“…Thus the convoluted scheme the White House has mapped out. The House would first pass the Senate bill, and then pass a reconciliation bill that addresses these objections—in effect converting the process into a makeshift and unprecedented vehicle for amendments. Mrs. Pelosi can’t rope in the 216 votes she needs without an iron-clad promise of another round of Senate action.

Iron-clad promise—or double-cross? After all, the White House would much prefer the Senate bill, because by its lights the cost-control programs are tougher than what the House prefers. And from a political perspective, a bill that can be signed immediately and that the press will portray as an historic achievement is far better than the drawn-out and gory battle that would be reconciliation. Republican Senators will have many procedural knives at their disposal, and the process will force Democrats to cast further votes and spend more months debating a deeply unpopular bill.

In other words, perhaps Mr. Obama has embraced this reconciliation two-step only to renege as soon as the House gives him what he wants. While some House Democrats would be furious, they’d soon be defending the Senate bill by necessity against the GOP. The moderates who vote for it might be collateral damage, but the White House has already concluded that this is the price of building its cradle-to-grave entitlement citadel.

Mr. Obama’s closing arguments are lending credence to rank-and-file fears that they’re getting played. Democrats are telling reporters that Mr. Obama has been telling them in private meetings that his Presidency, and the party’s claim to any achievement, rests on passing a bill. With barely any mention of substance, the right bill is any bill, by any political means necessary.

The White House also announced that it now wants the House to pass the Senate bill by March 18, before Mr. Obama departs for a foreign tour in the Pacific. But this barely leaves any time for the Congressional Budget Office to score Mr. Obama’s reconciliation fixes. Then there’s House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer’s far-fetched suggestion to Mr. Stupak and the antiabortion bloc that Democrats can take care of their concerns in a third bill, which everyone knows will fail in the Senate if it even comes to the floor.

In this wilderness of political mirrors, anything is possible. Spooked Democrats shouldn’t be surprised if they wind up being double-crossed for the ostensibly greater good of Mr. Obama’s legacy.”

Pajamas Media: Paul Hsieh – The government should not rob men to pay their neighbors’ medical bills

March 4, 2010Jenny Marie Hatch Leave a comment

Can the Moral ‘Narrative’ of ObamaCare Be Defeated?

“President Obama has finally demanded an “up or down vote” on his health care plan. Republicans have already raised numerous economic and procedural objections, arguing that his plan relies on economic “smoke and mirrors” and that the president is now endorsing the same controversial “reconciliation” process that he denounced in 2005 as a senator as “the wrong place for policy changes.” Yet the president and his supporters remain committed to their goal of government-run “universal health care.” Why is that?

The key is Obama’s declaration, “I don’t know how this plays politically, but I know it’s right.” Ultimately, Obama and his liberal base believe that government-guaranteed health care is a “moral imperative” — i.e., “it’s right.” And that will also be the key to defeating it.

As Leonard Peikoff once wrote, “So long as people believe that socialized medicine is a noble plan, there is no way to fight it. You cannot stop a noble plan — not if it really is noble. The only way you can defeat it is to unmask it — to show that it is the very opposite of noble. Then at least you have a fighting chance.”

…If we violate those principles in a vain attempt to guarantee “universal health care,” we will violate the moral principle that each man is entitled to the fruits of his labor, instead enslaving each man to pay for his neighbor’s medical care. We will destroy the prosperity and innovation that make modern medicine possible. We will give the government control over how doctors may practice, and which treatments patients may or may not receive. Our lives will no longer be ours, but rather the government’s. The end result will be, in Leonard Peikoff’s words, “the very opposite of noble.”

Benjamin Franklin once said, “They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security.” Let us not ignobly enslave ourselves for an illusion of “guaranteed health care.” We’ll have neither freedom nor health care — and we’ll deserve neither.

Paul Hsieh, MD, practices in the south Denver metro area. He is co-founder of Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine (MD).

The Hill: Stupak: 12 previous health bill supporters could flip over abortion

March 4, 2010Jenny Marie Hatch Leave a comment

The Senate’s healthcare bill would lose 12 Democratic votes in the House, Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) said Wednesday.

“Stupak, the sponsor of an amendment to the House healthcare bill that barred federal subsidies for health plans covering abortion, said that 12 lawmakers who had previously supported healthcare reform legislation in the House would be ready to switch.

“It’s accurate to say there are at least 12 of us who voted for healthcare that have indicated to the speaker and others that unless you change this language, we will vote against it,” Stupak said during an appearance on MSNBC.

Stupak and other Democrats who oppose abortion have threatened to fell the healthcare effort before Congress over the issue of abortion. They say the Senate’s provision, which had been demanded by centrist Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), does not go far enough in preventing federal money from going to support abortion.”

Bart Stupak makes me proud to have grown up in Michigan, where I was friends with many Democrats who believed in protecting the unborn.

Nancy Pelosi is a liar and a fraud.

Jenny Hatch

Scott Brown challenges the President to do better

March 4, 2010Jenny Marie Hatch Leave a comment

How BLEAK will the dark night of Medical Fascism become?

February 22, 2010Jenny Marie Hatch Leave a comment

Jenny with her nephew Jonah right after his birth (and first baby massage!)

I was just watching c-span

and the host was talking with his guest about health care and the teaparty “people”. Many callers took the time to share views on “what the teaparty people” think, and although none claimed to be members of this maligned crowd, it was interesting to me to have others attempting to describe who I am and what I think.

I thought I’d take a minute to share my views on health care as it relates to teaparty attendees, simply because I am a fierce teapartier and I write a health care blog.

I can’t speak for others and I don’t know that any of my friends who have also taken to the streets this past year feel as I do, but I want to make one point. The dark night of medical fascism has been hanging as a blight over the American People for a long time. Each step that has been taken legislatively to remove our rights of self determination and place a doctor, a social worker, a pharmacist, and a judge over our bodies and minds has brought us to this place. The big question in my mind is,

How BLEAK will the dark night of Medical Fascism become?

Lord knows for those parents who have children removed from their custody simply because of refusal to vaccinate, refusal to medicate with psychiatric meds, refusal to use chemo for cancer, refusal to have a newborn incarcerated in a NICU, refusal to have any doctor recomended surgery, drug, psychiatric intervention etc etc etc the bleakness has been overwhelming. Tens of thousands of families in America have learned first hand what happens when Mom or Dad says “No thanks, don’t want to use the product you are selling” and that big, nasty, overpriced medical arm comes crashing down and yells, “YES YOU WILL!

Parents have lost custody of their children over and over and over again when that Medical Behemoth declares them unfit for refusal to use the services, medications, and medical devices they produce to sell to consumers. This blog is dedicated to exposing some of those abuses of power and giving parents a place to learn how to protect themselves and their children from the iantrogenic (doctor caused) abuses that seem to be attached to every drug and every medical practice, especially those around birth and psychiatric care.

As President Obama prepares to use the Delphi Technique to manipulate the Nation to his predetermined outcome of Government Run Health Care, the questions that citizens and the politicians need to ask him is this:

Do consumers have the right to say NO?

Will citizens be supported in choosing to use alternative healing as opposed to drugs and surgery when making health care decisions?

Will citizens be able to retain their sovereignty over their own bodies and minds?

Will parents be enabled to make those health care choices that they believe will give their children the best outcomes physically and emotionally? And if a Mother or a Father decides that the health care services being offered are too expensive, carry too much risk, and/or they have found alternatives that are just as good or better than the toxic brew offered at the hospital….WILL THOSE PARENTS BE SUPPORTED IN CHOOSING SOMETHING BESIDES WHAT THE DOCTOR PRESCRIBES???

For this teapartier, the ultimate principle in all of the health care debate is this:

If I don’t have the right to claim sovereignty over my own body and mind, and if I as a Mother don’t have the right to make health care choices for and in behalf of my children until they are old enough to make those choices for themselves, then I am already a Medical Slave and it doesn’t really matter who is paying the bills.

Wether it is my husbands employer or the taxpayers paying the bills, the Medical Profession will keep chugging along, paying politicians on both sides of the isle and playing it straight down the middle legislatively. I don’t think the Pharmaceutical Companies who run the Medical Schools and the Media care too much who is paying the bills. Wether the health care system is the current Medical Fascism or Complete Socialism or straight on Commuism, somebody is going to pay.

The Medical Police State will stay high up on its pedastal until we the people decide to get off our knees and learn a thing or two about how to be really healthy.

True Health, Lasting life giving fun joyful whole living health is to be found in a kernal of whole wheat, a gently birthed babe, a tummy full of mothers milk, and joyful, healthy, family life….

And the Government doesn’t have a whole heck of lot to do with those things.

Jenny Hatch