Watchdog for the Health Care Bill

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Comment by Patty Parrett 49 minutes ago

We MUST focus on the healthcare bill for the next 24 hours. Please go to
http://www.resistnet.com/forum/topics/everyone-needs-to-focus-all
and send a unified message to Lincoln. We NEED TO STOP THIS BILL NOW

Comment by Lee Prince 4 hours ago

Cheryl, they can't go "nuclear" until they get through the motion to proceed. That's why they need 60. They COULD subdivide the bill and reintroduce it to try the reconciliation "nuclear" approach, but that would take longer and be subject to a LOT of parliamentary maneuvering since it would be unprecedented...literally...

Comment by Darla D, ADMIN / National Coord. 4 hours ago

PLease see all the links added on the front page regarding this bill. Main page top center.

Comment by Cheryl Bowman 1 day ago

If anyone caught Beck this afternoon, you were probably amazed like me at the phenominal taxes that are being imposed through this bill. If you go to http://www.glennbeck.com/ and towards the top of the page, he has Headline bookmarks. That is where you'll find the commentary on the taxes in the Health Care bill.

This is one talking point that could resonate with those that are the hard nuts to crack.

Meanwhile, we can only hope that Reid will not pull the "Nuclear Option" when this comes to a vote presumably over the weekend.

Comment by JGL 1 day ago

This is a great column from Geogre Will exposing CrappyCare for the Unconstitutional affront to our Liberties, personal freedoms, and individual rights:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/11/19/fighting_a_coericion_clause_99203.html

"Democrats' health bills depend on forcing individuals to buy insurance or face severe fines or imprisonment. In 1994, the Congressional Budget Office said forcing individuals to buy insurance would be "an unprecedented form of federal action," adding: "The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States."

This year, the Congressional Research Service delicately said "it is a novel issue whether Congress may use the (Commerce) Clause to require an individual to purchase a good or service." Congress has the constitutional power to "regulate commerce ... among the several states." But a Federalist Society study by Peter Urbanowicz and Dennis Smith judges it perverse to exercise coercion under the Commerce Clause "on an individual who chooses not to undertake a commercial transaction." As Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, says, there is "a fundamental difference between regulating activities in which individuals choose to engage" -- e.g, drivers can be required to buy auto insurance -- "and requiring such activities" just because an individual exists.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., says Congress can tax -- i.e., punish -- people who do not buy insurance because the Constitution empowers Congress to tax for "the general welfare." So, could Congress tax persons who do not exercise or eat their spinach?

When asked whether any compulsory insurance purchases are constitutional, Speaker Nancy Pelosi was genuinely astonished: "Are you serious? Are you serious?" In 1803, in Marbury v. Madison, Chief Justice John Marshall wrote, "The powers of the legislature are defined and limited; and that those limits may not be mistaken, or forgotten, the Constitution is written." He was serious."

This is exactly the issue with CrappyCare - who gets to make your medical decsions? You or the government?

This is the worst usurption of your individual rights ever proposed!

This is crunchtime for CrappyCare - FoxNews reports Reid is "confident" he has the votes for cloture!

Today is the time to make the phones, PC, and faxes smoke up in DC!

Comment by JGL 1 day ago

Just a reminder – the worst part of CrappyCare is still the Individual Mandate:

“That Darn Mandate"
by
Shikha Dalmia



“If the government can force Americans to buy coverage on the threat of fines or even imprisonment–an option that Nancy Pelosi has pointedly refused to rule out–every other government diktat becomes small potatoes by contrast. In fact, it becomes necessary. If uninsured Americans must buy coverage, why shouldn’t other Americans be taxed to subsidize them? Why shouldn’t the insurance industry be required to sell them coverage? Why shouldn’t government set insurance prices to ensure affordability? Why shouldn’t doctors and hospitals be asked to charge only “reasonable” rates–or offer only government-sanctioned treatments? Nothing about ObamaCare fundamentally changes so long as the individual mandate remains intact.

Therefore, instead of wonkishly droning about the public option, Republicans should counter Democrats’ grand appeals for “universal coverage for all” with equally grand appeals for “medical freedom for all.” They should stand together on the Capitol steps and issue the health care equivalent of Reagan’s Berlin Wall ultimatum: “Mr. President: Tear up this mandate.”

During the campaign, Obama himself successfully stopped poor Hillary dead in her tracks by reminding voters at every turn of her tyrannical plans to force them to purchase coverage. So why aren’t Republicans doing the same to Obama?

The main reason is that they themselves are deeply conflicted about the mandate. On the one hand, every Republican on the Senate Finance Committee voted against it–except, of course, for Maine’s Sen. Olympia Wavering-Heart Snowe. On the other hand, many Republicans, led by their intellectual lights at the conservative Heritage Foundation, among others, have long accepted–no, championed–the notion that unless people are forced to carry insurance, freeloaders who land in emergency rooms will cripple the health care system. Legislate personal responsibility, in other words. It was a Heritage plan for forced coverage that formed the blueprint for the Massachusetts universal care debacle that the then Republican Gov. Mitt Romney enacted.

Thus Republicans have no leg to stand on now that Obama, pulling one of his many switcheroos, has embraced the individual mandate. Heritage folks are trying to pull their own switcheroo by opposing Obama’s mandate, saying what they had originally proposed for Massachusetts was not really a mandate but actually a self-insurance scheme under which an uninsured person would have to post a personal bond before being treated in an emergency room.

But countering mandates with bonds doesn’t exactly make for a rousing rallying cry. Indeed, both ideas are based on the mistaken diagnosis that the central cause of our health care woes is the cost of uncompensated care that the uninsured get. The fact of the matter is that this care accounts for no more than $40 billion of the country’s $2.26 trillion health care bill–or less than 3% of total health care spending. This is less than what department stores lose to shoplifting every year. Several private hospitals that I visited in India last month make a fraction of the profits that American hospitals do but still reported treating up to 10% of their patients for free.

The mandate barring American hospitals from denying treatment to anyone who lands in emergency–the root of the supposed freeloader problem–certainly imposes a heavy burden on some hospitals, especially in inner cities. But it is far from clear that it forces American hospitals as a whole to provide more charitable care to the uninsured than what they would have without it. It would certainly be worthwhile at some point to consider policy options to replace this mandate with mechanisms to strengthen voluntary charity by hospitals and others. In the meantime, however, there is zero evidence to suggest that this mandate is imposing a crippling enough burden on hospitals to warrant mandates on everyone else as well.”

http://www.forbes.com/2009/11/17/obamacare-health-democrats-republicans-opinions-columnists-shikha-dalmia_print.html

Comment by Patty Parrett on November 18, 2009 at 5:24pm

Senator info is in discussion above including email ready lists that you can copy and paste

Comment by Patty Parrett on November 18, 2009 at 5:16pm

MSNBC reported the private meeting between Reid and Dems is happening to reveal Healthcare Bill to only them and see if they have 60 votes.. Hope everyone busy making contact NOW
Extra Contact numbers Sen Bayh who is on the fence: For press inquiries, please contact Brian Weiss at 202-224-6807 or brian_weiss@bayh.senate.gov. For all other matters, please contact Peter True at (202) 224-1062 or peter_true@bayh.senate.gov
For Sen Carper,contact Sarah Lewis at 202-224-2441

Comment by JGL on November 18, 2009 at 1:06am

Your CrappyCare late night update!

CrappyCare will cost a fortune:

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=18693&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DPD

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=18690&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DPD

CrappyCare will be a huge slush-fund for the union goons of SEIU:

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=18692&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DPD

CrappyCare will get you killed early:

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=18691&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DPD

Oh, if the big government socialists can be defeated and we return to protection of individual rights, personal freedom, free markets, and limited government poverty will be wiped out on the planet earth within 50 years!:

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=18691&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DPD

Comment by JGL on November 18, 2009 at 12:47am

Here is your future for you, your children, your negihbors, your community under CrappyCare:

"One Fifth of Nation Will Be on Medicaide"

http://blog.heritage.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/special_medicaid_expansion_150_fpl_map2.pdf

Per Senator Jim Demint tonight on Fox, "Dirty Harry" Reid is planning a cloture vote for Friday to open debate on CrappyCare - we need to keep the calls, emails, snail mails, and faxes flooding in!

Both Senator DeMint and Senator Gregg think that CrappyCare will likely pass if SOMETHING makes it out of the Senate!

And like it will become something BAD like PelosiCare if it makes it to conference committee with the House "leadership" calling the shots!

We need to ensure a Filibuster is SUSTAINED NOW to KILL THE CRAPPYCARE BILL!!!!

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