AN OPTION WE CAN'T REFUSE

The People's Democratic Party has again proven that they are not really a party of the people. On Oct. 13, the Senate Finance Committee approved a health-care plan that is slated to cost $900 billion over 10 years. Of course, the tax increases begin almost immediately, the benefits are delayed, and after 10 years the costs increase dramatically. All of this as Medicare and Medicaid are circling the event horizon of a black hole into which they will disappear in 2018.

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HOW LONG, OH LORD? ABOUT 16 WEEKS

Canadian conservative think-tank, The Fraser Institute, has just released its annual report on wait times for Canadians in search of surgery. This is a calculation of how long it takes a patient to move from the initial appointment with the family doctor, to the appointment with the specialist, to the appointment for the diagnostic testing, to the receipt of the results of the diagnosis, to the day of being wheeled into the operating room.

Salient points:

(a) the median wait-time for the entire country is just over 16 weeks, ranging from Ontario (lucky me, 12.5) to Newfoundland (unlucky me at the family cottage, 27.3)

(b) despite having substantially increased the amount of money being poured into the national health care system over the same number of years, wait times have not substantially changed since the Institute's report of 2001.

Read 'em & weep.

SWINE FLU PANIC IN PERSPECTIVE

I usually see about twenty patients in my office, and at least a few patients in the hospital, daily. Over the past several months, my patient load has increased by one third. Almost all of the increase is due to fears about H1N1 influenza. (Click on title to read more)

WHAT'S WRONG WITH OBAMA'S BRAIN?

Yes, we know he does not understand economics and cannot do simple math. He is supposed to be a constitutional scholar, but seems not to understand the constitution. His proposals and positions show a complete lack of comprehension of the obvious. Or do they?

(If on Blog, click title for full story. If on website, click title once, then again)

HEALTHCARE REFORM? THINK TRAFFIC COPS AND FOOTBALL

Many very intelligent and perceptive conservatives have advocated free market steps       that would "bend the curve" of healthcare costs downward. However, I believe that with   intelligent reform based upon tried and true principles we can do better than that. We can start a whole new curve!  (Click on title to read full article)

MR. OBAMA NEEDS A TIMEOUT

I tried to understand our president. Really I did. When he was elected, I sent an email to my conservative friends and the staff of Oregon Right to Life, the text of which appears below.

“I am of course frustrated and disappointed. However, we need to look ahead. We must make very drastic changes and recapture the conservative values we lost. Many felt it was better to elect a liberal who is really a liberal than a conservative who is really a liberal. Authenticity counts. (Click on title to read full article)

OBAMACARE: POINT AND COUNTERPOINT #3

This article is the third of a point / counterpoint series on Mr. Obama's healthcare plan.
Click on title to read article.

THE TRUTH ABOUT HEALTHCARE REFORM

Power Point presentation given to groups. Takes a minute to load.

OBAMACARE: THE CULMINATION OF LIBERAL INCREMENTALISM

The opening words of H.R. 3200, Mr. Obama's solution to the manufactured health care "crisis" in the United States reads: "A Bill to provide affordable, quality health care for all Americans and...
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MORE TALES FROM SINGLE-PAYER HELL

It's just anecdotal. But it's rich. Learned over the weekend from the local [rural Newfoundland] anaesthetist:

A certain town in southern Newfoundland is home to one of the handful of good small regional hospitals in the province. However, the nearest CT scanner is in St. John's, at the province's only major-league hospital -- a four-hour drive away. So you come to the regional hospital with chest pains, and the attending physician wants to give you a CT scan to check out your heart. You'll have to get an appointment in St. John's, and then travel. If they send you home from the hospital to wait your turn, you'll wait three weeks or more. But if you've been admitted to the hospital, the wait is only a matter of days. So what should the doctor do?

Of course: the doctor admits the patient, for no other reason than to move him ahead in the queue. He spends the better part of a week trundling aimlessly up and down the hospital hallways in his bathrobe, taking up a bed and using hospital supplies and services on the public dollar -- all to game the system into cutting down his wait-time for a necessary diagnostic procedure.

But hey -- it's FREE!

Not long ago, over at the Mother Blog, I sounded off about medical care in Canada, to this effect:

MY TWO-CENTS' WORTH ON HEALTH CARE:

There are many comments and criticisms one could make about any single-payer [government] health insurance system, such as Canada's. But on that subject, I am fond of making this factual (not critical) observation:

The Canadian Health Care System is a gift from the American taxpayer and their national military.

Why? Because if Canada invested in its own defense to the extent required to genuinely protect its people and territory without dependence upon the United States, the country wouldn't have a hope in Hades of affording socialized medicine.

The U.S. military is 2,300,000 strong (regular plus reserves), with plans for another 750,000 to be added within the next three years.

The Canadian military is less than 100,000 strong (regular plus reserves), with no plans for increase. The number has already increased from its nadir in 2001 [having fallen by one third in the decade since 1991].

Canada's population is approximately one tenth [10%] that of the U.S., and its land mass is larger.

Canada's military population is less than one half of 1% [.043] of that of the U.S. [Feel free to help me with the math if I've screwed this up.]

Canada is essentially defended at the expense of the United States, with Canadians secure in their knowledge that the U.S. would never permit any military threat to their northern neighbour, because it's just too close to home and would leave America vulnerable.

So Canada's far (FAR) from perfect health care system is even more expensive than anybody is letting on. In at least one sense, it has cost Canadians their sovereignty.

I would only amend these remarks by emphasizing, because it needs to be said, that in the Good Old Days before Trudeaupia infected the land, Canada had a proud tradition of punching WAY above its weight in joining the community of nations for the preservation of the civilized world.

Proportionately to its population, Canada's military contribution to both World Wars was substantial -- almost staggering. KIA's ran at 10%, if memory serves. Another member of the British Commonwealth, the then-independent mini-country of Newfoundland, made an even larger proportional contribution: for example, on the first day of the Battle of the Somme in the Great War, Newfoundland casualties came to 90% -- but they stayed in, kept joining up, and felt themselves born as a nation.

Today's Canadian Forces, ridiculously undersupplied and undersupported, and ever at the mercy of political winds, has acquitted itself with honour in Afghanistan, its ranks still heavily populated with the sons and daughters of the Maritime provinces -- as well as Québèc, amazingly enough [their storied Royal 22nd Regiment called "The Vandoos", for vingt-deux].

Historically, Canadian support for the military cratered in an inverse ratio to the rise of the statism and universal entitlements of Trudeaupian socialism (under which the military branches were forcibly amalgamated in 1968, into the generic "forces", sporting a dull airline-pilot-style service dress). The numerical nadir of the forces was reached around 2001, but has crept upward since then (with distinctive uniform restoration too).

As a percentage of GDP, Canada's military budget ranks one-hundred-and-eleventh in the world.

So, despite their valiant character and record, today's Canadian Forces lack sufficient numbers [IMHO] to single-handedly beat back a serious invasion of even their youngest province [that would be Newfoundland], much less the whole country [the second largest national land-mass in the world].

But it's a small price to pay for universal health-care.

Right?

JOHN STOSSEL DEBUNKS OBAMA HEALTCARE PLAN

OBAMACARE: POINT AND COUNTERPOINT #2

This article is the second of a point / counterpoint series on Mr. Obama's health care plan.
*ObamaCare will not promote abortions.
*It is true that there are no provisions in the current plan specifically providing for abortions. However, there are provisions in the plan for "family planning." Given his record, many conservatives rightly suspect that to Mr. Obama family-planning means a lot of planning, and fewer people in order to reduce the amount of carbon producing biological units. This health care plan gives the Commissioner of Health Choices the power to determine future benefits within the plan. The promotion of abortion can be easily added once the bill is passed. This is another example of liberal incrementalism at its finest.

GOVERNMENT HEALTHCARE FLAWED BUT SOLUTIONS EXIST

Healthcare is about protecting human life of every race amid attempts by the proponents of the culture of death, led by our president, to demean the lives of the pre-born, the infirm and the elderly. Our system of payment for healthcare needs to be improved and costs should be contained. However, our healthcare delivery system is the best in the world. It is not the free market that is the problem, but government manipulation of the free market. (Click on title above to read entire article)

OBAMA SUPPORTS GENOCIDE OF AFRICAN-AMERICANS

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke at the 2009 Planned Parenthood awards gala in Houston, where she received that organization’s highest honor, The Margaret Sanger Award. Clinton said of Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood: “I admire Margaret Sanger enormously, her courage, her tenacity, her vision’, and “I am in awe of her.” Further she said: “It’s the lesson that women’s empowerment is always, always about more than bettering the lives of individual women. It is part of a movement. It’s about economic and political progress for all women and girls”. Clinton’s boss, President Obama, has been a strong supporter of Planned Parenthood as well.
(Click on title above for full article)

NOT OK TO SMOKE POT PREGNANT, BUT OK TO KILL

A good friend of mine has a daughter who is in her early 20’s, who has been in and out of addiction. This year the daughter got pregnant and really wanted the baby. She wanted to be a mom. The baby was born healthy. But they discovered trace levels of THC and another downer in the baby’s bloodstream. The doctors said the THC (Pot) could have been smoked up to a month prior to the birth because THC was not in the mom’s system.

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JUST ANOTHER CANADACARE ANECDOTE THAT PROVES NOTHING......

Or "Arnie's Mom Survives a Trip to Toronto General Hospital"

Over at the popular Canadian blog "Blazing Cat Fur", Arnie* tells the story of his 84-year-old mother's encounter with medical care in Canada's principle city ["New York run by the Swiss," as Peter Ustinov called it], consisting of 18 hours, most of it spent in a corridor, which is a great place to meet people when you're half naked and they're looking for a place to dump their adult diapers.

Read it -- it's better than a crystal ball.


*[a nice man married to blogress Kathy Shaidle , well-known victim of Canada's Human Rights Commissions, in the dock with Ezra Levant -- I've met both Kathy and Arnie -- she's not nice, and proud of it]

Ronald Reagan On Socialized Medicine

Article on Health Care-Speech at Republican U-Choose Event

Good evening and thank you for coming. I am honored to have the opportunity to speak with you in support of liberty and the Constitution of the United States.

First, I want to say a word about race and our president. I am strongly in favor of a black president, but I am against the policies and political ideology of this particular president, as I am against those of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. These are not issues of race, and I resent opposition to Mr. Obama being construed as racism. Mr. Obama is a supporter of Planned Parenthood, an organization responsible for the extermination of 75,000 African American babies yearly and therefore is supportive of genocide against his own race.

OBAMACARE: POINT AND COUNTER POINT

ONCE OBAMA TIME

The following takes place in the year 2934 BCE in the Alpine highlands, present day France. Evening was coming on, a slight chill in the air. The summer camp of the Fleece People, a portable village really, was bustling with activity. The past five months had been spent here, just like it had in every year past as long as tribal memory could reach. Click on title to read full article...
Bart Willruth-Fresh Conservative