(image: Storming of the Bastille)
We have all been very frustrated at the level of secrecy surrounding the “Health care” legislation. At first the trumpet of dissent has come largely from the Conservative web sites spotlighting this disturbing behavior and pointing to the multiple campaign promises specific to this legislation made by Obama in the election run-up. The trend to the contrary to his pledge has now caught on with the MSM, to their credit.
The pledge:
When you look at this pledge and reflect on the “closed nature” of the proceedings and the results that have moved this legislation from the House to the Senate and now back to the House to merge the two bills, it has become so transparent on exactly what has occurred.
In the January 2008 debates held in Los Angeles, he specifically stated – "That's what I will do in bringing all parties together, not negotiating behind closed doors, but bringing all parties together, and broadcasting those negotiations on C-SPAN so that the American people can see what the choices are, because part of what we have to do is enlist the American people in this process"
In an August 2008 town hall Obama stated:
To achieve health care reform, "I'm going to have all the negotiations around a big table. We'll have doctors and nurses and hospital administrators. Insurance companies, drug companies -- they'll get a seat at the table, they just won't be able to buy every chair. But what we will do is, we'll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN, so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies. And so, that approach, I think is what is going to allow people to stay involved in this process."
The special interests and lobbyists, he said, "will resist anything that we try to do. ... And the antidote to that is making sure that the American people understand what is at stake."
When you dissect the first part of the pledge "I'm going to have all the negotiations around a big table. We'll have doctors and nurses and hospital administrators. Insurance companies, drug companies -- they'll get a seat at the table, they just won't be able to buy every chair” the transparency is quite laughable, if the results were not so nefarious.
Does anyone else see the irony here? The “big table” participants did not have to buy a seat at this table because Obama bought the seats for them. The very industries that Obama and the Democrats derided as “the cause” of the failed “health care system” and the impetus for the overhaul eventually were the ones he needed to move the bill forward.
AMA “Kickbacks” for support
For instance, in order to show that doctors supported the plan (American Medical Association) the bill was written to provide them with a “kickback” each year to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.
As Democrats tout the American Medical Association's endorsement of their health care overhaul, critics are saying it's no surprise the Democrats were able to gain the AMA's support -- thanks to a little-known monopoly that sends millions of dollars to the trade group each year.
The AMA holds the exclusive rights to the medical billing codes that doctors are required to use when they submit bills to insurance plans. This arrangement may be getting in the way of making health care less expensive and potentially more effective. – East Brunswick Sentinel
Obama indeed got his “doctors” when we were treated to his White House photo op that caused a stir when he handed out his “white lab coat” stunt and the transparency of this manufactured event was evident to anyone who actually had a thinking brain cell.
The backlash that the AMA has received from its rank and file physicians has been brutal due to the “paid endorsement” as reported by Forbes.com:
"The status quo is unacceptable," the group's president, Dr. James Rohack, a Texas cardiologist, said at the time of the endorsement.
The move proved costly to the AMA. It unearthed longtime tensions with doctors who see $1 trillion being spent on health care but doubt it will trickle down to help their patients or make their practices more financially viable. Right now, Medicare pays an average of $54 for sometimes hour-long appointments, says John Slatosky, a family doctor in Randleman, N.C. To pay for the new public plan, he predicts, the government will have to cut benefits from Medicare. "The AMA has stomped on primary care doctors for years," says Slatosky, who claims he's had to borrow from a bank all year to keep afloat.
An online straw poll on the doctors-only Web site Sermo.com found that 94% of 10,500 physicians polled oppose the bill. While the sample isn't scientific, and may have attracted an anti-AMA crowd, it's gotten attention as a vote of confidence against the group. The head of Sermo, Daniel Palestrant, has been on an anti-AMA rampage all summer, appearing on cable news stations to say that doctors have been sold out. Doctors aren't the reason why costs have risen or people can't find insurance, he argues: "Overall health care spending has gone up while physician salaries have gone down."
Palestrant accuses the AMA of being more concerned with keeping its seat at the White House table so it can protect its various ancillary moneymakers, like its estimated $75 million business licensing procedure codes to HMOs. (The AMA says Palestrant is upset because it ended a partnership deal with Sermo in May. Palestrant says he let the deal expire because the AMA doesn't care about its members.)
Whatever may motivate Palestrant, the anti-AMA bandwagon has picked up speed. Seven state medical associations--including those in New Jersey, Texas and Georgia--took the highly unusual step of breaking with their parent to denounce the bill. Others big ones like Arkansas' have also expressed deep skepticism, without specifically breaking with the AMA.
Several groups of specialty doctors--neurosurgeons, plastic surgeons and general surgeons--have joined the anti-ObamaCare coalition and have even been joined by two physicians who recently served as presidents of the AMA.
The AARP “kickback”
“One of the subplots to the health care debate I've been following is the cozy relationship between AARP and the Obama administration, as the group has thrown its full-throated support behind the Democrats' health care push even though their membership comes from the age group most opposed to Democratic health care proposals. Today, House Republicans have issued a report providing evidence that AARP is in a position to receive tens of millions of dollars in "kickbacks" if Democratic health care legislation becomes law.” – Spectator.org
The GOP report focused on the edict that the Obama Administration put forward on forbidding “Medicare Advantage Plan” providers from communicating to their insured the loss of coverage resulting from Obama care.
The GOP report said this – “This week the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced it was investigating Humana for providing "misleading" information regarding the Administration's proposed cuts to Medicare Advantage policies-and prohibited other Medicare Advantage plans from providing similar information on how Democrat health "reform" could take away their current coverage.
Yet the Administration's edict prohibiting plans from communicating with their beneficiaries failed to include AARP, which sponsors a Medicare Advantage plan but has been a prime advocate of Democrats' government takeover of health care-quite possibly because AARP has been supporting a health care overhaul from which it stands to gain overall handsomely. Even as AARP advocates for cutting Medicare Advantage plans by more than $150 billion, an analysis of the organization's operations reveals that it stands to receive tens of millions of dollars at the expense of seniors' medical care-with Democrats' full approval”
Organized Labor “Kickback”
"We are on the doorstep of accomplishing something that Washington has been talking about since Teddy Roosevelt was president, and that is reforming health care and health insurance here in America," Obama told rank-and-file House Democrats on Thursday during a visit to the Capitol complex.
As he spoke, heads of the nation's leading labor unions were announcing a deal to resolve a highly contentious dispute over Obama's desire to tax high-cost insurance plans to help pay for the health legislation. Unions had objected strongly, saying union workers ultimately would pay the 40 percent levy, and House Democrats backed the unions. But labor bowed to the White House demands after extracting agreements that would significantly soften the blow of the tax.” – Yahoo news
The pledge of openness and transparency to insure “all Americans” have health care insurance has now dwindled to roughly 30 million Americans additionally covered. In addition this bill aimed to pay for the coverage of “all Americans” by socking it to the “rich” and “Insurance Companies” who have been labeled as evil yet the Cadillac plan compromise directly benefits those same “rich” individuals that we were told needed to pay more due to their financial excess that needs to be redistributed.
Race against the clock to pass the bill
The final piece of the secrecy puzzle has just become transparent as the mid-term election in Massachusetts’s has tightened for the seat vacated by Ted Kennedy upon his death. The Republican is now 5 points ahead of Democrat Coakley and the fear that they will lose the 60 seat majority that prevents filibuster is real and tangible. So, in order to race the clock to get this bill passed before certifying the results has become “priority one”.
If the Democrats cannot do so quickly they have their backup plan to delay the seating of Brown until they do so. In this elitist maneuver, they have really become transparent in their disdain for “free and open” democratic elections in order to move their socialist takeover forward.
The delay they are proposing to maintain their 60 seats is a troubling development to all Americans and will only anger those in MA who speak through votes.
If you can recall –
“In contrast, Rep. Niki Tsongas (D-Lowell) was sworn in at the US House of Representatives on Oct. 18, 2007, just two days after winning a special election to replace Martin Meehan. In that case, Tsongas made it to Capitol Hill in time to override a presidential veto of the expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.” – Canada Free Press
The usurpation of the American voter (constituency) is all too transparent, isn't it?
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