Huffington Post | Natural Family Blog 🌹 Jenny Hatch

Dr. Marcia Angell MD wrote this thoughtful piece at the Huffington post the day after the Health Care Law was upheld as a Tax by The Supreme Court.

In her piece titled Did John Roberts just give Mitt Romney a gift? she expresses her concerns:

“The Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, puts me in mind of the old proverb: Be careful what you wish for. Democrats on a victory lap should watch their step, because John Roberts may have given Mitt Romney a gift. The impact on the health system will be much smaller than the political fallout, because with or without Obamacare, the American health system will continue to unravel — quickly if Romney is elected, slowly if Obama is re-elected.

First the policy, then the politics:

Obamacare is simply incapable of doing what it is supposed to do — provide nearly universal care at an affordable and sustainable cost. The problem is that three years ago, in his futile efforts to win over Republicans (remember the embarrassing courtship of Olympia Snowe?), Obama gutted the law before it was even passed. He made the private insurance companies the linchpin of the new system, and promised them millions of additional customers and billions of taxpayer dollars. He also did nothing to rein in the profit-oriented delivery system that rewards providers on a piecework basis for doing tests and procedures. So with all the new dollars flowing into the system and no restraints on the way medicine is practiced, the law is inherently inflationary….

…Now for the politics. Even though the Supreme Court decision will have little long-term effect on our health system, the political ramifications will be great. To be sure, it’s a victory for Obama, but that will be evanescent. Now the Republicans are on the offensive, and greatly strengthened by John Roberts’ insistence that the mandate is a tax, not a penalty. Remember how hard Obama tried to avoid the T-word?…

…The only way to provide health care to all Americans at an affordable cost is by instituting some form of publicly-administered nonprofit system like those in other advanced countries. After all, they manage to provide universal care at less than half the cost, on average, and their costs are rising more slowly. I have long advocated expanding Medicare (which is a single-payer program) gradually by lowering the eligibility age one decade at a time, while phasing out for-profit health facilities and changing doctors’ fees to reward primary care more and specialist care less.

On July 22, 2009, Obama said in a press conference, “Now, the truth is that unless you have what’s called a single-payer system in which everybody is automatically covered, then you’re probably not going to reach every single individual.” Bingo. Too bad he didn’t hang on to that insight, and use his rhetorical skills to make the case strongly to the American public. If he had fought for single-payer health care at the beginning of his administration, while he had both houses of Congress, and mobilized public opinion behind it, he might have made it. After all, the only thing members of Congress need more than industry money is votes.”

In reponse to her article I said this:

Thanks Dr. Angell,

It is refreshing to read such a thoughtful analysis of the situation.

Health Care in America will only be reformed when the sick incestuous relationship that currently exists between the FDA and Big Pharma is dissolved, drug commercials marketed directly to consumers are abolished, and the toxic, sick, bloated, parasitically infested swamp known as the American Medical Association is exposed as the fraud that it is.

The Alterenative Health Care system in the US defined by Chiropractic, Naturopathic, Midwifery, Herbalist, Homeopathic, and a variety of other healing modalities like Acupuncture currently exists and thrives without government money in a Free Market Capitalist environment. Allopathic Drugs and Surgery medicine should be compelled to halt its Crony and Crisis Capitalism and get into the market, where consumers will decide what they are willing to pay for, not Washington.

Jenny Hatch

I do not understand what was so controversial about what I said. I completely agree with Dr.Marcia in her analysis of the situation, I just disagree with her on where the healing of our Obese Health Care system is to be found.

Huffington Post is NOT an online newspaper, it is a leftist prostitute belching out Statist Philosophy and Socialist Propaganda even in the comment section. My comment was truthful and legitimate. There is a Market Based fix for healthcare, as articulated by the owner of Whole Foods in a wall street journal piece that was published the summer of 2009 when we were all debating Health Care. John Mackey articulated some great ideas and the left organized a boycott of his store because he had the gall to speak out.

I attended a rally in Boulder at my Congressmans office and said these words the summer of 2009:

The Healthcare fix will come with freedom.

Jenny Hatch

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Go Here to read the article at Huffington Post

Allen McDuffee

If you want to draw attention to a problem, try hiding it. That’s the strategy of several military bases when it comes to the H1N1 vaccine.

Shortly after the Pentagon announced that all Armed Services personnel would soon be facing a mandatory H1N1 vaccination program, I started receiving email from soldiers, airmen, marines and sailors because of a previous story I had written on the anthrax vaccine. Mandatory vaccine programs are a sensitive subject in the military, so it’s not a huge surprise that swift and visceral reactions to the program gained speed.

With a vaccine that was so new and little known about it, like many Americans, troops were heading to the web to find answers to their very legitimate questions — not only for themselves, but for their families who have the option of receiving the vaccine on base. What they found instead is that several websites and blogs with key information asking critical questions had been blocked from their viewing.

Among those that were repeatedly mentioned as blocked sites are the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), the site for Gary Matsumoto’s book Vaccine-A, and vaccine expert Dr. Meryl Nass. NVIC is a national, non-profit founded in 1980s that, through public education, advocates “vaccine safety and informed consent protections in the mass vaccination system.” Matsumoto’s site contains a forum in which thousands upon thousands of service members have posted testimonies regarding their experiences with the anthrax vaccine. And Nass is one of the world’s foremost experts on vaccines who has testified in front of Congressional committees — and, I might add, never has had a malpractice suit brought against her.

The Center for Disease Control (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) sites, however, are all available for military personnel. The official word from governmental agencies is welcome but critics, regardless of whether they were considered experts, are not.

According to the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, the only blocking of websites Pentagon-wide was in 2007, when a number of heavy-trafficked sites that “used lots of bandwidth” had to be denied to reduce the wear on networks “to ensure they continued to be available for mission requirements.”

That turns out not to be entirely accurate.

Some of you may recall the reporting earlier this year when wired.com’s Danger Room blog reported that the Pentagon was blocking not only YouTube, but even their own TroopTube.

When TroopTube launched last November, for instance, it was billed as an answer to the bandwidth and security concerns surrounding other video sites. TroopTube “crunches video files into several sizes and automatically plays the one that best suits viewers’ Internet connection speeds,” the Associated Press reported at the time. And “a Pentagon employee screens each [upload] for taste, copyright violations and national security issues.”Nonetheless, the public affairs office at the Pentagon further instructed me that “anything that may be blocked at the Service or base level should be addressed there — it’s a local issue.”

Since I had the most information (and the most complaints) about Wright-Patterson Air Force in Ohio, that’s where I directed my questions. After repeated email and phones calls, nearly two weeks later a spokesperson for Wright-Patterson told me that:

The Air Force general policy is all websites are placed into categories based upon their content and intended audience. All unethical categories are blocked as are any sites that are uncategorized. Currently the sites referenced are blocked because they are uncategorized.A wholly unsatisfactory answer that side-stepped the question, I took this statement to mean that blocking these websites had nothing to do with bandwidth use as in the Pentagon statement and everything to do with the content.

I asked the follow-up question: Since this is a recent decision to block them, why would they not just be categorized rather than being uncategorized? As a result, they would not be blocked for educational purposes of service personnel who have a mandatory H1N1 vaccination program?

Wright-Patterson did not respond to this question.

Making sure that servicemen and servicewomen consent to the vaccine and are informed is apparently not a concern for the Department of Defense. But the message is very clear for one service member who contacted me: “All you need to know is what we’re telling you, so shut up and take the vaccine with no questions asked.”

Nass, one of the experts whose site has been blocked, points out the real shame in all of this: “It’s unfortunate that the service members who are defending our civil rights are not afforded the same consideration.”

Note: If you’re on a base that has blocked websites related to the H1N1 vaccine, I’d love to know what sites are blocked and what base you’re on. You can post the info in the comments below or contact me directly.