Posts Tagged ‘obamacare’

One good idea among the payoffs

Posted: December 22, 2009 by datechguy in opinion/news
Tags: ,

I was looking at Michelle Malkin’s list of payoffs in the Senate Healthcare bill. It’s a list that doesn’t inspire confidence, however there is one gem hidden in the manure. Who knew it would be from the socialist in the place?

The $10 billion, added at Sanders’ request, would also ensure there would be medical professionals to provide primary care by expanding the National Health Service Corps by an additional 20,000 slots. Doctors, dentists, nurses and other medical professionals who agree to work in areas where there are limited medical services get help paying off their school loans.

This is exactly what I was talking about in my post about containing healthcare costs.

Does it make this bill worthwhile? Of course not. But of all the things there are to hit over this bill, this one piece isn’t an issue for me.

Back in November my favorite atheistic liberal feminist blogger Violet Socks at the Reclusive leftist wrote this:

On your blog, in your comments, everywhere. That’s how memes start. Coakley’s got the courage and the convictions. She’s raising her head above the parapet, right now, when it matters. Just as she did last year when she endorsed Hillary Clinton. Just as she did when she refused to surrender that vote at the convention.

Martha Coakley for President.

As you might guess by my description of her Violet and I have a serious disagreement on Abortion. Yesterday she quoted a post at a blog called Confluence:

There were a multitude of permutations that would have succeeded in covering poor and sick people but the Democrats picked the one that is most likely to piss off their own constituents in the highest numbers. Congratulations, guys.

But this abortion thing? I gotta wonder why it wasn’t sufficient to stick the knife into health care reform without adding the agonizing poison. You should have never even entertained Stupak and Nelson no matter how much they howled and screamed. That’s going to come back to bite you. And no matter how much theater comes up on the floor of the Senate during debate in the next couple of days to try to remove the amendments and compromises, taking them out is not going to make this bill smell any sweeter. The jig is up. We see through the distraction.

The actual post is interesting philosophically but bottom line is the abortion language makes the bill unacceptable.

Today the Boston Globe has this story about Martha the righteous:

“Let’s be clear on what’s principled here,’’ she said at the time of her opponent, US Representative Michael Capuano. “If it comes down to this in the Senate, and it’s the health care bill or violating women’s rights, where does he stand?’’

Obviously feeling the pressure, Capuano pivoted a few days later and said that while he voted yes in the House, he would vote no on final passage if the abortion restrictions did not change.

Coakley used her stark position on abortion rights to appeal to supporters for donations; in an e-mail, she declared her decision to make her position “a defining moment’’ in her campaign.

Asked last week whether she would vote against a bill that went beyond current law in restricting abortion coverage, Coakley said, “Yes, that’s right.’’

In a statement to the Globe yesterday, Coakley said that although she was disappointed that the Senate bill “gives states additional options regarding the funding mechanisms for women’s reproductive health services,’’ she would reluctantly support it because it would provide coverage for millions of uninsured people and reduce costs.

As Newsbusters put it:

Coakley is such a self-serving hypocritical flip-flopper than not even the Boston Globe could spin this story to make her look good. In almost any other state, Coakley would have very little chance in the general election but, hey, this is Massachusetts we are talking about here. Democrat candidates for senator aren’t so much elected as automatically coronated.

I have thoughts concerning Ms. Coakley, they are similar to my thoughts about Scott Harshbarger. Neither are printable so I didn’t say a thing at the time of the first post. As I want to keep my sense of decorum I’ll continue to restrain myself.

But I can’t wait to read Violet’s follow up post on this subject once she reads the Globe’s story. I’ll wager it is going to be an interesting but not work safe read.

Morning Joe was dealing with the Onion today so in honor of that and Harry Reid’s success to impose Cloture it’s worthwhile to link to this highly relevant Onion story from 1997:

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND—World Health Organization officials expressed disappointment Monday at the group’s finding that, despite the enormous efforts of doctors, rescue workers and other medical professionals worldwide, the global death rate remains constant at 100 percent.

Death, a metabolic affliction causing total shutdown of all life functions, has long been considered humanity’s number one health concern. Responsible for 100 percent of all recorded fatalities worldwide, the condition has no cure.

I love the Nader “quote”:

“Why should we continue to spend billions of dollars a year on a health care industry whose sole purpose is to prevent death, only to find, once again, that death awaits us all?” Nader said in an impassioned address to several suburban Californians. “That’s called a zero percent return on our investment, and that’s not fair. Its time the paying customer stood up to the HMOs and to the so-called ‘medical health professionals’ and said: ‘Enough is enough. I’m paying through the nose here, and I don’t want to die.'”

Yeah it’s funny and the Onion as always is worth a laugh but the bottom line is still what the article says. Everyone dies. That includes me and you.

Boy, back to back post on death, I know I’m in a bit of a mood today but two posts in a row on death? Bad sign, but as Curley Howard once said: “The Morbid the merrier”

I guess the “free cigarettes” line would get this a R rating today.

their coverage will follow:

David Almasi, executive director of the National Center For Public Policy Research, kept a log of commercials aired during the ABC World News broadcast from June 24th to October 12, a period of approximately three-and-a-half months following ABC’s rejection of health care-related ads from Conservatives for Patients’ Rights.20 The results are as follows:

In July, 173 of 326 commercials, or 53 percent, were PhRMA company advertisements. In August, 176 of 321 commercials, or 54.8 percent, were PhRMA. In September, 156 of 293, or 53.24 percent, were PhRMA commercials. Of the eight days in October analyzed, 45 out of 80 commercials, or 56.25 percent, were PhRMA company ads.

The grand total? In the 98 days of ABC World News programming analyzed from June to October, the broadcast featured 1,102 commercials, 597 of which were PhRMA member company advertisements, representing 54.17 percent of total commercials aired.

Notes Almasi, “Ad after ad on World News came from members of the drug lobby group PhRMA. It’s almost laughable how many ads they run each day. If they were to stop, it would seem doubtful the broadcasts could continue.”

The data, representing months of recording and logging of ABC World News commercials viewed in the Washington D.C. market, reveal an astonishing double layer of hypocrisy. ABC News, in spite of its morally superior affectations against “advocacy ads,” is perfectly willing to turn over large chunks of its news programming to a politician – if that politician is backed by companies representing more than half its advertisements.

You might recall ABC shrugged off charges that they did not or would not bring any opposing view to the broadcast in question.

Never forget that the broadcast networks revenue source is. Their product is an ad platform, PERIOD! Over the last 15 years the number of choices (read ad platforms) have increased and thus the need to have that guaranteed source of income becomes vital.

Remember the Quiz Show scandals:

The firestorm that resulted, claimed Variety, “injured broadcasting more than anything ever before in the public eye.” Even the sainted Edward R. Murrow was sullied when it was revealed that his celebrity interview show, CBS’s Person to Person, provided guests with questions in advance. Perhaps most significantly in terms of the future shape of commercial television, the quiz show scandals made the networks forever leery of “single sponsorship” programming. (emphasis mine) Henceforth, they parceled out advertising time in fifteen, thirty, and sixty-second increments, wrenching control away from single sponsors and advertising agencies.

Forever is apparently not all that it’s cracked up to be.

If any of this surprises you, then it is very likely you haven’t been paying attention.