URGENT: Nelson caves, Reid sets 1:00 am Senate vote for EARLY Monday Morning! Take Action!

Tyranny Reigns, The People Be Damned! URGENT: Nelson caves, Reid sets 1:00 am Senate vote for EARLY Monday Morning! Take Action!

This weekend, please call your two Senators at least once before the 1 am cloture vote which will occur very late Sunday night / [or as early as 1 AM] Monday morning! December 19, 2009

Harry Reid (D-NV) finally released his "secret deal" to the public this morning [Saturday, Dec. 19]. It will serve as a substitute for the decoy that was the 2,074-page bill the Senate has been debating for the past three weeks.

Reid also claimed that he has his necessary 60-vote minimum in light of Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE) caving in to accept watered-down abortion funding language and announcing his support to end debate.

Harry Reid's Manager's Amendment makes only slight cosmetic changes to this overwhelmingly unpopular legislation, as it still:

* Costs almost $1 trillion - $871 billion (and that's CBO's modest estimate not factoring in the full ten years after it goes into effect), 

* Cuts Medicare by hundreds of billions of dollars,

* Raises and imposes a vast array of new taxes on the American people, Allows for federal funding of abortion,

* Retains the CLASS Act (which the Democrat Chairman of the Budget Committee has described as nothing more than a "Ponzi Scheme"),

* Massively expands Medicaid, giving special treatment to a select few states so that taxpayers in VA, AR, and OH will have to pay higher taxes to subsidize the Medicaid program of a favored few, such as NE, MA, and VT.

TAKE ACTION!

Harry Reid has filed cloture on his substitute amendment, so the CLOTURE VOTE ON THE MOTION TO END DEBATE will occur very late Sunday night (12/20/09) night/or very early [Monday] morning--thus, weekend calls are imperative! If you wait until Monday morning when the sun rises, it will be too late!

This is a CALL-ONLY alert because less than 48 hours remain before the Senate votes, so calls are needed NOW! This will be our last action alert to pressure Senators on health care, so please take a few moments this weekend to call both of your Senators' district and Capitol Hill Offices. All phone numbers can be found here.

U.S. Capitol Switchboard: (202) 224-3121/Toll-Free (866)220-0044 Ask for your Senators!

PLEASE BE AWARE: There will NOT be a conference committee to further drag out the deliberation process on this health care bill. If the Senate musters together the necessary 60 votes to invoke cloture to proceed to final passage, this will be the last significant vote on health care your Senators will make, so this is the vote that counts.

Final passage requires only a simple majority, so NO votes on final passage are next to irrelevant. CLOTURE is the vote that matters. If it passes, Reid will then take the Senate bill to Nancy Pelosi and say, "Here is the bill, vote on it now, do not allow any amendments." This will facilitate the bill reaching the President's desk before the New Year.

THIS IS IT!

http://wbx.me/l/?p=1&u=http://www.capwiz.com/eagleforum/callalert/index.tt?alertid=14481606 Call to Action: GOP Senators plead for help in new YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtYZDFxnpvc

Ben Nelson caves on abortion, announces support for health care bill

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/19/AR2009121900797_pf.html

Big vote for FORCED HEALTHCARE INSURANCE in Senate committee TODAY!

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont. enters an elevator on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Oct. 8, 2009. On Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nev. announced that the Finance Committee will vote next week on the health care bill. (AP Photo/Harry Hamburg)

By ERICA WERNER 
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama's plan to remake the nation's health care system is about to take its biggest step yet toward becoming reality.

The pivotal Senate Finance Committee was poised to approve sweeping legislation Tuesday requiring nearly all Americans to purchase insurance and ushering in a host of other changes to the nation's $2.5 trillion medical system.

Much work would lie ahead before a bill could arrive on Obama's desk, but action by the Finance Committee would mark a significant advance, capping numerous delays as Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., held marathon negotiating sessions _ ultimately unsuccessful _ aimed at producing a bipartisan bill.

Four other congressional committees acted before August to pass health legislation, so for months all eyes have been on the Finance Committee, the remaining one. It's also the panel whose moderate makeup most closely resembles the Senate as a whole. And the committee's centrist legislation is seen as the best building block for a compromise plan that could find favor on the Senate floor.

With Democrats holding a 13-10 majority on the committee the outcome of Tuesday's vote is not in doubt. The big question mark is whether moderate Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine will become the first Republican to support a health overhaul bill. The legislation that passed the other House and Senate committees did so without a single Republican vote. On Monday, Snowe still wasn't saying.

With Finance Committee passage, Obama's top domestic priority will have advanced farther than former President Bill Clinton's effort ever did. The Clinton health plan never made it through all the congressional committees with jurisdiction.

The final days before Tuesday's long-anticipated vote were rocky. After playing nice for months, the health insurance industry released a report contending that the legislation would cause hefty increases in health insurance premiums.

Democrats and their allies scrambled Monday to knock it down. "Distorted and flawed," said White House spokeswoman Linda Douglass. AARP's senior policy strategist, John Rother, called it "fundamentally dishonest."

PricewaterhouseCoopers, the accounting firm that did the industry-commissioned analysis, issued a statement late Monday acknowledging it did not look at the entirety of the legislation, only the effects of four provisions that the insurance group wanted analyzed.

The drama threatened to overshadow the vote on the 10-year, $829-billion plan that Baucus has touted as the sensible solution to America's problems of high medical costs and too many uninsured.

The bill includes consumer protections such as limits on copays and deductibles and relies on federal subsidies to help lower-income families purchase coverage. Insurance companies would have to take all comers, and people could shop for insurance within new state marketplaces called exchanges.

Medicaid would be expanded, and though employers wouldn't be required to cover their workers, they'd have to pay a penalty for each employee who sought insurance with government subsidies. The bill is paid for by cuts to Medicare providers and new taxes on insurance companies and others.

Unlike the other health care bills in Congress, Baucus' would not allow the government to sell insurance in competition with private companies, a divisive element sought by liberals.

Last-minute changes made subsidies more generous and softened the penalties for those who don't comply with a proposed new mandate for everyone to buy insurance. The latter change drew the ire of the health insurance industry, which said that without a strong and enforceable requirement not enough people would get insured, and premiums would jump for everyone else.

The industry report was timed just ahead of the vote on Baucus' bill but the industry was already looking ahead to negotiations on a final package to bring to the Senate floor.

Once the Finance Committee has acted, the dealmaking can begin in earnest with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., working with White House staff, Baucus and others to blend the Finance bill with a more liberal version passed by the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

A major question mark is whether Reid will include some version of a so-called public plan in the merged bill. Across the Capitol, House Democratic leaders are working to finalize their bill, which does contain a public plan, and floor action is expected in both chambers in coming weeks. If passed, the legislation would then go to a conference committee to reconcile differences.

___

Associated Press writer Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar contributed to this report.

(Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)

http://www.wtop.com/?sid=1701389&nid=116

Obama on Drugs: 98% Cheney?

by Greg Palast
Thursday, August 13, 2009

For The Huffington Post

Eighty billion dollars of WHAT?

I searched all over the newspapers and TV transcripts and no one asked the President what is probably the most important question of what passes for debate on the issue of health care reform: $80 billion of WHAT?

On June 22, President Obama said he'd reached agreement with big drug companies to cut the price of medicine by $80 billion. He extended his gratitude to Big Pharma for the deal that would, "reduce the punishing inflation in health care costs."

Hey, in my neighborhood, people think $80 billion is a lot of money. But is it?

I checked out the government's health stats (at HHS.gov), put fresh batteries in my calculator and toted up US spending on prescription drugs projected by the government for the next ten years. It added up to $3.6 trillion.

In other words, Obama's big deal with Big Pharma saves $80 billion out of a total $3.6 trillion. That's 2%.

Hey thanks, Barack! You really stuck it to the big boys. You saved America from these drug lords robbing us blind. Two percent. Cool!

For perspective: Imagine you are in a Wal-Mart and there's a sign over a flat screen TV, “BIG SAVINGS!” So, you break every promise you made never to buy from that union-busting big box - and snatch up the $500 television. And when you're caught by your spouse, you say, "But, honey, look at the deal I got! It was TWO-PERCENT OFF! I saved us $10!"

But 2% is better than nothing, I suppose. Or is it?

The Big Pharma kingpins did not actually agree to cut their prices. Their promise with Obama is something a little oilier: they apparently promised that, over ten years, they will reduce the amount at which they would otherwise raise drug prices. Got that? In other words, the Obama deal locks in a doubling of drug costs, projected to rise over the period of "savings" from a quarter trillion dollars a year to half a trillion dollars a year. Minus that 2%.

We'll still get the shaft from Big Pharma, but Obama will have circumcised the increase.

And what did Obama give up in return for $80 billion? Chief drug lobbyist Billy Tauzin crowed that Obama agreed to dump his campaign pledge to bargain down prices for Medicare purchases. Furthermore, Obama’s promise that we could buy cheap drugs from Canada simply went pffft!

What did that cost us? The New England Journal of Medicine notes that 13 European nations successfully regulate the price of drugs, reducing the average cost of name-brand prescription medicines by 35% to 55%. Obama gave that up for his 2%.

The Veterans Administration is able to push down the price it pays for patent medicine by 40% through bargaining power. George Bush stopped Medicare from bargaining for similar discounts, an insane ban that Obama said he’d overturn. But, once within Tauzin’s hypnotic gaze, Obama agreed to lock in Bush’s crazy and costly no-bargaining ban for the next decade.

What else went down in Obama's drug deal? To find out, I called C-SPAN to get a copy of the videotape of the meeting with the drug companies. I was surprised to find they didn't have such a tape despite the President's campaign promise, right there on CNN in January 2008, "These negotiations will be on C-SPAN."

This puzzled me. When Dick Cheney was caught having secret meetings with oil companies to discuss Bush's Energy Bill, we denounced the hugger-muggers as a case of foxes in the henhouse.

Cheney's secret meetings with lobbyists and industry bigshots were creepy and nasty and evil.

But the Obama crew's secret meetings with lobbyists and industry bigshots were, the President assures us, in the public interest.

We know Cheney's secret confabs were shady and corrupt because Cheney scowled out the side of his mouth.

Obama grins in your face.

See the difference?

The difference is 2%.

*******

Palast studied healthcare economics at the Center for Hospital Administration Studies at the University of Chicago.

Greg Palast's investigative reports can be seen on BBC Television's Newsnight and, in print, atwww.GregPalast.com.

New: Subscribe to Palast’s podcasts (iTunes required)

http://www.gregpalast.com/obama-on-drugs-98-cheney/

RX FOR DISASTER: 83 MILLION OF US WON'T KEEP OUR INSURANCE

For those who do manage to keep their current insurance -- well, it won't cost $2,500 less, as Obama promised. Lewin estimates it will cost $460 a year more because of new cost-shifting from the government-run plan to private health plans.

That's right. The $1.3 trillion House health-care bill would cause millions of Americans to lose the insurance they have now -- while the rest of us would pay even more than we do now.

Faced with onerous new regulations and the possibility of heavy fines, employers might choose the simpler -- and legally safer -- route of dropping their health plans entirely and simply paying the new 8 percent payroll tax, which will be levied on employers who don't provide the government-approved health insurance.

Jam the phone lines TODAY! Call the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at (202)224-3121 and ask for your Representative to STOP the criminal forced health"care" legislation that will rob everyone of us blind!!

RX FOR DISASTER

83 MILLION OF US WON'T KEEP OUR INSURANCE

By ROBERT A. BOOK & ROBERT E. MOFFIT

July 22, 2009 
Posted: 1:00 am
July 22, 2009

AT tonight's press conference, someone should ask President Obama why he's endorsing, and not threatening to veto, the 1,018-page House health-care reform bill now being rushed to passage: It breaks nearly all his core promises about health-care reform.

"If you have health insurance, then you don't have to do anything," Obama said on Oct. 15, 2008. "If you've got health insurance through your employer, you can keep your health insurance, keep your choice of doctor, keep your plan. . . 

And we estimate we can cut the average family's premium by about $2,500 per year."

Both these solemn pledges, repeated often ever since and as recently as yesterday, are violated in the House bill. Its perverse incentives, plus the onerous regulations Congress plans to impose on employer-provided insurance, would cause more than half of those with employer-provided insurance to lose it -- 83.4 million Americans, according to The Lewin Group, a prominent, politically neutral health-care analysis firm.

And for those who do manage to keep their current insurance -- well, it won't cost $2,500 less, as Obama promised. Lewin estimates it will cost $460 a year more because of new cost-shifting from the government-run plan to private health plans.That's right. The $1.3 trillion House health-care bill would cause millions of Americans to lose the insurance they have now -- while the rest of us would pay even more than we do now.

Most of those who lose their current insurance would be enrolled in Congress' newly created government-run health plan. The health benefits these Americans get would be decided by the Secretary of Health and Human Services, based on the recommendations of a newly created Health Benefits Advisory Committee. The HHS team would decide, year by year, what health-care benefits you would and would not get in the government-approved package.

Change we can believe in, huh?

Congress would authorize the HHS secretary to pay doctors and hospitals who participate in its health plan on the basis of Medicare rates, plus 5 percent.

But Medicare rates are much lower than those in private insurance -- 19 percent lower for doctors and 32 percent lower for hospitals. So the plan means big cuts in payments to health-care providers. They'd try to cover part of their losses by charging more to the private plans still left.

Doctors would lose -- big time. Based on the projected number of people forced out of private insurance and into the public plan, the Lewin Group estimates that physicians will lose $13.4 billion in net income -- equivalent to an average pay cut of 6.3 percent.

Hospitals would be hit even harder, losing $67 billion in revenue. That's more than the total net cash flow of all the hospitals in the country. Facing bankruptcy, a lot of hospitals might have to close their doors.

It could get worse. The Lewin Group's estimate of the rise in premiums only accounts for the possibility that doctors and hospitals would try to raise prices on the privately insured to make up for their losses from patients in the new public plan.

But there's another reason why private insurance premiums might increase even more: The House bill also creates a new office with the Orwellian title "Health Choices Commissioner." After a five-year "grace" period, employer-sponsored private health plans would be subject to approval by this commissioner.

The commissioner would be empowered to set benefit levels, decide what services will be covered regardless of the preferences of patients and otherwise set standards for private health plans. These mandates are all likely to increase health-care costs and therefore private insurance premiums.

Those standards aren't specified in the bill and may never be debated in Congress. They are up to the discretion of the "Choices" commissioner -- who will, of course, limit your choices to "acceptable" plans only.

Your employer's health plan might not be deemed "qualified." In that case, your employer could be fined, and even prohibited from enrolling new employees until the commissioner is satisfied that the violation "has been corrected and is not likely to recur." More change you can believe in . . .

Faced with onerous new regulations and the possibility of heavy fines, employers might choose the simpler -- and legally safer -- route of dropping their health plans entirely and simply paying the new 8 percent payroll tax, which will be levied on employers who don't provide the government-approved health insurance.

In fact, for most employers, paying this tax will be cheaper than paying for the company-based insurance even at today's prices. If the Health "Choices" Commissioner's yet unspecified standards turn out to be sufficiently onerous, Americans could end up with single-payer health care -- universal government health insurance -- by default.

Perhaps that's the idea?

Faced with payments that don't cover their expenses, and fewer and fewer private insurers to shoulder the costs, expect even more hospitals to close and more doctors to choose early retirement or another profession.

But at least if they could find a doctor, the House bill would cover every American with something, right? No -- according to Lewin, 16.5 million Americans would still be left uninsured.

This is bad medicine, that will take an already ailing health-care system and render it severely dysfunctional.

Robert A. Book is the senior research fellow in Health Economics at The Heritage Foundation (heritage.org), where Robert E. Moffit directs the Center for Health Policy Studies.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/07222009/postopinion/opedcolumnists/rx_for_disaster_180586.htm?&page=0

Does OBAMA and the House really want to raise taxes on eight million uninsured people? YES!!!

Jam the phone lines TODAY! Call the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at (202)224-3121 and ask for your Representative to STOP the criminal forced health"care" legislation that will rob everyone of us blind!!

As expected, the House bill would MANDATE that individuals and families have or buy health insurance. And for those who do manage to keep their current insurance -- it will cost you...A LOT MORE!

Posted on July 14th, 2009 by kbh in featured, health, taxes 

The President has said he would not allow taxes to be raised on anyone with less than $250,000 of income.

Today for the first time we see the legislative language for and a summary of the health care reform bill that House Democrats intend to try to pass before the August recess.  The following is based on an initial quick scan of the bill and studying a few key sections.  I have been wondering how the drafters were going to solve the problem I am about to describe.  As best I can tell, they didn’t solve it.

---

As expected, the House bill would mandate that individuals and families have or buy health insurance.

But what if they don’t buy it?

Then Section 401 kicks in.  Any individual (or family) that does not have health insurance would have to pay a new tax, roughly equal to the smaller of 2.5% of your income or the cost of a health insurance plan.

[ Technical note:  From the legislative language, it appears the tax = min( 2.5% * (modified AGI – personal exemption), average premium cost).  In the examples below, for simplicity I assume modified AGI = AGI. ]

I assume the bill authors would respond, “But why wouldn’t you want insurance?  After all, we’re subsidizing it for everyone up to 400% of the poverty line.”

That is true.  But if you’re a single person with income of $44,000 or higher, then you’re above 400% of the poverty line.  You would not be subsidized, but would face the punitive tax if you didn’t get health insurance.  This bill leaves an important gap between the subsidies and the cost of health insurance.  CBO says that for about eight million people, that gap is too big to close, and they would get stuck paying higher taxes and still without health insurance.

---

Example 1:

Bob is single and earns $50K per year.  He earns more than four times the federal poverty level, so he does not qualify for subsidies under the House bill.

Bob works for a five-person small business that does not provide him with health insurance.  His $50K wage is average for this company, which therefore does not qualify for the new small business tax credits.

This company is small enough that they do not have to pay the IRS any fee for not providing Bob with health insurance.  (See the table on page 184.)

With only $50K of income, Bob cannot afford to buy health insurance.  Under the House bill, he would then have to pay about $1,150 per year in higher taxes to the government.  That’s 2.5% of (his income minus a $3,650 personal exemption).

I went shopping for Bob on eHealthInsurance.com.  He is 50 years old and a non-smoker, living where I do in Virginia.  The cheapest bare bones policy he can get is $1,620 per year.  Most plans are in the $3K – $5K range.  That $470 difference between the tax and the cheapest premium is more than Bob can afford on a $50K pre-tax annual wage.

To summarize, under the House bill:

Bob is a single 50-year old non-smoking small business employee who makes $50K per year before taxes and does not have health insurance.
Bob cannot afford a $1,600 bare bones health insurance policy, much less a $3K — $5K policy.
Bob would get no subsidies under this bill, and his employer would face no penalty for not providing him with health insurance.
Bob would end up without health insurance and would have to pay $1,150 more in taxes.

---

Example 2:

Freddy and Kelsey are married with two kids.  They earn $90K per year.  They earn more than four times the federal poverty level, and therefore do not qualify for subsidies under the House bill.

Freddy and Kelsey own and run a small tourist shop in Orlando, Florida.  They are the only two employees.  Their wages exceed the amounts that would qualify them for small business tax credits under the House bill.

Because their business is so small, the House bill would impose no financial penalty for not complying with the employer mandate.  Even if they did, the tax penalty would come out of their own bottom line, since the two of them are the business.

Freddy and Kelsey are both 40 years old.  They have a 15-year old son and a 12-year old daughter.  None of them smoke.

Shopping on eHealthInsurance, the cheapest plan I could find for them is a high-deductible PPO plan with a $6,000 annual deductible.  That would cost them more than $3,800 per year.  And it’s a bare-bones plan.

They can’t afford that.  Maybe they are recovering from a hurricane, or dealing with the real estate collapse in Florida.  They are also saving for their kids’ college, which is only a few years away.  Even with $90K of income, money is tight for a family of four.

If they cannot afford the (at least) $3,800 in health insurance premiums, then the House bill would make them pay more than $2,050 in higher taxes.

To summarize, under the House bill:

Freddy and Kelsey are a 40-year old couple with two kids.  They own and run a small tourist shop in Orlando, Florida.
They are the only employees, and earn a combined $90K per year.
They cannot afford even an inexpensive health insurance plan, and so the House bill would make them pay $2,050 in higher taxes.

---

These two examples show the difficulty of making an individual mandate work.  To get people to comply with the mandate, you have to impose a significant tax penalty on those who don’t comply.  This will change the calculation for many who were previously uninsured – they will buy health insurance, because the delta between the cost of having insurance and the tax penalty cost of not having it has shrunk, so they might as well buy it.

The bigger this gap, the fewer people will switch.  And for those who do not or cannot comply with the mandate, they end up in the worst of all worlds – uninsured and paying higher taxes.

From CBO’s new tables, it appears that about eight million U.S. citizens would fall into this category.  I expect that very few of these people would have more than $250,000 of income, the no-tax-increase line defined by the President.

I expect the House Democrats will emphasize that their bill would result in 97 percent of U.S. citizens having coverage.  Those other three percent, however, really get shafted, and that’s about eight million people.

If the President were to sign such a bill into law, I cannot figure out how his team could reconcile this consequence with his pledge not to raise taxes on the middle class.

But without the tax penalty, the mandate isn’t effective, and the number of resulting uninsured goes way up.

The House bill drafters have made a hard policy choice.  It is important that Members of Congress and the public understand the benefits and the costs of the approach they have chosen.

---

Update

Thanks to a friend for pointing this out: We know the President understands this point.  Here is then-Senator Obama in a debate with then-Senator Clinton on February 21, 2008, opposing her proposal for a universal individual mandate to purchase health insurance (emphasis added):

SENATOR OBAMA:  Number one, understand that when Senator Clinton says a mandate, it’s not a mandate on government to provide health insurance, it’s a mandate on individuals to purchase it. And Senator Clinton is right; we have to find out what works.

Now, Massachusetts has a mandate right now. They have exempted 20 percent of the uninsured because they have concluded that that 20 percent can’t afford it.

In some cases, there are people who are paying fines and still can’t afford it, so now they’re worse off than they were. They don’t have health insurance and they’re paying a fine.

(APPLAUSE)

In order for you to force people to get health insurance, you’ve got to have a very harsh penalty, and Senator Clinton has said that we won’t go after their wages. Now, this is a substantive difference. But understand that both of us seek to get universal health care. I have a substantive difference with Senator Clinton on how to get there.

http://keithhennessey.com/2009/07/14/house-taxes-the-uninsured/

Health Care "Reform" Bill Will Fund State Vaccine Teams to Conduct ‘Interventions’ in Private Homes

See a draft of the bill here: http://help.senate.gov/BAI09A84_xml.pdf 
Thursday, July 16, 2009
By Terence P. Jeffrey, Editor-in-Chief

President Barack Obama announces Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, left, as his nominee for Health & Human Services Secretary, Monday, March 2, 2009, in the East Room at the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Ron Edmonds)(CNSNews.com) - There is a knock at the front door. Peeking through the window, a mother sees a man and a woman, both in uniform. They are agents of health-care reform.
 
“Excuse me, ma’am,” says the man. “Our records show that your eleven-year-old daughter has not been immunized for genital warts.”
 
“And your four-year-old still needs the chicken-pox vaccine,” says the woman.
 
“He will not be allowed to start kindergarten unless he gets that shot, you know,” says the man—smiling from ear to ear. 
 
“So, can we please come in?” asks the woman. “We have the vaccines right here,” she says, lifting up a black medical bag. “We can give your kids the shots right now.”
 
“We are from the government,” says the man, “and we’re here to help.”
 
Is this a scene from the over-heated imagination of an addlepated conspiracy theorist? Or is it something akin to what is actually envisioned by the health-care reform bill approved this week by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee.
 
The committee’s official summary of the bill says: “Authorizes a demonstration program to improve immunization coverage. Under this program, CDC will provide grants to states to improve immunization coverage of children, adolescents, and adults through the use of evidence-based interventions. States may use funds to implement interventions that are recommended by the Community Preventive Services Task Force, such as reminders or recalls for patients or providers, or home visits.”
 
Home visits? What exactly is the state going to do when it sends people to “implement interventions” in private homes designed “to improve immunization coverage of children”?
 
The draft of the bill posted on the committee Web site provides more details.
 
Title III of the bill is entitled, “Improving the Health of the American People.” It includes four subtitles. They are: “Subtitle A: Modernizing Disease Prevention of Public Health Systems,” “Subtitle B: Increasing Access to Clinical Preventive Services,” “Subtitle C: Creating Healthier Communities,” and “Subtitle D: Support for Prevention and Public Health Information.”
 
The program authorizing home “interventions” to promote immunizations falls under “Subtitle C: Creating Healthier Communities.”  This subtitle directs the secretary of health and human services to “establish a demonstration program to award grants to states to improve the provision of recommended immunizations for children, adolescents, and adults through the use of evidence-based, population-based interventions for high-risk populations.”
 
The bill lists eight specific ways that states may use federal grant money to carry out immunization-promoting “interventions.” Method “E” calls for “home visits” which can include “provision of immunizations.”
 
Says the draft bill: “Funds received under a  grant under this subsection shall be used to implement interventions that are recommended by the Task Force on Community Preventive Services (as established by the secretary, acting through the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) or other evidence-based interventions, including—“(A) providing immunization reminders or recalls for target populations of clients, patients, and consumers; (B) educating targeted populations and health care providers concerning immunizations in combination with one or more other interventions; (C) reducing out-of-pocket costs for families for vaccines and their administration; (D) carrying out immunization-promoting strategies for participants or clients of public programs, including assessments of immunization status, referrals to health care providers, education, provision of on-site immunizations, or incentives for immunization;(E) providing for home visits that promote immunization through education, assessments of need, referrals, provision of immunizations, or other services; (F) providing reminders or recalls for immunization providers;(G) conducting assessments of, and providing feedback to, immunization providers; or (H) any combination of one or more interventions described in this paragraph.”
 
Many vaccines routinely administered to children in the United States are utterly uncontroversial. But in recent years there have been controversies about the chicken pox vaccine and the vaccine for HPV, which causes genital warts, which can cause cervical cancer.
 
On March 15, 2007, Bloomberg news summarized a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, which discovered that the chicken pox vaccine does not provide permanent protection against chicken pox, leaving children who have been immunized vulnerable to getting ill with the virus later in life when it can cause a more serious bout of the disease.
 
“Merck & Co.'s chickenpox vaccine weakens as children age, possibly leaving them vulnerable to a more serious infection as adults, a U.S.-sponsored study in California found,” reported Bloomberg. “The power of the vaccine, Varivax, the only one available in the United States against chickenpox, starts to fade after five years, according to the study in today's New England Journal of Medicine. The results suggest that children should get a second dose, which advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended in June.”
 
Bloomberg quoted the study as saying, "Waning immunity is of particular public health interest because it may result in increased susceptibility later in life, when the risk of severe complications may be greater than that in childhood.”
 
In March of this year, the Washington Post reported about the controversy sparked when the Merck pharmaceutical company campaigned to have states mandate that school girls receive Gardasil, its vaccine against HPV.
 
“Merck also began an ambitious marketing campaign and lobbying push to persuade states to add the vaccine to the list of those required for children to attend school,” reported the Post. “But the company eventually abandoned the strategy in the face of an intense backlash from critics who argued that the decision should be left to parents. Although many states considered such mandates, so far only Virginia and the District have imposed one, and [a Merck official] said the company has no plans to pursue that strategy again."
 
The Post's report noted that at least some experts questioned the wisdom of promoting use of the vaccine when its long term impact is still unknown.

“Federal health officials, Merck and others say they are confident that the vaccine is safe," reported the Post. "But some experts said they are concerned that there is insufficient evidence about how long Gardasil's protection will last, whether serious side effects will emerge and whether the relatively modest benefits for boys are worth even the small risks associated with any vaccine."
http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=51115

URGENT! U.S. Senate Health Committee Passes Health Care Reform Bill that will Bankrupt America

PLEASE TAKE ACTION ~ CONTACT YOUR SENATOR TODAY!!!

Call the Senate operator at (202) 224-3121 to get connected to your Senator.

See a draft of the bill here: http://help.senate.gov/BAI09A84_xml.pdf

Mike Adams
Natural News
Thursday, July 16, 2009

(NaturalNews) The great lumbering health care reform gears are in motion in Washington D.C., and the Big Government machine is spitting out a new recipe for the bankruptcy of America: A “health care reform” bill that pleases all the special interest groups and pharmaceutical companies but does nothing to improve the health of ordinary Americans.

Health care reform in Washington today isn’t about health, or reform. It’s about mandating monopoly-priced western medicine for the masses. It’s about fining people who wisely opt out of the criminally-operated health insurance industry, and it’s designed to keep the American people sick and diseased while emptying their pockets of any remaining earnings they might have somehow squirreled away during the ongoing financial / real estate crash.

For starters, this Senate health reform bill would financially penalize people who take care of their own health and choose not to hand over $1,000 or month (or more) to a corrupt, criminally-operated health insurance system. This is a bill that actually punishes people for staying healthy! At the same time, it just happens to expand the monopoly of western medicine to encompass the entire U.S. population, criminalizing those who have opted out of the failed health care system.

The other joke in this health care reform is the idea of a new government-run health plan, which is being hilariously presented as a way to “drive down costs.”

Since when has Big Government ever been able to drive down the costs of anything? It was Big Government, under the Bush administration, that actually made it illegal for government to negotiate price discounts with drug companies, locking in monopoly prices that filled the coffers of Big Pharma while bankrupting the taxpayers.

Even now, the FDA (under the Obama administration) continues its outright war against the natural products industry, censoring truthful information about the health benefits of dietary supplements in a tyrannical effort to eliminate Big Pharma’s competition. This has the effect of eliminating choice for consumers, ultimately driving up monopoly health care costs under the system of western medicine that (laughingly) claims to provide health care today.

Life is a pre-existing condition

The one good thing in the current discussions about health care reform is the idea of barring insurance companies from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions. Because, after all, who doesn’t have a pre-existing condition? Simply being born is a pre-existing condition, isn’t it? (Hospitals consider pregnancy and childbirth to be medical emergencies requiring drugs and surgery…)

According to drug-pushing psychiatrists, life itself is a pre-existing condition requiring pharmaceutical intervention. Merely experiencing emotions like sadness or happiness (or too much happiness followed by too much sadness) is a disease, they claim. Where are the reforms that would outlaw this psych drugging nonsense?

Meanwhile, there is nothing in these reforms that would actually teach Americans how to be healthy. Where are the calls for the arrest and imprisonment of Big Pharma executives, corrupt FDA officials and rogue FTC enforcers who have indirectly caused the deaths of millions of Americans through their war on natural remedies? Where is the ban on pharmaceutical TV ads, or the requirement that medical studies practice something resembling honest science instead of just making up whatever numbers they want and submitting those to medical journals for publication?

Why is aspartame still legal? Or monosodium glutamate? Or Ritalin? Where are the real reforms that Americans desperately need to raise a generation of healthy children?

Those reforms, of course, are never to be discussed. They would threaten the profits of too many powerful food and drug corporations. So they aren’t even part of the discussion.

My own Health Revolution Petition (www.HealthRevolutionPetition.org) is the real pathway to health reform in America. And yet even that petition is still a long way from the needed 100,000 signatures. That’s because good ideas don’t get much traction in mainstream America these days. Now, if I had a movie about teenage vampires (Twilight), that would get some traction. But sensible ideas about helping teens get healthy are utterly ignored.

The last sputtering gasp of western medicine in America

I’ve watched the health care situation in America quite closely for the past five years, and it’s not difficult to see where this is heading.

The political whores and sellouts in Washington routinely and predictably trade your future for their own short-term political gain, and that means selling out to medical special interest groups that thrive on disease and disinformation. The last thing these people want is a healthy population that needs fewer medical services. They don’t want a cure for cancer. They don’t want natural remedies for reversing heart disease. They don’t want kids to be healthy and happy without drugs.

What they want is a nation of drug addicts who play the role of helpless medical system dependants. They want people to be uninformed, nutritionally ignorant and irreversibly diseased because that’s the way they make more money and stay in power.

And that’s why health care reform in America is ultimately about appeasing the special interest groups of the medical-pharmaceutical-agriculture industrial complex. It’s all about keeping them in power (and in the money), and it has absolutely nothing to do with improving the health of a single American.

Yes, health care in America today is a disaster. But the last thing it needs is more Big Government running the show. Think about where our nation is headed right now with Big Government:

• Big Government now owns 50% of the homes in America (through the bailout fiasco involving Freddie and Fannie).

• Big Government now owns the biggest banks and investment houses in America.

• Big Government wants to become the landlord-in-chief by turning homeowners into home renters, where half the population rents from the government (and has no ownership of the homes in which they live).

• Big Government now runs a significant portion of the auto industry.

• And now, Big Government wants to run the health care system, too!

How is this not some strange brand of American Communism? When government owns (and runs) everything, and the free choice of the citizens is stripped from them, you no longer have a free country; you have Communism.

And that, unfortunately, is where America is headed: The land of the medical-financial-economic dictatorship, where all decisions are made for you by Big Brother, and free citizens who exercise free choice are either fined or imprisoned. It’s already happening with vaccines and cancer treatments. Just wait to see what happens when you dare say “no” to the new Obama health insurance plan!

Health care dictatorship

This new “health care reform” bill might as well be called the health care dictatorship bill. They say it will cover all Americans. Yes, it will, but it will cover them in a smokescreen of sickness and bankruptcy, accelerating the rapid decline of the American empire and trapping its people in a quagmire of medical enslavement from which the nation will never escape.

We are, in a very real sense, watching the slow, miserable death of a nation. Between its insurmountable financial problems ($12 trillion in debt right now, and nearly another $100 billion each month) and its health care failures (widespread degenerative disease now dominates the American population), America has positioned itself as a geopolitical failure of truly historic proportions. Yet instead of working to actually solve its problems, America has decided to spend more debt money, drug more people, take over more banks, print more fictitious money and hurl itself head-first into a brick wall with even more rapidity than anyone had previously thought possible.

It’s almost as if America’s leaders can’t wait to kill the nation, and they’d love to take a few million more citizens with them.

The philosophy in Washington today is like this:

• If the debt is too great to bear, spend more debt money!

• If health care is a disaster due to the monopolistic medical industry, enforce the monopoly nationwide!

• If the financial system isn’t working because of bad decisions made by investors, just make bigger and “badder” decisions at a higher level! (And bail out the investors while you’re at it.)

• If the money runs out, just print more!

Such is the mindset dominating America’s decisions today. They are beyond reckless. They are hopelessly suicidal. And what we’re seeing with health care reform today is merely a reflection of the national suicide being committed by our ethically-compromised representatives in Washington who would rather shore up their own six-year terms than help protect the next hundred years for the very people they hypocritically claim to represent.

http://www.prisonplanet.com/u-s-senate-health-committee-passes-health-care-reform-bill-that-will-bankrupt-america.html