Obama Administration: Horse Trading For Healthcare Control

Nancy Pelosi couldn’t have announced the new House healthcare reform bill, the Affordable Health Care for America Act (H.R. 3962), with any more pomp and circumstance. It was certainly more impressive than the Senate’s mouse-like rollout, apparently intended to avoid rubbing salt in the Baucus “bipartisanship” wound. H.R. 3962 is definitely a major milestone in attempting to reform our broken system-less healthcare; it’s historic, certainly. But no, it’s not the best our legislators could do. Image Credit: Wikipedia

Obama Administration: Horse Trading For Healthcare Control

Many have said it over these last several months ... "It's the Chicago way." What pundits have been reacting to is the way Barack Obama and the Administration around him negotiate in bad faith in order to get what they want, politically, even when the outcome will create more damage to our Constitutional country than fix the problems they say they are trying to address.

Just this last week, President Obama was able to come to the microphones Friday and tout the fact that he has received the endorsements of some pretty recognizable health care and special interest advocacy groups in the run up to the close approval of the House of Representatives Bill for the radical overhaul of America's health care insurance industry - HR-3962.

This excerpted and edited from The Doc Is In -

Health Care Reform 2009: Why Did the AMA & AARP Back Obamacare?
by Dick Morris & Eileen McGann

Here are the deals:

* The American Medical Association (AMA) was facing a 21 percent cut in physicians’ reimbursements under the current law.

Obama promised to kill the cut if they backed his bill. The cuts are the fruit of a law requiring annual 5-6 percent reductions in doctor reimbursements for treating Medicare patients. Bravely, each year Congress has rolled the cuts over, suspending them but not repealing them. So each year, the accumulated cuts threaten doctors and as of this point in time, they have risen to 21 percent. With this leverage as blackmail, Obama compelled the AMA to support his bill … or else!

* The AARP got a financial windfall in return for its support of the healthcare bill.

Over the past decade, the AARP has morphed from an advocacy group to an insurance company (through its subsidiary company). It is one of the main suppliers of Medi-gap insurance, a high-cost, privately purchased coverage that picks up where Medicare leaves off. But President Bush-43 passed the Medicare Advantage program, which offered a subsidized, lower-cost alternative to Medi-gap. Under Medicare Advantage, the elderly get all the extra coverage they need plus coordinated, well-managed care, usually by the same physician. So more than 10 million seniors went with Medicare Advantage, cutting into AARP Medi-gap revenues.

Presto! Obama solved their problem. He eliminates subsidies for Medicare Advantage. The elderly will have to pay more for coverage under Medigap, but the AARP — which supposedly represents them — will make more money. (If this galls you, join the American Seniors Association, the alternative group; contact sbarton@americanseniors.org. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it).

* The drug industry backed ObamaCare and, in return, got a 10-year limit of $80 billion on cuts in prescription drug costs.

This represents chump-change to HR-3962's almost $3 trillion projected costs over the next decade. They also got administration assurances that it will continue to bar lower-cost Canadian drugs from coming into the U.S. All it had to do was put its formidable advertising budget at the disposal of the administration.

* Insurance companies get access to 36-40 million potential new customers.

When the Senate Finance Committee lowered the fine that would be imposed on those who don’t buy insurance from $3,500 to $1,500, the insurance companies jumped ship and opposed the bill, albeit for the worst of motives - so the fine stood.

The only industry that refused to knuckle under was the Medical Device Makers (MDM). They stood on principle and wouldn’t go along with Obama’s blackmail strategy for an endorsement. The Senate Finance Committee reacted to this stance by imposing a tax on the MDM marketplace targeting medical devices such as automated wheelchairs, pacemakers, arterial stents, prosthetic limbs, artificial knees and hips and other necessary accouterments and consumables of healthcare.
Reference Here>>

So, these endorsements were not freely given, but were bought and paid for by an administration that is intent on passing its "Control of Healthcare" program at any cost. This is not the American way, you know, for the good of the country ...

... It's the Chicago way!

Welcome to the new, and improved Carter's Second Term.

Obama / Ayers Link Surfaces In An Oblique Way

In his first address to the UN General Assembly, the President denounces reflexive anti-Americanism and calls on the world's leaders to recognize the common challenges we face while delivering a litany of internal accomplishments and policy changes his Administration has impleminted. Image Credit: WhiteHouse.Gov

Obama / Ayers Link Surfaces In An Oblique Way

Barack Obama's personal relationships and their effect toward the way he governs are a little like discovering the effect of sun spot activity on the climate of the Earth!

In a new book just released, Christopher Andersen’s Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage, a reference was made based upon information the author was able to get through interviews with friends and neighbors. Normally, this information would not mean so much, but in the light of the multiple Czar appointments and the lack of background check of those in the shadow government Barack Obama is setting up ... without Congressional oversight, combined with the recent revelations of Van Jones (recently dispatched Green Jobs Czar due to radical, political affiliations that were recently uncovered), and independent ACORN investigations/convictions for illegal activity, this past connection validation becomes of greater importance.

In Barack and Michelle, America’s First Couple is scrutinized in stirring detail by Christopher Andersen, author of thirteen New York Times bestsellers including Jack and Jackie, Somewhere in Heaven, and the phenomenal #1 New York Times bestsellers The Day Diana Died and The Day John Died. Subtitled Portrait of an American Marriage, here is the first in-depth look at the popular U.S. President and his beautiful, brilliant, and stylish First Lady. Caption & Image Credit: HarperCollins

This excerpted and edited from Pajamas Media -

An Old Claim Arises Once More: Did Barack Obama Write ‘Dreams From My Father’?
By Ron Radosh - September 23rd, 2009 8:52 pm - Pajamas Media

Those who were skeptical of Barack Obama’s bona fides before the campaign, particularly the nature of his apparent relationship (or non-relationship, if you believe Obama) with Bill Ayers, will be stunned by Jack Cashill’s new revelation. Remember Cashill? He is a Ph.D. in American Studies from Purdue University and a blogger at American Thinker, one of the multitudes of conservative websites.

In October 2008, Cashill penned a much discussed blog, in which he suggested the possibility that Bill Ayers actually was the ghost writer for Barack Obama’s powerful memoir, Dreams From My Father. His claim was so reminiscent of the discussion before Bill Clinton’s first campaign about who wrote the novel Primary Colors, which bore only the name “Anonymous.” Some suspected Joe Klein, the political journalist. Klein vehmently denied the allegation. Then, he was forced to admit authorship when a literary detective compared phrases in Klein’s writings and those in the novel for New York magazine, and Klein was forced to hold a press conference admitting that he indeed was the author.
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And so his effort became just another one of those apparent conspiracy theories so prevalent in the ranks of both the left and the right. Then at the end of June 2009, Cashill returned to his original article.
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Again, the two contributors and Cashill played literary detective, offering more examples of strange similarities in the metaphors used in both Ayers’ Fugitive Days and in Obama’s Dreams. One of them found 759 striking similarities. Cashill found one of his contributor’s analysis to be “systematic, comprehensive, and utterly, totally, damning.” You can read his article and judge for yourself.

And now, Cashill picked up the new bestseller about Obama and his wife, Christopher Andersen’s Barack and Michelle:Portrait of an American Marriage. What he found simply threw him for a loop because, I suspect, it was the last thing Cashill expected to find. Andersen writes in his book that after Obama finally got a new contract to write a book, Michelle Obama suggested that her husband get advice “from his friend and Hyde Park neighbor Bill Ayers.”
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Obama had not as yet written anything. But he had taped interviews with family members. Andersen writes: “These oral histories, along with a partial manuscript and a truckload of notes, were given to Ayers.”
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Andersen also writes, quoting a Hyde Park neighbor of Obama: “Everyone knew they were friends and that they worked on various projects together. It was no secret. Why would it be? People liked them both.”
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Finally, Christopher Andersen concludes: “In the end, Ayers’s contribution to Barack’s Dreams From My Father would be significant — so much so that the book’s language, oddly specific references, literary devices, and themes would bear a jarring similarity to Ayers’s own writing.”

Let me make the point as sharply as possible. A book about the relationship of the first couple, their history together, and their road to the presidency makes the point in passing that is precisely the same as that made by Jack Cashill. Most reviewers, and readers, will probably read this in passing and go on.
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In the meantime, Cashill promises us more is coming. I, for one, look forward to reading what he comes up with.
Reference Here>>

The A-Z of Barack Obama

The moment when Barack Obama declared victory over his rival Hillary Clinton - Image Credit: Times Online (UK)

The A-Z of Barack Obama

File this under - - "The More You Should Know"

The Times Online (UK) had an interesting take on educating its readers about the presumptive nominee of the Democrat Party for President of the United States -

Example:

J is for Jakarta, where Obama went to school until he was ten. J is also for the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the black Chicago church pastor who baptised the Obama children. Obama disowned him after his race-tinged rants threatened to alienate white voters

K is for Kenya, the country where Obama's grandfather was a domestic servant to the British. Also for Dennis Kucinich, the no-hope Democratic contender that Obama accidentally voted for in the Illinois primary

L is for Leo, Obama's starsign . Also for Luo, his family's tribal heritage in Kenya

They should have added under "J" the word "jettison" ... and under the letter "L" - lightweight.

One wonders what other about-faces (as in "throw under the bus" - a suggestion for the letter "T") and changes in direction Mr. Obama will perform in order to become president ... establish a "war footing"?

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