Obamacare

It’s something deeply embedded in the American psyche. There’s an innate stubbornness Americans have in the face of adversity. These last three years have forged a new breed of American… much tougher and much, much more skeptical.

America has watched as its own sworn leadership has turned upon us, leaving economic chaos and destruction in its wake. Policy after policy, specifically designed to kill jobs in the private sector and foster an ever more dependent population.

If you want to see what the Marxists here have in store for us, if you want to see Obamacare in action, look at Great Britain. I have friends who believe that there won’t even be a Britain in another twenty years. Look well, America… this is what happens when a country loses the will to live… this is the face of socialism. It’s not a happy face, and it’s not a very pleasant way to live, either.

We’ve gotten a really scary look into what it would be like, in that this last three years have been the darkest economic times we’ve had since the Great Depression. We keep hearing all of the Obamanoids telling us how the recession ended last summer. I don’t think so. All I’ve seen it do is get worse. More people losing jobs, more foreclosures, more businesses forced to close. Makes you wonder why they’re not calling it a depression… silly me.

What is going to be real trouble for Democrats in general, is that now the American people have had a good opportunity to educate themselves about just exactly what has gone on since 2008. Well, let’s just say it’s not Bush. That excuse worked for about two weeks.

No amount of leftist polling can hide the fact that the numbers are plummeting for Barack Hussein Obama and his DeMarxists in the Congress. Every single thing this bunch has done has been, and is, an unmitigated disaster. It’s one of the reasons the left is so strident about the Republican presidential candidates they see as the greatest potential threats.

Americans are smarter and tougher as a result of this unnamed depression. The DeMarxists are going to find out just how tough and just how smart.

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2011

-By Warner Todd Huston

The debate about healthcare coming from the Democrats is steeped in purposeful misdirection on one hand and a complete lack of any real knowledge about what Obamacare will even do on the other. It is also a major overreach on a federalism level which is why it is hard to understand why more people aren't talking about the Healthcare Compact plan (healthcarecompact.org).14 states have already signed onto it and has even been signed into law in two of them, Georgia and Oklahoma.

Of course, the problem is that we are expected to believe that Obamacare -- which is essentially a nationalized healthcare policy -- will work just fine on a national level. Despite that history has proven over and over again that centralized planning simply does not work, most especially with something as unwieldy and complicated as healthcare.

It doesn't help that we are not being told the truth by those pushing Obama’s plan, either. Many times the president has claimed that with Obamacare you can "keep your health care plan” if you like it, you can keep your doctor if you like him. This, however, has been generously called a "questionable" promise. And that isn’t the only untruth coming from Obamacare supporters.

Just this week it was revealed that as much as 30% of the businesses in America that offer their employees healthcare plans will stop that practice once Obamacare kicks in. This number is likely low, too, as once bigger businesses start to jettison their healthcare plans it will start a snowball rolling down hill that will gather up nearly every other business with it.

Even the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is compromised at this on in the debate. The CBO has just hired an Obamacare pusher straight from the White House to become the CBO's deputy assistant director in its Health and Human Resources (HHR) Office. This woman, Melinda Beeuwkes, has been an advocate of Obamacare, worked to push Obamacare in Obama's administration, and has been a large donor to Democrats and Obama both.

Yet the CBO thinks this woman can provide, "objective, nonpartisan, and timely analyses to aid in economic and budgetary decisions on the wide array of programs covered by the federal budget." This does not fill one with confidence that even the CBO can be unbiased.

It seems fairly clear at this point that America has been sold a bill of goods with Obamacare and no holds are barred to push its unpopular and ineffective policies. So, what is to be done?

The Health Care Compact could be that answer.

As the website says:

The Health Care Compact is an interstate compact – which is simply an agreement between two or more states that is consented to by Congress – that restores authority and responsibility for health care regulation to the member states (except for military health care, which will remain federal), and provides the funds to the states to fulfill that responsibility.

The idea here is that the states will band together and share resources. They will cooperate with regulatory efforts, share demographic data, and insurance information to assist their own legislatures to better respond to the healthcare needs of their own citizens.

Importantly, the compact will assist states to make healthcare decisions locally as opposed to having healthcare decisions made in far away Washington D.C. In fact, this limited government, local control concept is exactly the sort of idea that fits perfectly with the ideas of our founders. It is the perfect 10th Amendment-style idea.

As I said, two governors have already signed the compact into law. When he signed the bill in his state Governor Nathan Deal of Georgia said, "a large majority of Georgians believe that we here are better equipped to manage our state’s health care needs than a one-size-fits-all plan under Obamacare."

Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin also signed onto the compact. She did so because she felt Obamacare did not meet the needs of her state. She felt that Obamacare failed because it did not "give states more flexibility to design and implement health care programs to fit the specific needs of their citizens."

Texas Governor Rick Perry has also spoken in favor of The Health Care Compact.

This Health Care Compact idea is intriguing and is well worth a try before we are inundated with the travesty that is Obamaare built of socialist ideas that have been proven to fail over and over again.

I urge you to contact your state senators and state representatives and encourage them to get on board with The Health Care Compact immediately. Providing states with the authority for their own federal health care dollars is a clear solution to Obamacare.

Some of the emotion that must have consumed Francis Scott Key, the night that he penned what was to become the sacred anthem of our country, has rubbed off on me. I can imagine what it must have looked like. Anybody who has ever been in the infantry knows about night time illumination and pyrotechnics. I’ve always thought it would make quite a show if it weren’t so deadly.

Francis Scott Key beholds the American flag still flying over Fort McHenry at dawn, September 14, 1814. Inspired by the sight, Key pens the "Star Spangled Banner", later to become the national anthem of the United States. Image courtesy of Library of Congress.

The British Navy, the most powerful military machine in the world, couldn’t defeat Ft. McHenry. Other accounts told of uncounted numbers of bombs, rockets and mortar shells lighting the night sky and falling on the fortress. At the height of the British bombardment, Key looked up to see our flag still flying.

We are watching the 112th Congress hit the ground running, with all, or most, of the conservative agenda plainly marked in the Republican arsenal. We have just come through our own two year Fort McHenry. The Conservative Republican banner is flying high above the Capitol once more. Don’t screw it up this time guys. An immediate vote to repeal Obamacare stands a darned good chance of passing the House, reflecting the Conservative promise to quickly illuminate lawmakers’ stances on the bill by calling for the quick vote.

Many Democrats may be reluctant to be seen supporting the health bill. With more than 60% of Americans opposing government health care it has quickly become the new third rail of American politics, right up there with the deficit. It would be a very rocky road for the repeal in the Senate but, as wacky as Senate politics can be, who knows?

Pass or not, it is but the first shot across the bow of the Marxist minority. The next move will be to choke the life out of Obamacare and some of these runaway rogue agencies and bureaucracies. Spending has got to be slashed at all levels of government.

‘Inquiries’ into the money trails from TARP and the various stimulus disasters should be undertaken, to see how much of that money can be tracked, retrieved and returned to the American people.

The Marxists will use all the usual tired assaults, but the 112th Congress need only remember one thing… be the party of No! Let them bleat and whine. Do not give an inch. We do not compromise with treason.

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2011

-By Warner Todd Huston

In a few days the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is expected to release its final decision on whether or not 17,000 women across the country will have the same access to the breast cancer drug Avastin that they now have. Several congressmen, thousands of doctors and patients, and many small government activists stand against this perceived example of Obamacare-like rationing.

As reported last week, with this Avastin situation five Congressmen have become alerted to the threat that government is instituting cost-based rationing of healthcare and have become alarmed at the effects that will have on the sick. It seems that this FDA decision will set the table for the rationing war to come under Obamacare unless that legislation is repealed or inhibited.

Avastin is, admittedly, an expensive drug. But are we ready for government to decide if your lifesaving medicines are “too expensive” to be allowed for use? Is that the cost-based road down which we wish to travel? And how far down that road do we go? How much cost-cutting do we want government to indulge where it concerns our health? And should government even have that role in the first place?

These are questions that the Avastin decision evokes.

Aside from the letter mentioned above written by the five congressmen, Representative Jack Kingtson also sent a letter to Chairman Rosa DeLauro of the House Appropriations Committee, Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Dev., FDA, and Related Agencies. Rep. Kingston asked the chair to schedule an oversight hearing on Avastin.

Because of the implications of removing the breast cancer indication from the Avastin label on women currently undergoing treatment, I believe it is imperative that we hold a hearing on Avastin during the upcoming lame duck session.

Mr. Kingston is worried that the FDA is moving hastily and so are many doctors and patients. Sadly, Rep. DeLauro has ignored Mr. Kingston's request. She is a great supporter of rationing and Obamacare after all.

The son of one such patient recently wrote an op ed in The Hill pleading with the FDA not to end support for the drug with which his mother is finding success. Josh Turnage ended his piece saying, "The FDA can still change course and preserve the right of breast cancer patients to make an informed choice. If someone you loved were diagnosed with breast cancer, wouldn't you want the right to choose this drug?"

Now, many of the critics of the drug's supporters say that it is fearmongering to worry about the FDA delisting the drug for breast cancer. The say that the limitation to just breast cancer will not impact the availability of the drug all that much. But this ignores the great impact that government action has on a thing.

Already several insurance companies are moving away from supporting the drug with just the threat of government action.

• Regence Blue Shield, the large regional plan in the Pacific Northwest recently published an Avastin policy listing the breast cancer treatment as “medically unnecessary.”
• Utah Public Employee Health Plan a small regional payer in Utah has begun to deny all Avastin claims but has not yet bothered to publish a written policy.
• Health Care Service Corporation the parent company of Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Illinois, New Mexico and Oklahoma recently published an Avastin policy that restricts use of Avastin.

Because of the government's actions -- even as limited as those actions are thus far -- thousands of patients are finding the availability of their drug being limited.

This is a perfect example of what will happen to the medical field if these sort of government actions increase under Obamacre. Please do call your representatives and senators on this issue before the Dec. 17 deadline and let them know how you feel.

(Here is a Roche Company update sent to investors on where they stand on the matter)

It’s a shame that we have to spend at least as much time watching ‘our side’ as we do the DeMarxists and the White House cabal. Yes, it is a shame, but if we think that a little thing like a historic power shift changes anything for some of these folks, we’d better guess again.

Unfortunately, as we’ve shown, vacuuming up pork is not a domain reserved for the Democrats. There are some of the elite ‘establishment’ Republicans who are not going to be willing to give up what they see as their prerogatives. These are the ones who should have listened to what the country was saying. If they paid attention it was only long enough to hitch a ride on the tail of the meteoric rise of the American Patriot movement. They were mouthing the right words, but there were some of us that were on the sarcastic side of suspicious.

We’ve since been proven unhappily correct, watching the antics of a few like Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe. All I guess that goes to prove is that they performed exactly as expected. I don’t know why we should act surprised. It does point out the the necessity of watching our ‘own’ as much as we watch the multiplicity of enemies who threaten our nation… from within or without.

There will be no compromise on liberty. There will be no accommodation on the conservative principles that swept us to office. The American people spoke in no uncertain terms. We want fiscal restraint and low tax rates to encourage business and new hiring. We want Obamacare repealed… repealed is not spelled ‘repaired’, either.

We want our borders controlled and the bad guys inside our country tracked down and rooted out. We want a military free of social engineering and politically correct policy detrimental to combat readiness and efficiency. But through it all, our eyes will be on you!

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2010

The American people have spoken: they don’t like ObamaCare. Or, at least they don’t like something that Obama and the Democrats have done over the last couple of years. Either way, Republicans have the House back. But the Democrats still hold the Senate and Presidency, so Republicans cannot simply roll back the damage of the last two years with impunity. They have to be a bit bipartisan. Hardcore Democrats have been salivating for socialized medicine for decades, so they are going to cling to their recent “progress” with great tenacity. To achieve counterrevolution, we will need something to satisfy some swing Democrats, a new plan which is more progressive than the pre-Obama system of tax free employer provided health insurance.

And frankly, that’s a good thing. The old system stank. It exacerbated the worst problems with health insurance. These are:

• If the poor have insufficient insurance, they clog up the emergency rooms or go on Medicaid.
• If everyone buys medical care using insurance money, we have no market for medicine.
• If people change policies or (worse) have gaps in coverage, we have the problem of preexisting conditions.

The old system magnified all three problems. A tax deduction is valuable to high income earners and of little value to the working poor. This provides incentive for employers with mostly high income earners to pay employees with excessive health insurance while employers with minimum wage earners to provide limited or no health insurance. This is backwards! Ideally, we want high income earners to self-insure for all but the most catastrophic illnesses. That way, we have a cash market for medical services which the insurance companies can observe in order to calibrate their payouts. Meanwhile, we want the working poor to have low copayments because they don’t have much cash on hand.

The old system clobbered those who change jobs often; every job change means an insurance change. Without these forced insurance changes, we would have a market for whole health insurance. An individual could be a group of 1, if he buys a whole health policy while young and healthy. These forced insurance changes are a real paperwork headache for those who change jobs frequently, and their employers. Considering that many of the working poor change jobs often, this headache impacts them and their employers the most. Finally, the overhead of providing health insurance is more significant for small businesses than big corporations which have a dedicated human resources department. The old system was a recipe for corporatism and wage serfdom.

A better solution would be to eliminate the tax deduction, and divide up the resulting revenue to give every citizen free money for health insurance. The money would be a voucher, a coupon if you will, to subsidize buying either individual or group coverage as you see fit. As long as the coupon is worth less than the policy in question, consumers experience the full marginal cost of buying a more expensive policy. We have a market! Consumers have full incentive to shop for the best deal.

But they also have incentive to buy at least minimal coverage. Go uninsured and your coupon expires worthless. I predict that the young and healthy will rush to use their coupons to buy whole health insurance, catastrophic insurance if we make the coupons the right amount.

I also predict that the more progressive Democrats will oppose the idea, even though it is progressive. The problem is: it would work, and true progressives want any semi-private system to fail so we can move on to a single-payer system. That said, Democrats in more conservative districts would have a hard time saying no.

That leaves President Obama. Would he stick to his progressive roots? Or would he yield like Clinton did in order to have a shot at reelection? It is hard to say. Of course, we wouldn’t have ObamaCare in the first place had Republicans gone to a voucher system for health insurance back when we had control…

-By Warner Todd Huston

Obama's Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is due to take up the case of Avastin, a cancer drug that successfully treats some 17,000 women annually. With a coming December 17 decision, the FDA seems poised to take this drug away from these patients quite despite the fact that their doctors find the drug effective.

The most dangerous period of time in Washington D.C. is that time we call the lame duck session (I call it the zombie congress; dead men walking). It is that time when those elected officials that are about to be ingloriously shipped off home for the last time due to losing election results make a mad scramble to grab for as much as they can get.

In the case of regulatory agencies like the FDA the lame duck session is not treated in exactly the same manner, but it is sure that when congress is about to have its majority party change over with the president's party on the losing side of the switch, regulatory agencies often try to push through favored policies before the new congress is seated and before that new congress is in a position to put any pressure on those agencies to prevent them from pushing the president's agenda.

We are currently seeing this lame duck scramble happening in Obama's regulatory agencies. The FCC was pushing its ruinous Net Neutrality ideas, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has been changing labor rules to favor unions, and the FDA is about to eliminate Avastin putting at risk the lives and cancer treatment regimens of thousands of women suffering from metastatic breast cancer.

Recently five members of congress sent a letter to FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg presenting their "serious concerns" over the hasty decision to take Avastin away from these breast cancer sufferers. The letter was signed by Representatives Kay Granger (R, TX); Rodney Alexander (R, LA); Jo Bonner (R, AL); Tom Latham (R, IA); and Dennis Rehberg (R, MT). (Download letter HERE)

These congressmen feel that if the FDA takes Avastin off the market for treating cancer it will be engaging in yet another "large-scale intrusion into Americans' lives and their personal health care decisions that have previously been left up to a patient and their health care provider."

It's hard to beat that logic, for sure.

The quintet of representatives related that Avastin has proven to be a viable treatment that helps over 17,000 patients manage their disease and "live more productive lives." Further the congressmen feel that the decision to eliminate Avastin is merely based on cost cutting and rationing instead of on any real medical basis. (My bold)

In addition to these facts, patients from all over the country have been sharing their stories in response to the very real threat o being denied further access to this treatment. Many patients have had miraculous results form Avastin and have been living disease-free for years. While there are certain risks associated with taking Avastin, most patients would agree that the biggest risk is the one associated with dying from their disease. We fail to see why this Administration would want to remove a viable treatment option that has the support of thousands of doctors and patients around the country. Limiting access to this treatment is unthinkable and we are struggling to see any justification other than cost.

The United States health care system is unrivaled anywhere else on the globe. Unlike other countries, where agencies like the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) [NICE is the British health care regulatory system - WTH] frequently deny patients access to treatments deemed not to be cost-effective, our system has provided patients with unparalleled access to innovative, cutting edge medical technologies that have improved the lives of millions of individuals. Perhaps most important, the decision about what course of treatment is best kept between the patient and their health care provider, not a group of bureaucrats whose mission is to contain costs. Nowhere has this been more prevalent than in the area of cancer, where the United States leads the world in survival rates because of a historical commitment to early diagnosis, introduction of innovative treatments, and strong government programs that provide coverage and access to these services. We are concerned that this decision is the beginning of eroding this successful system in a manner that will harm patients in order to save money i a health care system fraught with other inefficiencies that can be addressed without limiting patient choice.

The congressmen are worried that this move will be at the van of a wave of Obamacare-like decisions by government agencies that will threaten the "fundamental pillars of access, physician choice, and innovation that have led us to prominence" in our current health care system. The five wrap up their letter saying, "we express our strong concern that the current Administration is overreaching into the personal health care options of Americans."

It seems that the Avastin decision is the first major example of Obamacare rationing and cost-cutting measures all based on bean counting instead of medicine.

It must go down in history as one of the most delusional celebrations in history, ranking up there with the White Star Line directors hailing the maiden voyage of RMS Titanic as a success, or Napoleon claiming that Waterloo was his finest hour.

How Nancy Pelosi could celebrate the achievements of the 111th Congress, while keeping a straight face, is a total mystery to me. Going one incredulous step further, she announced her intention to remain as Minority Leader.

Historically, incumbent leaders have usually done the honorable thing after such a shellacking. Given that her Congress was possibly the most unpopular ever, perhaps she thinks that the disapproval of the public aimed at everyone else except her. After all, she does retain a lot of support in her own district. Uh… Nancy, it’s San Francisco. As my mother used to say, “You could put a donkey up there and they’d vote for it”.

Soon to be gavel-less, it will be interesting to see how things unravel from January. Her election as Leader draws me to one of two conclusions. Either the majority of the remaining Democrats intend to carry on attempting to push their agenda as if nothing had happened, with no hope of getting enough votes to proceed to the Senate, or they have given up the ghost entirely and don’t care who is leading them.

Pelosi’s overwhelming desire to hold on to authority is a classic example of the dictatorial Marxist philosophy that once you have power never relinquish it, regardless of the consequences to anyone else.

Her ideology, and that of her cohorts, is demonstrated by her reverse logic approach to Congressional proceedings. “You can see what’s in the bill after we pass it”. Similarly, Obama’s statement that we’ll see the benefits of Obamacare further down the road. Well, we have seen the evils contained in Pandora Pelosi’s box, and we don’t intend getting that far down the road to discover the hidden delights (not) of Obamacare.

I shouldn’t be griping about her, or Obama for that matter. We have now re-taken the House and they don’t have the ability to drive through their socialist plans any longer. Besides, the more they cling to their blindfolded ideologies, the easier it will be for us in 2012.

(Editor Dee is in for Skip today)

-By Warner Todd Huston

If anyone wants a current example of what is looming ahead for medical science at the hands of Obamacare, the Avastin controversy is a perfect one. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) wants to de-list the cancer drug Avastin one reason being that it is a drug too expensive for government to fund. It is scary to think that the federal government can summarily dismiss cancer drugs merely because of expense, but that is what happens when government starts counting the beans. It becomes an issue of cost instead of effectiveness.

There were other reasons that the FDA wants to dump Avastin, but cost was one of them. One of those that sat in judgment of Avastin admitted that cost was a factor in the decision to delegitimize the treatment. Natalie Compagni Portis, a member of one of the panels that the FDA convened to investigate the drug, said, "We aren't supposed to talk about cost, but that's another issue."

In some cases it costs as much as $88,000 annually for an Avastin breast cancer regimen, certainly not a cheap deal. But who is the government to decide that a lifesaving (or life extending or life changing) drug is too expensive for us to be allowed to use?

Imagine what this might mean for future experimental drug treatments? How many drug companies will continue pursuing new treatments when they begin to see the expense involved? How many promising drugs will be abandoned as companies become fearful that the costs of development will never be returned in sales because of government proscriptions?

Let's put it in different terms. Remember when flat screen TVs first came out? They often cost over $20,000 a set. Certainly only the very rich could afford such a ridiculously extravagant price for a mere television, right? But as more people clamored for them companies began to experiment on production techniques and the technology began to come down in price. More people bought flat screens when prices fell to $10,000, then $5,000, then $2,000 per set. Thanks to the profit motive more and more customers could finally afford flat screen TVs until today that is practically all you can buy, often they are under $1,000.

Now, imagine where our TV technology would be if the federal government stepped in and summarily decided that $20,000 was too much for a TV and prevented companies from selling products that were initially so highly priced? TV manufacturers would have instantly ceased experimenting and manufacturing the over priced products, prices would never have come down through competition and innovation, and today few people would have the benefit of a flat screen TV.

This example may seem trivial, but the drug manufacturing industry is not that much different than the example above. The fact is drug companies are companies first and foremost. They manufacture products for sale. They aren't charities. And if these companies see no profit at all in the effort they will not bother pursuing it. That is simply a fact of life.

That fact of life, that quashing of the entrepreneurial spirit, the destruction of the profit motive, all at the hands of government, will also quash new drugs that might bring lifesaving cures in the future. Avastin is one example of the heavy hand of government putting us all at risk.

[It's been 1 year and 4 months since I wrote my last blog post here. For readers of The Next Right, I left my position as the RNC's Deputy Research Director back in May and am currently a Senior Communications Strategist with New Media Strategies in Rosslyn, VA. It feels good to be back in the blogosphere.]

Lisa Murkowski has now conceded. I have a great amount of respect for Joe Miller, but I have been a loyal supporter of Lisa Murkowski since her 2004 campaign. As a conservative from Alaska, I have disagreed with her positions on a few issues, but I believe she has been a good Senator for Alaska. Murkowski has been a thoughtful policymaker among her peers as well as an articulate leader on several key national issues including energy security.

Yet despite the enormous amount of admiration I have for her, I believe Murkowski has no one to blame except her own campaign for what is a stunning primary defeat. Bottom line up front: Lisa Murkowski's primary campaign should serve as a lesson in what not to do when you are being attacked by your opponent.

There has been a lot of talk about how wrong the polls were, the ballot initiative concerning abortion, and why Lisa Murkowski decided not to "go negative" on Joe Miller. Yet it's just not as simple as that. Here are four very interconnected reasons why Lisa Murkowski lost: