Obamacare and Soft Tyranny [Reader Post]

North Carolina editorial roundup
If you're over 65 and want to consult with your doctor about which life-prolonging medical treatments you'd want or not want if you were incapacitated and dying, should Medicare pay your doctor for offering that medical advice? If you've ever watched a spouse, son or daughter struggle with decisions about what an aging, comatose or terminally ill patient would want — feeding tube? ventilator? resuscitation? — then you know the importance of the patient himself or herself thinking thr...

Using Regulation Against The Will Of The People
Written into the Declaration of Independence is a simple imperative, “Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Our nation was built on this concept, but the Obama Administration is using its power to write Regulation to circumvent the will of the people and advance its own agenda. Three recent examples of this over reach are shocking and all Americans should demand an end to the practice and a reversal of what has already been don

Federal Government Manages Finances So Badly They Cant Be Audited
The U.S. Government Accountability Office said it could not render an opinion on the 2010 consolidated Financial Statements of the Federal Government, because of widespread material Internal Control weaknesses, significant uncertainties, and other limitations. “Even though significant progress has been made since the enactment of key financial management reforms in the 1990s, our report on the U.S. government’s consolidated financial statement illustrates that much work remains to be...

White House May Reintroduce 'Death Panels'
The Obama Administration has restored one of the most Controversial provisions of the new Health Care law. The New York Times reported the new policy will let the government pay doctors for end-of-life counseling. That counseling could include doctors discouraging patients from trying everything medically possible that might keep them alive. "The infamous Section 1233 is still alive and kicking," said Elizabeth Wickham, Executive Director of LifeTree, a pro-life Christian educational ministry....

Berwick Sets Up Death Panels By Fiat
"If they would rather die they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population." -- Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol Sarah Palin was right. John Boehner -- make that Speaker-elect of the House John Boehner -- was right. While Americans were busy celebrating with family and friends and presumably not paying attention to the news, the New York Times, in a story ironically dated Christmas Day -- a holiday celebrating the birth of the Prince of Peace -- reported the foll...

Media amnesia on "death panels" myth
One of the most frustrating aspects of the media's coverage of politics is the way they treat deceptive factual claims. As I've often pointed out, these claims are often reported in a "he said," "she said" format that provides readers with no indication that the statement in question is misleading or false. And even when reporters do characterize these statements accurately, it rarely creates a lasting precedent within their news organization. Instead, these outlets typically suffer a sort of ...

End-of-life counseling part of new Medicare policy
The New York Times reported over the weekend that a provision of Health Care reform Legislation that was abandoned after it became the focus of conservative outrage is making a return, this time as part of a new policy outlined in a Medicare Regulation. Voluntary counseling on end-of-life decisions was attacked by conservative pundits and politicians throughout the debate over Health Care reform, eventually labeled as “Death Panels.” The service would require Medicare to pay for end-...

This Week's Health Industry News
With the Congress in adjournment and many business people taking off the time between holidays, we do not expect any substantive health industry news this week. But we could be surprised. Take, for instance, the news reported Sunday by our colleague Robert Pear in Washington. The Obama Administration, through an administrative rule, is resurrecting the notion of end-of-life planning services for older Americans — the same sort of planning that was falsely characterized as “Death Panels”

Twitter roundup
BrendanNyhan Dec 28, 2010 at 1:01pm As predicted (https://j.mp/c9Fe3v), overemphasis on Obama staff as cause of/solution to structural political problems https://j.mp/gYxThi Blaming staff for structural problems - Brendan Nyhan Back in January, I predicted a rash of process-based explanations of President Obama's declining political fortunes in 2010: During the next eleven months, it will become increasingly obvious th... Obama's insular White House worries his allies - latimes.com Bren...

Poll: Individual Coverage Mandate Least Popular Part of Health Care Law
The Health Care bill that passed earlier this year continues to be a divisive and generally unpopular piece of Legislation as a whole. But a CNN poll out today indicates that the broad unpopularity may in part be due to just one of the bill's provisions -- the Individual Mandate. When asked specifically about three major provisions contained in the Health Care law, only the one requiring all Americans to have Health Insurance was opposed by a majority of respondents to the poll. Thirty-eight p...

Today in Capitalism
Has anyone else noticed that every other ad on Cable Television these days is for Medicare Advantage plans? I guess “ObamaCare” didn’t kill Medicare Advantage after all. I also noticed a news story about a company called High Road Capital, which seems to be in the business of buying things, snapping up a whole lot of Health Care businesses. Private Equity firms have snapped up many companies that provide medical billing, coding and document processing this year in an effort ...

Democrats Seek Alternative to "ObamaCare"
According to Kaiser Health News, Democrats have reached Stage Eight of the Seven Stages of Legislative Grief: Rebranding. Because no matter how unpopular your Legislation is, it's nothing that can't be cured by coming up with a better name. Democratic pollsters concede that there is a problem. "We do need a common narrative that includes a name," said Celinda Lake, president of Lake Research Partners. "When Obama's job performance improves, it will be fine to call it ObamaCare. Now, it is polari...

Fox News Tries To Rehabilitate Palins Discredited Death Panels Smear
As The New York Times reported yesterday, the Obama Administration has enacted Medicare Regulations to include an end-of-life planning provision similar to one struck out of the Health Care Reform Bill after Sarah Palin “touched off a political storm over ‘Death Panels.’” Palin’s “death panels” accusation wasn’t just a lie, it was PolitiFact’s Lie of the Year for 2009. But good ol’ Fox News resuscitated the lie and gave it new life by j...

Numerous reform law provisions take effect Jan. 1
The new year will ring in implementation of numerous Healthcare Reform law provisions, as the massive overhaul is just starting to take effect. Many of the biggest changes prompted by the law - the mandate that everyone buy Insurance; the state insurance exchanges; the Subsidies to help most Americans buy insurance - don't kick in until 2014. But more than 20 provisions of the reform law go into effect in 2011, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation timeline.  The following go into effect Ja...

Health insurers should stop scaring seniors
by Will Nicholson, M.D. MPR December 28, 2010 The health Insurance Industry should end its media campaign aimed at frightening Senior Citizens about Medicare reform. Scary political advertisements should have ended with the Midterm Elections last month. Regardless of your political sensibilities, I hope you can see that intentionally scaring the elderly with inaccurate and incomplete information doesn't uphold the ethical standards of doing no harm that the rest of us in Health Care try to liv...

Republican Congressman-Elect: Obamacare Rationing Is Being Hidden From The Public
Over the holiday, when the nation was busy with friends, family and celebration, the Obama Administration quietly broke news of a new Regulation to implement a part of ObamaCare that Congress specifically did not authorize. Specifically, a provision that would have the government paying doctors to convince patients not to seek extraordinary end-of-life treatment. “The longer this goes unnoticed, the better our chances of keeping it,” said Democrat Rep. Blumenauer from Oregon. Now Con...

Top Ten Heritage Papers of 2010
Yesterday, we posted the Top Ten Heritage Charts of 2010. Today we bring you the Top Ten Heritage Papers of 2010. This list combines all non-multimedia publications including WebMemos, Backgrounders, Center for Data Analysis Reports, Legal Memorandums, and White Papers. The papers are sorted by pageviews with the 10th most popular chart on top, and the most popular chart at the bottom. 10. Why is America Exceptional? 9. Why Government Spending Does Not Stimulate Economic Growth: Answering the ...

Obama Brings Back End of Life Counseling
When it was discovered that ObamaCare included funding for end of life counseling, Controversy erupted and that language had to be stripped from the bill Obama eventually signed. So, how is it that end of life counseling is now being funded by the Federal Government? Through Regulation, of course. The New York Times reported that this is the way President Obama will operate for the next two years. The final version of the Health Care Legislation, signed into law by President Obama in March, a...

'Death panels' controversy: Is Obama avoiding Congress? (The Christian Science Monitor)
Washington – In a move that could resuscitate the partisan battle over what Sarah Palin dubbed "Death Panels," the Obama Administration is set to implement a Controversial federal health-care provision by executive authority. The new rule would pay doctors to consult with Medicare patients who want voluntary counseling about health-care options in the case of terminal illness. The Obama Administration casts the change as minor, saying that these are common-sense discussions t...

Why Do People Oppose the Health-Care Law?
A CNN poll published Monday finds that the majority of those surveyed oppose the health-care overhaul passed by Congress this year -- but that only some of them do so because of an opposition to the government taking a greater role in regulating the market. Reports CNN: Overall, 54 percent oppose the law, down five points from March, with 43 percent in favor of the measure, up four points from earlier this year. But here's the critical fine print: roughly a quarter of those who oppose the new l...

Doctor sex misconduct cases monitored in secrecy
A private program that has long kept secret watch over Illinois doctors receiving substance-abuse treatment is now monitoring Health Care professionals with sexual misconduct violations -- including some convicted of Crimes. Begun several decades ago by the state's doctors' lobby, the Illinois Professionals Health Program has drawn criticism for the off-the-books nature of its work and its lack of accountability. That it has expanded its reach to sex-offending health workers has heightened the...

Charles Krauthammer: Republicans Shouldnt Defund Obamacare
His argument is political in that he thinks Republicans will do themselves political harm by giving Democrats an excuse for why ObamaCare will have failed. They’ll be able to claim that the only reason the bill didn’t work was because Republicans wouldn’t let it work. His preferred solution? Let it be implemented, apparently, and let Americans grow to dislike it to the point where they demand its Repeal. I am skeptical about taking away the funds because what it will do, it wil...

CNN Poll Finds Only 38% Support for Obamacare Mandate
If President Obama and Democrats could strip the Individual Mandate from ObamaCare, support for it would rise significantly. Of course, they can't do that without removing provisions of the bill that actually are popular. If you eliminate the mandate, you have to allow consideration of Pre-existing Conditions. Imagine how much automotive Insurance would cost if you weren't required to buy it, but could purchase it after a wreck and have your Insurance company pay the bills. The entire law is fat...

Three-quarters of U.S. uninsured employed
MENLO PARK, Calif., Dec. 28 (UPI) -- Seventy-five percent of the some 50 million of the U.S. population with no Health Insurance come from Working Families, researchers say. The report by the Kaiser Family Foundation says 57 percent of people in the U.S. under age 65 receive health Insurance Coverage as an employer benefit. Medicare covers virtually all those who are age 65 years and older, but the non-elderly who do not have access to or cannot afford private Insurance now go without health co...

The Health-Care Law Provisions Taking Effect in 2011
Parts of the uncatchily named Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, aka the health-care overhaul law, began to kick in earlier this year. But in 2011, other provisions will roll out — some as soon as January 1. The Kaiser Family Foundation counts 21 provisions taking effect next year. Among them: The requirement that the proportion of premium dollars spent on medical care must amount to at least 80% for Small Business plans and 85% for large group plans will kick in. The so-called me...