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You land up in a hospital and you feel like you are in a maze. Do you have the correct information when you go in?
Did you know that communication breakdowns in hospitals in the U.S. led to more than 1700 deaths over a five year period? Maybe that does not sound like a big number, but it is if it happens to you. What if I told you, you need a medical team?
But let’s face it, in the trauma of being admitted, patients and family can easily become confused by the tons of information and instructions from these strangers.
That’s why Kati Kleber, BSN,RC, and CCRN and nationally certified critical care nurse in the neurosciences intensive care unit at Novant Presbyterian Medical Center pulled together information you need to know before it all comes crashing down and you become one of those 1700 plus victims.
It’s called “Admit One” with what you must know when going to the hospital, but no one actually tells you. From CNN to Dr. Oz Kati shared the insider information with me on POPPOFF.
1) BRING A LIST OF HOME MEDICATIONS. Know what medications you take on a regular basis. When you are admitted someone will ask you to provide a list of your med and will put them in your chart. Your attending doctor will decide which to keep you on in the hospital. On this one, I asked Kati if it’s a good idea to have a list of vitamins and herbs you take, and she said absolutely because of interactions.
2) MAKE A LIST OF HEALTH CARE TEAM MEMBERS. An extensive team of health professionals will come and go from your room. It’s hard to tell which is which…doc, nurse, consultant etc. You and your support person will want to write down who is who, along with their instructions.
3) KNOW YOUR CODE. Your code status informs staff what to do if you stop breathing or your heart stops. Patients without chronic health issues who aren’t nearing the end of their life may want health professionals to do everything to revive them. Others with terminals diagnosis or advanced age may choose not to be revived. This is called DNR or Do Not Resuscitate.
4) ASSIGN A SPOKESPERSON. Identify someone the hospital staff can call when changes occur. It is important this person can be easily reached and that you trust.
5) WRITE DOWN QUESTIONS AS YOU THINK OF THEM. Except for nurses, most team members stop by your room once a day, review your care plan, and make adjustments. It’s not easy to remember all your questions.
6) ADVOCATE FOR YOURSELF. Let the nurse know of any changes in your condition so the information can be relayed to your health care team. Also, if for any reason, you are not happy with a member of your health care team, let your nurse know that you’d like to speak with a nurse manager.
7) LEAVE THE EQUIPMENT TO THE EXPERTS. Hospitals are full of elaborate, high-tech equipment. If any equipment becomes dislodged, always alert a nurse. Unfortunately, incidents have occurred where patients or family inflict irreparable harm when trying to fix things themselves.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg, lots more in “Admit one.” You can also check out www.nurseeyeroll.com.
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Is there a health hoax happening in the U.S.? It is according to Raymond Francis author of “Never Be Sick Again” and his latest book “The Great American Health Hoax.” He claims healthcare in America is pretending to be something it is not.
He added on POPPOFF that the definition of healthcare is the maintenance or restoration of health. But our healthcare system is not about maintaining or restoring health…it’s about managing the symptoms of disease.
This is disease-care, not healthcare. In addition to the possibility of a hoax, he claims it is threatening to bankrupt the United States with an aging population…10,000 people retiring daily and we have promised to pay for their healthcare.
There won’t be enough young people working to cover the costs. But he thinks there is a way out of this economic mess. Choose health! All the debate so far is about how to save a dime here and a dollar there, but it won’t work.
We need to change the terms of the debate to how to prevent disease. We need to teach people how to choose health…no disease, no costs. Unfortunately, health is a choice not yet chosen.
So, it is possible to choose health? Yes, says Francis. The science is there. We already know how to prevent and reverse almost all disease. We have to put to use what we already know. Raymond Francis is a chemist and MIT graduate and has spent sufficient time around chemicals.
So when plagued with a chemical sensitivity as a result of his acute chemical hepatitis, he knew he had to do something to save his life and fast!
The first step - - identify the root of the problem. It was here he discovered that these issues derive from the significant changes in lifestyle, diet, and environment that have occurred over the past hundred years.
Many advances have been made, but not all of them are beneficial to our bodies and their delicate chemistry. Harmful toxins can be found in a myriad of places besides prescription drugs like carpets, cookware, building materials, even appliances.
Now it’s all about diet, right? No, says Francis, it’s a very holistic approach to health with what he calls the Six Pathways to health and disease. You can get yourself moving toward health on all Six Pathways and you will remain biologically young, healthy and vigorous.
We do not know all of the many factors that can be affecting your health, which is why using all six at the same time is important. They are:
I don’t have enough time to tackle them all, but I was curious if there were any foods we should not eat. He said, yes. Get off processed foods. The average American diet consists mostly of processed foods, and this diet will not support healthy life…even in rats.
In his book, he lists what he calls the Bad four. These are the four most dangerous foods people eat…sugar, wheat, processed oils, and milk and dairy products. He also told me on the air no corn, no soy or tofu either. Guess it has to do with GMOs.
You can check out all the other things we do to live an unhealthy life in “The Great American HEALTH HOAX (available on Amazon)” The Surprising Truth about How Modern Medicine Keeps You Sick. You can also check out his website www.BeyondHealth.com.
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A U.S. judge on Thursday blasted the Obama administration’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit brought by Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives over the implementation of the Democratic President’s signature healthcare law.
Reuters Reports:
Republicans in the House filed a lawsuit in November, saying administration officials unlawfully bypassed Congress.
At issue are executive changes authorizing Treasury payments to healthcare insurers without the funding being agreed by Congress and delaying implementation of the law’s employer mandate, which required employers with more than 50 employees to provide healthcare coverage.
U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer, appointed by Obama’s predecessor, Republican George W. Bush, repeatedly interrupted U.S. Justice Department lawyer Joel McElvain during the hearing in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Justice Department lawyers argue that the House lacks standing to sue, citing a section of U.S. law that means the House would have to prove it has been directly harmed.
“So it is your position that if the House of Representatives affirmatively voted not to fund something … then that vote can be ignored by the administration, because after all, no one can sue them?” she asked.
Republican duplicity continues on the Obamacare front and it's got me stumped. What's the bigger lie?
If you like your doctor, you can keep him?
Or if you elect a Republican Congress we'll repeal Obamacare?
Potentially even worse than the lying is the hypocrisy.
Members of Congress colluding with the administration are now receiving a yearly subsidy of between $5,000 and $10,000 to buy an Obamacare policy regardless of their total household income.
One expects this from Democrats, but now Republicans are enjoying the handouts and preventing efforts at repeal from Senator David Vitter (R–LA).
Commenting on the rioting in Baltimore, the Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Henniger was almost to the end of his April 30 text when he said “On Wednesday morning, the year’s first-quarter GDP growth rate came in—0.02%.
Next to nothing. For the length of the Obama presidency, with growth significantly below norm, unemployment for blacks aged 24 and younger has hovered between 30% and 40%. That’s the real powder key, not the police.”
Most Americans do not put the state of the economy at the heart of everything else is occurring. Instead they listen to politicians apply the blame to everything other than themselves.
President Obama spent his entire first term blaming George W. Bush for the bad state of the economy he inherited, but instead of addressing it, he increased it by imposing ObamaCare, radically altering how many would be hired while others were cut to a part-time status. The bill added a number of taxes as well.
When 2015 arrived in January CNS News reported that “A record 92,898,000 Americans 16 and older did not participate in the labor force in December, as the labor force participation rate dropped once again to 62.7 percent, a level it has not seen in 36 years,” according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
Remember those unemployed young blacks? In March the BLS noted that a record of 12,202,000 black people were not in the labor force. The unemployment rate for black people in March was 10.1 percent, which is nearly double the overall unemployment rate of 5.5 percent.
For black teens, age 16 to 19, the unemployment rate was even higher at 25.0 percent, meaning that one in four black teens who were actively seeking a job did not have one.
By the beginning of April, the BLS reported that “a record 93,175,000 Americans 16 and older did not participate in the labor force in March, as the labor force participation rate dropped to 62.7 percent, the lowest level seen in 37 years.”
Also in April, the BLS reported that “a record 56,131,000 women, age 16 years and over, were not in the labor force the previous month, as the participation rate for this group dropped to 56.6 percent—a 27 year low.
It was no surprise that the Department of Agriculture reported that “The number of beneficiaries who receive compensation from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), otherwise known as food stamps, has topped 46,000,000 for 37 straight months.”
The U.S. Census Bureau started 2015 with news that one out of five young adults—white, black, Hispanic—and ages 18 to 34, currently live in poverty! That’s 13.5 million people, “up from one in seven (8.4 million people) in 1980.”
If all this strikes you as very bad news, it gets worse. In February, the Daily Caller’s White House Correspondence, Neil Monro, reported that “President Barack Obama has quietly handed out an extra 5.46 million work permits for non-immigrant foreigners who arrived as tourists, students, illegal immigrants or other types of migrants since 2009.”
“’The executive branch is operating a high parallel work-authorization system outside the bounds of the (immigration) laws and limits written by Congress (and which) inevitably reduces job opportunities for Americans,’ said Jessica Vaughan, the policy director at the Center for Immigration Studies” which filed the FOIA request the revealed this travesty.
So it didn’t matter to Barack Obama that millions of Americans were out of work while the White House masterminded a secretive program to provide non-Americans access to the jobs that were available.
We are living in the midst of an economic disaster and despite the often rosy headlines the reality is one that Stephen Moore, the chief economist at the Heritage Foundation, took note of in January in The Washington Times. He identified “hidden indicators” of the true state of the economy as 2015 began:
“The $1 trillion growth gap. This economic recovery is the lowest in 50 years”
“The restless recovery. It’s been 10 years since Americans in the middle class got a pay raise that kept pace with inflation.”
“Inequality is worse. The Gini coefficient (as measured by the Census Bureau), the left’s favorite measure of income inequality, rose each of Mr. Obama’s first four years in office, breaking all-time highs in both 2011 and 2012, and it remains high.”
“The debt has grown by $7.3 trillion. When Mr. Obama entered office the national debt was under $11 trillion. Now it’s more than $18 trillion…it will be $19 trillion when he leaves office.”
The record speaks for itself. Americans are worse off today than when Obama took office in 2009. In the years since then he has totally failed to take the best understood steps to push back against a recession and unemployment.
He has expanded the federal government. He has failed to initiate a reform of the nation’s tax code to stimulate investment and expansion.
The nation’s first black President has so poorly served the interests of the African-American population that they are worse off today. He has practiced “equal inequality” by afflicting our other demographic groups, younger workers, woman, and everyone else who has been left unable to afford college and unable to purchase a home and start a family.
These years will be seen in retrospect as a desert of opportunity.
Is it too soon to begin to sum up President Obama’s “legacy”? Possibly, but after six years we know enough to draw some conclusions.
There is much to protest on any given day Obama sits in the Oval Office with all its powers at his disposal. The Constitution granted the executive branch considerable power, particularly in the conduct of foreign affairs but the Founders also created a system to offset the office when it comes to domestic affairs.
It is clear that Obama has virtually no interest in foreign affairs, preferring to tell lies about Islamic terrorism and to ignore Russia’s seizure of Crimea and its support of insurgents in eastern Ukraine. Instead he has devoted most of his time, when not vacationing and playing golf, to his domestic agenda. It has proven to be a failure.
The failure of ObamaCare, introduced with a series of lies, is the most dramatic feature of his legacy. While it remains a law, it has been so plagued with problems that one can easily imagine it being repealed once Obama is out of office. It has seriously harmed what was widely understood to be a costly system. By now, thanks to Jonathan Gruber, one of its architects, we know that both he and the President knew it would be largely unaffordable back in 2009 and both regarded Americans to be “stupid.”
The Supreme Court will hear a case, King v. Burwell, on March 4 and will likely rule in June. As The Wall Street Journal opined, “As a matter of ordinary statutory construction, the Court should find that when the law limited subsidies to insurance exchanges established by states, that does not include the 36 states where the feds run exchanges.” That many states refused to set up their own exchanges and that tells you just how poorly it was received.
Fundamentally, “if the subsidy foundation is undermined, the rest will collapse of its own weight…The subsidies are crucial to ObamaCare because they offset the added costs of the law’s regulations.” Suffice to say, Republicans who now control Congress had better have some measures to enact to replace ObamaCare. And, yes, if it was passed in whole, it can be repealed in whole.
While 36 states refused to participate in ObamaCare’s exchanges, 26 states joined together in a legal suit against the legitimacy of Obama’s unilateral executive order intended to alter the laws regarding illegal aliens, but only Congress can change those laws. No President has the authority to do so.
Ironically, on President’s Day, February 16, Federal Judge Andrew Hanen enjoined Jeh Johnson, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, from implementing “any and all aspects of phases of the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents program as set out by Johnson in a November 20, 2014 memorandum.
The injunction was based on “the failure of the defendants to comply with the Administrative Procedure Act.” That Act governs the issuance of new rules and regulations by government agencies, including requirements that public notice be posted and opportunities to comment exist before a substantive rule can be enacted. The routinely arrogant Obama administration ignored this.
The greater issue, of course, has been Obama’s refusal to obey the existing immigration laws in order to add five million or more illegal aliens to the U.S. population without their going through the process that millions of others have obeyed.
If Obama won’t obey the law, why should he expect the states or anyone else to do so? The suit was brought by the states on the grounds that “the Government has abandoned its duty to enforce the law” and Judge Hanen concluded that “this assertion cannot be disputed.” The case will now move up through the court system because, of course, Obama’s Department of Justice will seek an appeal. By the time a ruling is made, Obama is likely to be out of office and his amnesty efforts will have failed.
Obama’s two key initiatives will go down in flames and that is very good news.
Beyond them is the astonishing amount of debt he had added over the past six years, starting with a failed “stimulus” program that wasted a trillion dollars on non-existent “shovel ready” jobs, the bailout of General Motors that left taxpayers with a loss of $11.2 billion, and grants to “clean energy” companies, many of which went belly up.
As of this writing, not only has the credit rating of the U.S. been downgraded for the first time in its history, but U.S. debt stands at $18 trillion and growing. That is definitely not good news.
We can, however, as Obama’s term of office recedes with every passing day, know that his “transformation” of America into a socialist state will end in failure. When gone, whoever replaces him will have a huge job of reestablishing America as the leader of the free world.
It will not likely be a Democrat. Obama’s legacy will include—as it already has—a major voter shift to support of Republicans in Congress, in the governorships, and many state legislatures throughout America. And that is good news.
Last December I wrote of Senator David Vitter’s lonely fight to make our elected panjandrums and their courtesans live under that same laws we do. You can find that column here.
As you might imagine this is very difficult because our "public servants" mostly consider themselves better than the public they serve.
Vitter believes in the principle that restaurant food is better if the cook eats it, too. And the same goes for legislation, although politicians don't have to eat the bill — not even Nancy Pelosi needs that much roughage.
Just live by the laws they pass, like the rest of us do.
I interviewed Senator Vitter last week and he's making progress on requiring Washington to suffer under Obamacare, too, but even with a Republican House and Senate the struggle remains an uphill climb.
I have decided to take on the idea of vaccinations. As always, to get to the truth, one must hit that ball back and forth, and when the dust settles, hopefully the truth will be visible... hopefully, we will recognize it when we see it!
One might think the argument a simple matter to consider, and yet there is a powerful triangulation that stymies most all civility, and the truth of this matter is covered in both fear and outright lies. If you want to know the truth, which is not always evident in the world of men, follow the paper trail.
If there is a corporate profit to be made, more than likely there will be little or no moral compass, as the corporation is compartmentalized just for that purpose... Individuals, except for those calling the shots from the top, do not feel or understand the workings of other departments, and so do not feel responsible for the whole, or its overt consequences. And so, if love and fear is the primary motivator of an individual, there will, there must be a moral equivalent.
And that is what I'm looking to find here...Of course, there are exceptions, but I challenge you to find one. Even an individual who might take a stand on a social issue on a television program, or a restaurant perhaps, or other businesses who might make it known that it is opposed to some government mandate, must have indeed calculated that there was a good chance they would survive the ordeal, and even formulate the possibility that it might be lucrative, before coming forth and taking a stand.
Yes, so terrible to consider, that goodness may be tainted, but how rare are the kinds that have come forth knowing full well that their take on a particular subject would ultimately destroy their very livelihood? Can you name one? Whistle-blowers come to mind...
On one side is a woman who thinks that her children will be at risk unless it in mandated by government that all children be required, by pain of fine and or imprisonment, to be vaccinated... If they refuse, they must have virtual forfeiture of any further participation inside of that society, branded publicly, marked so that they will be identified everywhere they travel, and will be forever labeled as such, unless of course, they resend...it is the price paid for dissonance on one hand, and an unquestioned and dominating authority on the other.
Civil Disobedience, the Constitution, our civil liberties, freedom, Liberty from tyranny, all morality and ethics, Love and joy, all civility, all politeness, all of science, all of history and our future, everything both artful or speculated by scientific hypothesis, and our undeniable imagination... all of it would be pulverized by a woman guarding her children... and it is well known that she would do anything, anything at all...
And Big Pharmacy knows this... and the paper trail both begins and ends there...
Big Pharmacy is even bigger then the Military Industrial Complex, and Government wants to control that... oh, really? And what is big government?
It is a collection of corporations with a singular mindset, working in conjunction... and by the use of media, and corporate lawyers, they pay billions for their drug adds, at the same time lobbing congress to support them in their monetary-big-Pharmacy endeavors.
Lobbying is not a plead for help; it is bought and paid for...It may or may not surprise you to know that “Obama-care,..” you know the one that had to pass so that we could see what was inside? Well, now the thousands of pages are found to be full of doublespeak, and convoluted lawyer loop-holes, and has a Big Brother Pharmacy-fingerprint on every page.
They finally had enough from both sides to vote it in, and what prey-tell changed their minds, not actually knowing what was in it? What could change the mind of a man who is bought and paid for?
So lets hit the ball back for a moment
Why would a loving woman take a stand against another loving woman, unless her mind is filled with something else, like fear. And where would she get this fear? From a long-ago teacher? An inner voice of reason? What if, let us consider for a moment... media propaganda? And who controls this media, corporations do, and what is their primary objective?
Is it a cure for cancer? Is it a free drug that cures diabetes? No, no more so then a good surgeon want to tell you that a topical cream will get rid of a planter's wart. Cutting it out will be far more effective, we are told, and they sleep very well at night, justifying that it is...
Wait, lets bounce it back again
Isn't Anti-vaccination parents deemed by Pro-vaccinated parents to be dangerous and irresponsible? And that without that particular vaccination, as all others are required by law to do, the individual, along with their entire family, will be scorned as irresponsive to the collective needs of our civilization, and the decision to withdraw from the system irresponsible.
Some, but not all, who are Pro-Vaccination, say the chance is worth the risk, even in the wake of admitting that the increase in autism is not readily understood. 10,000 to one a decade ago is now 50 to one... and looks to be still escalating... Yes, escalating, with an unknown trigger.
Is it as simple as one person not being able to put their feet in another person's shoes? Surely, you would think differently, question the official narrative more closely, if your child contracted autism on the very day they got a shot...
Your child had a slight fever, but some had not symptoms at all, and that is not enough to show that each individual reacts differently to the shot! If there are differing reactions, why can't we concede that some people may be more susceptible than others? We are not allergic the same, so what is the problem?
The nurses, practitioners of many kinds, and doctors that I know, some in my family and some who I see professionally, overwhelmingly agree that vaccinations are a powerful force, and tool, for good.
Now this may be entirely true, or wrong, but shouldn't we consider that the primary reason for this strong supportive stance might be that they have, for their entire career, believed that vaccinations are a power for good, and that even the mere suggestion that it is not is an affront not only to their intellect, but morally as well?
Who, with so much education, making daily life and death decisions, would readily admit the remote possibility that they have been duped. Surely, a doctor three hundred years ago would look at how medicine is being practiced today as magic. And surely, without a doubt, with computer compilations that create new data, with the ability to save it all, and making it easily accessible to all those working on similar projects.
That, for the sake of reason, we are doubling our store of knowledge in most all of the sciences, every 2.2 years? Could there be, Lord forbid, something that might curb this expansion of knowledge? Perhaps a reluctance to relinquish power, control, and a black bottom line?
If everyone would just back up a moment, and look into each others eyes, they would see the same thing: Goodness, Love, accountability, responsibility, obligation, duty, honor, and all of it motivated by fear.
Points to consider...
1.) There is the trust issue. Both big corporations and government, all modern governments, work together for a common cause. Some corporations in Russia feel competitive with some Western corporations, and central banks too.
Do you think that Western inventions are protected by law beyond the borders of China, Russia, or India? International law? Ever wonder why our current Progressive government is so opposed to being under the jurisdiction of a system of international law? No, it has nothing to do with your right to bear arms, but of the profit margin in arms and drug trafficking.
If you really want truth, do a bit of homework using this question: “What does Afghanistan Poppy, Medicinal Marijuana, Benghazi, Iran, Saudi and Israel, Cuba and North Korea, have in common?” Want a hint? Its Profit. Corporate profit.
2.) If you vaccinate your children, and it works, then they surely must be safe from those who are not vaccinated. Unless, of course, the vaccination did not work. So what moral justification does one woman have over the other, if both ideals are flawed? Both are love and caring, responsible parents, who want to do what is right. If there are no guarantees, why then is the argument so cut and dry?
3.) Read the Public Health Service Act (PHSA). And how it deals with something they term “Quarantine.” Any resistance against the proclamation martial law, is futile, with unconstitutional draconian enforcement backed by the military. Yes, we trust them. We trust everything that is said on the black box too. They have never lied to us!
Now, you might be surprised to know that I have not yet made a decision on this issue here, but after seeing the video above, you just might see the light....
I did know a woman in Crowley. LA, who has been raising a child who was normal the same day it was inoculated, over thirty years ago. “While we were driving home, I saw the change in her. I saw her alert, with sparkling eyes that recognized me and reacted to me, and I watched them turn dull and without light before we got home.
She didn't die that day, only her future did, because she is still four years old. There is no way anyone can tell me that shot had nothing to do with it. It can't be proved, so they told me, but I live with it every day, and I know damned well the shot did it.” This year she will be 38. She still plays with the same teddy bear, has never learned to read, and is barley potty trained.
She can not be trusted alone, and has to be monitored from the time she wakes up till she is bathed and put to sleep. She is diagnosed with having autism, and no one can explain how or why. Don't we have an obligation to ask these questions? Any loving and responsible parent would.
“I do not agree with a word that you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” - Voltaire
Can anyone remember how awful the U.S. healthcare free market system was that it needed to be replaced by the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as ObamaCare? Can’t remember? That’s because it was ranked one of the best of the world and represented 17.9% of the nation’s economy in 2014. That’s down from the 20% it represented in 2009 when ObamaCare was foisted on Americans.
One of the best ways to follow the ObamaCare story is via Health Care News, a monthly newspaper published by The Heartland Institute. The January issue begins with an article by Sean Parnell, the managing editor, reporting that ObamaCare enrollment is overstated by 400,000.
“The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) once again lowered its estimate of the number of Americans enrolled in health plans through government exchanges in 2014. The 6.7 million enrollees who remain are far lower than the eight million touted in May at the end of the last open-enrollment period.”
ObamaCare has been a lie from the moment it was introduced for a vote, all 2,700 pages of it, to the present day. Everything President Obama said about it was a lie. As to its present enrollments, they keep dropping because some 900,000 who did sign up did not make the first premium payment or later stopped paying.
Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies as the Cato Institute, said the dropout rate is a troubling trend. “It means that potentially hundreds of thousands of Exchange enrollees are realizing they are better off waiting until they get sick to purchase coverage. If enough people come to that conclusion, the exchanges collapse.”
Elsewhere in this month’s edition, there is an article, “States Struggle to Fund Exchanges”, that reports on the difficulties that “states are experiencing difficulty in paying the ongoing costs of the exchanges, especially small states."
'The feds are asking us to do their jobs for them. We get saddled with the operating costs,’ said Edmund Haislmaier, senior research fellow for health care policy studies at The Heritage Foundation.” Some are imposing a two percent tax on the insurance companies which, of course, gets passed along to the consumer. Even so, the exchanges are not generating enough income to be maintained.
Why would anyone want ObamaCare insurance when its rates keep rising dramatically? In Nebraska the rates have nearly doubled and another article notes that “A 2014 study finds large numbers of doctors are declining to participate in health plans offered through exchanges under the Affordable Care Act, raising questions about whether people buying insurance through exchanges will be able to access health care in a timely manner.”
One reason physicians gave was that they would have to hire additional staff “just to manage the insurance verification process.”
Dr. Kris Held, a Texas eye surgeon, said ObamaCare “fails to provide affordable health insurance and fails to provide access to actual medical care to more people, but succeeds in compounding existing health care costs and accessibility problems and creating new ones.”
Health Care News reports what few other news outlets have noted. “In Section 227 of the recently enacted ‘Cromnibus’ spending measure, Congress added critical but little-noticed language that prohibits the use of funds appropriated to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to pay for insurance company bailouts.”
William Todd, an Ohio attorney, further noted that “Congress did not appropriate any separate funding for ‘bailouts.’” Todd predicted that “some insurers are likely to raise premiums to avoid losses, or they will simply stop offering policies on the exchanges altogether.”
The picture of ObamaCare failure emerging from these excerpts is a very true one. Its momentum, in fact, is gaining.
In mid-December, the Wall Street Journal opined that “With the Supreme Court due to rule on a major ObamaCare legal challenge by next summer, thoughts in Washington are turning to the practical and political response.
If the Court does strike down insurance subsidies, the question for Republicans running Congress is whether they will try to fix the problems Democrats created, or merely allow ObamaCare damage to grow.”
“King v. Burwell will be heard in March with a ruling likely in June. “Of the 5.4 million consumers on federal exchanges, some 87% drew subsidies in 2014, according to a Rand Corporation analysis.”
The Wall Street Journal recommended that “The immediate Republican goal should be to make insurance cheaper so people need less of a subsidy to obtain insurance. This means deregulating the exchanges, plank by plank. Devolve to states their traditional insurance oversight role, and allow them to enter into cross-border compacts to increase choice and competition.
Allow insurers to sell any configuration of benefits to anyone, anywhere, and the private market will gradually heal.”
Or, to put it another way, eliminate ObamaCare entirely and return to the healthcare insurance system that had served Americans well until the White House decided that socialism was superior to capitalism.
The problem with the Affordable Care Act is that the cost of the insurance sold under the Act is not affordable and ObamaCare is actually causing hospitals and clinics to close their doors, thus reducing healthcare services for those who need them.
ObamaCare must go. If the Republicans in Congress did nothing more than repeal ObamaCare, the outcome of the 2016 election would be a predictable win no matter who their candidate will be. If not repeal, some separate actions must be taken such as eliminating the tax on medical instruments.
If the Republican Congress fails to take swift and deliberate action on ObamaCare between now and the 2016 elections, they will have defeated themselves.
If a man walks in the bathroom and sees Napoleon starring back from the mirror as he brushes his teeth it might be a harmless idiosyncrasy. But should he go into the French Embassy and loudly demand the emperor’s back pension checks a nice man in uniform would take him for a mandatory mental health evaluation.
If that same man saw Marilyn Monroe starring back as the Crest dribbled down his chin the situation would be entirely different.
All he has to do is buy pants that zip up the side and an entire psychosis–enabling industry springs into action at taxpayer expense. Under Obamacare insurance companies are being forced to pay for “gender reassignment surgery” — as if reproductive organs can be swapped out like a bad carburetor — and now Medicare is required to cover body vandalism because our government is incapable of distinguishing between legitimate health goals and dangerous delusions.
Medicare wouldn’t pay for my steroid injections if I thought 18” biceps were lurking just beneath the surface in my upper arms, so why should taxpayers be on the hook for surgery that essentially installs a kangaroo pouch on men?
What’s more, body vandalism on the taxpayer dime is expensive!
Male–to–“female” operations cost approximately $25,000 and the reverse female–to–“male” quadruples that at $100,000. I’m guessing the discrepancy in surgery charges is because clear–cutting is cheaper than construction. Or maybe $100,000 is the maximum charge from a sliding scale based on the size of the finished product: The “Obama” being much cheaper than the “Putin.”
Dan Youra is one of the outstanding conservative cartoonists in the trade today who follows in the footsteps of the great political cartoon masters, whose quotes inspire a new generation of followers.
"Outside of basic intelligence, there is nothing more important to a good political cartoonist than ill will." ~ Jules Feiffer, Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist.
"Too many of today's artists regard editorial cartooning as a trade instead of a profession. They try not to be too offensive. The hell with that. We need more stirrer-uppers." ~ Bill Mauldin.
Youra was one of the first recipients of a Fulbright Scholarship and worked in Latin America. He served as an editor of Current Thought on Peace and War at the United Nations in New York.
"As long as there are politicians who continue to try and fool the voters, there is no chance of ever running out of material to work with because they create it themselves and about themselves," says Dan Youra.
Dan is the small business owner and operator of the Youra Studios located in the State of Washington.
You may not have realized just how special Members of the House and Senate really are. Oh, you know about the fawning aides, exotic "fact–finding" junkets and free limo lease.
But are you aware that Republicans in the House don't think they should be subject to the same laws that dominate our lives?
They have the bizarre idea that saying publicly you oppose Obamacare means elected officials have done all they can and should be exempt from the law in the future.
I say their failure to defeat or repeal Obamacare means the baleful effects of the law should be doubled for them as an incentive to get off their behinds and defeat Squeaker of the House John Boehner and repeal Obamacare.
If there is one thing pundits like to do it is to make predictions. If they turn out to be right you can always look back and quote them as proof of your prescience and if they are not, you can always ignore them.
The best ones, of course, are those filled with doom and I suspect they are the most prevalent. We all live to some degree in fear of the future.
It is, after all, unpredictable and we are conditioned to believe something awful will happen. That’s what keeps insurance companies in business. Governments continue to create problems and then promise to solve them.
For example, at some point there will be a huge earthquake in California thanks to the San Andreas Fault and in a comparable fashion the Yellowstone National Park will have an even bigger event due to a huge volcano that lies beneath it. The loss of life and economic impact will be historic no matter when they occur.
What is predictable will be natural events such as hurricanes and tornadoes, but what is largely unreported is that both have been occurring less in recent years. As Weather.com noted this year, “the Atlantic basin, which includes the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean, produced the fewest tropical cyclones and fewest named storms since 1997.”
Worldwide, there are some 40,000 tornadoes and the U.S. averages some 1,200 a year. So the weather guarantees some unhappy news for some of us some of the time.
Blaming natural phenomenon on “global warming” which is not happening or on “climate change” which has been happening for 4.5 billion years is the way the merchants of fear keep everyone scared of real and imaginary weather events. The planet has been in a natural cooling cycle for the past nineteen years because the Sun is in one as well, producing less radiation.
As for climate, it is measured in units as small as thirty years and as big as centuries and millenniums. Nothing mankind does has any impact. The Pope is wrong. The President is wrong. And lots of others who claim that climate change is an immediate threat.
What interests most people is the state of the economy and the good news is that it appears to be improving although relying on government issued statistics is problematic because they are often mathematically skewed to show a favorable trend.
There is a natural dynamism to the U.S. economy which would be even greater if the government would eliminate the hundreds of thousands of regulations that interfere with the conduct of business and stop issuing more. Less taxation would boost the economy as well.
I am hopeful people will stop being taken in by the talk about “income inequality.” If the economy improves there will be jobs and the marketplace will determine the salaries they will pay. By contrast, legislating minimum wage increases reduces jobs. We’ve been watching machines replace humans for a long time now.
Elsewhere in the world, the economy is very iffy. The drop in the price of oil will have a dramatic impact on nations whose economies are dependent on it. The Russian Federation will likely be less aggressive with neighboring nations. Venezuela is already in a world of trouble.
The Middle East will feel its impact as well. The reason traces back to the increase in the technology of hydraulic fracturing, otherwise known as fracking. It had its beginnings in 1947 and today it is unlocking huge amounts of oil and natural gas. It will make the U.S. energy independent and that’s a very good thing. It will also continue to generate jobs and revenue.
Will there be wars in the world? The short answer is that there will always be conflicts because that is the nature of the world. Wars are very expensive and most nations want to avoid them. The big problem in 2015 will focus on two nations.
North Korea is led by a mentally unstable dictator, a threat to others in its region thanks to its nuclear weapons, missiles, and huge army. Iran will be a threat if it is allowed to acquire the ability to make its own nuclear weapons. When that happens the threat level to Israel and the U.S. increases, along with every other nation its missiles can destroy.
What is entirely predictable will be the horrific attacks of Islam’s “holy war” on all other religions and, testimony to its lack of internal cohesion, its attacks based on whether Muslims are Sunni or Shiite.
It would be nice to predict that science will find cures to many of the ills of mankind and the fact is that it has been doing that for much of the last century and will continue to do so in this one. In 1973, life expectancy in the U.S. was 71 years of age and it is now up to 78.
In much of the world people are living longer and that is having some interesting demographic impacts in nations that are trying to cope with providing care for a growing older generation.
In the sphere of U.S. politics the most encouraging trend as seen in the last two midterm elections has been voters—those who actually show up and vote—toward conservatism. The Republican Party has regained control of the Senate and expanded its control of the House.
The majority of U.S. states have Republican governors. The Tea Party has played a significant role in this, but it is a movement and will continue to take the lead in seeking to reduce the size of the federal government that is far too large for a society based on the idea of freedom and liberty.
In what is likely to be an increasing bipartisan effort, the new Congress will work to control as much as possible the damage Obama seeks to inflict.
It takes no great prescience to predict that Barack Hussein Obama will spend his remaining two years in office doing what his Communist roots and ideology has trained him to do; stir as much racial divisiveness as possible, encourage more illegal immigration, keep the increasingly unpopular ObamaCare alive, undermine our moral structure, degrade our military strength, and other such mischief.
Two years sounds like a long time, but he will be gone by January 20, 2017 when a new President takes the oath of office that he has ignored. One prediction about him is easy. He will be judged the worst President the nation has had and, in fact, that judgment has already been rendered.
What is not predictable are the directions the U.S. Supreme Court will take the nation in 2015. Despite its August name, it has made some supremely bad decisions in the past.
Wouldn’t it be nice if it undermined ObamaCare after having helped inflict it on a health system that was the best in the world and is now suffering greatly from it?
If any of my predictions turn out to be true, I will claim bragging rights, but mostly what I intend to do is maintain my personal sense of hope, sensing that more people worldwide are discovering that others share their desire for less corruption and more freedom.
Around the world millions of Christians joined together to celebrate the birth of Jesus and to pray for “peace on Earth, good will toward men.”
The 2015 World Almanac puts the number of Christians in the world at 2,347,171,000, by far the largest group sharing the same spiritual beliefs. It puts the number of Muslims at 1,633,173,000.
Of the seven billion residents of planet Earth, more than six billion identify themselves as part of one of the many different faiths, to include Hindu, Buddhist, and others.
As it has for 1,400 years, Islam continues to pose the greatest threat to peace on Earth and is not displaying much good will even toward other Muslims.
A website, TheReligionofPeace.com maintains an on-going, virtually daily record of those slaughtered around the world in the name of Islam and Allah.
The killing is daily, but earlier this month, Canon Andrew White, a clergyman known as the ‘vicar of Baghdad’, reported that Islamic State militant Islamists had beheaded four Iraqi Christian children, all under the age of 15, for refusing to convert to Islam. The barbarity of the ISIS killings and the numbers of others by Islamists add up to a record of atrocities that rival any in history.
The silence from Muslims condemns this so-called religion.
The Jewish genocide of the last century is being matched by the Christian genocide that is continuing in this century.
The human price paid for the Islamic fascism currently adds up to more than 57 million displaced refugees in 22 countries, a humanitarian disaster equal to the entire population of Great Britain. The UN’s emergency aid chief is asking for $16 billion in funding to address the crisis of the conflicts in Syria, Iraq, and South Sudan, in addition to places like the Central African Republic, Somalia, and Ukraine.
There are other events that undermine the prospect of peace. One need only watch as Western nations attempt to negotiate a deal to stop Iran from making nuclear weapons. It is an exercise in futility. Iran is tempting an attack from those nations that understand the enormity of the threat that represents. The Obama administration seems oblivious to it.
Europe is concerned about the threat that the Russian Federation poses with its intent to split eastern Ukraine off from its western half. Former Soviet satellite nations are also concerned about Russian nationalism and the desire to reclaim its former empire. While not overtly aggressive, the West and Asian nations in China’s sphere of influence worry about its intentions too and, as always, North Korea continues to threaten its neighbors.
All this is happening as the residents of planet Earth are gaining the increasing ability to communicate with one another via the Internet, to learn about the events affecting their lives and others, and, as in the case of the “Arab Spring”, to come together to overthrow dictators in an effort to establish governments that provide more freedom and justice.
It transformed Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia to name just three nations affected by it. In Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood was ousted from power, outlawed, and is under attack these days in the Sinai.
In the United States there has been a dramatic political shift from the progressive policies of the Obama administration to a growing conservatism opposing ObamaCare, amnesty, and attacks on the nation’s energy sector.
When right-wing Republican and left-wing Democrats joined together to oppose elements of the $1.1 budget, something significant is occurring. As 2015 dawns, a Congress controlled by the Republican Party will have to demonstrate that it reflects the will of the people who put it in power.
What has caught many Americans by surprise is the utter contempt with which they were held by the Obama administration and its leaders, from the President on down, who deliberately lied to voters and regarded them as “stupid.”
Politics in America does not generate peace even within the two parties, but this exercise in democracy is a worldwide phenomenon except in nations still rule by despots and monarchs. It is a healthy republic in which issues are vigorously debated.
Peace on Earth is a noble aspiration and one for which I suspect the vast population of the Earth yearns. It is threatened by the vanity, greed, and desire for power that too often defines the leaders of large bodies of people who are themselves threatened by such men.
Peace needs to be pursued because the alternative is Hell on Earth.
