Personnel is policy: With appointees like these, how can we *not* fear ObamaCare?

ALG Research, writing for NetRightNation, presents in Appointment Watch: Jarrett and Holdren:

John Holdren, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (Science Czar)

* Holdren has been a big proponent of population control.
* Holdren has suggested adding a sterilant to drinking water in order to control the population.
* Holdren advocated a “de-development” of the United States.

Holdren was confirmed March 19, 2009, with not one single Senator voting against.

When Obama keeps appointing people that advocate "abortions" until two years after birth and right to sue for animals, and people like Holdren, who can wonder what kind of social leverage Obama intends to inflict with his so-called Health Care package?

After reviewing Holdren’s views one would hope that his appointment as a Czar was an anomaly. Unfortunately Holdren’s appointment follows Obama’s pattern of appointing people with views to the left of almost everyone on Earth.
-Don Todd, Director of Research,
Americans for Limited Government

bim: ObamaCare starting to look like a horror movie

Billll at Billll's Idle Mind writes about Cast for Codgers.

Under the Cash For Codgers program, if someone came in seeking health care services that were judged “excessive” by a locally appointed appraisal board, then their nearest relative will be granted power of attorney to make the decision, and will be offered $3500 to $4500 for such organs as are usable, and the patient would then be humanely parted out[emphasis added]. Unusable portions will be disposed of in an ecologically approved manner, with preferences given to demands of the agriculture industry.

Movie fans may recall a couple of old-time, science fiction horror movies: Logan's Run and Soylent Green.

Soylent Green invited people to step into the vat, to be surprised to emerge as canned food headed for the nearest grocery. Logan's Run sounds eerily like Cash for Codgers - at age 35 people are deemed "too old", and participate in a major media event - a "run" with the promise of being let to live if they escape the many dangers and traps. Until Logan, of course, none are permitted to survive. Logan manages to escape.

I wonder if people have thought through this rationed health care. For one popular instance, suppose B. Hussein Obama sets himself as a national icon of health.
- Want to see a doctor, but weigh more than The One? Wait until you lose the weight.
- Want to see a doctor, but don't run like a top Marine Sargeant? Get practicing - the doctor is on the other side of the obstacle course.
- Want your kid to see the doctor, but the little tyke is throwing a tantrum? Come back when the toddler shows discipline and courtesy, and reverance for Big Foot and B. Hussein Obama.
- Want to see the doctor but didn't vote for Obama? Maybe after the next election Alderman Obama will have time for the doctor to see you.
- Want to see the doctor but smoke/take drugs? Have to pass the pee-in-the-bottle test and pass the 60-days without exposure to smokers sniff test.
- Want to see a doctor but aren't married and sexually active? Well, the doctor will be available as soon as you have been "fixed".
- Want to see a doctor, you are pregnant with more than one kid at home? The doctor will see you right after the abortion and after you get "fixed".
- Make more money, or have more assets, than a retired grocery store clerk? Tough. Hire an illegal Mexican to be your family doctor. Just don't expect to have access to legal pharmacies and diagnostic equipment.

This may answer Frank W. James' "I've Got A few Questions" post, on why Obama gives a rip. Oh! Bummer! wants control of average Americans.


Back in the Reagan Presidency, one conservative quote angered Liberals: The more you spend on health care, the more expensive health care becomes. If someone survives cancer, a car crash, or anaphylactic shock, the odds are great that the person will be using, at some time, additional medical services. Invent a new drug or machine that helps critically ill patients - and it will get used on those that *might* benefit. Look at how frequently viagra happens to be used for recreation rather than medical necessity. Or how often Tylenol gets used when drinking less alcohol, or more water, the night before would have sufficed. Back 100 to 200 years ago, you got the flu or dysentery, and you died or got over it, with few people seeing a doctor. The advent of health insurance now insures lots and lots of people see the doctor for a few palliative prescriptions and instructions to get plenty of rest in bed, drink fluids, and take tylenol/aspirin. Doctors get the income, insurance companies make out, pharmaceutical companies make out big time.

The answer has to lie somewhere in between. There has to be a way to improve health care for those that cannot afford the elite prices and elite services and elite pharmaceuticals that the American Medical Association, big hospitals, and big drug companies have established as "minimum". There has to be a way to reduce costs, improve availability and reduce waste (fraud happens in Medicare and Medicaid; other providers and insurers don't put up with it).

Reducing cost and waste has to include reducing difficulty in getting care.

I propose an underlayer to the layers of medical care in America: Healers. A medical practitioner with credentials to practice overseas, or a BS with apprenticeship, capable of treating minor scrapes and breaks and viruses, and charging about what a movie ticket costs. And able to screen patients to identify those that need traditional or advanced medical care. Healers with immunity to mere negligence law suits; it would take active assault and intent to inflict harm for a healer, or doctor, to lose in court.

fwj: Where does the Constitution permit ObamaCare??!?

Frank W. James writes on Corn, Beans, Spent Brass, an empty page and a deadline about disturbing questions regarding ObamaCare: I'VE GOT A FEW QUESTIONS????...

I am afraid there is a fallacy in leaning on the interpretation that the founding fathers had for the Constitution.

That is, the Constitution has always been a living document. It wasn't ratified, or wouldn't have been, without the Bill of Rights - the first 10 substantive changes or Amendments.

I fear and hate the agenda pursued by the deceitful, dishonorable President B. Hussein Obama. There may come a day that the world will naturally and rightfully fall under a single world government. We aren't there by a long ways, not when Afghanistan and Iraq and Iran and Venezuela entertain so many military interests and factions from so very many nations. We aren't ready when Muslim's can be found that hate anyone not of their belief, or Christians or anyone else. It is suicide of family, community, and nation to proceed as if we can accommodate or appease hostile forces in the world.

The unfortunate truth is that many Americans share the vision and what they have been told is the agenda of B. Hussein Obama; I fear there is still much deception hiding the truth from most of them. In the past, it has been the compromises between left and right, between those wanting change and those wanting stability, that has been the major source of the strength of the United States.

What I see happening is a lack of compromise, that the liberal and socialist agenda is proceeding unchecked. And proceeding unchecked is a clear and real invitation to tyranny - which does violate the Constitution.

I am appalled at the White House interfering in GM and Chrysler far beyond the authority of the White House. I am horrified that Congress participated in the "overpay and bonus" witch hunt at AIG. But what really gets my goat is that there has been no motion to censure the President for exceeding his authority, no move to impeach him for interference and intimidation in private business. If a court were to find that B. Hussein Obama had violated the Constitutional bounds of his office, does that violate his oath of office - and thereby unseat the President? The question hasn't been asked. And that bothers me, a lot.

Regardless of how one views the intent of the Constitution at the founding of the country, I contend that the current wording and interpretation in the courts holds true. As a nation of laws, I am disappointed that the President is permitted to ignore the Constitution, rather than wait out the process to amend it or whatever would be required to support his extralegal shenanigans.

I still want to know what Obama did to get Souter to quit the Supreme Court; it is obvious he needed a bought judge, Sotomayor, to cover his butt when ObamaCare lands before the Supreme Court - it cannot help but start out there.

There have been no publicized moves to recall any of the privileged players treating the President's proposals as if they were simply another proposed law - one that they don't need to worry about what it contains.

What I fear is a breakdown of civil authority, unless the Constitutionally mandated checks and balances start exerting a dampening influence on the outrages coming from the Obama White House.

I have heard anecdotes that President Obama appears to suffer from Narcissistic Personality Disorder. That there is a psychological explanation for why he considers anyone thwarting him to be evil and deranged, why his every whim seems to him to be the Truth Before God. I dunno. I figure his tenacious pursuit of ObamaCare is either deranged obsession that he knows better than most Americans, or that he keeps ObamaCare on the media fire to prevent us looking at H.R. 2749 Food Safety Enhancement Act or gun control efforts or other underhanded misuses he is making of the US Government. I suppose it could be both.

I consider Obama's conduct outside the authority of the Presidency and against the limits of the Constitution to be illegal. But the same House majority that helps assure passage of Demcrat-sponsored legislation means that a move to impeach cannot be voted out of the House of Representatives, either. Obama's butt is covered against being prosecuted, at least for now. Which amounts to another invitation to tyranny - freedom from prosecution for illegal acts.

Frank, your worded your piece in a fallacious manner, implying you were unsure if the Constitution either required or even permits what ObamaCare is attempting to do. I think most of the argument was lost when LBJ launched his War on Poverty. Right or wrong, I think ObamaCare could well end up being implemented if passed. My Representative and Senators have been told how I feel about the program - that it is unconstitutional, devised to destroy incomes of physicians and hospitals in favor of government operated services, that it is another step in implementing government management of wages at all levels from part time custodial on up. ObamaCare rewards certain of Obama's secret backers, and destroys additional American infrastructure, as a means to dismantle America.

Because the America Obama is headed for has nothing to do with the US Constitution. Just wait until he irritates enough people he has reason to invoke martial law, and see what gets set aside and what doesn't.

But that is just my thought tonight.

Brain drain a'coming

So, lets assume that the wreck is on it's way, that ObamaCare is coming in some way, shape, or form.

How does the President hire enough paper pushers to fill all the offices that haven't been built yet?

Where do all the people come that will pursue a career in government service - and be unavailable to participate in the national economy?

One estimate has that 45 million, plus or minus, are uninsured. That ObamaCare disrupts everyone's health insurance while leaving 35 million still uninsured.

Are those 35 million uninsured to be drafted, to work civil service jobs and thus fall under civil service health insurance?

Remember, the government claims that unemployment is what, 9 or 10%? That is, not counting the additional 10% that aren't collecting unemployment because there aren't any jobs, but Washington, DC didn't like the numbers so they stopped counting them.

Unemployed and underemployed people are a problem for the economy - but they are also a vast and rich resource. Many are people that have educated and skilled backgrounds. As the economy improves, hiring should increase - will there be any left, after staffing Big Government, that will be ready to hire, ready to produce products and wealth that will feed families and pay taxes?

Will the managers and specialists needed to run the government's health care plan, by their absence, cripple companies wanting to increase production, to provide new services, to meet increased regulations?

Or is B. Hussein Obama planning to pull a gangster style packing operation, putting all his patronage chips in the hopper, putting all his cronies and ACORN and illegals and others into slots they aren't - and won't be for years - qualified to fill?

ObamaCare end of life counseling

First - the gross mis-statement. What I am calling ObamaCare is not health care, and does nothing to care for anyone but insurance companies and B. Hussein Obama's good buddies.

But - end of life counseling, that has been touted as euthanasia and an excuse to withhold care for the elderly or grievously injured or ill, this is supposed to be an implementation of living wills.

Living wills go by several names, my mother has one, my father did before he died. This is where you make a legal, binding request that hospitals not make any "heroic" intervention or effort to resuscitate or revive you, if you are close to death.

People do choose this kind of restriction on their doctor. Often the ventilator, the vegetable coma, the impairment and pain of partial successes seem so daunting, that one chooses not to. For many, they struggle for all the breaths available, and wish for every chance for another day. That is, they choose, or refuse to consider or choose the matter, which is another kind of choice.

What some families have faced, though, is hospitals, nurses, and doctors that refuse to follow clear and legal instructions. Instead they impose their particular morality - without accepting the legal, moral, human, and financial consequences.

One summary of end of life counseling as expressed in the House-passed version of the bill today, is that this means the physician discusses wishes and options, about every five (5) years for the elderly or infirm. I would compare this to counseling women before performing an abortion - bring care giver and patient together for a review of options and to confirm the patient's choice.

In either case, abortion or end of life, it would be immeasurably sad to overlook an alternative that would have been reasonable, beforehand, to the patient.

In both cases, though, government participation raises a spectre, a shadow of grave concern. Just as liberal forces have played our elementary schools to inflict their social engineering on our nation's children, there is the real likelihood that someone at some level - local, regional, national - will use the counseling provision to slant the message. To recommend, refuse to discuss, or demand one choice or another. That federal programs will introduce intimidation, denial of services, or harassment to bias "choices" in a preferred direction.

It is guaranteed that the "counseling", when implemented by the government, will expand the scope to include additional provisions, etc. Governments hire bureaucrats that only advance within government circles, and most often by expanding the scope and range of their organization.

If end of life counseling and abortion counseling were recommendations of the American Medical Association - and every American visited a family physician regularly - I would be much happier about this topic.

I am much happier that Mom talked to (the late) Dr. Frink about resuscitation, about heroic interventions, than to the IRS agent at my last audit. Dr. Frink never, to my knowledge, lied to a patient, or made up problems.

For one thing, doctors make money prescribing medicines and caring for patients. Government agents advance by keeping costs down. I know which influence I trust to waste less life and cultural experience.

Would a young doctor tomorrow, briefed on the legal requirement for end of life counseling, be affected by how the government presents the program? I cannot imagine otherwise. Would that doctor's patients then be influenced by the government procedures and representations? Yep.

The concept, or possibly even the intent of the ObamaCare end of life counseling provision might be well intentioned. Stuff happens. But I do not trust a government intervening into the discussion between doctor and patient. There is already too much intrusion.