E!!

This Independence Institute YouTube video on just one set of drawbacks in the Oregon Health care system is pure gold.

Watch; laugh; cry; share.

Free-marketers, conservatives and/or Republicans have recently been tagged as the “Party of No” by their big-government pushing liberal counterparts.  According to the Left, all the Right ever does these days is say “no” to every policy proposal that comes down the pike.

Saying “no” to bad policy is hardly a sin, but there are some good alternatives floating around out there.

Like these suggestions for free market health care reform proposed by Geoff Lawrence, the fiscal analyst at the Nevada Policy Research Institute.

Read the whole thing and incorporate into your Talking Points – to be added after you say “no” to Obamacare pushers.

Breitbart found some video of Obama speaking on health care from a 2003 speech to the AFL-CIO.

Here is the money quote:

“I happen to be a proponent of a single payer universal health care program. I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its Gross National Product on health care cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. And that’s what Jim is talking about when he says everybody in, nobody out. A single payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. And that’s what I’d like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take back the House.”

“Wow.”

The White House response to this?

A three-minute (mis)information video featuring Linda Douglass, a former ABC news correspondent and now the WH Office of Health Reform communications director, sitting in front of a computer screen showing Drudge’s front page and saying the video and site headline is “taking sentences and phrases out of context, and they’re cobbling them together to leave a very false impression.”

Why not try to explain why Obama has changed his mind, rather than denying what we just saw him say ON VIDEO in a speech just a few years ago…?

Great Investor’s Business Daily cartoon.

This NY Post health care op-ed includes some truly appalling commentary by Dr. Ezekiel (Rahm’s brother) Emanuel and Dr. David Blumenthal.

As I was reading the piece I had a wrenching, visceral reaction.  Orwellian in nature.

These people actually believe they are adequately equipped to make not only “minor” but also life-and-death health care decisions for the elderly, the infirm, and the terminal.  That they have the right to say when a person does, or does not, need or deserve health care – and to what degree.  That they can and should decide which technologies are “appropriate” and which are too costly depending on the age and condition of the patient.

They knowingly and deliberately wish to suppress and subvert the will of family, and of the individual.  And they do it in the name of money:  cost savings, greater efficiencies.

It is horrifying.  Because the only thing more agonizing and torturous than having to make a life-or-death and/or quality-of-life choice about the care of a loved one, or yourself, is to be taken out of the process and have some computer algorithm or committee make the decision for you.

If these monsters are allowed to proceed — what else do you call men so misguided and monomaniacal that they sit in their mahogany-trimmed offices and play at being gods with clear conscience? — we will find ourselves living that horrifying vision that was once but a fiction.

(As an aside, Orwell’s heirs should sue Emanuel, Blumenthal, President Obama, and two-thirds of Congress for copyright infringement over health care language.)

And we should all come out of our slumber before we find ourselves in a nightmare from which we cannot wake.

Update: Fred Thompson interviews the writer of the above-named NY Post piece, Betsy McCaughey (8 minutes).

She said that on page 425 of the House bill is language making it mandatory that every five years, people in Medicare will have a required counseling session that will educate them about how to end their life sooner (how to refuse nutrition and medication, and how to approach hospice care).  And that some parts of the bill dictate that the elderly will be faced with denials of care based on their age.  It’s called “comparative effectiveness.”

Much has been said about Obama’s hurried, we-must-do-it-now approach to health care reform.  I don’t want the rush, and further, I think rushing through this is a really good way to ensure we end up with some really bad policy.

Now CNN’s Dana Bash is reporting that Harry Reid said there will be no Senate vote until after August on health care.

But, from Ohio, Ed Henry reports that a “senior administration official” said Reid’s comment does not change the president’s plans:  He still wants votes in both houses before August recess.

H/T:  K-Lo @ The Corner

Update:  Mr. Crum just called me and said he thinks Harry Reid’s statement was made with one eye on the polls and one on Reid’s 2010 senatorial campaign.  If a bill is rushed through and things don’t end well, Reid can say he tried to slow things down.  If things do turn out well, he can still point to how cautious he was.

Yuval Levin always impresses.  Read it.

Let Freedom Ring has a pledge designed to hold congressmen accountable for reading the entire health care bill before they vote on it.

(How ridiculous is it that we even have to have such things?)

Here’s what the website says:

All 535 Members of the U.S. House and Senate have received multiple copies of the Pledge by fax, email, regular mail or personal visitation. Any Representative or Senator not shown on the list of signers below may therefore reasonably be classified as having declined to sign. A few Senators have insisted that although they are supportive of our Pledge, they have adopted a blanket policy against signing pledges that prevents their signing ours. Although Let Freedom Ring believes that that they should make an exception for our pledge, because it is narrowly drawn and quite specific, we have agreed to post letters from those Senators in a separate section following the list of signers. You may read the letters by clicking on the Senators’ names.

Go see the list.  And download the pledge if you want to send it directly to your own rep.

Dina Titus (D-NV) casts a vote that earns my respect. 

From an article in the WSJ:

A group of Democrats elected in recent years from some of the country’s richest congressional districts have emerged as a stumbling block to raising taxes on the wealthy to pay for President Barack Obama’s ambitious health-care overhaul just as the plan has begun to meet increasing resistance over its cost.

Friday, two freshmen representatives — Dina Titus, from suburban Las Vegas, and Colorado’s Jared Polis, representing Boulder, Vail and some of the tonier suburbs of Denver — joined Republicans to vote against Mr. Obama’s top-priority health-care overhaul when it faced a vote in their House Education and Labor Committee. One reason was a one-percentage point-surtax on couples earning between $350,000 and $500,000 — gradually increasing to 5.4 percentage points on earnings more than $1 million — to pay for it.

Watch this great “retro” video illustrating the best that government run health care has to offer.  Clever!

Here’s a clever, funny 1-minute video from the Independence Institute (known for short as “I2I”) explaining just one problem with Obama’s mandated health care program.

When presented with 1,000 page bills that even Congress doesn’t read or understand, we need more stuff like this:  short, simple, easy to understand close-ups on what a given policy actually means to a citizen.  People don’t personally process all the talk of “trillions” and “socialized medicine.” 

They pay attention, though, when they realize they are going to be penalized, or lose something.

While I’m praising I2I, a Colorado free-market think tank with personality – who knew a think tank could be fun? – they have an education blog called Ed is Watching written by a clever 5-year old named Ed.  And another blog called ”The Good, The Bad, and the Shameful,” which puts officials and special interests on record re: education reform.

Aspiring education reformers should go take a look.

Nearly every argument in favor of universal (socialized) health care includes the premis that it is a “right.”  But according to the U.S. Constiution, this is not so.  Geoff Lawrence over at NPRI explains why by giving us a brief lesson (via the writings of John Locke) about how the Constitution does not in fact support “positive rights.”  If you wish to effectively debate someone on health care reform (or any other entitlement program), you must understand this fundamental concept.  I recommend that you read Geoff’s whole post, but here’s the opener to give you a taste:

In the ongoing debate over health care reform, I continue to hear pundits on the left claim that health care is a right. Yet, this notion that government exists to guarantee “positive rights” such as free health care completely misunderstands the development of constitutional government.

The entire notion of constitutional government can be traced to John Locke’s Second Treatise. Here it is explained that all men are endowed with a set of natural rights which include: life, liberty and property. In order to protect those rights, civilized individuals agree to a “social contract” in order to form a government whose primary purpose is to protect the rights of individuals. This is done by empowering government to restrain the actions of others (such as theft, physical violence, etc.) that might directly infringe on your own natural rights. Hence the expression “Your rights end where someone else’s begin.”

The primary problem with the concept of “positive rights” is that the purpose of government changes from protecting the natural rights of individuals to actively infringing upon those rights. Any requirement for government to provide individuals with a certain amount of goods means that those goods must first be confiscated from society – which is a limit on the natural right to control property.

Just so.

For a wonderful treatise on why the government should not be in the business of deciding whether or how much to take from us in order to give to select others, read this story that was told on the House floor by Davy Crockett when he was serving as a U.S. Representative from Tennessee.  It concerned two votes on spending bills and the temptation of Congress to distribute money that was not their own for “charitable” purposes.

Our federal and state legislatures, as well as the Oval Office, have too long been staffed by too many people who do not understand nor support our rights and protections as they ought to exist according to our Constitution.   Through the increasing willingness of we, the citizenry, to allow government to do what we, as individuals, ought to be doing – helping and giving to the poor and needy as we are able and as we feel called to do – we have permitted our great Republic to become a tax-laden “social democracy” that reduces rather than protects our prosperity and freedom.

On May 23, 1857, in a letter to an American friend, Lord Thomas MacCauley wrote: “A democracy cannot survive as a permanent form of government. It can last only until its citizens discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority (who vote) will vote for those candidates promising the greatest benefits from the public purse, with the result that a democracy will always collapse from loose fiscal policies, always followed by a dictatorship.”

Are we there yet?  Not quite, but I fear we are getting dangerously close.  Educate yourselves, good people, and let us find ways to speak out and persuade others before this great Republic devolves into a pitiful excuse for the nation it once was.

My friend and fellow blogger over at Cranky Hermit reports on a recent discussion panel  - the “Organizing for America Health Care Forum” – at Centennial Hills Library.  The panel was moderated by former Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist Erin Neff. 

Cranky Hermit did such a great job of reporting who said what – and of providing reliable research data that handily refutes many of the claims made by those in attendance – that I am going to withhold comment and encourage you to just go read it.  (And then drop him a comment with your thoughts and thanks.  We need more citizen journalists covering these kinds of events.)

Michael Cannon at CATO says he caught a hint of things to come while talking with a WalMart lobbyist in a cab a few years back.  WalMart is backing an employer mandate for health care, i.e. a legal requirement that employers provide a government-defined package of health benefits.  And by defined, we mean something along the lines of “you will pay no more and no less than “x” for your workers’ health care plan.”  Cannon explains and theorizes why WalMart – one of America’s greatest entrepreneurial, free-market success stories – is going along with an anti-free market, government dictated approach to employee benefits.  In short, it’s to gain an advantage over their biggest competitor (Target). He also slams them pretty hard for it.

Update:  On the subject of Big Government and Big Business getting in bed together, Jonah @ NRO has an excellent post.  Read it.

Re:  the header reference, for those scratching their heads:

In 44 BC, Julius Caesar was murdered by a group of senators. They were led by Marcus Brutus, who had been a close friend of Caesar. In Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar, Caesar begins to resist the attack but then resigns himself to his fate when he sees his dear friend with knife in hand:

Caesar: Doth not Brutus bootless kneel?
Casca: Speak, hands, for me! [They stab Caesar.]
Caesar: Et tu, Brute? Then fall, Caesar! [Dies.]
Cinna: Liberty! Freedom! Tyranny is dead!

Et tu = And you

I’m a sucker for Monty Python references.  And this one recalls one of my favorite scenes from The Holy Grail while cleverly poking fun at socialized health care.

My very favorite scene from Grail is this one (dialogue with Graham Chapman as KING ARTHUR, Michael Palin as DENNIS THE PEASANT, and Terry Jones as the WOMAN).

Available on YouTube here.

Yeah, I know what I said, but tomorrow ran a bit long. And right now it’s late and I’m really too tired to wax blogetic.  But I’ll give you a few interesting items to read:

– Gun Owners of Nevada SB-52 alert here. Raggio and Gansert’s contact numbers are conveniently provided.

– A moderate Democrat displeased with the leftward lurch of the Obama White House writes to the Las Vegas Sun here.

– On Friday, Carson City protestors protested about the state budget here.  The state Assembly overrode the governor’s veto so we now have a $6.9m budget and a $781 million tax increase to fund it.  (Gov. Gibbons’ proposed $6.2 billion budget, which legislators rejected, included a $220 million voter-approved room tax increase.) Me, I reject BOTH budgets as more than was needed – and more than Nevada can afford.

– If the facts are as represented, it seems a mistrial and re-trial for an Army Ranger would be in order here.  Personally, I don’t care if he shot the Al Quada operative while he was just sitting on the rock.  Why are we politely escorting known terrorists around anyway…?

– A seemingly worthy non-partisan breast cancer initiative petition is here. It urges Congress to pass legislation to end the practice of so-called “drive-through” mastectomies in which women are forced out of the hospital only hours after invasive breast cancer surgery.  Hours...?

Far Right Democrat reminds us about George Orwell’s 1984ian government organization, the Ministry of Truth, and wonders how quickly KOS will do likewise in the way of rewriting history (i.e. change the official story) on mandated health care when Obama reverses himself and endorses it.

Of course, the modern day Ministry of Truth – the mainstream media – does this all the time.  As do nearly all politicians, especially during election cycles. 

Revisionist history:  it’s what’s for breakfast.

Remember my post on the unsustainability of the Canadian health care system?  Well here’s a link to an article including a true story from a Canadian woman suffering with cancer.  Read it and weep – for her.

This article on the problems with the Canadian public health care system is worth reading. The opener:

TORONTO, ON – Provincial spending on health care is growing faster than revenues with six of 10 provinces projected to be spending more than 50 per cent of all available revenue on health care by 2036, says a new report released today by independent research organization the Fraser Institute.

The Fraser Institute’s piece quotes Director Brett Skinner:

“Over the past ten years, health care spending in nine out of 10 provinces has grown at an unsustainable rate. Unless governments find a better way to finance health care, then provincial governments will likely be looking at tax hikes, further rationing of medical goods and services, or ugly trade-offs with other important spending areas.”

Apparently Alberta is the only Canadian province that’s managed to keep its revenues apace with health care expenditures. How? Energy-driven revenue increases.

But in provinces without large energy resources, revenue has been increased through – what else? – increased taxes. Skinner points to Ontario’s “health premium” income surtax as an example of a provincial government trying to create new taxes to cover health care costs. Says Skinner:

“The tax burden cannot continue to rise over the long-term unless people are willing to accept declining rates of economic growth and lower standards of living. Trying to drive long-term revenue growth through tax increases is futile.”

The report concludes that Canada’s public health insurance system is not financially sustainable through public means and recommends several changes. You can read about them at the end of the piece.

All suggested changes have one thing in common: they are private sector solutions. I say we learn from our neighbors to the north and seek private sector solutions now.