Guess What Greece Has To Jettison?

Policy Failure: Greece was told that if it wanted a bailout, it needed to consider privatizing its government health care system. So tell us again why the U.S. is following Europe's welfare state model.

The requirement, part of a deal arranged by the IMF, the European Union and the European Central bank, is a tacit admission that national health care programs are unsustainable. Along with transportation and energy, the bailout group, according to the New York Times, wants the Greek government to remove "the state from the marketplace in crucial sectors."

Read the rest here:

Peasants Revolt!

Obama's Secretary Sebelius & Dem Sen Cardin Confronted By Unruly Mobs at Obamacare Forums

An unruly peasant told Obama's Health and Human Services Secretary Sebelius and other Obama cabinet officials: "It will be a cold day in hell before he socializes my country" at an Obamacare townhall meeting in Louisiana:





Pass it on ... more here at Freedom's Lighthouse:

Government Run Health Care

Cliff notes version: Abort the young, kill the old, save lots of money.




You have a right to choose, which method to use for your suicide.

Think not, listen here.

CBO Chief Criticizes Democrats' Health Reform Measures

By Lori Montgomery

Instead of saving the federal government from fiscal catastrophe, the health reform measures being drafted by congressional Democrats would worsen an already bleak budget outlook, increasing deficit projections and driving the nation more deeply into debt, the director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said this morning.

Under questioning by members of the Senate Budget Committee, CBO director Douglas Elmendorf said bills crafted by House leaders and the Senate health committee do not propose "the sort of fundamental changes that would be necessary to reduce the trajectory of federal health spending by a signficant amount."

"On the contrary," Elmendorf said, "the legislation significantly expands the federal responsibility for health care costs."

Though President Obama and Democratic leaders have said repeatedly that reining in the skyrocketing growth in spending on giovernment health programs such as Medicaid and Medicare is their top priority, the reform measures put forth so far would not fulfill their pledge to "bend the cost curve" downward, Elmendorf said. Instead, he said, "The curve is being raised."

The CBO is the official arbiter of the costs of legislation, and Elmendorf's stark testimony is certain to undermine support for the measures even as three House panels begin debate and aim to put a bill on the House floor before the August recess. Fiscal conservatives in the House, known as the Blue Dogs, were already threatening to block passage of legislation in the Energy and Commerce Committee, primarily due to concerns about the long-term costs of the House bill.

Cost is also a major issue in the Senate, where some moderate Democrats have joined Republicans in calling on Obama to drop his demand that both chambers approve a bill before the August recess. While the Senate health committee approved its bill on Wednesday with no Republican votes, members of the Senate Finance Committee were still struggling to craft a bipartisan measure that does more to restrain costs.

The chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), has taken a leading role in that effort. This morning, after receiving Elmendorf's testimony on the nation's long-term budget outlook, Conrad turned immediately to questions about the emerging health care measures.

"I'm going to really put you on the spot," Conrad told Elmendorf. "From what you have seen from the products of the committees that have reported, do you see a successful effort being mounted to bend the long-term cost curve?"

Elmendorf responded: "No, Mr. Chairman."

Asked what provisions would be needed to slow the growth in federal health spending, Elmendorf urged lawmakers to end or limit the tax-free treatment of employer-provided health benefits, calling it a federal "subsidy" that encourages spending on ever more expensive health packages. Key senators, including Conrad, have been pressing to tax employer-provided benefits, but Senate leaders last week objected, saying the idea does not have enough support among Senate Democrats to win passage.

Elmendorf also suggested changing the way Medicare reimburses providers to create incentives for reducing costs.

"Certain reforms of that sort are included in some of the packages," Elmendorf said. "But the changes that we have looked at so far do not represent the sort of fundamental change, the order of magnitude that would be necessary to offset the direct increase in federal health costs that would result from the insurance coverage proposals."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid dismissed Elmendorf's push for the benefits tax. "What he should do is maybe run for Congress," Reid said.

But Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus expressed frustration that the tax on employer-funded benefits had fallen out of favor, in part because the White House opposes the idea. Critics of the proposal say it would target police and firefighters who receive generous benefits packages. And if the tax is trimmed to apply only to upper income beneficiaries, it would lose its effectiveness as a cost-containment measure.

"Basically the president is not helping," said Baucus. "He does not want the exclusion, and that's making it difficult."

But he added, "We are clearly going to find ways to bend the cost curve in the right direction, including provisions that will actually lower the rate of increase in health care costs."

Ideas under consideration include health-care delivery system reform; health insurance market reform; and empowering an independent agency to set Medicare reimbursement rates, an idea the White House is shopping aggressively on Capitol Hill.

But Baucus is not giving up on the benefits tax. "It is not off the table, there's still a lot of interest in it," Baucus said.

Ration and Kill

The Sam Adams Alliance has a brilliant new satirical video extolling the virtues of the Health Administration Bureau. Set in 2015, after the health-care industry mysteriously goes bankrupt under ObamaCare, the video uses the feel of a World War II propaganda newsreel, complete with paeans to “sacrifice” and “giving a lot and taking a little”:

Obamacare -- RATION and KILL

Will you make it through the maze before you die?

Canadain Health Care -- Undercover

Canadian Health Care Lies In Ruins

Claude Castonguay, the father of the Canadian Health Care(Socialized Medicine) says the Canadian health care system lies in ruin.

Back in the 1960s, Castonguay chaired a Canadian government committee studying health reform and recommended that his home province of Quebec — then the largest and most affluent in the country — adopt government-administered health care, covering all citizens through tax levies.

The government followed his advice, leading to his modern-day moniker: "the father of Quebec medicare." Even this title seems modest; Castonguay's work triggered a domino effect across the country, until eventually his ideas were implemented from coast to coast.

Four decades later, as the chairman of a government committee reviewing Quebec health care this year, Castonguay concluded that the system is in "crisis."

And what is the solution he proposes to the 'crisis'?

"We are proposing to give a greater role to the private sector so that people can exercise freedom of choice."

Privatization, that's what. So tell me once again why we should follow their lead, as the Democrat Marxists say we should?

What brought the failure? The same thing that causes failure with any system where it is all offered free, or appears to be free. That in turn causes infinite demand which cannot be met. The result is rationing, which just has to get more serve as demand for free does not moderate itself. In the end, collapse. The moderating factor for market based economies is the market. If goods or services become priced too high, this motivates new suppliers to enter the supply side and take part of the demand.

If you are waiting for your Canadian style health care, this IBD Commentary is a must read.

If price is too high, the supply is too low. Drill here drill now, pay less. Something even the densest no-drill Democrat Marxists should be able to understand, if they wanted to. The problem is the Marxists don't want to, they want control.

England's Socialized Medicine

What do all socialist schemes to run health care have in common -- They all result in rationing. In fact everything run by government, results in rationing. Why, because when things are free, or at least appear to be free, then the only result is a bottomless pit of insatiable demand. It's like some law of the jungle that when supply is artificially constrained people will wait in longer and longer lines to get the few that remain.

The Soviet Union of old tried this, and it resulted in the entire country doing nothing more than waiting in long lines, for everything.

We would be wise to pay attention to the English socialized health care before we ram head on into the same dead end. The headline shows how supply is being rationed, not as many beds. A major decrease in quality while at the same time, constricting supply.

NHS hospitals lose 32,000 beds in a decade

More than 30,000 hospital beds have been lost since Labour came to power, with record cuts in NHS wards last year. The Department of Health claims bed numbers have fallen because hospitals are more efficient, with patients staying for shorter periods

The cutbacks mean increasing numbers of hospitals are going on "black alert" – which involves closing their doors to new patients because they are full.

Patients' groups described the loss of the beds, at a time when overcrowded wards have seen soaring rates of killer infections, as "a national scandal".

The reduction contradicts a pledge from Tony Blair at the turn of the century that there would be 7,000 more NHS beds by 2010. New figures, seen by The Telegraph, show that the number of health service beds fell more than 8,000 last year, as the NHS began a reorganisation process which will mean the closure of dozens of hospitals.

More than 40 per cent of maternity units turned away women in labour last year because they had no room.

Meanwhile, ambulances have been forced to queue outside overstretched hospitals, treating patients in car parks just yards from accident and emergency departments. The new statistics, revealed in response to a parliamentary question by Ed Vaizey, the Conservative MP, show that almost 32,000 NHS hospital beds went between 1997, when Labour took office, and 2007.

Costs sky-rocket with insatiable demand, the only possible solution is to cut back the number that can be taken in at a time -- Meaning, lengthen the lines.

Nothing complicated about it. Free is never free, no matter who tells you otherwise. The only thing absolutely free in the world is ignorance, and that we seem to have in never ending abundant supply.

When you give up your responsibilities you will have no more rights.