Source: CBS
House Budget Chair Paul Ryan, a Republican, and Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat, introduced a bipartisan solution for the future of Medicare. Nancy Cordes reports on the details.

Source: CBS
President Obama on Thursday said that “as the father of two daughters,” he supports the Health Human Service’s Department’s decision to restrict over-the-counter sale of “Plan B” to girls younger than 17.

This is chilling. A neurosurgeon called in to Mark Levin’s radio program to tell of a conference he attended with HHS in Washington, DC. He says what he learned is not currently available to the public was only shared with neurosurgeons. He says the “death panels” are in fact real. Listen to what he says. And then tell everyone you know.

He’s actually happy that many employers are planning to drop health care coverage for workers under ObamaCare which will force them into the government option.

I love it when Democrats have temporary lapses of honesty and candor. Here’s far left Rep. John Conyers explaining why he voted for ObamaCare. He says it provides a “platform” from which we can eventually get to a Canadian style single-payer health care system.

It’s also the same kind of system they have in the UK. And yes, it really does have a death panel.

This is a prime example of “death panels” in action. The head of Britain’s NHS who advises local health clinics how to best spend their government funds (how to best ration care) has some advice on premature babies. Let them die.

Dr Austin, who advises local health trusts how to spend their budgets, said doctors were ‘doing more harm than good by resuscitating 23-weekers’ and that treatments have ‘very marginal benefit’.

The NHS spends around £10million a year resuscitating babies born this early and keeping them alive on incubators and ventilators.

But despite round-the-clock care from teams of experienced doctors and nurses, just 9 per cent leave hospital – the rest die. And only one in 100 grows up without some form of disability. The most common include blindness, deafness and cerebral palsy.

Dr Austin said that the care given to such tiny infants should be weighed up in the same way as the NHS decides whether or not to fund treatment for dying cancer patients.

That is quite literally a death panel. Bureaucrats decide if the government will fund treatment for dying cancer patients, treat a premature baby, etc. If they decide you’re too old to warrant expensive cancer treatments then you die. The government decides who lives and who dies. That is the sick vision liberals have for the American health care system. ObamaCare is certainly not this, but it’s what Democrats were left with when they couldn’t get a British style health care system passed.

In 2009, Obama advisor Robert Reich said his message to old people is, “we’re going to let you die.”

As a conservative I’ve been pretty much alone in my defense of Planned Parenthood over the years. Most conservatives I know want to shut Planned Parenthood down, but I’ve always argued that they provide valuable medical care to poor people beyond just abortions. They provide free contraception and only charge what you can afford. A friend of mine was able to get a full gynecological exam and birth control pills for about $25. That’s a wonderful thing.

Unfortunately, a new video sting released today I’m simply unable to defend. It’s frankly horrifying. The PP clinic targeted is in New Jersey. It’s not your typical wink-wink by a nurse for an underage abortion either. It goes so far beyond that it’s hard to believe. In short, it’s devastating. I wouldn’t be surprised if the GOP tries to defund the organization this week. I can’t say I blame them. If Planned Parenthood is going to be run like ACORN then tax payers shouldn’t have to pay for it. And people should go to prison.

From the AP:

PENSACOLA, Fla. — A federal judge declared the Obama administration’s health care overhaul unconstitutional Monday, siding with 26 states that sued to block it, saying that people can’t be required to buy health insurance.

U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson agreed with the states that the new law violates people’s rights by forcing them to buy health insurance by 2014 or face penalties. He went a step further than a previous ruling against the law, declaring the entire thing unconstitutional if the insurance requirement does not hold up.

It’s pretty much a foregone conclusion that ObamaCare is going down in flames when it reaches the Supreme Court.

This article titled “Republicans repeal healthcare reforms in symbolic vote” was written by Chris McGreal in Washington, for The Guardian on Thursday 20th January 2011 01.02 UTC

The new Republican-controlled House of Representatives has voted to repeal the health reform law it passed last year in a largely symbolic but politically loaded repudiation of Barack Obama’s flagship policy.

The legislation, entitled the “Repealing the job-killing healthcare law act”, passed with a clear majority of 245 to 189 as the vote went almost entirely along party lines, in contrast to the healthcare legislation last year which passed with a wafer thin majority as many conservative Democrats rejected it.

But it is unlikely to go much further because the leaders of the Senate, which is still under Democratic party control, have said they will not take up the repeal legislation. Even if they did, the Republicans are unlikely to find the support they need in the Senate to overturn reforms that extend coverage to more than 30 million uninsured Americans and prevent insurance companies from cutting off treatment, among other measures.

However, Republicans in the house intend to keep the battle over healthcare alive by finding ways to throw obstacles in the way of implementation, such as using spending bills to deny funding for the reforms. The Republican leadership has been accused of making a priority of an ideologically driven and largely futile attempt to repeal the healthcare law when the economy is a more urgent matter – the same accusation levelled against Obama by his opponents.

But Republicans say that overturning healthcare legislation is intended to remove a financial burden on business and to cut the budget deficit. The new speaker of the house, John Boehner, said that the healthcare law will “increase spending, increase taxes and destroy jobs in America”.

A study by the congressional budget office differs. It says that scrapping the healthcare reforms will cost 0bn over the next decade.

The Republicans also pushed the repeal because dozens of new members of Congress made overturning healthcare legislation a leading commitment of their campaigns.

“Our vote to repeal is not merely symbolic,” said one new Republican member, Nan Hayworth, an ophthalmologist. “It respects the will of the American people and it paves the way to reform our healthcare.”

Some Republicans argued in this week’s debate in the House that the law is unconstitutional because the federal government is overstepping its powers in requiring Americans to buy health insurance.

Democrats argue that the legislation helps millions of Americans, including those with pre-existing conditions or caps on health care coverage who were effectively left without treatment and some of whom died.

One Democrat member, Steve Cohen, likened Republican accusations that the reforms are socialist to the fictions of the Nazi propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels.

“They say it’s a government takeover of health care, a big lie just like Goebbels,” he said. “You say it enough, you repeat the lie, you repeat the lie, and eventually, people believe it.”

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

Representative-elect Joe Walsh (R-IL) says he’s sticking by the Tea Party principles that got him elected and is refusing the congressional health care plan.

“I don’t think congressmen should get pensions or cushy health care plans,” he said.

All that sounds good, but it looks like he’ll be sleeping on the couch:

…it‘s a decision that’s not being welcomed by everyone in his family. Walsh’s wife has a pre-existing medical condition, and she’ll now be charged with the difficult task of finding a plan on the open market.

Why would she have a “difficult time” finding a health plan on the open market? I thought ObamaCare made it illegal for health care providers to refuse people with pre-existing conditions.