Category: Health Care

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, yesterday, “whoever sits here this time next week, you all will be talking about health care reform not as a presidential proposal but as something that will soon be the law of the land.”

Gibbs expressed confidence that the government take over of health care would be popular with the American people.

“. . .once it passes, we’re happy to have the 2010 elections be about the achievement of health care reform. That’s a debate I think we’re obviously comfortable having,” he said.

Regarding opponents of the bill, he said “They do not even have control over themselves! Do not believe them! . . .We’re giving them a real lesson today. Heavy doesn’t accurately describe the level of casualties we have inflicted. . . These cowards have no morals. They have no shame about lying . . .God will roast their stomachs in hell”

The U.S. Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention  (CDC) reported, yesterday, March 9, that about 16 percent of Americans between the ages of 14 and 49 have genital herpes which is incurable.

The CDC said about 21 percent of women were infected with genital herpes or herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2) compared to about 11.5 percent of men.

It said about 39 percent of blacks were infected —  including 48 percent of black women — and about 12 percent of whites.

Genital herpes can cause recurrent and painful
genital sores and greatly increases the likelihood of acquiring
and transmitting the AIDS virus.

Congressman Jason Altmire (D-Pa4) said in an interview on Fox News Sunday that he may vote in favor of the Obama Health-Care socialization bill.

Altmire was one of 39 Democrats to vote against the House version of the bill in November.

Sen John Cornyn (R-Texas) notes that once the House Dems vote for the Senate bill there is neither a guarantee nor a need for the reconciliation process should the President sign it into law.

Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett said, yesterday, that his office is conducting a legal analysis of theconstitutionality of the provision granting Nebraska a permanent exemption from paying Medicaid expenses that all other states, including Pennsylvania, are required to pay.

Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson secured this special provision for Nebraska
in exchange for his support of the Patient Protection Affordable Care
Act.

Corbett notes that Medicaid expenses for Pennsylvania are about $15 billion per year

Liza Northrop Beale, the general manager of The Almanac, a weekly newspaper in Washington, Pa. died Saturday of complications related to the H1N1 virus. She was 49 and lived in Peters Township which is suburban Pittsburgh.

Mrs. Beale won a first-place 2009 Keystone Press Award from the Pennsylvania NewspaperAssociation for niche publication production, along with top honors for weekly editorial writing.

She was also the editor of Southpointe Today and Suburban Living.

She is survived by her husband, William.

The Senate Democrats, last night, voted to open debate on a health care bill that the Congressional Budget Office estimates will cost $979 billion over the next 10 years.

The vote came without any Republican support with 39 opposing and George Voinovich of Ohio not voting. The Republicans do not have enough votes by themselves to filibuster the bill to stop it.

Pennsylvania’s senators, Bob Casey and Arlen Specter, are Democrats.

The Democrats note that the CBO says the act will reduce the federal deficit by $130 billion.

Those who are not Democrat senators don’t seem to be buying it. Not even David Broder of the Washington Post who cites groups such as the Concord Coalition and The Committee For A Responsible Federal Budget as among the skeptics.

And after 10 years? Well, the conservative Heritage Foundation estimates the cost over 20 years to be $4.9 trillion.

But despite what Democrats believe, government is not yet the entire economy, and most frighteningly the CBO estimates

that the total cost of intergovernmental mandates would greatly exceed the annual threshold established in the (Unfunded Mandates Reform Act.) See page 18.

The Senate bill, after all, would be funded by increasing fees on insurance companies, drugmakers, medical device manufacturers, hiking the Medicare payroll tax to 1.95 percent on income over $200,000 for indviduals ($250,000 for couples), a 5 percent tax on elective surgery, an excise tax on insurance companies, fees on employers whose workers receive government subsidies to buy insurance, “fines” on those who fail to buy coverage, and cuts to Medicare and Medicaid.

Insurance companies, drugmakers etc. are going to pass on the cost and the rich are going to have less to spend and invest albeit many Americans don’t seem to be able to understand that.

Don’t forget what the point of this bill is supposed to be: paying for the uninsured who are now getting medical care via emergency rooms. Granted that’s not the most efficient way of doing it, but greatly hiking cost to cut services doesn’t seem to be a very efficient answer.

The bill still must be passed by the Senate, reconciled with the House and signed by President Obama.