President Obama and Democrats hope a Split-the-Vote will force Health Care Reform

New Rx for Health Plan: Split Bill - WSJ.com

The White House and Senate Democratic leaders, seeing little chance of bipartisan support for their health-care overhaul, are considering a strategy shift that would break the legislation into two parts and pass the most expensive provisions solely with Democratic votes.

The idea is the latest effort by Democrats to escape the morass caused by delays in Congress, as well as voter discontent crystallized in angry town-hall meetings. Polls suggest the public is losing support for the overhaul plans, giving Republicans less incentive to go along.

Democrats hope a split-the-bill plan would speed up a vote and help President Barack Obama meet his goal of getting a final measure by year's end.

Angry Protester.

Democratic plan would be put to a separate vote in the Senate, including the requirement that Americans have health insurance. But in Massachusetts the program is a failure it has not achieved universal healthcare, although the reform has been a boon to the private insurance industry. The state has more than 200,000 without coverage, and the count can only go up with rising unemployment.

The program is not affordable for many individuals and families. For middle-income people not qualifying for state-subsidized health insurance, costs are too high for even skimpy coverage. For an
individual earning $31,213, the cheapest plan can cost $9,872 in premiums and out-of-pocket payments. Low-income residents, previously eligible for free care, have insurance policies requiring unaffordable
copayments for office visits and medications.

On April 4th 2006 The Massachusetts legislature approved a bill that would require all residents to purchase health insurance or face legal penalties, which would make this the first state to tackle the problem
of incomplete medical coverage by treating patients the same way it does cars.

The costs of the reform for the state have been formidable. Spending for the Commonwealth Care subsidized program has doubled, from $630 million in 2007 to an estimated $1.3 billion for 2009, which is not sustainable.

We must let Congress know we want improved access to affordable healthcare for all, not more expensive private health insurance we can't afford to use when we are sick. Massachusetts healthcare reform
fails on all five Institute of Medicine criteria. Congress should not make it a model for the nation.

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Newt Gingrich Defends Sarah Palin's "Death Panel" Comments

GM Chevrolet Volt Electric Car get 300 Miles a day for $40,000.

GM says new Volt could get 230 mpg in city driving

General Motors said Tuesday its Chevrolet Volt electric car could get 230 mpg in city driving, making it the first American vehicle to achieve triple-digit fuel economy if that figure is confirmed by federal regulators.
But when the four-door family sedan hits showrooms late next year, its efficiency will come with a steep sticker price: $40,000.
Still, the Volt's fuel efficiency would be four times more than the popular Toyota Prius hybrid, the most efficient car now sold in the U.S.


Most automakers are working on similar designs, but GM would offer the first mainstream plug-in with the Volt, which seats four and was introduced at the 2007 Detroit auto show.

Chevrolet Volt electric car.

The Volt is powered by an electric motor and a battery pack with a 40-mile range. After that, a small internal combustion engine kicks in to generate electricity for a total range of 300 miles. The
battery pack can be recharged from a standard home outlet.

Toyota's Prius—which starts at about $22,000—gets 51 mpg in the city and 48 mpg on the highway and goes further than 300 miles. Hybrids use a small internal combustion engine combined with a high-powered battery to boost fuel efficiency.

What is the life of these high powered batteries?
The bottom line is that no one really knows how long they last. Manufacturers like Toyota and Honda have warranties that last for 8 years and between 80,000 and 100,000 miles. Replacement battery packs for hybrid cars generally cost about $3,000.

The batteries in hybrid cars are responsible for the better fuel economy that's become central to the technology. They power the electric motor, which typically propels a hybrid car at lower speeds. This puts less pressure on the gasoline engine and stretches out the amount of fuel a vehicle burns in between trips to the gas station.

But the chemical material that makes up all car batteries, whether it's a conventional car or a hybrid, is typically toxic. Currently, there are far fewer hybrid cars on the road than conventional cars; however,
concerns have been raised that if the number of hybrid cars increase, landfills will soon overflow with toxic batteries that are full of corrosive and carcinogenic materials.

Japanese electronics maker Hitachi Ltd. said Thursday it will supply lithium-ion batteries for hybrid vehicles to General Motors Corp. in 2010 and sharply raise production capacity to meet surging demand for gas-electric cars.
Hitachi currently makes 40,000 lithium-ion batteries per month and will lift the capacity to three million units per month that's 36 million a year.

PHEVs and electric cars need more robust lithium batteries than conventional hybrids, because the batteries undergo a more severe duty cycle, charged to the brim then nearly drained.

Even as it pushes ahead on the electric Smart cars, Mercedes says it isn't sure rechargeable batteries cut pollution or energy use. "You have to produce the energy" for recharging, and that might come from inefficient, higher-polluting sources.

So are you going to buy a GM Chevrolet Volt electric car  for $40,000 that only will go 300 miles a day, which you might have to buy a $3000 replacement battery and not save the environment?

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Hybrid vehicle battery challenges- Jon Lauckner, GM
WE NEED GOVERNMENT MONEY.

President Obama Grew Deficit by $181 billion in July.

TheHill.com - Deficit grew by $181 billion in July

Spending through July of 2009 has increased by $530 billion, which is 21 percent over the same period in 2008. The bailout money for Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae accounted for almost half of the spending increase. Unemployment benefits have more than doubled, Medicaid spending has grown by a quarter and Medicare spending has increased by 11 percent.

Tax revenue for the first three quarters of 2009 has fallen by approximately $350 billion, or 17 percent compared to the same period last year, due mostly to the effects of the recession on payroll, income and corporate taxes. A third of the decline is due to tax breaks in the stimulus, including the middle-class tax cut that President Obama campaigned on during last year's election.

The independent budget scorekeeper has projected the deficit to reach $1.8 trillion by the end of the fiscal year, Sept. 30. The deficit in 2008 reached $455 billion, which was a record at the time.

President Obama "Spendaholic".


The latest deficit projections come as Democrats in Congress and the White House are pushing for healthcare reform criticized by Republicans as too costly. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) stressed during a town-hall meeting in Colorado this week that the healthcare bill won't add to the
deficit or restrict benefits and instead will increase access to care.

I guess Nancy Pelosi is smarter than the independent Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Which said the bill expected to cost roughly $1 trillion over the next decade. Nancy said the bill won't add to the
deficit.

As if healthcare spending weren't already a train wreck in the making, it's projected to nearly double by 2017, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced today. That means it'll reach a whopping $4.3 trillion and account for 19.5 percent of our gross domestic product, up from 16.3 percent
now.

The Obama campaign maintain that they've figured out how to pay for their proposals without worsening the deficit. The problem is that given the difficulties we already face—that $4.3 trillion—their mechanisms to finance these programs just aren't very convincing. That's like saying you're going to pay for a weight-loss program with the money you'll save on groceries once you're slim.

The final presidential debate: Deficit spending, health care, and more

SCHIEFFER: We found out yesterday that this year's deficit will reach an astounding record high $455 billion. Some experts say it could go to $1 trillion next year.
OBAMA: Well, first of all, I think it's important for the American public to understand that the $750 billion rescue package, if it's structured properly, and, as president, I will make sure it's structured properly, means that ultimately taxpayers get their money back, and that's important to understand. But there is no doubt that we've been living beyond our means and we're going to have to make some
adjustments. Now, what I've done throughout this campaign is to propose a net spending cut. I haven't made a promise about...
SCHIEFFER: But you're going to have to cut some of these programs, certainly.
OBAMA: Absolutely. So let me get to that. What I want to emphasize, though, is that I have been a strong proponent of pay-as- you-go. Every dollar that I've proposed, I've proposed an additional
cut so that it matches. And some of the cuts, just to give you an example, we spend $15 billion a year on subsidies to insurance companies. It doesn't -- under the Medicare plan -- it doesn't help
seniors get any better. It's not improving our health care system. It's just a giveaway. We need to eliminate a whole host of programs that don't work. And I want to go through the federal budget line by line, page by page, programs that don't work, we should cut. Programs that we need, we should make them work better.
But what is absolutely true is that, once we get through this economic crisis and some of the specific proposals to get us out of this slump, that we're not going to be able to go back to our profligate ways. And we're going to have to embrace a culture and an ethic of responsibility, all of us, corporations, the federal government, and individuals out there who may be living beyond their means.
President Obama speaking out of both side of his mouth.

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Bush Has Doubled National Debt with Deficits

President Obama's Health Care Reform bill Encourages "end-of- life" Counseling for Seniors

'End-of-Life' Counseling Intensifies Health Care Debate - Political News - FOXNews.com

A provision in President Obama's health care reform bill encourages "end-of- life" counseling for seniors -- sparking euthanasia fears among some of the legislation's critics and leading others to believe that the White House is looking to save money by pressuring insurers to provide less coverage to seniors.

The provision, tucked deep within the House bill, would provide Medicare coverage for an end-of-life consultation every five years, and more frequent sessions if a person is suffering a life-threatening disease.
Health providers would be required to explain to seniors the end-of-life services available, including "palliative care and hospice."
"This provision may start us down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia if enacted into law," House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Rep. Thaddeus McCotter, R-Mich. said in a statement last month.

Senior Citizen golden years.

What could "end-of-life" counseling really mean to those over 65?

From: What Are the Potential Cost Savings from Legalizing Physician-Assisted Suicide?, New England Journal of Medicine, July 1998

Medicare budget is spent on the 5 percent of Medicare patients who die each year. The last month of life accounts for 30 to 40 percent of the medical care expenditures in the last year of life. To many, savings from reduced use of expensive technological interventions at the end of life are both necessary and desirable." By dying one month earlier by means of physician-assisted suicide, might save his or her family $10,000 in health care costs, having already spent as much as $20,000 in that year."


Obama encourages people to create living wills because researchers, who interviewed 603 advanced-cancer patients about whether they had end-of-life conversations with their physicians, found that
patients who did had an estimated average of $1,876 in health care expenses during their final week of life, compared with $2,917 for those who didn't. Patients also associated higher costs with a worse
quality of death during their final week and typically did not live longer if they received intensive care.
"Policies that promote increased communication, such as incentives for end-of-life conversations, may be cost-effective ways to both improve care and reduce some of the rising health care expenditures."
White House aides acknowledge it's a sensitive issue.
The 64-year-old Oregon woman, whose lung cancer had been in remission, learned the disease had returned and would likely kill her. Her last hope was a $4,000-a-month drug that her doctor prescribed for her, but the insurance company, Oregon State Health Plan, refused to pay.
What the Oregon Health Plan did agree to cover, however, were drugs for a physician-assisted death. Those drugs would cost about $50.
"What is six months of life worth?" he asked in a report in the Eugene Register-Guard. "To me it's worth a lot. This is my life they're playing with."  Remember the government wants to play with your life.

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Oregon Health Plan Denies Chemo Medicine- Assisted Suicide Offered Instead

Obama Misleading and Outlandish About Health Care Reform

Obama Addresses 'Outlandish' and 'Misleading' Claims About Health Reform - Political Punch

After a week of rowdy town halls where President Obama’s policies on health care were challenged, the president used his weekly address to debunk what he called “outlandish rumors” about what reform will mean to Americans.

As senators and representatives head home for the August recess to meet with their constituents, the president said it is important that Americans have the facts.
“So let me start by dispelling the outlandish rumors that reform will promote euthanasia, cut Medicaid or bring about a government takeover of health care," he said. "That’s simply not true. This isn’t about putting government in charge of your health insurance; it’s about putting you in charge of your health insurance. Under the reforms we seek, if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.”

England has had Government Health Insurance for over 50 years. Let's see how they treat their elderly.

Age discrimination

One of the worst areas, the report found, was mental health care, where older people found services deteriorating as they passed the age of 65.

Gordon Lishman, director-general of Age Concern England, said it was "shocking" that so many social services departments were still failing to meet the needs of older people - the main users of these services.

He said: "Sadly, too many older people in need of public services are currently treated as second-class citizens." Liberal Democrat health spokesman Steve Webb said: "The needs of older people are not a priority for this government."


Andrew Lansley, the shadow health secretary, said the report highlighted the possibility that government targets for assessing patients in Accident and Emergency departments had led to the rushed discharge of older people. He also highlighted concerns about inconsistencies in community rehabilitation of stroke patients.

You would think after 50 years of Government Health Care the English government would have gotten it right. No! After 50 years the needs of older people are not a priority for this government.

In the debate about health care reform, France is often held up as an exemplar. The French get excellent outcomes on every measure, and they achieve them at far lower cost than the United States.
Why is this so? Their freedoms of diagnosis and therapy are protected in ways that would make their managed-care-controlled US counterparts envious. However, the average American physician earns more than five times the average US wage while the average French physician makes only about two
times the average earnings of his or her compatriots. But the lower income of French physicians is allayed by two factors. Practice liability is greatly diminished by a tort-averse legal system, and
medical schools, although extremely competitive to enter, are tuition-free. Thus, French physicians enter their careers with little if any debt and pay much lower malpractice insurance premiums.
Maybe we should follow France example. Introduce tort reform and make medical schools tuition free and keep the greatest health systems in the world.
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Dirty Little Secret - Universal Healthcare? Social Security?

President Obama, We're Pointed in the Right Direction with lost of Quarter Milliom Jobs and People Giving Up.

Job Losses Slow, Signaling Earliest Days of a Rebound - NYTimes.com

The most heartening employment report since last summer suggested on Friday that a recovery was under way — and perhaps gathering steam — despite the reluctance of the nation’s businesses to resume hiring or even stop shedding jobs.

Employers eliminated 247,000 jobs in July, a huge number by the standards of an ordinary recession, but the smallest monthly loss since last August, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported. And the unemployment rate, rising for months, actually ticked down, to 9.4 percent from 9.5 percent in June, mainly because so many people dropped out of the hunt for work, ceasing to list themselves as unemployed.

Unemployment Line.

Suggested on Friday that a recovery was under way — and perhaps gathering steam but never in the 61 years of record keeping has one-third of the unemployed, currently 14.5 million people, been out of work for 27 weeks or more.

The unemployment rate, rising for months, actually ticked down, to 9.4 percent from 9.5 percent in June,
More than 400,000 who had been looking for work dropped out of the labor force in July, if all those people had continued to look for work, then the unemployment rate last month would have ticked up, to 9.7 percent,” said Nigel Gault, chief domestic economist at IHS Global Insight.

After months of painful job losses, the Obama administration was clearly relieved at the brightening picture. Through July, 6.7 million jobs have disappeared since the recession began in December 2007, with manufacturers accounting for nearly one-third of the loss. But manufacturing losses in July eased to
52,000, largely because of a fluke in the auto industry.

"The worst may be behind us," President Barack Obama declared. "Today, we're pointed in the right direction." If laid-off workers who have given up looking for new jobs or have settled for part-time work are included the unemployment rate would have been 16.3 percent in July. All told, 14.5 million were out of work in July.

 Analysts say companies will keep cutting jobs probably through the rest of this year, though the pace of layoffs should continue to taper off. The beginnings of recovery could actually push the unemployment rate higher, since far more people would be energized to look for work again.

So President Obama, don't count your chickens before they hatch. It is like saying you are getting better because your cancer is not growing as fast.Your not getting better when your cancer slows in growth but until it's in remission.

An elevated unemployment rate could become a political liability for Obama when congressional elections are held next year. Ronald Reagan's GOP lost 26 House seats in the midterm elections in 1982.

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Unemployment Hits 16.5% (U6) Unbelievable