Big Brother Wants to Know...

The White House recently asked that if you see a “fishy” email about healthcare that you should forward this email to them at a specified email address(flag@whitehouse.gov). Hmmm… you know the more I think about that one, the more it REALLY bothers me, and I’m not the only one. It makes me ask myself several questions.

What are they going to do with the email addresses? Really. I mean, are they going to make up some form letter to try and dissuade the person from forwarding more “fishy” emails? Are they going to answer the issues brought up in the “fishy” email? If they take ANY action on this how can that not be viewed as some type of intimidation tactic? Not that you expect Rahm and Robert to show up at your front door and brake your thumbs or anything, but… getting an email from the White House saying that you don’t seem to understand what they are trying to do… that’s kind of a big deal. It’s very much, hey we’re watching what you are doing and we know that you don’t understand this, so we are going to… set you straight here. Can you imagine if you had gotten an email from George W. Bush’s White House for sending out ‘truther’ emails about the 9-11 attacks? Or dissenting emails about the Iraq war? Can you imagine how fast the ACLU would be suing the White House for that? Of course, crazy, small government conservatives like myself would take such an email and plaster it all over blogs, facebook, forward it to news sources, and basically blow the whistle long and loud, which in the end would be bad PR for the White House. So… I really don’t think they will be sending out emails on this.

Are they going to research the email addresses and see where it originated? Are they looking for information that this all comes from the insurance industry and they are trying to tie it back to a common source? Even if they could do that, which, they just can’t because all of this doesn’t come from one source, it comes from educated people reading bills that Congressman can’t seem to find time to read, what would it prove? If a company comes out, really any company for that matter, and says “hey, the government is trying to put me out of business” I’m going to look into it and if I think they have a valid point I’m going to talk about it, blog about it, email about it, and maybe even talk to my representatives about it because that is over stepping the bounds of the government. That’s a good thing to get upset about. The government doesn’t need to be putting any businesses out of business. We need more jobs, not less. Insurance companies making profits is a good thing. When industries are profitable it attracts other people to the market, which means more competition and lower prices. Not to mention that they grow and employ more people. What’s not good about that?


Quite frankly, I really don’t know what the government hopes to do with this. I can’t think of any scenarios where this really turns out good for them. If anything it will only spur on the conspiracy theorists and has already gotten them a letter from at least one member of congress. Talk radio is going to get even more crazy about this… and I think some weird people might even be blogging about it.

Of course, if any of you think this is “fishy”, or if any of my other dozen or so blog posts on this messed up, government nationalization of healthcare are “fishy” then you should probably do your civic duty and turn me in by sending a link to my blog to flag@whitehouse.gov. No, really… the curiosity about what they are going to do with this information is just killing me! I want to know! I’ve got to know! I may turn MYSELF in!

Of course, maybe that is what they are trying to do… take any attention possible away from healthcare legislation with a distraction… hmmm….

*****Update: Greate video from NC about how the administration has been handling dissent about healthcare.

A little mid-week humor

The White House Attacks Drudge over the President's Statements

The White House is fighting back against the DrudgeReport because Matt Drudge and some bloggers had the NERVE to pull up video of the President describing his plan before he was elected. Watch and listen



Here is the video she was referencing. It is a combination of videos where the President very clearly describes wanting a single payer system and the process that will help him get it. Eliminating private health insurance. Your insurance.



Now the White House video shows the President making the same promise that he has made over and over and over during this healthcare “campaign” that he is on.

If you look at the bill, you can see why some, including myself, claim that the president is not telling the whole truth, and that the goal is in fact that the bill would cause more and more people to go towards the public option and away from their private insurance.

The President says that if you like your insurance and you like your doctor then you will get to keep them. Unfortunately he leaves out the rest of the information contained in HR3200, which says that you can keep them if you want to. Of course after five years (at the MOST) YOUR insurance plan is required to change to be just like the public option, only more expensive of course because your insurance company has taxes that don’t apply to the government, they have to show a profit (unlike the government), and they can’t fix prices paid to doctors like the government can, in fact they end up eating the loss that doctors endure from accepting the public plan. If the president was honest he would say that “you can keep your insurance… for up to five years.”

Like the bill says…

The Commissioner shall establish a grace period whereby, for plan years beginning after the end of the 5-year period beginning with Y1, an employment-based health plan in operation as of the day before the first day of Y1 must meet the same requirements as apply to a qualified health benefits plan under section 101, including the essential benefit package requirement under section 121.

Sorry, that’s not twisting the president’s words. That’s reading the bill. After all, the President’s speeches don’t become law, bills do.

Which reminds me… have you called your representatives about this? I’m just telling mine very simply that this plan is no good. We don’t need more government in healthcare, we need less. If you vote for this reform, or for ANY MAJOR overhaul of the healthcare system, I will not be voting for you. Let’s make small improvements and see if they work.

A short break from healthcare

I needed some light reading to detract from the insanity of this healthcare debackle, so...

I am currently reading Beirut to Jerusalem by Thomas Friedman. It’s an older book, but from a historical perspective, that’s fine. Friedman is an interesting character. An American Jew, he became fascinated with the holy land during his teenage years and studied Jewish and Arab culture during high school and college. He became a reporter and went to Beirut to live during the late seventies and stayed there for five years before being reassigned to Jerusalem. Imagine a Jewish reporter, living in the middle of a civil war between the Druse, Shiites, Sunnis, Christians, Maronites, Palestinians, and half a dozen other sects or ethnic backgrounds, who are at times battling each other and at times battling the Israeli army. Throw in international peacekeeping forces from the US, France and a hand full of others and you can see the dangerous world of chaos that Thomas Friedman found himself in.

Although he is Jewish, he lived extensively in Muslim dominated areas (of course not really advertising that he was Jewish), and gained some interesting perspective on the conflict inside Lebanon and throughout the Middle East as a whole. While he has some fascination with the Zionist movement that resettled Jews in their ancient homeland, he is critical at times of Israeli action and takes a fairly even handed approach. If nothing else the stories are fascinating although obviously on the macabre side considering he is constantly surrounded by car bombs, shootings, kidnappings, random checkpoints from forty different militias, ethnic cleansing, and people generally overwhelmed with the situation that they are in.

One story he relates is a dinner party where machine gun fire opens up in the street right outside the home, which obviously is not in the plans of the hostess. As she feels her guests becoming more and more uncomfortable she finally asks, “should we eat now or wait for the cease fire?”

I still have about half of the book to read, but Friedman’s observations are extremely insightful and give you a very interesting picture of what military forces are up against when you go into a country occupied by several contingents of rival ethnic and religious groups. This is the first book of his that I have read, but have had others recommend his writings numerous times. If you want to get at least a decent understanding of the Middle East mindset I highly recommend it. Unlike many books on the subject it is an easy read.

This is what we have to look forward to?

Imagine this letter came to you? Or your mom? Maybe your spouse?

This is government run medicine.

Is this the "right to healthcare" that everyone is touting.

Now imagine this across the country in a single payer system, where you have no alternatives... welcome to Obamacare.

20/20 Health Care Story

Stossel is right on the money. Must see.

Environmentalists Created a Drought That is Going to Cost All of Us

As if the economic downturn wasn’t enough, environmentalists have created a dust bowl. The San Joaquin Valley in California is the largest agricultural area in the world, it provides half of the vegetables for the entire country, and it’s gone bone dry in order to improve the chances of saving the delta smelt.

The delta smelt is a fish and was listed as ‘threatened’ on the endangered species list. As a result an environmental lobby went to court and asked the court to shut down the turbines that pump water into the irrigation system for the San Joaquin Valley. Not 'reduce' or 'cut back', but turn off.

And that’s what the court ordered.

Now there is a 41% unemployment rate in the valley. An estimated 80,000 workers have lost their jobs. Every business in the area is suffering. Farms and houses are being foreclosed on. The ground is dry and the crops are dead.

Don’t just think it’s bad for the farmers. It’s going to affect food prices across the country. Vegetable prices are going to go up.

All for the sake of a smelt that MAY be getting injured or killed in the pumps.

The Pacific Legal Fund is fighting this and putting pressure on Washington to convene a committee to look into the issue and turn the pumps back on. Their website is here. You can sign their petition here.

Public Health Insurance Option Will Lead to a Single Payer System

I made the case, again, early this week that the public option being pursued would eventually lead to nationalized healthcare in the form of a single payer system.

Some creative bloggers, who are actually in favor of a single payer system talked to Rep Barney Frank about the public option and a single payer system, asking him why he didn't just want to go with a single payer system now. He explains that they don't have the votes to get that passed, but that they have the public option and he believes that will lead to a single payer system. Past history tells us that you certainly cannot trust Rep Frank a good portion of the time, but in this case I think it's safe to believe him.

Is Obama the Antichrist?

Okay, I do not make a habit of interpreting end time prophecies. The thing about prophecies is that they are usually very obvious right AFTER they are fulfilled. So someday when I am in heaven I’ll go… “oh, yah, I totally see that now!” And I have read the book of Revelation many, many, many times and I have yet to find the word “antichrist” in it. I’m not completely familiar with the whole pre-millennial, post-millennial, yada, yada, yada… quite frankly it really doesn’t matter too much to me how God shakes everything out in the end. I have my faith and trust in Him, I’m living for Him every day, and I’m doing my best to fulfill the purpose that He has given me. So any way it goes down… I’m okay. I know I’ll win because I’m with God.

That being said I have heard from several of you out there that Obama is the antichrist. The Bible speaks of anyone being against-Christ as the antichrist (kind of obvious from the name) and there have been many people in history that fit this bill quite nicely. Is President Obama one of them? Well, personally he doesn’t really seem to fit the bill. I think his actions seem anti-United States sometimes, but anti-US does not make him antichrist. He’s definitely anti-logic, anti-common sense, anti-free market, anti-truth, and anti-fiscal responsibility, but the man says he believes in Christ and has his faith in him and I am not about to jump into the spiritual judgment seat. I’m not going to sit in judgment on the man’s soul; his presidency on the other hand is entirely fair game…

In any case, there seems to be a strong desire out there to condemn the President as the antichrist (whether that means the beast or the prophet of the beast in Revelation, I don’t know), but this video shows what I consider to be an interesting play on words. Whether it is anything more than that is really not my call.

Nationalized Healthcare Part 2

I know, yesterday I went on about the trials and mess associated with nationalized healthcare and that isn’t what is being proposed in these bills. Yes, I understand that, but that is where these bills are leading us. Granted they wouldn’t take us there next week. It may even take years, a myriad of lawsuits, and a lot of jobs lost and businesses destroyed, but it would take us there.

What these bills are doing is requiring certain levels of coverage and mandating that employers provide coverage. (Let’s ignore the fact that this would cripple small business and completely drive some of them out of business. I know, I was talking to a small business owner this weekend who is already struggling and views this change as the gallows.) This minimum coverage level is a political tool. Lobbyists are already raking in the dollars pushing the right people to include their industry in the minimum coverage. Of course existing plans would not have to up their coverage for five years, unless of course they make a change in coverage, premium, or pretty much a letter in their plethora of paperwork. If they changed anything, they have to switch to the minimum coverage. Naturally this increased coverage (not increased benefit necessarily) of course costs more. So now private insurance companies have to adjust their rates for this adjusted level of care and they won’t be going down.

At the same time you have the “public option”, which is where the government comes into the game. Number one they aren’t a ‘for profit’ entity, so they aren’t trying to maintain the margins that the private insurance companies do. They also aren’t subject to the same tax laws as the private companies, and as we’ve already discussed, they have a huge percentage of the market and dictate what they will pay. The resulting decrease in government rates from the “public plan” now increases the rates on the private insurance companies, as I mentioned in part 1.

Now companies are in a struggling economy looking at their medical insurance costs shoot through the roof. So, they lay off some employees and take a look at their alternatives. They are spending a significant amount per employee to have insurance coverage and it is increasing all of the time as the Secretary of Health and Human Services decides on new additions to the minimum coverage. The law says that you have to provide coverage or pay a fine, but the fine is less than what the coverage is costing per employee. It doesn’t take a very creative bookkeeper to discontinue coverage and dump every employee into the “public option” to opt for a government fine that is lower and more stable than providing coverage at the minimum level.

So after all of the private insurance companies have been driven out of business, you will have socialized medicine on a single payer system. That’s when the fun we’ve already discussed in part 1 kicks in. It’s not an immediate take over, but it is a take over and a big one considering healthcare makes up approximately 17% of the US economy.

There are other issues that need to be considered as well and I need to actually dig through the nuts and bolts of this bill. There HAS to be some very creative wording in here regarding law suits and I’m very intrigued as to what it says. When it comes to providing health insurance there is always the risk of law suits, some legit, some not. However will the government ALLOW themselves to be sued if they wrongfully refuse coverage or will they be able to claim sovereign immunity? Hmm… I’m very intrigued. Since it is the government writing the bill you would think that they would specifically express that sovereign immunity applies, but since it is being written by liberals who have been on the receiving end of millions in campaign contributions from trial lawyers, they might specifically deny it, just to throw their loyal contributors a bone.

Either way… it’s not good for any of us.

… and on a side note, it will never apply to those who are voting for it. Their fluffy government insurance stays put for life.