Trapped In The Closet: Redux

Watching this episode of South Park online last nite reminded me of this post I had written in 2006 when it originally aired in Canada: "Trapped In The Closet"

Yes I'll admit it.

I heart South Park.

I am a South Park Conservative.

Tell "Americans United For Change" To Stop Lying

It should come as NO surprise that the liberal labor-affiliated group and member of HCAN, "Americans United For Change" are outright lying on behalf of President Obama.

Their attack ad on Facebook targeting Sarah Palin calls the massive Healthcare Bill the Obama administration is putting forward, "health insurance reform".

That is pure Bullshit!

The bill, which a majority of Americans, --Democrats & Republicans & Independents-- oppose, is aimed at completely overhauling the entire Healthcare Industry by creating a Socialized Health Care system operated by the Federal Government.

Nothing in the bill is meant to simply "reform health insurance."

If you want to reform health insurance, then why not simply include the practice of denying health insurance to anyone, including the sick, the elderly, and the disabled for ANY reason, INCLUDING pre- existing conditions, to be deemed a violation of any and all existing anti discrimination laws, and subject to huge fines and jail time. Or create a separate law.

But "Americans United For Change" KNOW without a doubt that health INSURANCE reform is NOT the Democrats agenda. Their agenda, as clearly evidenced in the bill they intend to force through Congress regardless of how the majority of Americans feels, is to completely socialize the health care system, reducing it to a single payer system, that will render the same costly fiasco that is Medicare/Medicaid.

Rethinking Medicare,Medicaid

With Medicare (and let us not forget its younger sibling, Medicaid) dollars eating away at federal and state budgets and a looming surge in Medicare beneficiaries as baby boomers retire, there is growing evidence of Medicare's flaws, and the prospect that it needs to be scaled back is hardly unreasonable.

Apart from needing to rethink and reform Medicare/Medicaid, a program considered to be the 'gold standard" in public insurance option, we also have a badly run, badly administered, inefficient Government- run Veterans Health Care program, denying far too many vets the medical help they need, and The Federal Government's Social Security program is deep trouble: by 2017 Social Security will pay out far more benefits than it will collect taxes, and without major reform, The Social Security Trust Fund will be exhausted by 2041.

Does anyone other than left wing demagogues trust the Federal Government to manage a VASTLY larger program than the combined three I cited?

Here's my "ad" to the liberal labor-affiliated, labor-funded group Americans United For Change

“Health insurance reform" is NOT what the bill is about and the truth about this bill is too important for outright lies.

Send the liberal labor affiliated group Americans United For Change a message: tell THEM to stop lying about Palin, about THEIR agenda, and to stop denying the truth about ‘death panels" aka Section 1123 of the bill."

From The Washington Post

Section 1123 however, addresses compassionate goals in disconcerting proximity to fiscal ones. Supporters protest that they're just trying to facilitate choice -- even if patients opt for expensive life-prolonging care. I think they protest too much: If it's all about obviating suffering, emotional or physical, what's it doing in a measure to "bend the curve" on health-care costs?

Though not mandatory, as some on the right have claimed, the consultations envisioned in Section 1233 aren't quite "purely voluntary," as Rep. Sander M. Levin (D-Mich.) asserts. To me, "purely voluntary" means "not unless the patient requests one." Section 1233, however, lets doctors initiate the chat and gives them an incentive -- money -- to do so. Indeed, that's an incentive to insist.

What's more, Section 1233 dictates, at some length, the content of the consultation. The doctor "shall" discuss "advanced care planning, including key questions and considerations, important steps, and suggested people to talk to"; "an explanation of . . . living wills and durable powers of attorney, and their uses" (even though these are legal, not medical, instruments); and "a list of national and State-specific resources to assist consumers and their families." The doctor "shall" explain that Medicare pays for hospice care (hint, hint).

Admittedly, this script is vague and possibly unenforceable. What are "key questions"? Who belongs on "a list" of helpful "resources"? The Roman Catholic Church? Jack Kevorkian?

Ideally, the delicate decisions about how to manage life's end would be made in a setting that is neutral in both appearance and fact. Yes, it's good to have a doctor's perspective. But Section 1233 goes beyond facilitating doctor input to preferring it. Indeed, the measure would have an interested party -- the government -- recruit doctors to sell the elderly on living wills, hospice care and their associated providers, professions and organizations. You don't have to be a right-wing wacko to question that approach.

From William Jacobson, Associate Clinical Professor of Law, Cornell Law School:

These critics, however, didn't take the time to find out to what Palin was referring when she used the term "level of productivity in society" as being the basis for determining access to medical care. If the critics, who hold themselves in the highest of intellectual esteem, had bothered to do something other than react, they would have realized that the approach to health care to which Palin was referring was none other than that espoused by key Obama health care adviser Dr.Ezekial Emanuel (brother of Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel).

The article in which Dr. Emanuel puts forth his approach is "Principles for Allocation of Scarce Medical Interventions," published on January 31, 2009. A full copy is embedded below. Read it, particularly the section beginning at page 6 of the embed (page 428 in the original) at which Dr. Emanuel sets forth the principles of "The Complete Lives System."

While Emanuel does not use the term "death panel," Palin put that term in quotation marks to signify the concept of medical decisions based on the perceived societal worth of an individual, not literally a "death panel.

Tell liberal activist Brad Woodhouse, Communications Director for DNC & former President of the HCAN member, liberal lobbyist, labor-affiliated, labor-funded "Americans United For Change" to Stop Lying On Behalf Of President Obama.