Mayo Clinic Realizes ObamaCare A Total Disaster, Stops Accepting Medicare

What we have here is a very cute and clever title for a very disastrous development.

Mayo Says: Hold The Medicare
By Ed Carson
Thu., Dec. 31, ’09

The Mayo Clinic will stop accepting Medicare patients at one of its primary care clinics in Arizona. Why? The government doesn’t pay enough:

More than 3,000 patients eligible for Medicare, the government’s largest health-insurance program, will be forced to pay cash if they want to continue seeing their doctors at a Mayo family clinic in Glendale, northwest of Phoenix, said Michael Yardley, a Mayo spokesman. The decision, which Yardley called a two-year pilot project, won’t affect other Mayo facilities in Arizona, Florida and Minnesota.

Obama in June cited the nonprofit Rochester, Minnesota-based Mayo Clinic and the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio for offering “the highest quality care at costs well below the national norm.” Mayo’s move to drop Medicare patients may be copied by family doctors, some of whom have stopped accepting new patients from the program, said Lori Heim, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians.

This is nothing compared to what might happen under Democratic health overhaul plans, which would slash Medicare spending by nearly $500 billion over 10 years. As Medicare actuaries recently pointed out in understated fashion, such cuts “may be unrealistic.” But, if Congress actually carried them out, about one in five hospitals, nursing homes and home care agencies could lose money, they warned in their report.

As a result, such providers could drop Medicare, leaving seniors with less access.

This is now only going on at one Mayo clinic – but it is going to spread.

Don’t think for a second that this isn’t directly related to the disaster known as ObamaCare.  Democrats are gutting Medicare reimbursements and blocking the essential “doctor fix” from their bill to create the contrived and bogus illusion that their boondoggle will provide “deficit neutrality.”  They are playing all kinds of games and gimmicks, such as taxing for ten years and only providing benefits for five, to support that illusion.

It will fail, and a lot of people will die.

Alan B. Miller, an expert in the field of health care, wrote:

Medicare reimbursements to hospitals fail to cover the actual cost of providing services. The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), an independent congressional advisory agency, says hospitals received only 94.1 cents for every dollar they spent treating Medicare patients in 2007. MedPAC projects that number to decline to 93.1 cents per dollar spent in 2009, for an operating shortfall of 7%. Medicare works because hospitals subsidize the care they provide with revenue received from patients who have commercial insurance. Without that revenue, hospitals could not afford to care for those covered by Medicare. In effect, everyone with insurance is subsidizing the Medicare shortfall, which is growing larger every year.

As much as Obama and the Democrats have demonized private insurance (before co-opting them in the current version of ObamaCare – what is it, ObamaCare version 6.0 by now?), the higher prices paid by private insurance have been all that has allowed doctors and hospitals to continue to accept Medicare and Medicaid at a loss.

And so, what do you think will happen when Democrats cut the reimbursement rates?  People who have commons sense know: hospitals and doctors will begin to see fewer and fewer Medicare patients, as a matter of simple economic necessity.

That isn’t a “reform,” but a disaster.

And this stuff is why the dean of the Harvard Medical School gave ObamaCare a failing grade.  It’s why the California Medical Association recently came out strongly against the bill.  It’s why more and more state governors – Democrats as well as Republicans – are beginning to scream that ObamaCare merely turns Medicaid into a giant deficit-creating unfunded mandate on the states (again, to create the illusion of being “deficit neutral”).

Enough with illusions.  This bill is absolutely terrible.  It’s more than 2,000 pages long, nobody understands it, and it has changed again and again, yet actually seems to be getting worse and worse.

Democrats Worried About Fact That They Haven’t Been Worried About Jobs

This would be funny, if it wasn’t so blatantly pathetic:

Pelosi switches to jobs
By Mike Soraghan – 11/16/09 08:41 PM ET

House Democratic leaders, worried they’ve appeared unresponsive to rising unemployment because they were absorbed by healthcare, are aiming for a legislation solution by Christmas.

That focus follows a similar shift in the Senate, where Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told colleagues he also plans to bring up a jobs measure, The Hill reported first last week.

The House change began Monday night when leaders scheduled AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and Robert Kuttner, co-editor of The American Prospect, to address the House Democratic Caucus.

And it could end with an economic package on the floor sometime in December, Democratic sources said.

But some leadership aides cautioned that leaders are still debating whether to do one large package or a series of smaller bills.

And they say the Obama administration has yet to get on board.

One way or another, aides say, House Democrats’ message from now to Christmas will be about jobs.

“We continue to look for opportunities to build on the recovery package and other actions Congress has taken to bolster the economy,” said Nadeam Elshami, spokesman for Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

Leaders want members to have something to take home with them to show that they’re working on the economy. But they have to balance that against growing discomfort among voters about skyrocketing government spending.

It’s not that Democrats give a damn about jobs; they just want to make sure like they LOOK like they give a damn about jobs.

Obama promised that if his giant pork-laden generational theft act known as the “stimulus” passed, unemployment would be capped at no higher than 8%.  And then it just kept growing and growing.

The Democrats’ plan never was about jobs, but about government control and about creating a trillion dollar political slush fund.

Don’t believe me about the stimulus slush fund?

To get as far as the bill did so far, it appears the administration might have spread some money around. California Rep. Jim Costa was wavering but told a local newspaper last week that his vote could be contingent on getting some federal money for a new medical school in his district along with help for local hospitals.

When a constituent named Bob Smittcamp e-mailed him to complain about his vote for the House bill, the congressman explained he’d been offered the dollars he was looking for — $128 million in federal money.

“He responded to me by basically saying that he did not like many of the elements there were in the legislation. However, he was able to procure $128m for the University of California medical school in Merced,” Smittcamp told Fox News.

They have spent the last five months (plus) utterly consumed by a government health care takeover that most Americans didn’t want virtually from the outset.

Now we’re learning that this massive 2,000 page monstrosity is anything BUT “deficit neutral” even in the first ten years (and it blows up into enormous deficits thereafter) and that it most definitely WILL hurt seniors and undermine Medicare.

And all the Democrats can say is “full steam ahead!”

A few things come out of this “Pelosi switches to jobs” article:

1) The Democrats are literally afraid that the American people will recognize the truth and get angry about it.

2) Democrats have absolutely no clue how to create jobs.  And Obama has even less of a clue than the other Democrats.

3) The Democrats are turning their “job creation” over to the unions.

And it’s number three that frankly pisses me off the most.

It’s amazing that the SEIU only has 2.2 million members, but more influence than anyone else bar none in the Obama administration.  SEIU president Andy Stern – basically a confirmed Marxist – has had more visits to the White House (22 so far) than ANYONE.

It’s really no surprise that Obama and the Democrats would run to their special interest to write their legislation for them.  SEIU was given a huge hand in crafting both the stimulus and the health care legislation; why NOT let them write the next jobs bill too?

The words of Barack Hussein Obama, as presidential candidate:

“Your agenda has been my agenda in the United States Senate. Before debating health care, I talked to Andy Stern and SEIU members. Before immigration debates took place in Washington, I talked with Eliseo Medina and SEIU members. Before the EFCA, I talked to SEIU. So, we’ve worked together over these last few years and I am proud of what we’ve done. I’m just not satisfied.”

Obama’s number-one visitor is on the record as saying:

“We’re trying to use the power of persuasion. And if that doesn’t work, we’re going to use the persuasion of power”

And Obama’s union thugs are all about using “the persuasion of power.”

Glenn Beck pointed out that he had a solid 3 million viewers.  And he wondered how the American people would act if HE had had more visits than anyone else to the Bush White House, and got to write the stimulus and the “job creation” legislation.

The AFL-CIO has about 11.5 million members, based on their own information.  With a total of 15.4 million union members in the United States.  Rush Limbaugh has 14.2 to 25 million listeners, according to the Washington Post.  And I wonder how liberals would react if Rush Limbaugh had more visits to the White House than anyone, and got to write the laws that will run the nation.

So you start to see just how blatantly partisan and ideological the Democrat Party truly is.  The union agenda is just as hostile to what Republicans want for the nation as Glenn Beck’s or Rush Limbaugh’s agenda is to what Democrats want for the nation.

We’re not just talking about partisanship; we’re talking about HYPER–HYPER-partisanship.

Let me say about jobs what Libertychick said about health care: “SEIU (and by obvious extension AFL-CIO) doesn’t care about jobs.  SEIU cares about SEIU.”  Barack Obama and the Democrat Party are going to let the unions and the hard-core union agenda write themselves huge sums of taxpayer dollars.

What’s that?  You DON’T think that the SEIU only gives a damn about the SEIU?

From the Allentown Morning Call:

In pursuit of an Eagle Scout badge, Kevin Anderson, 17, has toiled for more than 200 hours hours over several weeks to clear a walking path in an east Allentown park.

Little did the do-gooder know that his altruistic act would put him in the cross hairs of the city’s largest municipal union.

Nick Balzano, president of the local Service Employees International Union, told Allentown City Council Tuesday that the union is considering filing a grievance against the city for allowing Anderson to clear a 1,000-foot walking and biking path at Kimmets Lock Park.

“We’ll be looking into the Cub Scout or Boy Scout who did the trails,” Balzano told the council.

These unions don’t give a damn about you.  They don’t give a damn about your family.  They don’t give a damn about your community.  They don’t give a damn about altruism or volunteerism or doing right.  And they would burn a Boy Scout’s house down if they thought it would serve their greedy partisan interests.

And the Democrats don’t give a damn about you, either.  Frankly, the Democrats aren’t much different from their number one special interest group.  Democrats are now rushing to cover their hindquarters because they ignored the economy while they were focused on trying to TAKE OVER the economy via their health care agenda.

‘Crazy Claims About Death Panels’ Sadly Not Crazy At All

Are you familiar with the phrase, “the banality of evil”?  The opening paragraph in the Wikipedia article on the subject summarizes the concept quite well:

The banality of evil is a phrase coined by Hannah Arendt and incorporated in the title of her 1963 work Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.  It describes the thesis that the great evils in history generally, and the Holocaust in particular, were not executed by fanatics or sociopaths but rather by ordinary people who accepted the premises of their state and therefore participated with the view that their actions were normal.

Again and again, we have seen great evils inflicted by governments upon their people.  And we want to find monsters, because that’s who we want to believe would alone be capable of such monstrous evil.  But again and again, we find ordinary people – faceless bureaucrats performing faceless functions – had carried out what we later realize were monstrous deeds with a blithe acceptance of the premises of their government’s policies.

One of the reasons that these policies – later correctly described as “evil” – were allowed to begin, develop, build momentum, and ultimately turn monstrous is because too many people dismissed the possibility that such evil could ever happen.  “Our government would never do such a thing.”

Only it did.  It’s happened too many times before, and it will happen again.

With that introduction, let us look at the ubiquitously mocked term, “death panels.”  Nothing like that could ever actually happen.  Right?

Wrong.  If you go to Europe, it’s happening right now.  And the same sort of quasi-socialist liberals who want to create government health care here were created it there.

Terminally ill grandmother ‘left to starve’ by doctors

Hazel Fenton, an 80-year-old grandmother who was placed under a controversial care plan and left to “starve to death” after doctors identified her as being terminally ill, only recovered after the intervention of her daughter.

By Richard Savill
Published: 10:30PM BST 11 Oct 2009

Hazel Fenton pictured with her daughter Christine Ball Photo: ANDREW HASSON

Mrs Fenton, from East Sussex, is still alive and “happy” nine months after doctors declared she would only survive for days, withdrew her antibiotics and denied her artificial feeding, her daughter, Christine Ball, said.

“Without my persistence and pressure I know my mother would be dead now,” she added.

Mrs Fenton, a former private school house mother, had been placed on the Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP) scheme, which was originally developed as a way to care for cancer patients towards the end of their lives.

However, there has been recent criticism that not only cancer patients but others with terminal illnesses are being made to die prematurely under the NHS scheme.

Last month six prominent British doctors and health care professionals wrote to The Daily Telegraph, expressing concern that some patients were being wrongly judged as close to death.

Under NHS guidance introduced in England, medical staff can withdraw fluid and drugs from dying patents and many are put on continuous sedation until they pass away. But this approach can also mask signs of improvement, it has been argued.

Miss Ball, who had been looking after her mother before she was admitted to the Conquest hospital, Hastings, East Sussex, on Jan 11, said she had to fight hospital staff for weeks before her mother was taken off the plan and given artificial feeding.

Miss Ball, 42, a carer, from Robertsbridge, East Sussex, said: “My mother was going to be left to starve and dehydrate to death. It really is a subterfuge for legalised euthanasia of the elderly on the NHS. ”

Mrs Fenton was admitted to hospital suffering from pneumonia. Although Mrs Ball acknowledged that her mother was very ill she was “astonished” when a junior doctor told her she was going to be placed on the plan to “make her more comfortable” in her last days.

On Jan 19, Mrs Fenton’s 80th birthday, Mrs Ball said her mother had lost “an awful lot of weight” but was feeling better, and told her she “didn’t want to die”.

But it took another four days to persuade doctors to give her artificial feeding, Miss Ball said.

Mrs Ball said the fight to save her mother had been made harder by the Mental Capacity Act. “I was told that we had no rights, and food and hydration were classed as treatment, which meant they had the right to withhold feeding. It gave a doctor the power to play god with my mother’s life,” she said.

Mrs Fenton is now being looked after in a nursing home near her daughter’s home.

A spokesman for East Sussex Hospitals NHS Trust said: “Patients’ needs are assessed before they are placed on the [plan]. Daily reviews are undertaken by clinicians whenever possible.”

At the same scripted event in which White House aides handed out white coats to create a propaganda moment, Barack Obama recently said:

“We have now been debating this issue of health insurance reform for months,” Obama said.  “We have listened to every charge and every counter-charge — from the crazy claims about death panels to misleading warnings about a government takeover of our health care system.”

Death panels.  Crazy, right?  Nothing like that could ever happen here.

Unless it occurs to you to stop and THINK, and ask yourself why you would think that corrupt House Ways and Means Chairman Rep. Charlie Rangel – or the Democrats who refuse to hold him accountable for his crimes – would be so much better than British liberals.

Provide your case that they are only evil over there in Britain, but our big government liberals here are ontologically good, and simply incapable of creating a system that would grow and degenerate until it tries to starve human beings to death.

There are all kinds of things going on in the United Kingdom and in Continental Europe that will very quickly be going on here, too, because too many of us just shut our minds off to the banality of evil that we have already seen time and time again.

And it’s already going on here.  Right now.  Under the very sort of medical system that Barack Obama wants to impose across the nation.

Take the story of Barbara Wagner, who was condemned to die by her state government medical system.  They denied her the drugs she needed to save her life, but agreed to pay for her to be euthanized.  Some faceless liberal bureaucrats “who accepted the premises of their state and therefore participated with the view that their actions were normal” decided that Barbara Wagner’s life was not worth saving, but only worth taking.

The banality of evil.  Coming soon to a hospital or a doctor’s office near you.

And right now, Democrats are trying to expand the banality of evil.

The Wall Street Journal exposed that ObamaCare will cut essential cardiology and oncology care in order to lower the cost of the health system:

In President Obama’s Washington, medical specialists are slightly more popular than the H1N1 virus. Compared to bread-and-butter primary care doctors, specialists cost more to train and make more use of expensive procedures and technology—and therefore cost the government more money. Even so, the quiet war Democrats are waging on specialists is astonishing.

From Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus’s health-care bill to changes the Administration is pushing in Medicare, Democrats are systematically attacking specific medical fields like cardiology and oncology. With almost no scrutiny, they’re trying to engineer a “cheaper” system so that government can afford to buy health care for all—even if the price is fewer and less innovative ways of extending and improving lives.

And the results of such measures and others will be a holocaust of the elderly.  With all measures undertaken in the spirit of bureaucratic efficiency:

The Congressional majority wants to pay for its $1 trillion to $1.6 trillion health bills with new taxes and a $500 billion cut to Medicare. This cut will come just as baby boomers turn 65 and increase Medicare enrollment by 30%. Less money and more patients will necessitate rationing. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that only 1% of Medicare cuts will come from eliminating fraud, waste and abuse.

The assault against seniors began with the stimulus package in February.  Slipped into the bill was substantial funding for comparative effectiveness research, which is generally code for limiting care based on the patient’s age.  Economists are familiar with the formula, where the cost of a treatment is divided by the number of years (called QALYs, or quality-adjusted life years) that the patient is likely to benefit. In Britain, the formula leads to denying treatments for older patients who have fewer years to benefit from care than younger patients.

It is also highly relevant that Medicare denies treatment at a rate of more than double any private insurer’s average right now.  Is government care the thing you should most trust, or the thing you should most fear?

When Barack Obama mocks “the crazy claims about death panels,” it is ultimately up to you have to ask yourself just how much you implicitly trust the government to take care of you even when it is in the bureaucrats’ economic interests to allow you to die.  And it is up to you to decide if history is incapable of repeating itself.

Giant Hyopcrisy Of Left Revealed Through Grayson ‘Die Quickly’ Remarks

In England, Parliament often takes on the form of professional wrestling, with members loudly decrying one another with nothing sans public opinion to monitor what they say or how they say it.

But in America, we’re assured, we have a greater sense of political decorum.

That “decorum” was “shockingly” violated when Rep. Joe Wilson blurted out, “You lie!” during a speech that President Obama called Congress into session to make.  It didn’t matter that Joe Wilson was actually RIGHT when he said Obama was lying.  As the Washington Examiner pointed out, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office declared:

“Under H.R. 3200, a ‘Health Insurance Exchange’ would begin operation in 2013 and would offer private plans alongside a public option…H.R. 3200 does not contain any restrictions on noncitzens—whether legally or illegally present, or in the United States temporarily or permanently—participating in the Exchange.”

No, it was beside the point that Joe Wilson was right and Obama really WAS lying.  What mattered was that decorum had been violated.

And then there was somthing else that Nancy Pelosi made – inspired by the “hateful remark” made by Joe Wilson – that further ratcheted up the debate:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi: “I have concerns about some of the language that is being used because I saw … I saw this myself in the late ’70s in San Francisco,” Pelosi said, choking up and with tears forming in her eyes. “This kind of rhetoric is just, is really frightening and it created a climate in which we, violence took place and … I wish that we would all, again, curb our enthusiasm in some of the statements that are made.”

(Youtube here).

Nancy Pelosi, as I point out here, cried her alligator tears to demonize Wilson and by extension Republicans, all the while pointing out invented facts.  Among other things, the violence that she alluded to was committed by a career DEMOCRAT, and it didn’t have anything to do with “rhetoric.”  Rather, Harvey Milk and George Moscone were murdered by a San Francisco District 8 Democrat official named Dan White because Milk and Moscone had refused to reappoint him.

So Nancy Pelosi came out and lied about and then demagogued a historical event as a ploy to demonize Republicans and anything they might say in opposition to the liberal agenda.  It was a vile thing for her to do.

The fact of the matter was that Joe Wilson was wrong in his outburst, and he apologized both personally and in a letter.

Didn’t matter.  Nancy Pelosi’s House censured him anyway, taking a day of the people’s time to do it.  “Decorum,” remember.

So with all that as backdrop, let’s proceed to the latest bit of “This kind of rhetoric” that “is just, is really frightening” and which could easily create “a climate in which … violence” could take place.

Representative Alan Grayson, Democrat-Florida, came to the same House floor that Joe Wilson had sat on, and said:

“It’s my duty and pride tonight to be able to announce exactly what the Republicans plan to do for health care in America… It’s a very simple plan. Here it is. The Republican health care plan for America: ‘don’t get sick.’ If you have insurance don’t get sick, if you don’t have insurance, don’t get sick; if you’re sick, don’t get sick. Just don’t get sick. … If you do get sick America, the Republican health care plan is this: ‘die quickly.'”

(Youtube here).

It was utterly outrageous.  For two reasons.  Number one, the Republicans – who have submitted more than three dozen health care reform bills and who actually held them over their head and waved them during the Obama speech – currently have a major bill to reform health bill available to any who would just look at it.  It is just a lie that amounts to rank demagoguery to claim that Republicans don’t have a plan beyond, “don’t get sick” and “die quickly.”  Number two, the polls are crystal clear: senior citizens – who presumably would not want to rely on a plan to “not get sick” and then to “die quickly” – are opposed to the Democrats’ plan by a nearly 2-1 margin.  From Rasmussen:

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 56% are opposed to the plan.

Senior citizens are less supportive of the plan than younger voters. In the latest survey, just 33% of seniors favor the plan while 59% are opposed. The intensity gap among seniors is significant. Only 16% of the over-65 crowd Strongly Favors the legislation while 46% are Strongly Opposed.

So according to Alan Grayson, not only Republicans, but nearly two out of every three seniors who basically support the Republican position on health care, want seniors to die.  Grayson’s remark was both insane and immoral.

Republicans called upon Alan Grayson to do what Joe Wilson had done (RIGHT AWAY) and apologize for his statement.  Here’s what they got:

Republicans got an apology of sorts from Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson Wednesday – it just wasn’t the one they wanted.

Instead of saying he was sorry about accusing Republicans of wanting people to “die quickly,” he gave an apology “to the dead.”

“I would like to apologize,” he said. “I apologize to the dead and their families that we haven’t voted sooner to end this holocaust in America.”

And thus a man representing the party that has murdered nearly 50 million human beings before they could even enjoy being born compares Republicans to Adolf Hitler and their actions to the murder of six million Jews.

That same article, for what it’s worth, also further points out what a patholigical liar Grayson is:

Grayson provided the contretemps of the day on Capitol Hill, and even one of his party’s leaders, Democratic Caucus Chairman John B. Larson of Connecticut, at one point publicly called on him to apologize for Tuesday night’s speech.

“I wouldn’t have used the words that Mr. Grayson has,” Larson said. “I would encourage Alan to apologize.”

Later, Grayson contested whether Larson really meant what he said.

“I spoke to him and he did not ask me to apologize,” Grayson offered.

He also claimed he hadn’t said “Republicans want you to die quickly” – until a reporter read his words back to him.

Not only did Grayson say “Republicans want you to die quickly”; he literally had the words written down on a giant card which he displayed on an easel as he spoke.  That’s how much of a twisted lying weasel this guy is.

And do the Democrats – who as we now know so value decorum – call upon Alan Grayson to first apologize and then shut his lying mouth?

Absolutely not.

Did the Democrats – who literally shed alligator tears decrying the hateful rhetoric – demand that one of their own cease and desist from hateful rhetoric?

Absolutely not.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi had this to say to defend the man who said that Republicans want seniors to die (with said Republicans supported by 59% of seniors) and that the Republicans had created a holocaust of people dying without health care:

“We have to have a debate that is not distracted from… Apparently Republicans are holding Democrats to a higher level than they are holding their own members,” she said, referring to floor comments by some Republicans who have said Democratic health care reforms would lead to higher deaths among seniors.

“There’s no more reason for Mr. Grayson to apologize… If anybody’s going to apologize everybody should apologize,” Pelosi said at her weekly press conference.

Well again, Nancy Pelosi, in defending Grayson, has to lie to do it.  Republicans aren’t trying to hold Democrats to a “higher standard”:

Wilson’s conduct was denounced by Democratic and Republican lawmakers. Senator John McCain of Arizona, Obama’s Republican opponent in the 2008 presidential race, called Wilson’s outburst “totally disrespectful.”

“He should apologize,” McCain said in an interview on CNN.

Many other Republicans called for Wilson to apologize, including his Republican House leadership.  And Joe Wilson DID apologize.

“I let my emotions get the best of me when listening to the president’s remarks regarding the coverage of illegal immigrants in the health-care bill,” Wilson said in a statement. “While I disagree with the president’s statement, my comments were inappropriate and regrettable.”

So it’s a lie that Republicans are trying to hold Democrats to a “higher standard.”  Rather, they are trying to hold Democrats to the VERY SAME standard Republicans had held for themselves, and in fact the VERY SAME STANDARD THAT DEMOCRATS HAD JUST HELD REPUBLICANS TO.

Note to Nancy Pelosi and her Democrat minions: please don’t get so damn hoity toity with your self righteous outrage when it suits you, only to show what blatant hypocrites you are the very next moment when it suits you.  Your hypocrisy shines through like brilliant glittering diamonds.

As vile, hateful, and dishonest as Alan Grayson’s remarks have been, that isn’t where the real outrage is.  No, the real outrage is the complete dishonesty and the rabid demagoguery of the Democrat leadership – especially as epitomized in Nancy Pelosi.

When a party demands that one party be held accountable to violations to “decorum,” and then cynically violates that very same decorum with far more loathsome and dishonest outbursts, it is past time to remove that party from power.

Obama Lies About AARP Endorsement At Bogus Town Hall Event

Obama has told so many lies regarding health care that it is positively unreal.  But here’s yet another:

Rachel Martin and Jake Tapper report:

President Obama today suggested that the health care reform legislation for which he’s pushing has been endorsed by the American Association of Retired Person.

“We have the AARP on board because they know this is a good deal for our seniors,” the president said.

At another point he said: “Well, first of all, another myth that we’ve been hearing about is this notion that somehow we’re going to be cutting your Medicare benefits.  We are not.  AARP would not be endorsing a bill if it was undermining Medicare, okay?”

The problem?

The AARP hasn’t endorsed any plan yet.

The country’s largest advocacy group for Americans over 50 issued a statement after the event saying, “While the President was correct that AARP will not endorse a health care reform bill that would reduce Medicare benefits, indications that we have endorsed any of the major health care reform bills currently under consideration in Congress are inaccurate.”

AARP is a lot less likely to be rushing in to endorse anything after getting their heads bit off by their own membership:

Last week, AARP officials speaking at a forum in Dallas walked out after several seniors interrupted the meeting with critical questions and comments.

Some AARP members say they are so outraged that they’ve taken to tearing up their membership cards and firing off heated letters to the organization’s CEO.

Recent polling by FOX News shows seniors, many of whom are on Medicare, don’t want a major overhaul — 93 percent rate their current coverage as good or excellent, and 56 percent say they oppose the creation of a government-run option for all Americans.

Other groups representing seniors say they aren’t surprised by the recent backlash.

“We get letters every single day from people that are very upset about this bill and about the AARP supporting it,” said Stuart Barton, president of the American Seniors Association. “So I don’t blame them for coming back and saying they are going to tear up their AARP cards.”

It’s understandable that many members would get the mistaken impression that AARP is backing the ObamaCare plan, given their frankly weaselly behavior as they waffled one way under White House pressure, and then waffled the other under their memberships’ pressure.  But they don’t have a massive White House staff to sort out the actual facts, and they aren’t expected to be held accountable the way the President of the United States of America is to be held accountable.

President Obama is supposed to tell the truth; not advance falsehoods.

Obama is trying to say, “Seniors don’t have to be worried because AARP wouldn’t endorse a plan that hurts seniors.”

And number one, even AARP’s own members clearly don’t accord AARP that much integrity and good will.  And number two, AARP HASN’T endorsed Obama’s plan.  So I guess we’re back to, “Seniors should be worried.”

An older woman at Arlen Spector’s town hall today said:

“I’m sick of the lies.  I don’t like being lied to.  I don’t like being lied about.“

But the Democrats just keep lying, and keep lying about the people who they’re lying to.

We get Obama attending a phony, controlled, choreographed town hall filled with plants even as his attack dogs demonize protesters as being “plants” and saying things like:

“I have not said that I was a single-payer supporter”

when he is on record having said:

“I happen to be a proponent of a single payer universal health care program.”

and he is on the record as having said:

“The very first promise I made on this campaign was that as president I will sign a universal health care plan into law by the end of my first term in office.”

It’s one thing for a president to say one thing, admit his mistake, tell the American people that he has changed his mind, and then specifically tell us what he will do and what he will now not accept.  But that’s not what our weasel-in-chief does; rather, he lies about what he’s in fact said without ruling the previously-said thing out.  Instead, concerned citizens are left to worry about whether the president was lying earlier, or whether he’s lying now.  An they have every reason to believe he’s lying now.

Obama said:

Well, the — I’ve seen some of those signs. (Laughter.)  Let me just be specific about some things that I’ve been hearing lately that we just need to dispose of here.  The rumor that’s been circulating a lot lately is this idea that somehow the House of Representatives voted for “death panels” that will basically pull the plug on grandma because we’ve decided that we don’t — it’s too expensive to let her live anymore.  (Laughter.)  And there are various — there are some variations on this theme.

But, again, Obama just dismissively laughs off something that is actually quite serious.

Maybe he shouldn’t have told a woman regarding her aged but healthy mother:

“Maybe you’re better off, uhh, not having the surgery, but, uhh, taking the painkiller.”

He won’t pull the plug on grandma; he’ll just withhold lifesaving surgery and give her a pain pill.  It’s not active euthanasia – at least not yet; it’s passive euthanasia.  But grandma ends up just as dead.

During an October debate with John McCain, Obama said, regarding his foreign policy:

“Let me tell you who I associate with. On economic policy, I associate with Warren Buffett and former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker. If I’m interested in figuring out my foreign policy, I associate myself with my running mate, Joe Biden or with Dick Lugar, the Republican ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Those are the people, Democrats and Republicans, who have shaped my ideas and who will be surrounding me in the White House.”

So when we want to know what Obama wants in his foreign policy, we have to look at who he is associating with, and who he is surrounding himself with in the White House.  And Barack Obama has surrounded himself with some people who hold some pretty terrifying ideas concerning health care.

Obama has to explain why he appointed Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel as both his health-policy adviser at the Office of Management and Budget and as a member of the Federal Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research.  Emanuel has said JUST THIS YEAR:

“When implemented, the Complete Lives system produces a priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most substantial chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated… The Complete Lives system justifies preference to younger people because of priority to the worst-off rather than instrumental value.”

He explained:

“Unlike allocation by sex or race, allocation by age is not invidious discrimination; every person lives through different life stages rather than being a single age. Even if 25-year-olds receive priority over 65-year-olds, everyone who is 65 years now was previously 25 years. Treating 65-year olds differently because of stereotypes or falsehoods would be ageist; treating them differently because they have already had more life-years is not.”

Dr. Emanuel has said:

Many commentators note that 27 to 30 percent of the Medicare budget is spent on the 5 percent of Medicare patients who die each year.

“Many have linked the effort to reduce the high cost of death with the legalization of physician-assisted suicide…. Decreasing availability and increasing expense in health care and the uncertain impact of managed care may intensify pressure to choose physician-assisted suicide” and “the cost effectiveness of hastened death is as undeniable as gravity. The earlier a patient dies, the less costly is his or her care.”

And he has said:

Conversely, services provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens are not basic and should not be guaranteed. An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.

Then there is Cass Sunstein, whom Barack Obama appointed to the position of Regulatory Czar.  Sunstein wrote in the Columbia Law Review in January 2004:

“I urge that the government should indeed focus on life-years rather than lives. A program that saves young people produces more welfare than one that saves old people.”

Barack Obama’s Regulatory Czar explained:

“If a program would prevent fifty deaths of people who are twenty, should it be treated the same way as a program that would prevent fifty deaths of people who are seventy? Other things being equal, a program that protects young people seems far better than one that protects old people, because it delivers greater benefits.”

Let us not forget Obama’s director of the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy, John Holdren, who has openly advocated forced abortions and sterilizations as a population growth solution.  Seriously, is it a stretch that he likewise supports the passive euthanasia advocated by Emanuel and Sunstein to control population growth?

I am willing to entertain the notion that the final health care bill will not include “death panels.”  But, given the people Obama has appointed who are serving as architects of the health care legislation, he certainly shouldn’t get the benefit of the doubt.  Because these men whom Obama appointed have written some very frightening things that very much suggest a “death panel.”  Ezekiel,  Sunstein, and Holdren are just three very real Obama officials who have written some very real things that would entail the very real deaths of many very real American citizens.

And Obama’s mockingly laughing at “death panels” is not very funny given his appointments of Ezekiel Emanuel and Cass Sunstein.  Mr. Obama, don’t you dare mock us for being afraid over the writings of men that you appointed.

The prospect of bureaucrats having more power to make more decisions over more vital aspects of peoples’ lives is frightening.  It should not be glossed over.  Obama and Democrats assuring us that they won’t accept any plan that creates a deficit when the plan they left behind in August creates another trillion dollars in deficits (and probably many times that, given the CBO’s tendency to massively underestimate costs) is frightening.  And nonchalant promises don’t hold any water.  Assuring Americans that a “public option” won’t push people into government care when the bill in fact does the exact opposite is immoral.

And Democrat politicians who casually dismiss these issues and others are the reason for all the anger.  People are realizing that there lives may literally be at stake – and they are in absolutely no mood to be played with.