1,900 Pages of Health Care Bureaucracy

In a ceremony at the US Capitol by Speaker Pelosi, that could only be attended by those on the invited guest list, the Democrats unveiled 1,990 pages of legislation intended by the Majority in the Congress to lead to a government take over of health care.     The public option is government healthcare.   Away with private insurance, and private "pay as you go" healthcare with options and welcome to Medicare and Medicaid on steroids.

What is the option?    The Republicans, who have been systematically denied access to the closed door Democrat negotiations among the Pelosi lead Congress, have some ideas.    www.healthcare.gop.gov  
And Minority Leader Boehner (with a video clip) on the 1,900 page health care bill.

The health care bill debate goes to the floor on the Congress.     And the American people should very afraid of the government plans to reduce present program (cost cutting), increase premiums (more coverage to more folks with less money to pay), expand coverage (anyone, including non-residents) and increased government controls (under the guise of streamlining the system).     Let's see what other government success stories we have?    The Post Office?  Nope.   The GSE's (Fanny Mae or Freddie Mac)?  Nope, they went broke.   What about Indian Health Care?  Nope, it is not working very well.   What about Amtrack?   Nope, keeps losing money, even with increased subsidies.

So now the Democrats in Congress want to take over healthcare in the US?     Now is the time for the American people to say:  No, not this time.  

(c) 2009, Jasper Welch, Four Corners Media.  www.jasperwelch.org

Prez Obama Slips in Polls

Prez Obama Slips in Polls

As fall weather cools, the President continues to see his polling numbers follow the trend toward lower approval and high disapproval by Rasmussen Reports:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Wednesday shows that 27% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty percent (40%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -13. That’s just a point above the lowest level ever recorded for this President. It’s also the sixth straight day in negative double digits, matching the longest such streak    www.rasmussenreports.com   

Let’s look at the President approval (positive numbers) when he was first sworn into office in January on the 21^st of each month since then.    Now the Rasmussen Reports numbers (Approval Index) are negative for President Obama

January 21, 2009       Obama starts at +28

February 21^st             Obama is down to +10

March 21^st                 Obama in single digits at +4

April 21^st                   Obama just positive at +2

May 21^st                    Obama climbs to +7

June 21^st                    Obama slips to negative -2

July 21^st                     Obama trends down to -5

August 21^st                Obama down to -8

Sept 21^st                     Obama stays at -8

October 21^st               Obama into double digits -13

It appears that the PR machine at the White House is failing to prop up support for the President, and instead the WH press office has decided to mount an attack and isolation campaign against Fox News.    Perhaps the White House under the Obama administration could change their policies and politics?   That is what is the likely cause for President Obama slide into a Jimmy Carter and George Bush type approval index.   While Mr. Obama campaigned as a moderate Democrat and one who was bi-partisan, the actual Presidential staff (Axelrod, Emanuel) and Administration is sharply partisan in their Chicago style political operations.  And the Presidential approval index reflects the opinion of the American people to that partisan approach.

© 2009, Jasper Welch, Four Corners Media   www.jasperwelch.org

US Senator Judd Gregg: US On Path to Banana Republic

Senator Judd Gregg on path to Banana Republic

On Sunday October 18th, US Senator Judd Gregg (R-New Hampshire) has the last word on CNN.    The video interview by CNN's John King revealed a perspective by an experienced US Senator who sounded an ominous warning about the US Congress (under the Democrats majority) continuing to overspend.

“This deficit is driven by us,” New Hampshire Republican Sen. Judd Gregg candidly said Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union when asked about the federal government’s projected $1.42 trillion operating deficit for the 2009 fiscal year.

“You talk about systemic risk. The systemic risk today is the Congress of the United States,“ the Ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee told CNN Chief National Correspondent John King, “that we’re creating these massive debts which we’re passing on to our children. We’re going to undermine fundamentally the quality of life for our children by doing this.”

Search the CCN news site www.cnn.com  under key words, Last Word, Judd Gregg, John King to get a look at this interesting interview.

Tom Mullins for Congress

Tom Mullins for Congress

On Saturday, October 17^th, Tom Mullins announced his intention to run as a Republican candidate for the 3^rd Congressional district in New Mexico.    He is challenging the freshman Democrat Congressman, Ben Ray Lujan, Jr, son of the current NM Speaker of the House, Ben Lujan.    Tom Mullins is a graduate of Colorado Schools of Mines and he is a registered professional engineer, who resides and works in Farmington, NM.    Mr. Mullins has served as the past president of the Independent Petroleum Association of New Mexico (IPANM), and he is an owner in Synergy Operating, LLC and his professional consulting practice Mullins Energy, Inc.    

According to recent press reports, the 40-year-old Mullins announced in Santa Fe, NM (introduced by Representative Tom Taylor, R-Farmington) and he will also announce on Sunday night October 18^th in Farmington, NM.  

Bloggers note: I have personally known Tom for the past 8 years, and I have found Tom to be one of most well read, well educated and hard working people that I’ve met here in New Mexico.    His ability to understand issues, work with other people and get things done will serve the citizens in New Mexico well, when he is elected to Congress. 

For more info on Tom’s bid for Congress:

 http://www.mullinsforcongress.com/ 

© 2009, Jasper Welch, Four Corners Media   www.jasperwelch.org

Constitutional Welfare

Constitutional Welfare

Welfare n. 1. health, happiness, or prosperity; well-being.    This is the true definition (Webster’s) of the word welfare, and it is contained in the preamble of the US Constitution: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

In the meantime, our US Congress, and our new President, who are sworn to uphold the Constitution, are poised to pass a sweeping heath care bill that threatens the welfare of the citizens who they serve.    Let’s examine the welfare definition:

Health is more important part of our well being.    Once the US government comes into the health care arena, choices are made for us, about us and that will impact us.    Supposedly for our good, but as we have seen with most US government programs, somehow the good intentions at the Congressional level get lost in the translation at the state and local level.   Instead of looking to Washington, DC., we should be looking to Grand Junction, CO.   This western Colorado community has worked for over thirty years to create a locally directly and quality focused health care delivery system that has higher quality care (that comparative regions) and lower costs (that average regions in the US).    Ideas coming from the ground up with real people, organizations and health care professionals.   Not the Washington DC top down approach that has been proven not to work.

Happiness is our personal responsibility.    The government doesn’t owe it to us, except to provide for our national defense and secure the blessing of liberty.    That compares the present health care legislation in the US Congress (now in the US Senate) that is attempting to secure nationalized health care with compulsory insurance, fees, fines and taxes.     That will secure us socialized medicine, not the blessings of liberty.    What responsibility does the Congress have for health care?     To allow the individual to choose their doctor, their insurance, their level of care and make reasonable (not unilateral) provision for those unable to obtain decent health care.   

Prosperity is the result of limited government, lower taxes, less government spending and the pursuit of happiness by the individual.  It allows for the citizens to practice personal responsibility, not be wards of the state.   The proposed health care bill expands government, increases taxes, expands government programs and spending, and restricts the choices of individual Americans.     The United States has been known as the best place in the world to go to receive the best medical care.     The Mayo Clinic, MD Anderson, Cleveland Clinic are not located in Cuba, Russia or China.   They are located in the US for a reason.   That may be lost in the headlong plunge into a government run health care system.

Choices in health care, choices in insurance, good choices in your lifestyle are part of our constitutionally protected welfare, or well-being.     The Democrats, in their quest for a socialized and fair practice of medicine and health care delivery have created legislation that threatens the very fabric of our free society.    A while 1,000 pages of hastily written legislation may be passed in some form by the US Senate, the 50 plus words in the preamble of the US Constitution stand as a beacon of hope and freedom.     Do Americans want the 1,000 model of beauracracy and government control, or do we prefer the way of liberty and true welfare? 

© 2009, Jasper Welch, Four Corners Media, www.jasperwelch.org  

Legislative Process Light is Creating Heat on Healthcare

Legislative Process Light is Creating Heat on Healthcare

As the Health Care bill goes through the legislative process in the US Senate, some very interesting discussions, drama and defining moments have occurred.     And things have not gone exactly as the Democrats or Chairman Max Baucus (D-Montana) had planned.  [Remember the President’s demand that the Congress have Health Care bill to his desk before the August recess?   The subsequent town halls back in the states and Congress districts caused even more reality of citizen concern that the Congress was move way to fast on nationalizing 1/6 of the US economy].   In fact, the debate has become more multifarious by the day, which is the way of the US Senate and the American system of government is designed to work.    Despite the desire of the Democrat leadership, you cannot just cram through a massive Health Care bill without due process.   This is a republic (at least at this point), not an oligarchy as the Washington elite has hoped for during the attempted Health Care legislative end run around the American people.

Here are excerpts on a recent excellent article, written by Mark Hemmingway in the National Review Online (www.nationalreview.com) from the September 29^th post:

Baucus & Dems are hiding the true cost of Healthcare legislation:

The actual cost of the Baucus bill is $1.7 trillion over ten years, but Democrats prefer to say it will cost $900 billion over the next ten years — this is true, but only because the main spending provisions don’t kick in until 2013. The Democrats also aren’t advertising that the $838 billion in new taxes and fees in the legislation begin being collected next year.  Mark Hemingway, NRO, 9.29.09

Even the Congressional Budget Office (the only watchdog at the table, that is somewhat neutral in the process) is doubting how much (more) the bill will cost the US taxpayers:

And then, it will be hard to tell how much the legislation costs; the Senate Finance Committee doesn’t work with the actual legislative language. They work in “conceptual” language or what they call “plain English.” Senator Baucus himself admits, “This probably sounds a little crazy to some people that we are voting on something before we have seen legislative language.” It doesn’t just sound crazy; the CBO says that it is (crazy). Without the actual legislative language, any CBO review of the bill “does not constitute a comprehensive cost estimate” and makes it impossible to get an accurate sense of the cost. When CBO said they would need two weeks to do another formal cost estimate of the amended bill, Baucus balked.  Mark Hemingway, NRO, 9.29.09

The Chairman (Baucus) and Congressional Democrats don’t want the public, the press, the healthcare professionals, the medical industry or their colleagues to see the bill over time (just 72 hours in the light of day), because that is too messy, too transparent and will introduce too much accountability.  Instead the Democrat led US Senate Finance committee is attempting an efficiency approach.   Why take time to get Health Care right, when you can just slide socialized medicine through?   Or maybe not.

It's not just the CBO who won't get a chance to look over the bill. Senate Democrats voted down an amendment by Sen. Jim Bunning (R., Kent.) that would have required that, after mark-up, the final language be made available to the public for 72 hours on the Internet. Senator Baucus says he’s against putting the bill online because that, too, would take two weeks.    Mark Hemingway, NRO, 9.29.09

Finally, according to a new Rasmussen poll regarding private insurance and the public option  http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/healthcare/october_2009/fear_of_losing_private_health_insurance_trumps_public_option   the American people indicates that 63% of the respondents favor keeping their private insurance versus the Democrats “public option” offering.     So why are the Congressional Democrats so focused on the public option?     Simply put, they are dedicated to a socialized approach to medical care in the United States and the political Democrat elite have decided that our system of private insurance and choice of medical providers is second rate.   This in spite of the overwhelming evidence that socialized medicine (when tried in other countries) has resulted in a government run system that rations care, reduces quality and limits choices in medical providers.   

With the Congressional majority dedicated overhauling medical care, health insurance and health care in the United States in the socialized image of Europe or Canada, now is the time to contact your Congressman or Senator.    Or even run for Congress yourself.   Most members of Congress have better health care coverage and options that the rest of the taxpayers.   What is wrong with that picture? 

© 2009, Jasper Welch, Four Corners Media, www.jasperwelch.org