mike and ruth

by Star Parker – Syndicated Columnist – OneNewsNow 3/15/2010 8:55:00 AM

When Barack Obama was sworn in as president, he chose the Bible that Abraham Lincoln used on which to take the oath of office.

A little over a year later, as President Obama strong arms House and Senate Democrats to pass a healthcare bill that will nationalize 17 percent of our economic lives — a bill that most Americans don’t want — we ought to recall Lincoln’s famous words at Gettysburg.

Dedicating the final resting place for those who fought there, Lincoln appealed that we not let up in the struggle for “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

Democrats may soon show, if we let them, that the American ideal of representative government — government of a nation, in Lincoln’s words, “conceived in Liberty” — is lost.

Bending rules into a procedural pretzel, Democrats will attempt to pass one of the largest government takeovers of private American lives in history without a single Republican vote and, against the will of the people, Obama will sign it into law.

Democrat pollsters Pat Caddell and Doug Schoen write in the Washington Post, “…a solid majority of Americans oppose the massive health-care reform plan.”

Pollster.com, which reports an average of all polls, shows that now for the first time disapproval for President Obama exceeds approval — 48.8 percent to 47.5 percent.

According to Gallup, just 21 percent of Americans are satisfied with the direction of the country, down 10 points from spring of last year when the healthcare reform push began.

And, per the latest from the Pew Research Center, only 13 percent of Americans view healthcare as “our most important problem.”

But this isn’t about logic. Mr. Obama and his colleagues on Capitol Hill perceive a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to grasp the holy grail of the left and realize the dream of transforming America into a European style welfare state. Democracy — what the American people actually want — is just not going to stand in the way.

It isn’t just about Republican opposition. Nancy Pelosi must persuade, bribe, and threaten to get 216 House Democrats to support this despite having 253 sitting House Democrats.

Speaking the other day in Missouri, Obama mocked Republicans who want to stop this train and begin the process over.

But Warren Buffett, the legendary investor and one of the nation’s wealthiest men — himself a Democrat — said the same thing in an interview on CNBC.

Buffett said we should “start over.” And he said, correctly, that the main healthcare problem is runaway costs and that the bill that the president is pushing “unfortunately…doesn’t attack the cost situation that much.”

Yet, in his remarks in Missouri, the president said, “…let me tell you, we’ve incorporated almost every serious idea from across the political spectrum about how to contain rising healthcare costs. There’s not an idea out there that we have not worked on, that we have not included in this proposal.”

At the recent White House healthcare summit, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., challenged with clarity the massive accounting gimmicks and hallucinatory economic assumptions that Democrats have used to present this massive budget busting disaster of a bill as a prudent deficit-cutting measure.

Ryan, speaking for Republicans, showed that the 10-year costs are in reality $2.3 trillion, rather than under a trillion as claimed. It’s all been ignored.

In the one laboratory experiment we have — Massachusetts, which enacted a state plan similar to what Democrats want for the nation — premiums are now the highest in nation, and per capital health expenditures are 27 percent higher than the national average.

Every freedom-loving American patriot that cares about our future should be on the phone today to their senators and congressmen saying “stop.”

[Please read also this article by Thomas Sowell… ‘Fraud has been at the heart of this medical care takeover plan from day one. The succession of wholly arbitrary deadlines for rushing this massive legislation through, before anyone has time to read it all, serves no other purpose than to keep its specifics from being scrutinized– or even recognized– before it becomes a fait accompli and ‘the law of the land.'”]

The Orchestra at Temple Square, under the direction of Igor Gruppman, will present An Evening of Russian Music on Friday, March 19, and Saturday, March 20, 2010, at 7:30 p.m. in the Tabernacle. Works include Mikhail Glinka’s Overture to Russian and Ludmilla, followed by excerpts from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, which will feature concertmaster Meredith Campbell on the violin, as well as Tamara Oswald on harp and Elizabeth Willey on cello. The second half of the program will be Symphony no. 6 in B minor (Pathetique) by Tchaikovsky. Tickets are required for the concert (I have a few; please call me if you would like to go) but standby persons will be admitted to the hall about 15 minutes before the concert begins.

President Obama has said that it is time for discussion to end. He said this in September, in October, in November, in December, in January, in February, and in March. Why did the discussion not end? Because the votes were not there to pass the legislation he wants to pass! The votes are not there today eigher, even with all the Republicans abstaining from the vote, there are STILL not enough votes to pass it. The bill now reportedly contains about 2900 pages of content. It is not only about healthcare, but also has many provisions for Education and other issues. WHY? Let’s work on the other issues as separate issues, not a part of this gigantic unknown entity that our government is trying to ram down our throats, saying pass it first and read it later! Let your representatives know you expect them to vote NO to this, and that if they vote “Yes”, you will vote them out as soon as possible! Thank you for reading.

by James L. Lambert – Guest Columnist – 3/10/2010 from OneNewsNow.

Unlike Nancy Pelosi, I am thankful for the healthcare industry. In fact, I’ve benefited greatly because of the status quo of that industry.

Several years ago, needing to lower my monthly healthcare costs, I shopped around to secure a new healthcare provider for my family, as the monthly premiums were increasing.

Thank God for good old competition between the different providers. Besides saving money each month, I found a new healthcare plan for myself. And when I did have to use that coverage to pay for an expensive operation, I figured my healthcare provider saved me in excess of $80,000. It was an enormous blessing.

Enter Democrats Nancy Pelosi and President Barack Obama. In their rush to impose their version of socialized medicine on all of America, they and their ilk have been viciously demonizing the healthcare insurance industry with exaggerations and innuendo. Robert Gibbs, the president’s press secretary, has even confirmed that the White House is recklessly determined on passing the healthcare legislation sometime during the next two weeks. According to insiders, the push to get the bill passed before the upcoming recess (March 29-April 11) is intentional. Why? If it doesn’t pass before then, it is expected that members of Congress will “get an earful” from their constituents during the congressional break — which would doom the bill’s passage.

Meanwhile Democratic leaders Pelosi and Obama are blaming the insurance industry for “carpet-bombing” their attempts to pass socialized medicine. The dirty little secret here is that this bill, if passed, will cost American taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars. It will also deny billions of dollars of Medicare funds to seniors in addition to transferring over $31-billion in expenses to the states, some of which are almost bankrupt. Even Obama admitted that we “can’t cover another 46 million for free…we’re going to have to find the money somewhere.”

Now the president is attacking the healthcare industry insurers by saying that insurers are not to be trusted. “They’re filing the airways with deceptive and dishonest ads,” he reports. And the country is being “held hostage” by the insurance companies, according to the president.

My, that’s interesting. It seems like the federal government has all the power these days. They can legislate companies out of business, print money out of thin air (creating inflation), waste billions of dollars on frivolous government programs, and put trillions of dollars of debt on the back of future generations.

Speaker Pelosi’s attacks on insurers are even more vicious. She emphatically states that the health insurers “are the villains in this. They have been a part of the problem in a big way”….”It’s almost immoral what they are doing”….”Of course they have been immoral all along.”

Dr. Mark Perry, professor of economics in the School of Management at the University of Michigan, has a different take on healthcare insurers. He has studied profitability margins of the 100 most profitable industries in America. He ranks healthcare plan insurers as the 86th most profitable industry in the country. This equates to a profit margin of 3.3 percent (see chart). Measured by profitability, 85 industries outrank healthcare. But you won’t hear that from the President of the United States or the Speaker of the House of Representatives.

Here are the facts: health insurers take tremendous risks in providing insurance to their customers. Like any prudent business, they try to keep their costs down with healthcare providers/hospitals and doctors. They also realistically deny coverage to very high-risk patients — in the same way that banks turn down a car loan to someone who has a terrible credit history.

Secondly, I don’t believe that healthcare insurance is “a right.” Contrary to what Speaker Pelosi preaches, not everything in this country is a right – not by a long shot. Many things in life come through hard work and determination. The concept of personal responsibility is essential to our society. Even so, the federal government provides emergency ward care to anyone, especially if it’s absolutely needed.

Finally, the government needs to understand that taxpayers can no longer be called on to pay for the healthcare of the 12 million people who are in the U.S. illegally, the 7 million people who don’t want healthcare insurance, or the millions of part-time workers who are not covered by insurance from their employers. No one is forcing them to work for these particular companies.

Here’s my take: If you want health insurance, you most likely can get it. You might not always like the coverage you get, but you get what you pay for. You can even obtain catastrophic insurance (which is even cheaper). It’s like anything you buy in the free marketplace, where people spend money on wide-screen televisions, fancy cars, expensive cell phones, and computers. If they wish to make their health a priority, most people can afford to buy some type of health protection. Believe me, it will be a lot cheaper than what our tax rates will be if this socialized medicine bill is passed.

So, Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Obama, back off! The free enterprise system does a much better job of providing healthcare than the federal government could ever dream of.

And here’s my advice: If you don’t want the government to take over the healthcare industry, which represents 1/6th of our economy, I urge you to call your representatives on Capitol Hill and voice your opinion — today!

(Taken from http://americansolutions.com.) Last week President Obama made his final push on his healthcare reform plan surrounded by seven doctors in white coats. It was pure theater, and pure propaganda.

The fact is that most doctors don’t support Obamacare. You might not know it because the American Medical Association, which represents fewer than 20% of all doctors, is the largest organized group of doctors and its national leadership decided to support Obamacare, even as their rank and file members have grown disillusioned with the President’s health reform plan.

So a new group of 3000-4000 doctors has emerged, Docs 4 Patient Care, and they are rushing to get the word out about how docs really feel about a government takeover of healthcare.

Their message is getting out in one of two ways. First, they are speaking to their patients, one at a time, and sharing with them their view that President Obama’s health plan will be a disaster for healthcare in this country. President Obama might be speaking from the Oval Office, but patients are hearing in the doctor’s office that the President’s approach is terribly flawed.

Who is the patient likely to believe, their own doctor or Obama’s doctors? That’s no contest.

The second way is also simple and direct. The doctor leaders of Docs 4 Patient Care are looking straight into a video camera from their offices, and offering their direct testimonials about why Obamacare will badly damage our system of American healthcare and hoping the power of YouTube can help carry their messages to patients around the country.

In the video above, Dr. Fred Shessel speaks for five minutes about what every senior, and every American should know about Obamacare.

President Obama may have the bully pulpit, but he does not have the credibility of Dr. Fred Shessel.

If enough Americans have the chance to watch these videos of the docs, there’s no chance Obamacare would ever pass.

And aside from watching and sharing the video above, here are 3 questions you may want to ask your doctor:

1. Nearly half a trillion dollars will be cut from Medicare if President Obama’s healthcare bill is passed. What would that mean for me?

2. If the government has a larger role in deciding who receives or doesn’t receive certain treatments, what will that mean for our relationship? Will you have more or less authority?

3. What would the Obama healthcare bill mean for Medicare Advantage?

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I happen to agree with the opinions of our friends who posted the information above on their website. Please investigate carefully the costs and outcome of this disastrous piece of legislation and you will undoubtably come to the same conclusion as I and thousands of others have:

a- We cannot afford the costs of this legislation!
b- The funding of abortions by tax and other public monies is abhorrant and should be resisted by the public.
c- The practice of forcing americans to purchase health insurance (from the government, as they will be the only provider in a few years) or being fined a percentage of annual income is unconstitutional.
d- The closed-door arm-twisting and deal-making with legislators is not what was promised (“negotiations will be open to the public”) and special interests have far too much benefit from what we have heard, considering the small portion of the content of this bill that has been actually seen.
e- Nancy Pelosi says “pass the bill first, then see what it in it.” This attitude is ridiculous and should be clearly indicative of “foul-play”.

This bill MUST NOT BE PASSED into law! While it is true that insurance companies are raising their rates for coverage and there are many things wrong with our Health Care System, this gargantuan 2400-page bill IS WORSE and could cause financial issues for the entire country for generations to come. CALL YOUR CONGRESSMAN AND URGE HIM OR HER TO VOTE “NO”. Ask your friends and family to do likewise. The present administration is determined to inflict this bad piece of legislation upon us regardless of what the people think. MAKE SURE YOUR REPRESENTATIVES KNOW HOW YOU FEEL. It must be defeated.