~~By InsightAnalytical-GRL
About two weeks ago, then President-elect Obama vowed this:
Obama Pledges to Reform Social Security
By JENNIFER LOVEN
AP
WASHINGTON (Jan. 7) – President-elect Barack Obama said Wednesday that reforming massive government entitlement programs — such as Social Security and Medicare — would be “a central part” of his effort to control federal spending.
(SNIP)
Noting that the Congressional Budget Office had just estimated he would inherit a $1.2 trillion federal deficit for fiscal 2009, Obama promised to cut unnecessary spending.
“We expect that discussion around entitlements will be a part, a central part of those plans,” Obama said. “And I would expect that by February in line with the announcement of at least a rough budget outline we will have more to say about how we’re going to approach entitlement spending.”
My first response was, “Gee, instead of holding half of the money from the bailout funds until it’s time for Congress to run for re-election in 2010 and using the rest for pork barrel spending now (mainly to banks and little “gifts” to various groups he’ll need in 2012), wouldn’t it be great if the damned cash could be used to create a real healthcare system instead of looking at already strained programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security to “reform”? Maybe look at a system which would save businesses money, maybe keep more jobs at home, etc. etc.???” Too simple, I know…the Wall Streeters and banks need to be at the feeding trough first and get their mitts deeper into these programs…
So, since we’re not going to get REAL healthcare improvements, we should wonder how Obama Administration will address THIS issue…
From the American Association for Health Freedom’s January 6th, 2009 edition of Pulse of Health Freedom newsletter :
Now, Health Freedom Watch reports that a lawsuit has been filed to challenge the withholding of social security benefits from seniors who decline Medicare Part A. Kent Masterson Brown, an important constitutional attorney, believes that this Social Security policy is illegal because “forced participation in Medicare infringes on a citizen’s right to privacy and to make necessary choices about his or her own health care, and, accordingly, violates the First, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution.”
The three plaintiffs in the lawsuit say that forced participation in Medicare Part A interferes with their doctor-patient relationship and their choice of a hospital. While these plaintiffs have catastrophic health coverage insurance and savings to pay for their hospital care, one of the plaintiffs, Norman Rogers, stressed in a National Press Club news conference that the physicians who care for his parents, who are in a nursing home, face restrictions from Medicare in how they conduct their professional practice. Medicare is infamous for reams of regulations that dictate care, often in contradiction of the doctor’s professional opinion and the patient’s right to choose.
With every indication that there will be a push for government funded and administrated healthcare for all Americans, the limited healthcare freedom of choice faced by Medicare and Medicaid recipients is a lesson that consumers and practitioners alike should heed. Read the AAHF position paper regarding private contracting under Medicare Part B to educate yourself about healthcare freedom of choice under government-administered health insurance.
Will the Administration let people opt out? After all, Obama is the guy who isn’t for “universal healthcare” anyway. Or, will they fight the suit with the aim of perhaps further penalizing people, like we are now penalized in $$ if you don’t sign up for Medicare Part D Prescription Drug Coverage immediately (and Part D is a huge shuffling of money around for which we are paying through the nose)?? It would be a nice source of extra cash if they could levy huge “fees” on people who still wanted to opt out, no matter what the cost.
So, there’s another thing to be watching for especially if you’re on Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, etc. And there are rumblings about disability benefits as well. Wonder what Mr. Constitutional Lawyer Obama thinks about this suit, if he even know if it exists? (After all, he wasn’t even sure about that executive order involving Gitmo…) Where does all this fit in his plans for healthcare “reform”??
The question is not just about cutting spending…it’s about what is jeopardized in terms of care. Do you trust Obama, Tom Daschle or the Democrats in Congress with YOUR health?
I sure don’t…
Filed under: Current Politics | Tagged: American Association for Health Freedom, bailout, Barack Obama, Congress, Democrats, disability, Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, First Amendment to the Constitution, Fourteenth Ammendment to the Constitution, Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, Gitmo, Guantanamo Bay, Kent Masterson Brown, Medicaid, Medicare, Medicare Part A, Medicare Part D (Prescription Drug Coverage), Ninth Amendment to the Constitution, Pulse of Health Freedom newsletter, Social Security reform, Tom Daschle |
InsightAnalytical -- Watching Our World 
[…] Obama’s Entitlement “Reform”– the Social Security-Medicare Nexus … […]
The one consistent thing I have found while doing research for my mother’s cancer is this:
The American “health care” system is designed to bilk the most money our of the most people while providing the least cures possible.
Cabal is the only term that applies. It is mind-numbing to discover that the average Oncologist in this country makes $800,000 per year for poisoning people. Any treatment that actually cures cancer or causes extended remission is not only rejected out of hand, but intentionally buried and even legally barred from use if a drug company cannot patent it and make TRILLIONS of dollars a year off of it.
I will be writing much more on this soon, but in the meantime do yourself a favor. Grab your prescription drug (or that of a family member or significant other) and take a look at that sheet of paper that’s in 6 point type with all the medical symbols for the chemicals on it. Now I know this is a pain, but read through it. I will bet you that at least one of two things will be true:
1) There will be some very unpleasant side effect buried in the fine print that neither your doctor or pharmacist discussed with you.
2) At least one of the possible side effects will be exactly what you are taking drug to eliminate.
There is by my own estimation about one doctor in several thousand who genuinely wants to cure your disease. The rest may have started out that way, but between HMOs, EPOs, PPOs, and the SOBs at phamaceutical companies nearly all of them have had that beat out of them. It’s all about either the money, doing whatever creates the least paperwork, or both.
Now ask yourself exactly what Barack Obama will bring to that equation. Yeah. Exactly.
GG,
One of the things I am proud of at my department at my hospital, is that we have banned drug reps from the site. We have also banned accepting any gifts – ANY pens, clocks, note pads, stick pins, pill boxes, lunches, dinners, breakfasts, snacks….
There were several objections to this move. But not by the people of honor. And it was easy to see who were those easily bought by the corporations.
Yup,”I could finally say I am proud of my company”…. ummmm…. hospital
what is going on with wordpress today????
Grail, your comment brings back some very painful memories for me. After a radical mastectomy, I had five years of poisons put into my system both by infusion and orally. Top this off with radiation, and I ended up with my immune system destroyed and my bones weakened to the point that my legs wouldn’t hold up my body. After the fall that hospitalized me tests showed that I was cancer free, but the treatment had left me needing long term physical therapy. How long I had been cancer free, I don’t know. But I do know that the oncologist still had me taking a very powerful (and very expensive) drug that, along with the radiology was literally killing me. I had been having bone scans, CT scans, and MRIs every six months , and was told the cancer was still there, and spreading. Had my primary care physician not taken over and order his own tests I might still be taking those strong drugs. I think the drug companies control our treatment and if we only stopped to think why everything in the Dr.’s office has a brand name on it, and why we get a new prescription every time we go to the Dr., we would question every prescription they give us. This is what I do now. I question EVERY thing that I am told to put into my body now, and research every drug that is suggested to me. If the treatment is worse than the disease, sometimes you’re better off without the treatment.
Even after I was pronounced cancer free the oncologists insisted that I continue taking one powerful drug that I absolutely refused. He tried using the scare tactic that if even a minute bit of cancer was still circulating in my blood stream it could attach itself to any one of my organs and start growing again. I chose to disregard this advice and my last three sessions of tests have been positive.
The drug companies don’t want us to get better and cut off their lucrative source of income. It’s mostly about the money, Grail, I’m convinced of this, and Obama is not going to do anything to change things. If anything look for it to get worse. Money talks, and the pharmaceutical industry is BIG money. This is why there is no research into trying to find a natural remedy that might cure cancer. There is no money in it.
IA,
Thanks for this post. I believe it touches on a subject that affects every family in America, and I don’t think our new president will do a darned thing about the disgrace that our medical system is.
Social Security: The Phony Crisis
Dean Baker and Mark Weisbrot
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/035468.html
Mark Twain once said that a lie can get halfway around the world before the truth even gets its shoes on, and it’s hard to find a more compelling example than the lie about Social Security’s finances. Despite the fact that none of the numbers cited here are a matter of dispute, the public has been overwhelmingly convinced that Social Security is in deep trouble. According to a February 1998 poll by Peter Hart Research, 60 percent of non retired Americans expect Social Security to pay much lower benefits or no benefits at all when they retire. The proportion is even higher, at 72 percent, for people aged 18-34.
Ironically, the only real threat to Social Security comes not from any fiscal or demographic constraints but from the political assaults on the program by would-be “reformers.” If not for these attacks, the probability that Social Security “will not be there” when anyone who is alive today retires would be about the same as the odds that the U.S. government will not be there. The latter event is, of course, a possibility, but not enough of a likelihood that most people would plan their retirement around it.
GW initiated the fine art of choosing your words carefully – for the New World of “optical politics.” As a former adviser of his has since authored a whole book on the topic – “It’s Not What you Say, It’s What People Hear” (may not be accurate title but has the same meaning.
bho is already trying to run his phraseology through focus groups first – not to find out what people want – but to find out how to use words to trick and deceive the public into thinking they’re getting something good.
Current example: “Social Security Reform” Watch out for the real meaning behind the nice words.
As for Reforming “Entitlement” how about the new SCHIP they’re racing through – giving health care benefits to children of immigrant aliens – I can’t afford Health Care.. should taxpayer dollars be used to supply it free for whoever enters our borders? Already predictions of the pressure on health care providers – due to these millions of freeloaders – indicate a near collapse of the overburdened system.
So, to answer the ? should we trust bho with Health Care Reform? I’d sooner buy the Brooklyn bridge (if only mortgage $ were available.)
I kinda thought you’d agree with me, Jacquerie re “trusting ” Obama!! LOL!!
Leslie,
I am amazed to hear about what your hospital (or at least your dept.) is doing considering you are in Chicago. You give me a flicker of hope that there may be a chance yet…
Lee,
I am so sorry that you had to go through that ordeal, but I am also glad that you survived it and learned the truth. It amazes me how many times we go back for more (myself included) from these dispensers of designer drugs. As I write this there is an ad playing on TV using scare tactics to ask people to look into the Governor’s tax cuts before he closes more hospitals (21 have been closed over the past 8 years the ad cautions). Do I smell another bailout? Yup. The odor has become unmistakable. We all need to develop a better sense of smell (or learn to trust the one we have). Perhaps the medical/health care scam will be what we can use to open the eyes of the sheeple to the dangers that Obama and the Democratic Congress pose.
The posts this week have blown me out of the water!
I have been too tied up at work, with work to be able to read them thoroughly. But this weekend, after running all the errands that the goddesses will allow, I’ll be able to give my real attention to reading and digesting these posts.
Grl. the depth of research and the total integrity of what you report about puts most of our media to shame. I am very proud to be a part of this blog.
No, I don’t trust the government with my health care. From a purely actuarial standpoint, single payer health care is the optimal solution. However, we also have to consider who would be running such a system: our corrupt government. Right now in Texas, only 1/3 of primary care physicians accept new Medicare beneficiaries. My mother spent a week looking for a doctor in Texas and eventually ended up going to a cash-only practice. So much for Medicare.
This is my fear for single payer health care in the United States. The government would raise taxes through the roof to pay for it, only to have health care providers overwhelmingly reject it. So we’d essentially be back to where we started, only with much higher taxes.
Bill,
The only way it can work is if the health care providers become employees of the system. Which is more or less what we have right now, except it’s not the government running it, it’s corporations deciding on your diagnosis.
The only way for the health care system in this country to work is for more people to say “screw it” and go to cash only or barter docs like your Mom. Once we realize that we aren’t suffering from every disease we see on tee vee and only go to the doctor when there’s actually something wrong, we might get back on track. A doc whose livelihood depends on customers might get back to actually trying to cure some patients once in a while before he loses his customers.