can mean that people in lower-income neighborhoods face relatively higher risk premiums than those in posh suburbs. Life insurance applications ask dozens of questions designed to assess how great a risk you pose. This means a missionary who travels to poor countries to help the destitute is likely to be identified as a risk taker and pay a penalty for living a life of good works. It’s not existentially fair, perhaps, but it’s not discrimination based on malice either.

The reference also has a description of how the private markets are handling the pre-existing condition problem, and how government could help without taking over and destroying the health care system.

Stupid Argument for Using Reconciliation

Of all the arguments one could make for using reconciliation for the health care bill, the Democrat argument is the stupidest, most self-supporting argument one could make.

Realise that reconciliation itself is not a "nuclear option", or even a bad thing. Reconciliation is a specific part of the rules of the senate, and is perfectly valid to use in it's intended application. So saying that "Republicans used reconciliation" is a pretty stupid argument -- it's like claiming "Republicans passed bills with 50 votes, so we shouldn't be allowed to filibuster judges" -- it's apples and oranges.

Reconciliation is for passing bills that implement financial aspects of an already-passed budget agreement. The intention is for the senate to not get bogged down debating and blocking implementation of taxes or spending changes that have already been through the process during the budget debate.

So reconciliation is often used as an omnibus legislation, to implement the budget.

But the health care bill isn't a budget item. Sure, parts of it include budget items, like new taxes, and restricting money for medicare. But things like changing the rules for medicare advantage, creating new regulations, and the like are certainly not budget monetary items.

And what is more clear is that reconciliation has never before been suggested as a way to amend existing non-reconciliation legislation, before that legislation has been completed. In this case, they have competing bills between the house and senate, for which they can't find a common bill that gets a majority in the house and passes filibuster in the senate. This is hardly the first time this has happened -- in fact, it happens all the time.

The normal procedure is to go back to the drawing board, and find some other way to get everybody on board. Instead, since the democrats can't amend the current bill with the support of 60 senators, they want to pass the bill with a PROMISE that they will amend it by using budget rules. There were Senators like Webb who said they voted on the bill to MOVE THE PROCESS FORWARD, "knowing" that if the house democrats screwed around with the bill, they could vote against it when it came back and still stop it. Now they are being told "too bad, we lied to get your vote, and now we don't need it anymore".

Anyway....

But that isn't the stupidest argument. The stupidest argument is the one many democrats are using, that "reconciliation is a horrible way to do this, and it's only a 'last resort' if we can't pass the bill any other way".

That argument is essentially saying : If we can get 60 votes, that's what we will get, and we will only pass the bill with fewer than 60 votes if we get fewer than 60 votes".

Which I hope you can now see is a stupid argument. It's like saying "We'll go to the restaurant you choose, so long as you choose the one I like, otherwise we'll go to the one I like." Or, calling a coin flip by saying "you can have heads, unless the coin comes up heads, and then I get heads".

Here is an actual example, Ben Nelson: "[reconciliation is] my least favorite way to do something. It’s only after everything else fails, when there’s obstruction going on,” Nelson said.

Well, a filibuster is obstruction. And failing to break a filibuster is "everything else failing". So his argument is "reconciliation is to use if someone tries to filibuster and we can't break the filibuster". If true, then no filibuster would ever work against the majority.

Obama blames SecDef Gates for shortchanging troops.

In Obama's widely panned Tuesday Night Speech, he made what appears to be a blatantly false claim:

Commanders in Afghanistan repeatedly asked for support to deal with the reemergence of the Taliban, but these reinforcements did not arrive.
That’s why, shortly after taking office, I approved a long-standing request for more troops.

Former Sec. of Defense Rumsfeld called Obama out on this lie, saying that if there is ANY evidence that the White House received requests during his time in office, they should make it public.

Obama, knowing he was caught in a lie, came up with a scheme -- Gibbs, his spokesperson, came out and agreed with a reporter's assumption that Obama was talking about requests made in 2008.

See, in 2008, the Sec. of Defense was Robert Gates. And today, he is still Defense Secretary, which means he reports to, and is under the control of Obama.

Of course, in reality the 2008 troop requests did work through the system, and as troops became available some were retasked to Afghanistan. But after the election, the incoming adminsitration put a hold on the troops, and took almost 3 months before finally releasing half of the request (hence Obama's "approved a long-standing request" is also misleading since they were long-standing because he asked them to be put on hold).

Now we've operated almost a year, and nothing more has been done; except that Obama forced his generals to HOLD their requests so he could claim there was no "request on his desk".

"I want to live forever" - Fame? No, Reid's Delusion of Obamacare

Senator Harry Reid, who couldn't craft a health care bill that solved a SINGLE ONE of the "problems" the health care bill is supposed to fix, has a much bigger target in mind -- immortality:

"Today we [decide] whether to even discuss one of the greatest issues of our generation," Reid, a Nevada Democrat, said shortly before the vote. "Whether this nation will finally guarantee its people the right to live free from fear of illness and death, which can be prevented by decent health care for all."

Obamacare/House version would reduce senior care

Last time, I chronicled how the Obamacare bill passed by Pelosi would raise health care cost by hundreds of billions of dollars -- contrary to the stated goal of lowering health care costs.

Today, from the Washington Post, we find that Obamacare also fails to protect people's existing insurance, another "promise" from the great President Obama, who breaks promises on a daily basis.

Specifically, the Post notes that Senior Citizens are a prime target of Pelosi and the Democrats, because Pelosi's Bill would reduce senior care:

A plan to slash more than $500 billion from future Medicare spending -- one of the biggest sources of funding for President Obama's proposed overhaul of the nation's health-care system -- would sharply reduce benefits for some senior citizens and could jeopardize access to care for millions of others, according to a government evaluation released Saturday.

Again, we could have known this fact before the House voted on the bill. In fact, Pelosi certainly knew this -- which is why she pushed for a rediculous schedule, making at least one member miss his own son's wedding so she could pass health care destruction in the dead of saturday night.

The report, requested by House Republicans, found that Medicare cuts contained in the health package approved by the House on Nov. 7 are likely to prove so costly to hospitals and nursing homes that they could stop taking Medicare altogether.

Not that Democrats want old people to just die or anything. No serious person would try to argue that a political party wants people to die. Oh wait -- that's exactly what the crazy elected Democrats DO argue. But Republicans aren't the ones cutting billions from old people's health care.

This new study also points out the tremendous increase in costs under this plan:

In the face of greatly increased demand for services, providers are likely to charge higher fees or take patients with better-paying private insurance over Medicaid recipients, "exacerbating existing access problems" in that program, according to the report from Richard S. Foster of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Oh well, it sucks to be an old person dependent on government-run health insurance when the Democrats control the government.

Who Is Failure? (whoever thinks that is a sentence?

Who Is Failure? Apparently, Barack Obama, who also might be a Miserable Failure.

I only wish he was more of a failure. He is still "succeeding" enough to destroy the country.

Obamacare/House version RAISES health costs

Obama and the Democrats are pushing health care reform by claiming that costs are going up, and we need to stop that. This is the only thing that the public seems to agree with them about -- the public would LOVE to save money on health care.

But no bill pushed by the Democrats yet has done a thing to lower costs. And the bill that just passed the house will actually increase costs, by almost 300 BILLION dollars:

The House-approved healthcare overhaul would raise the costs of healthcare by $289 billion over the next 10 years, according to an analysis by the chief actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

The CMS report is a blow to the White House and House Democrats who have vowed that healthcare reform would curb the growth of healthcare spending.

I don't see how this is a "blow" to house democrats. Pelosi already forced her side to rush the vote on their bill, before they had this analysis. Realise that if they had simply waited a week, they could have had this information BEFORE they voted.

This of course explains WHY Pelosi rushed the vote. She knew, and the democrats all knew, that their bill did nothing to fix health care. They just wanted to take over health care, because they want to run everything, and make all of us serve them.

Pelosi is a power-hungry politician. She wants to rule the world. She is willing to destroy our health care to get what she wants. We need to stop her.

Obama Disrespects our country (again again)

Obama is the President of the United States, which we as Americans say is the greatest Country in the world, a Country that bows to no other.

Obama won't put his hand on his heart for our country. But he will bow to foreign leaders, bringing shame to our country.

And he apparently is the only head of state to do so, as this animated picture shows:


I am getting sick and tired of our President denigrating our country, apologizing for all of us for things that deserve no apology, selling out our principles for marxists and socialists, turning our country into a laughingstock of the world.

Obama Disrespects our country (again)

During the election, a picture was circulated showing that Obama refused to salute the American flag during the playing of our national anthem.

At the time, some people argued that it wasn't universally accepted that one should put their hands on their heart for the anthem, but only when saying the pledge.

This even though anybody who's been at a ball game, or at the entrance to a theme park, knows better.

But now Obama is the President of the United States. As such, he's not just being himself, he's representing all of us.

And still he disrespects the flag, and our country:



Unless, of course, his heart is in his, well, you know.

Obama's lies exposed again.

Let me get this straight. Saturday, Obama says the House bill, as written, meets all his qualifications. One of those qualifications he's been making is that the bill did not fund abortions.

Saturday night, the Stupak Amendment passes. This amendment bans abortion funding from the House bill that Obama claimed already had none.

In response to the Stupak Amendment, abortion rights advocates are livid:

Abortion rights advocates called the measure the biggest setback to women's reproductive rights in decades.

So Obama promises a bill that has no tax money for abortion. Obama claims the House bill meets that promise. An amendment is passed which removes abortion from the bill. Abortion advocates denounce the amendment for setting back women's reproductive rights.

Is there any wonder why a majority of Americans no longer trust President Obama to tell us the truth about health care? Obama lies with such audacity that Bill Clinton is a piker in comparison. Obama's promises about ANYTHING cannot be trusted -- he is constantly taking back his promises, be it on Afghanistan, taxing the middle class, missle defense, closing Guantanamo -- you name it, Obama has lied about it.


BTW: Currently, many insurance policies offer abortion. Perversely, because the democrats are taking over our health care, many more people will need government subsidies to afford the higher costs of insurance, so many people will lose abortion coverage, since they now have it in a private coverage, but with Obamacare they won't be able to afford their premiums, they'll have to take government subsidies, and therefore will be unable to get abortion coverage.

The government has no business screwing around with, or funding, the nation's medical insurance. If the government would keep it's nose out of our affairs, we wouldn't have to pass abortion funding bans, because government wouldn't be funding anything to begin with.

And as much as I loathe abortion (killing babies just doesn't appeal to me like it does to Nancy Pelosi), I really would like ALL of us to not have tax dollars pay for our health insurance.

Democrat's Health "Reform" - Robbing Peter to Pay Paul

The Washington Times re-iterates a fundamental goal of the Democrats in the "health care reform" bill: "Young Adults Could Face Sharp Rise":

Young adults, a group that helped elect President Obama last fall, could have the highest costs to bear but the most to gain under the health care overhaul proposals in Congress.

The reform bills require insurance companies to reduce the disparities between what they charge the young and the old, with potential to dramatically raise prices for young adults.

Young people don't need health insurance as it exists today. They mostly just need catastrophic coverage, to cover for the really unexpected event like a car accident, a heart attack, or some other rare medical problem.

But state insurance regulations often force policies to cover all sorts of things that young people don't care about -- like a single male having to pay extra to cover Erectile Disfunction, Birth Control pills, abortion and gynecological services, and long-term nursing care.

This is why so many people are uninsured -- the kids just don't see a benefit worth the cost:

Young adults have often been overlooked in the battle to extend health insurance coverage to all Americans. They have the highest rate of uninsured status of all age groups, either because they can't afford it on fresh-from-college salaries or they hope that their age will save them from high-cost medical care. A 2008 study by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that young adults, ages 19 to 29, make up 29 percent of the uninsured population in the United States.

But at least the insurance companies are allowed to sell the over-blown policies to the young people at a cost less than that for people who will actually USE their services.

Americans understand the principle. If you are a young driver, you pay more for car insurance because you will tend to have more accidents. Life Insurance costs more as you get older, or if you have a history of heart disease, or are a smoker, because you will likely die sooner. Homeowners insurance gives you discounts if you have smoke detectors, better locks, and a fire hydrant nearby, because your house is less likely to burn completely.

But medical insurance is already skewed, mostly by employer-based programs. Because while many companies DO charge more for their older employees, it is generally based on salary, and isn't nearly enough of a difference to reflect the actual costs. That's because it isn't offered as a cost-effective insurance, but as an EMPLOYMENT BENEFIT.

Now, the democrats want to force the same thing on ALL MEDICAL INSURANCE.:

"Allowing insurers to charge older Americans vastly higher premiums simply because of their age is discrimination, pure and simple," Mr. Kerry said. "Insurers must compete based on price, value and customer satisfaction, not by avoiding Americans based on their age or health."

But in true socialist government form, the democrats insist that charging young people a lot more for their insurance won't be a problem -- Because they will get taxpayer-funded subsidies:

But proponents say that much of the new costs young people would face would likely be picked up by tax subsidies that are being designed to help low- and middle-income people buy coverage.

The current plans call for subsidies to be available to individuals and families with incomes up to 400 percent of the federal poverty level. This year, that level is $10,830 for an individual and $22,050 for a family of four.

If this wasn't going to increase the deficit, the end result instead would be that government regulation would drive up costs for everybody, but force insurers to take less money from old people and more money from young people, while old people had to simultaneously pay more taxes so that the government could take the money and give it to young people so they could pay for the higher insurance costs.

The key being that this has nothing to do with health care, and EVERYTHING to do with having 85% of the people in this country dependent on the government giving them money. Because once everybody needs the government to survive, the Democrats will have all the power they crave to tell people what to do, like forcing them to by unncessary medical insurance.

McDonnell gets two endorsements

The one is a positive endorsement from the Manassas News/Messenger.

The second endorsement is that the Washington Post endorsed Creigh Deeds. Since the WP endorsement is based solely on the willingness to raise taxes, that's one endorsement McDonnell neither could get, or would want.

The Post tries to also make their endorsement about McDonnell's "thesis". But their hypocrisy on that point makes their argument for Deeds worse -- just three months ago the WP said the opposite things about McDonnell, based on his record, from what they say now.

Since the WP has been writing for the past month for the sole purpose of providing quotes for Creigh Deeds to use in his advertisements, there really was no question they would endorse the man they endorsed in the Democratic primary -- in for a penny, in for a pound.

More on the endorsements later.

Health Care Reform -- Bribes and Punishment

All you need to know about the corruption of Washington DC, and the danger of allowing the Federal Government to meddle in our private affairs, can be found in a Washington Post article (Sunday, October 18, 2009), mockingly headlined "Medical Device Makers Court Unlikely Allies". I say "mockingly" because the facts reveal something more of a shotgun wedding born out of spitefulness, hatred, and anger rather than mutual respect:

But the two camps have come together to defend a powerful home-state industry in the political doghouse: medical device firms.

The companies, whose products range from $3,000 heart stents to $30,000 implantable defibrillators, refused to offer direct financial concessions earlier this year to help pay for health-care reform, unlike drugmakers, hospitals and other health- care players.

The move angered Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee, who view the industry as a key contributor to soaring health-care costs, and led the panel to approve a $40 billion fee on device makers over the next 10 years.

So a private industry providing useful services to the people of our country was "asked" to "voluntarily" change what they charged for their product, and they rightly told the feds to stick to their constitutional authority.

And the democrats got ANGRY, because someone dared to stand up to their authority. And they decided to punish those who made them angry, by using the power of government to tax them, thus driving up the costs of the medical devices to the people who need them most.

And what will those taxes paid for by the citizens be used for? To pay off those other industries who bowed down to the democrats and did what they were told.

This article also reveals the inconvenient truth about rising health care costs. Our costs are going up not because things are getting more expensive, but because we have businesses offering NEW treatments and NEW hope for people with medical problems.

In the case of the medical device manufacturers, their devices are making people's lives better, and people are willing to pay money for the new treatments. Nobody is forcing anybody do pay for this, you could always pretend it was 10 years ago and the devices weren't available. But why wouldn't you pay money for something better? Well, the democrats don't think that makes any sense at all:

The industry's efforts are made more difficult by evidence that the push to sell pricey medical devices, from artificial joints to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines, has been a significant contributor to skyrocketing health-care costs in the United States. One manufacturer, New Jersey-based ReGen Biologics, has come under fire for aggressively lobbying the Food and Drug Administration to gain approval for a knee-surgery device.

It makes it sound like we don't need or want these devices. But another dirty little secret -- state governments force medical insurance plans to cover things like this, because of lobbying pressure, and then since it "doesn't cost anything", doctors will approve the devices.

But instead of actually reforming how we deliver health care, the democrats are pushing more regulation, more distortion of the costs. They don't care that medical devices may be unnecessary -- instead they are going to TAX them, which means the government will be MORE LIKELY to include these devices in health insurance requirements, because the government will need the tax dollars.

Steven Nissen, chief of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic, called device makers "a Wild, Wild West" industry that uses aggressive marketing, including confidential payments to doctors, to drive up demand for its products. "Given the way they have encouraged overutilization, it makes sense that some of that should be given back to help bend the cost curve," he said.

Why not ban "confidential payments" to doctors? Because the suggestion that doctors are doing unncessary surgery against their patient wishes simply because they get bribes has already been shown to be false -- it's just a canard used to argue that there is a problem that needs to be fixed.

This is the democrat's message. You can't trust your doctors, they area on the take. You can't trust the companies that have made life-saving drugs for you, they just want to make money. You can't trust your insurance company, you can't trust your nurses, you can't trust the hospital.

But you CAN trust 58 democrats in the Senate to do what is right for you, because they would never act out of anger to punish their adversaries. Oh wait, they just did.

Creigh Deeds -- Tearing down Virginia's Universities.

Creigh Deeds, desperate to get liberals in Northern Virginia to vote for him, while not turning off the rest of Virginia, is running targeted ads attacking a solid Virginia University in Virginia Beach.

In the ad, Creigh Deeds claims that we should vote for Deeds rather than McDonnell because McDonnell attended Regent University, which Deeds derisively misnames.

Regent University is an accredited university which graduated over 1000 students last year, including many Virginia residents, all of whom must wonder what Creigh Deeds has against them, since Deeds is telling prospective employees that in Deeds' opinion, they shouldn't be hired.

Regent University (its undergraduate school and graduate schools) is accredited or certified by the following bodies:

Regent University is accredited by the Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools to award associates, baccalaureate, masters, and doctorate degrees. Contact the Commission on Colleges at 1866 Southern Lane, Decatur, Georgia 30033-4097 or call 404.679.4500 for questions about the accreditation of Regent University.
Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) www.chea.org

The State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV)—certification of the Commonwealth of Virginia. www.schev.edu

The Association of Theological Schools in the United States and Canada (ATS), accredits the School of Divinity. The Commission on Accrediting of the Association of Theological Schools, 10 Summit Park Drive, Pittsburgh, PA 15275. www.ats.edu

The American Bar Association (ABA), accredits the School of Law. The Accreditation Committee and the Council of the Section, 321 N. Clark St., Chicago, IL 60610. www.abanet.org

The American Psychological Association (APA), accredits the psychology programs of the School of Psychology & Counseling. Office of Program Consultation and Accreditation, 750 First Street, NE, Washington, DC 20002-4242. www.apa.org

The Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP), accredits the counseling programs of the School of Psychology & Counseling. 5999 Stevenson Avenue, Alexandria, VA 22304. www.cacrep.org

The Regent University School of Education's educational leadership and teacher preparation programs, which are designed to prepare competent, caring, and qualified professional educators is accredited by the Teacher Education Accreditation Council for a period of five years, from January 9, 2009 to January 9, 2014. This accreditation certifies that the educational leadership and teacher preparation programs have provided evidence that they adhere to TEAC's quality principles. Teacher Educational Accreditation Council, One Dupont Circle, Suite 320, Washington, DC, 20036, phone 202.466.7236. www.teac.org/

Apparently, Creigh Deeds thinks he knows more than these organizations, and believes that people who graduate from this Virginia University should be treated as 2nd-class citizens, held up to ridicule and mocking by political candidates who want to be Governor.

This is rediculous. How could we put a man into the Governorship who has so blatantly attacked thousands of our young men and women who worked so hard to earn college degrees from our own universities?

Creigh Deeds - Unfit for Duty

Does Creigh Deeds hate Virginia's universities?

How else would you explain Deeds telling his campaign to launch an attack on the graduates and leadership of an accredited Virginia University?

In a commercial that Deeds must pray is only seen by liberals in Northern Virginia, Deeds attacks McDonnell for attending Regent University in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Deeds then attacks McDonnell for serving on the board for the University for 7 years. Imagine any other candidate trying to attack someone for serving a Virginia institute of higher learning.

Here are the current list of trustees. I'm guessing none of them are going to vote for Deeds, after he essentially put them all down:

Mr. G. Conoly Phillips, Chairman
Bishop Wellington Boone
Dr. Benjamin S. Carson
Adm. Vernon E. Clark (USN Ret.)
Dr. Chauncey Crandell
Mrs. Roberta Eldred
Mr. Jim L. Funari
Mr. Joseph R. Gregory
Mrs. Roberta P. Hromas
Mr. Thomas J. Knox Jr.
Dr. Kay Peng Khoo
Mr. Michael D. Little
Mr. Howard W. Long
Mr. William L. Maynard
Mrs. Cheryl McLeskey
Mr. David V. Melilli
Mr. Lowell W. Morse
Mrs. Dede Robertson
Dr. M. G. Robertson
Mr. Timothy B. Robertson
Mr. Thomas M. Saltsgiver
Dr. Jay A. Sekulow
Mr. Daniel C. Sellers Jr.
Mr. Robert O. Snelling Sr.

Let's just look at one of these people that Creigh Deeds apparently thinks is unfit for duty because he's a trustee at Regent University -- Admiral Vernon Clark:

Admiral Clark served aboard the destroyers USS John W. Weeks (DD 701) and USS Gearing (DD 710). As a Lieutenant, he commanded USS Grand Rapids (PG 98). He subsequently commanded USS McCloy (FF 1038), USS Spruance (DD 963), the Atlantic Fleet's Anti-Submarine Warfare Training Center, Destroyer Squadron Seventeen, and Destroyer Squadron Five. After being selected for flag rank, Admiral Clark commanded Carl Vinson Battle Group/Cruiser Destroyer Group Three, Second Fleet, and United States Atlantic Fleet.

Let's skip ahead:

Admiral Clark has also served as the Deputy and Chief of Staff, United States Atlantic Fleet; the Director of Operations (J3) and subsequently Director, of the Joint Staff.
Admiral Clark became the 27th Chief of Naval Operations on July 21, 2000, relieving Admiral Jay L. Johnson. In 2001, Clark was considered to be on the "short list" of choices for Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; the eventual pick was Air Force Gen Richard Myers [1]

Wow, he was almost the Chairman of the JCOS, but Creigh Deeds thinks he's unfit for duty because he's a trustee at Regent University.

Admiral Clark's personal decorations include the Defense Distinguished Service Medal (three awards), the Navy Distinguished Service Medal (two awards), the Legion of Merit (three awards), the Defense Meritorious Service Medal, the Meritorious Service Medal (four awards), the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal, and various service and campaign awards, including the Joint Meritorious Unit Award (two awards), Navy Unit Commendation, Navy Meritorious Unit Commendation, Battle Efficiency Award (two awards), National Defense Service Medal (three awards), Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal, Vietnam Service Medal (two campaigns), Southwest Asia Service Medal (one campaign), Sea Service Deployment Ribbon (six awards), and Navy and Marine Corps Overseas Service Ribbon

But forget all those awards and honors. Creigh Deeds says that Admiral Clark is unfit for duty, because he's a trustee at Regent University.

Since his retirement, Clark has been honored with the Eisenhower Award from the Business Executives of North America and the Distinguished Sea Service Award from the Naval Order of the United States. Clark was elected to the board of directors of Raytheon in December 2005 and the board of directors of SRI International in March 2007.[

Raytheon and SRI International think Admiral Clark's an OK guy, but they must be wrong, because Creigh Deeds says this man is unfit for duty.

But you know, maybe Creigh Deeds is the one who is unfit for duty.