Democrats - Then and Now

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Number Of Americans Lacking Health Insurance Has Increased Since Obamacare Was Enacted

(CNS News) — The percentage of American adults who lack health insurance coverage has not only increased during the presidency of Barack Obama, but it has continued to increase since Obama signed his signature piece of legislation last year mandating that by 2014 every American carry health insurance, according to a Gallup survey released today.

In 2008, when George W. Bush was president, according to Gallup, 14.9 percent of adult residents of the United States lacked health insurance coverage. That increased to 16.2 percent in 2009, the year that Obama was inaugurated, and to 16.4 percent in 2010, the year that Obama signed his law requiring that all Americans have health insurance.

In the first half of this year, according to data released by Gallup today, the percentage of adults in the United States lacking health insurance ticked up to 16.8 percent.

That conclusion is based on Gallup’s interviews with 177,237 American adults from January through June of this year. The interviews were part of the ongoing Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index survey.

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Liberals Love Death Panels

Sarah Palin correctly pointed out that Obamacare had built in death panels that would ultimately lead to needed medical treatments to seniors being cut to save money, the Left flipped out. They claimed that it was crazy to suggest that there was something like that in the bill and they assured everyone that they would never, ever, ever back something like that, and that they were offended that Palin even suggested it.

Of course, there was one problem with that assertion: Liberals have no qualms about lying to the American people. They do it all the time. That's how they deal with the fact that many of their views are unpopular: They just lie about what they want to do. It's such a common occurrence that liberals often just assume liberal politicians who say things that differ from the liberal line are lying. For example, do you ever wonder why liberals, for the most part at least, give Barack Obama a pass for being against gay marriage? There's a simple reason for it: They think he's lying.

That's how it is with death panels. When a bill with death panels in it was in front of the American people, liberals claimed to be against death panels. But isn't it funny that since Obamacare became law, stories about liberals who support death panels keep dribbling out?

See, that's how it works. They lie to get you to support their position, then they start talking about it a little bit, and then eventually, liberals start talking about it en masse like everyone knew what they were getting into right from the start.

Want some examples?

Currently, Medicare is not allowed to deny a treatment based on cost alone, but in the coming years, "it will be difficult to sustain coverage of these very costly procedures considering the Medicare program is facing a huge long-term deficit," Howard says.

"Ten years, 20 years down the road, Congress is going to have to rewrite the law to allow cost to play into coverage decisions." -- David Howard, assistant professor in the department of Health Policy and Management at Emory's Rollins School of Public Health.

"Some years down the pike, we're going to get the real solution, which is going to be a combination of death panels and sales taxes. It's going to be that we're actually going to take Medicare under control, and we're going to have to get some additional revenue, probably from a VAT. But it's not going to happen now." -- Paul Krugman

That's a tradeoff society is making because of very, very high medical costs and a lack of willingness to say, you know, is spending a million dollars on that last three months of life for that patient, would it be better not to lay off those ten teachers and to make that tradeoff in medical costs. But that's called a death panel and you're not supposed to have that discussion. -- Bill Gates

Know why society never has that conversation, Bill? Because when conservatives point out that liberals want to do something unpopular, like kill old people by withholding medical treatment in order to save money, liberals deny that's what they believe. Hell, PolitiFact, which is a left-wing organization that pretends to be a right-down-the-middle outfit, actually declared that 'Death Panels' was the "Lie of the Year" for 2009. Certainly that wasn't true! Certainly that could never happen! Yet, the bill passed, and suddenly liberals are trying to lay the groundwork to kill Grandma because we can't have everyone else paying for her medical treatment.

Of course, the extra cost of paying for that medical treatment is built into the current system and it's one of the reasons prices have risen so fast. Could we cut the costs of medical treatment in the United States dramatically by cutting back on the amount of end-of-life medical treatment that we give people? Absolutely.

However, most Americans don't like this idea because they're good hearted people and also because they know that those they love may very well be in that position one day and they don't want to see them denied medical treatment. Conservatives tend to like the idea even less than the average American because we put a particularly high value on innocent human life. We're not the pro-life party for nothing.

Liberals, on the other hand, kind of like the idea of letting old people die to save money for the state, but when it was time to make the case, they didn't have the guts to argue for what they believed in. So instead, they denied that was what they wanted to do, they put it in the bill anyway, and now they're trying to prepare the public for it while they hope some nameless, faceless, unelected committee full of bureaucrats will just force it on the American people.

Heck, if all you "useless eaters" out there who are a net drain on the state could be so kind as to go ahead and die, liberals like Hanna Rosin at Slate will even go so far as to call you a "hero" for it,

Ann Hulbert’s late mother is my new hero. In this lovely essay in the American Scholar, Ann describes how her mother, in her last months, turned down radical medical intervention of dubious value. She did not do this because she googled a million medical sites and called in favors from doctor friends who weighed the evidence. She did it in order to stay true to her temperament and her philosophy.

Here is the exchange between Ann’s mother and the doctor:

“If geezers like me have lots of tests and treatments,” she told the doctor, “there isn’t going to be enough money to spend on the other end. This health-care mess isn’t going to be fixed if we aren’t ready to get out of the way.” Nonplussed on his little stool, he shook his head and raised an eyebrow. “Well, I’ve heard that view before, but never from someone in your situation. People generally change their tune when it suddenly applies to them.”

If you choose not to get medical treatment to try to extend your life when you're very ill, that's your choice. Some people who are sick and in a lot of pain may look at the quality of their life and decide it's not worth it. I respect that decision. But, it doesn't make you a hero and honestly, it's sick to applaud a woman for ending her own life in order to "get out of the way" of the government's health care plan.

SOURCE

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American Health care is better than european

What First Lady Michelle forgot to mention was that women with breast cancer have a 14 percent higher survival rate in the United States than in Europe. Breast cancer mortality is 52 percent higher in Germany than in the United States, and 88 percent higher in the United Kingdom.

Breast cancer mortality is also 9 percent higher in Canada than in the US. Less than 25 percent of U.S. women die from breast cancer.

In Britain, it’s 46 percent; France, 35 percent; Germany, 31 percent; Canada, 28 percent; Australia, 28 percent, and New Zealand, 46 percent.
For some reason she forgot to mention these facts in her video.

http://gatewaypundit.firstthings.com/2009/10/first-lady-michelle-fearmongers-for-nationalized-health-care-video/

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Obamacare is for the peons and knaves.

http://gatewaypundit.firstthings.com/2009/10/obamacare-is-for-the-peons-congress-to-keep-their-gold-plated-health-care-plans/

Our moral superiors have more important things to worry about.

Congress will keep their gold-plated insurance plans as they force the rest of the country into a rationed health care government plan.
Townhall reported, via Free Republic:

Personal doctors on call 24/7. Coverage that knows no caps. No exemptions for pre-existing conditions.

Those are the sorts of benefits members of Congress currently enjoy on the taxpayer’s dime, and the kinds of benefits Americans on a government-run public health care plan will never see if Obamacare passes.

“One thing is certain: Congress will exempt itself from whatever lousy health care system it forces on we little people,” said Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute. “Congress will get better insurance than you do because politicians always get a better deal under government-run health care.”

While it’s not news that Congressional health insurance plans are posh, CBS News recently uncovered the details of plans – right as the details of the Baucus health care bill are being hashed out.

Members of Congress can choose from five different plans, and have access to both the VIP Bethesda Naval Hospital and a reserved spot Ward 72 at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, an elite division usually reserved for military members. Their everyday medical concerns can be taken care of at a doctors office located inside of Congress.

Their premiums are the same as those of insurance plans with half the benefits, and the plans last a lifetime; not until Medicare kicks in do ex-Members or loose their Congressional health benefits. Congress has repeatedly voted down any provision that would switch their insurance plans to the lower-grade public option if Obamacare goes through.

Helen Evans, the director of Nurses for Reform, a campaign for more consumer-led, sustainable healthcare systems in Britain, said that this sort of elite care for the bureaucracy – and low-brow care for the plebes – is the same thing that happens in the government-run British

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