Barack Obama - Leader of the Quisling Party!

I have seen no indications to the contrary... Obama is the leader of the de facto Quisling Party. I understand that most of us have never heard of Vikdun Abraham Lauritz Jonnsøn Quisling. His is a name hidden in history's Vault of Shame. He was Norway's version of our own Benedict Arnold. Quisling assisted Nazi Germany in conquering his own country, and then ruled the collaborationist Norwegian government. The term 'quisling" is synonymous with one who collaborates with the enemy - a traitor.

Quisling even captured a spot in our dictionary as: n. A traitor who serves as the puppet of the enemy occupying his or her country. We do have enemies in our midst... some are in your neighborhood, many are in your town, thousands are in your city, and tens of thousands are in your state. They do not meet the military definition of "occupying forces", but they are "occupying" much of America's real estate.
Obama showed his true colors with his appointment of communists, Marxist-socialists, and others who despise America as it is and has been for over two centuries, to power positions within our government. If "a man is known by the company he keeps", we now know Obama.
His "borrow, tax and spend" philosophy is textbook Cloward-Piven strategy, designed to collapse the system by creating crisis where there is none, and then correcting those man-made crises by throwing money at them, thereby overloading the system with unrealistic financial burdens - such as welfare for non-citizens and those capable of working, and other give-away programs. The Cloward-Piven strategy has not yet achieved its goal of total system breakdown and the establishment of a Marxist state... the key word being yet. Our current administration is doing everything it can to move us in that direction. The Cloward-Piven strategy is, quite simply, economic sabotage.

The 1996 "Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act" imposed time linits on federal welfare, along with strict eligibility and work requirements. Cloward and Piven were in attendance when President Clinton signed the act into law. However, the Obama administration has for any practical application suspended the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, with multiple extensions on unemployment compensation, and the granting of welfare to illegal aliens - just two more means of overburdening the financial system.

The left-wing socialist-progressives are using our system to destroy our system. Inflation due to unbelievable debt, permitting outsourcing of American jobs (thereby adding to already high unemployment) because of exorbitant union wages , pushing "amnesty" for tens of millions of illegal aliens (essentially buying votes for socialist-progressive politicians), and blatantly buying votes in the House and Senate to support Obama's health care program with political plums. Obama refused to host the traditional "National Day of Prayer" for Christians, yet worshiped at a mosque with his Muslim co-conspirators. Isn't that de facto promoting of one religion over another?

The unofficial Quisling Party moves forward under the direction of Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Franks, et al. Those elected officials in Washington who lack the courage to stand against the Quislings are as much to blame as those active participants in the destruction of our Republic!
TAKE A STAND AMERICA! TELL THEM "TOO MUCH"! MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD THIS NOVEMBER, AND SEND THIS MESSAGE:

HEALTH CARE QUICKIE... YOU DO THE MATH

Here's a little logic test for you. The Democrats health care plan is basically unchanged. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md, insists that the goal remains the same: "to pass far-reaching legislation that would (1) expand coverage, (2) reduce costs and (3) improve quality."

Expanding coverage of exactly what? It would be simple enough to expand the number of people covered by 40-50 million - all that it requires is a stroke of Obama's pen on the Democratic legislation. Swell - now we have 40-50 million more people using existing medical facilities and existing medical personnel!

Jumping over #2 - "reducing costs" (I'll come back to that) - let's go to #3... Improve quality. How do we accomplish that with the same number of hospitals and medical personnel, while providing services to an additional workload of 40-50 million patients? WE DON'T!! You cannot improve the quality of anything by simply increasing the workload. And, if we do not increase the facilities and personnel, the quality - and availability - of treatment will necessarily decrease.

Reducing costs is therefore impossible. You must expand existing facilities and/or build new ones, and increase the number of personnel accordingly. Who will provide the materials and labor for construction without cost? George Soros? NO! Will the medical equipment and supplies manufacturers donate their equipment and supplies? NO! Will the roughly 500,000 additional medical personnel work around the clock without pay? NO! The American taxpayer will pay for these "improvements" by way of higher taxes - that's how 30 million additional citizens, and 20 million illegal aliens will be covered under a national health care program.
The Democrats have no sense of reality when it comes to the government competing with private industry in health care insurance and treatment. The majority of Americans do not want a government health program of any kind. It is not in the government's business to compete with private industry - the government's business is strictly that of legislation and regulation. "Voodoo economics" fixes nothing, yet it is being used to peddle this outrageously expensive health care system just as it was used to "create jobs". Every single job created by the "Stimulus Package" cost the taxpayers more than $461,000.

CONGRESSIONAL DEMOCRATS VOTING POSITION

It is past time to tell the government "Enough!". It's time to tell the government "NO MORE!" A little socialism is way too much!

Health Care Reform for Dummies - Part II

This is my very own improved plan for health care management in the United States of America...

Government regulation is probably needed in the following areas:
1. Medical Equipment Manufacturers - Regulation is needed to reduce the obscene profits on medical hardware. Profits in the $800,000+ range for one low-end Magnetic Resonance Imager (MRI) have surpassed reasonable profit, and entered the realm of profiteering. R&D and associated production and marketing costs should be amortized over the estimated life of the equipment - let's call it 10 years. This would eliminate the temptation to attempt to recoup all expenses in the first 10 units sold. All expenses in R&D, production and marketing would be tax deductible for the corporation during that 10 year period - but the corporation would not be tax exempt.

2. Medical Supplies Manufacturers - This would include expendable single-use supplies such as bandages, tongue depressors, disposable hypodermic syringes, catheters, cast materials, etc., and would be regulated essentially the same as above.

3. Pharmaceutical Manufacturers - No more gouging the American people. If product "X" is only worth $3 in Bangladesh, Indonesia, India or Somalia, then it's only worth $3 on this planet. Regulation would be essentially the same as #1, above.

4. Hospitals - This is basically the retail part of the business of medicine. The hospitals are not only saddled with the expenses forced upon them by equipment, supplies, and pharmaceutical manufacturers, they have the additional overhead expenses of personnel to cook, clean to hospital standards, and provide security within the boundaries of the hospital campus. Then there are the professional costs and wages. The average MD in the USA makes $171,000 per year. That's good money. The average nursing school graduate is paid an average of $22 per hour during the first year, and by the fourth year can be earning $25 per hour, average. To offset their overhead expenses hospitals charge about $5 for a band aid and $8 for an aspirin, and about $1,000 a day for a room! Hospitals should be regulated insofar as charges for consumables (supplies and pharmaceuticals) goes. Cost + 40% is the generally considered the retail standard markup, and that should work for hospitals too - as long as the rest of the medical system is working as it should.

5. Doctors - Doctors should be permitted to practice medicine using their best judgment, and nobody other than their immediate supervisor or the medical licensing board should be allowed to interfere. Doctors should be protected against outrageous lawsuits by capping suits against medical professionals at $500,000. Having a ceiling on malpractice lawsuits should reduce a doctors cost for malpractice insurance, and allow them to charge substantially less than $10 per minute for their time. Many doctors are paying $150,000-$200,000 annually, and a few pay even more for insurance. However, the majority find themselves in the $60,00 per year category. Now we have a chicken-egg-chicken situation... are doctors paying exorbitantly high premiums for insurance because they charge a lot for their services? Do they charge a lot for their services because their insurance is so high? Do they pay a lot for insurance because they may be sued for ridiculous amounts of money? A doctor's malpractice premiums are probably outrageously high because they do get sued for ridiculous amounts of money - by US! We are the primary driving force behind the exorbitant cost of health care. Lawsuits, non-payment for services, equipment costs, student loans to cover outrageous medical school costs, etc. all figure into the equation used to determine what 10 minutes of MD time is worth.

6. Health/Medical Insurance Companies - Most insurance companies are publicly traded, which means they are listed on one of the several stock exchanges, and are available to individuals, consortiums or other corporations to purchase stock. The insurance companies, as do all publicly traded corporations, have an obligation to their stock holders to show quarterly profits and pay dividends to the investors based upon the amount of money they have invested. Adding known "risk" to the group comprising policy holders increases the possibility of payouts and reduces the probability of producing those dividends. The uninsurable were classified that way for a reason - RISK! Insurance companies like to take money, and hate to part with it. If the insurers were forced to accept previously uninsurable clients, one of two things would have to happen:
a. The risk presented by the uninsurable would have to be paid for with higher than normal premiums... so high they would undoubtedly be unaffordable to 90% of those desiring insurance coverage, or
b. The premium rates of all insureds would have to be increased to offset the potential for increased losses by the insurance company.
Health/Medical insurance companies must be allowed - better yet, make that required - to sell policies in all 50 states, thereby increasing competition, and through that competition for the available health insurance $$, lower the costs of health insurance. In order for this plan to be cost-effective all the elements must come into play. And, sadly, the uninsurable must remain the uninsurable. Let the doctors and hospitals do a little pro bono work now and then, and make it completely tax deductible.

The "bottom line" is:

It is human GREED that keeps our health care costs in the stratosphere.

(Oh, yeah... and I did this with about 2,200 pages fewer than Congress!)

Senate Passes Health Care Bill - Ignoring Citizens Expressed Wishes

The AP lead-in reads - "WASHINGTON – Senate Democrats passed a landmark health care bill in a climactic Christmas Eve vote that could define President Barack Obama's legacy and usher in near-universal medical coverage for the first time in the country's history."

Let's dissect that sentence:

"Landmark health care bill" - Yes it is. Only because the people never wanted it in the past, and the Congress actually listened to them back then.

"Climactic Christmas Eve vote" - More of an anti-climactic and cowardly vote. With a Democratic majority it was a foregone conclusion that the bill would get the necessary 60 votes. The real question was how much those last few votes would cost the American people in terms of political PORK! How much were the holdout political whores selling their votes for on Christmas Eve? And that idiot Harry Reid's adding the pressure of a Christmas Eve vote - knowing that such timing would undermine any thought of prolonging the process throughout the day - pretty much insured rapid passage by those 60 who lack any hint of integrity. They now have their 30 pieces of silver.

"Define President Barack Obama's legacy" - That's the real reason for the passage of this very expensive, very destructive bill by the Senate... to give Obama a victory of some kind, even at the expense of the citizenry. His legacy is already "defined" as one of appalling incompetence in all areas other than destroying the American economy for decades to come... Obama has done a fine job of that!

"Near-universal medical coverage" - One more step toward destroying our economy and making the once-free American people increasingly dependent upon the government. You don't add millions of people to any program without incurring additional costs, and Obama's voodoo math says we will save money! The only way we will "save money" is by increasing taxes for four years prior to providing any health care benefits. How does that "save" us any money?

Congratulations are in order for all those fine Senators who cast their votes to assist Obama in ruining the United States of America, against the wishes of "We the People". Enjoy it while you can, for on November 20th of 2010 we shall remember! Of course I am assuming that we will still have free elections in 2010, and that could prove to be a faulty assumption...

CORRECTING HEALTH CARE IN THE U.S.A.

Correcting just the end product of health care is not the answer to America's health care "problem". Health care is indeed a problem, but the problem is systemic and must be attacked at all levels, not just at the hospital level. However, in order to correct the system we must first correct GREED at the individual and corporate level.

How do we do that? In reality, we probably cannot/will not because everybody likes money. For me, personally, I have never made so much money that I ever had an excess of it. I have owned some nice cars in my life, but they were bought used, owned one at a time, and financed for YEARS. I do not own any stocks or bonds, nor do I belong to a country club. I have been fortunate enough to live indoors all my life, but never in opulence (unless you compared my domicile to the ones in some 3rd world ghetto... a Somali native might consider my abode to be opulent by comparison to his). I have never really known "want", but like most working-class Americans, I have always had sufficient. I have always been able to afford everything I truly need, and most of the things I have wanted but could have lived without. I suppose you could call me "content" with my lot in life. Don't misunderstand me though - I am not the reincarnation of Mother Teresa - if I were to win the lottery I would not refuse the money, but I rarely buy a lottery ticket, and I don't worry about not winning. I like to think of myself as "Joe Average" in most respects. Now let's get to the GREED problem...

For many people in this world there is no such word as "enough" - it simply does not exist in their vocabulary. This is a big part of the health care problem, and many other "social ills", but we do not correct it by redistribution of the wealth. That which an individual has earned (through honest and noble means) as the fruits of his/her labors entitles them to enjoy that wealth, however massive or paltry it may be. On the other hand, what honest and noble human being walking the face of this Earth produces fruits worth $10,000,000 or more per annum, other than perhaps the founder of his/her own corporation? There is no level of hired management worth that kind of money! But our major corporations pay that much and more for CEO's, CFO's, COO's and other executives, ostensibly because "they can't get the best and brightest for less" . On top of their obscene salaries, they get expense accounts, stock options, bonuses, company cars/limousines, (and in some cases drivers)/airplanes, and health, dental, life and vision insurance as part of their compensation packages.

If the government feels the need to get involved in something in industry, that would be a good starting point, but the government's job is to regulate industry, not manage it. Therefore the Congress would need to pass legislation something to the effect of:

1. No executive compensation packages worth more than $2,000,000 TOTAL - in any industry. That would eliminate the possibility of one industry "raiding" another for top executives, and anybody should be able to live very nicely on $2,000,000 per year!

2. No "Golden Parachutes" for any executive who is terminated for cause, or who fails to live up to the terms of his/her contract, or who has not increased the market value of the corporation by at least 15% during his/her tenure. Naturally there would be no "Golden Parachutes" for executives who left or were discharged from a failing corporation. We do not reward failure!

3. Corporate stockholders would receive a fair return on their investments, of say 20% - not to exceed $1,000,000 per year in total cash value regardless of the amount of corporate stock held. It would be against the law for American corporations or private investors to invest outside the United States of America.

4. Manufacturers of durable goods items, such as automobiles, appliances, and medical equipment, would have a restricted wholesale markup of not more than 20% of the total manufacturing cost. Retailers of those items would likewise be held to a 20% markup over and above their acquisition cost.

5. Union labor compensation package rates would be reduced to the average level of non-union workers performing the same work within the state where they are employed, plus 20%. A union member may be terminated at any time for just cause, as would any non-union employee, and a union member will enjoy no more recourse than that which would be available to the non-union worker.

6. Successful corporations would pay bonuses equal to one weeks earnings to all employees twice a year. Corporations posting losses during the fiscal year would correct those losses by replacing marketing and sales personnel beginning with executives - unless the product was found to be defective. If sales were down due to defective or inferior merchandise, Quality Control and responsible production workers would be replaced.

7. Outsourcing American jobs to foreign countries would be eliminated, thereby reducing our unemployment rates. Any corporation with existing foreign operations would be allowed to maintain that operation for 5 years, however those corporations would be required to pay to the state(s) in which they have production facilities, full U.S. unemployment benefits for each job created in those foreign countries on a worker-for-worker basis. One hundred employees in Sri Lanka would mean that Corporation "X" would have to pay full unemployment compensation for 100 unemployed Americans in the USA, even if they do not have production facilities in the USA.

Health Industry Specific Requirements
Items 1 through 3 and five through 7, as outlined above, would apply throughout the Health Care Industry. Additionally:

8. A cap of $500,000 maximum payment per medical malpractice lawsuit would be established.

9. Doctors working in a hospital/clinic/urgent care environment would be salaried. General Practitioners would be compensated at the after-tax rate of $1,250 per week and would work no more than 50 hours per week. Specialists would be compensated at the after-tax rate of $1,500 and work no more than 50 hours per week. Nursing Staff would be compensated at the after-tax rate of $875 per week, and work no more than 50 hours per week. Support personnel would be paid at the prevailing rate for their employment type within that state.

10. Medical Schools may charge no more than $150,000 for any training provided, to be repaid by the student over a period of not less than 20 years.

11. Health Insurance will be made available nationwide - from any state to any state. For example, all health insurance companies will be able to offer coverage in any of the 50 United States, thereby increasing competition to give the consumer the best value for his/her money.

12. Health Insurance companies may charge, based on reliable actuary data, at a rate not to exceed $10.00 per month per $1,000 of potential annual loss, based upon all physical contributing factors, such as age, sex, weight, race, general physical health at the time of application, pre-existing conditions, use of tobacco, alcohol or non-prescribed drugs, and the potential for loss over the length of the contract.

13. All prescription medicines offered for sale by pharmaceutical companies will be sold at a global rate, not to exceed the rate billed to the poorest of nations.

14. Corporate R&D costs will be recouped over a 5 year period via a tax credit of 20% of the total R&D cost per year, per new product. R&D costs will not be passed along to the consumer.

15. Hospitals/clinics/urgent care facilities providing over the counter (OTC) medicines or medical supplies (i.e. - aspirin, band-aids)can charge for those medicines and/or supplies at a rate not to exceed five times the per unit cost for said medicines and/or supplies.

This is certainly not meant to be the "be all and end all" of health care system regulation, but it could provide someone more intelligent than I with a "jumping off point". And, by the time our legislators - 95% of whom are lawyers - got through rewording and earmarking it, these 15 items would have been transmogrified into 1500 PAGES of government regulation!

There is certainly a remote chance that I could be "fulla" in this area, since I am neither a health care professional nor a lawyer. It just seems to me that something that appears to be so simple doesn't have to become Labyrinthine as it passes through the House and Senate!

Obama's Universal HealthSCARE - A PRESCRIPTION FOR DISASTER!

Your President is attempting to create a horrific "Universal Healthcare System" run by the government. The sliver-tongued devil makes it sound as if it will be gold-plated, and essentially free for anybody earning less than... oh, somewhere between $250,000 and $1,000,000 per year, depending on what time of day he is asked about who will shoulder that burden. Trust me, it will never happen that way, and he knows it! He's still in campaign mode, where lies are expected and delivered, but nonetheless believed by his supporters (and a few others who aren't paying attention).

This evening on television, I saw the Senate Version of the Universal Health Plan. It was in a loose leaf binder approximately 1 foot thick, and replete with thousands of rules and regulations determining who can get what health care services and how much of those services they will be entitled to. There were well over 1,000 pages in this "plan", and that's over 900 pages more than anybody voting on the plan will read. Here's the thrust of the health "care" plan (which, in all honesty, should be called the Universal Health Management System. There's very little "care" in it at all, other than care for cost.):
1. Everybody is expected to be enrolled in it. Those who choose not to be enrolled in the plan will be fined $1,000 per year for non-participation. The Congressional Budget Office has already forecast that the fines would bring in $38 BILLION over the first 10 years.
2. The availability of treatment will be predicated upon several factors, among which are lifestyle, eating habits and age. If you smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol, eat fattening foods, are overweight, or are considered past your productive life you get fewer treatment options. Therefore the older one becomes, the less treatment is available. (Excuse me, but aren't our "golden years" generally when we need an increase in medical treatment?)
3. Your health management program will be controlled not by medical personnel, but rather by a cabal of government employees, whose primary duty it is to reduce costs!
4. If you have reached a point in life where some government bean-counters arbitrarily picked an age of elimination, instead of treatment for your ills, you will get a pain pill - to make dying more comfortable. You are expendable, and your continued existence is financially inconvenient to Obama and his cronies. You will become a victim of mandated murder - not by a bullet to the brain, but by refusing to provide you with the available "magic bullet" that could prolong your life!
5. There would also be some problems if you are young, yet have a chronic and serious (i.e. - expensive to treat) illness. Since health "management" is an issue of cost rather than physical or pyschiatric need, the victim of the health management system may find themselves in the same boat with the elderly... "We're sorry, but your life isn't worth what it would cost to prolong it. Please do the socially responsible thing and die."

The list of built-in heath management inequities could go on almost forever. And, modeling the system after that of Great Britain or Canada is absolutely the wrong thing to do. If the government wants an effective model, they should investigate Australia's implementation of socialized medicine. It seems to satisfy the needs of the people... as opposed to satisfying the desires of some deranged dictator.

This scam is being foisted upon our citizenry by a man whose goal seems to be the destruction of our once great nation. A man who travels the globe, rather than staying in his office working for us, apologizing for all the inequities and misery we have caused other nations. Obama seems to have forgotten those fiascos called World War I (begun by Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany) and World War II, where the USA cruelly kept Europe free from being trampled under the hobnailed boots of Adolf Hilter's Nazi forces.

We need no apologies for a country that - in a relatively short span of 232 years - went from a remote British colony to world leadership, surpassing countries and cultures that were hundreds and thousands of years our senior. A country that for the past 100 years has been bailing out the nations of the world, never failing to respond to a cry for help, either financially or militarily! More American blood has been shed in more foreign lands for the benefit of others than any other nation on the planet. We are not a source of embarrassment to ourselves, nor should we be a source of embarrassment to our "leader".

How can we expect our military to perform their best when their "Commander In Chief" is embarrassed of their history and performance? It's much easier to replace one man who lacks integrity and national pride, than it is to replace a million warriors. The time for a new leader is rapidly approaching. Unfortunately, with a Democratic super-majority in the house and Senate, the chances of a successful impeachment are slim. I would be surprised... no, shocked and awed... if the Dems would admit that their chosen leader was an incompetent loser, who is "leading" this country into financial ruin.

I could be wrong about this... I truly hope I am. I also hope that the "pie in the sky" finds its way to your table on Earth.

HEALTH CARE REFORM FOR DUMMIES!

I may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but this "health care reform" seems a bit out of kilter to me. If it was made by Bally's the "Health Care Thrills" pinball machine's TILT light would be flashing and the buzzer would be blaring loudly! Here's what I see as the best way to get health care costs under control - with very little actual government control:

We begin at the source of skyrocketing health care costs - the pharmaceutical companies, and the medical equipment manufacturers -

1. Pharmaceuticals (prescription drugs) in the US cost anywhere between 3 and 10 times what the same drugs are being sold for in both the northern and southern parts of North America (for those of you who failed geography, that's Canada and Mexico). And, in 3rd World, or "developing" nations, the disparity becomes even greater! Why is it that the USA gets to pay the premium price for necessary medical supplies when they are created within our own borders? Because the PharmCo's think we can afford the outrageous prices, and that we should pay for all their R&D. Granted, Research and Development of medicines is an expensive proposition, but why do Americans have to bear those costs alone? And why do the PharmCo's seem to believe they should recoup those expenses in the first 6 months of sales? Those costs are passed on at your neighborhood pharmacy as well as at your local hospital. Why does the same Band Aid, or USP formula aspirin that sells for $4.00 per hundred at Rite Aid or Wal-Mart, cost you $5.00 per pill on your hospital bill? Because those of us who actually pay our medical bills (with or without medical insurance), pay our medical bills... and we foot the costs for those who do not!
2. Medical equipment costs are horribly expensive, and no hospital is considered a hospital these days if they don't have a CT Scanner or MRI Scanner. R&D costs to develop safe and effective medical equipment are at least equal to those of the pharmaceutical industry. Where is it written that being a manufacturer of anything is cheap? A "decent" Magnetic Resonance Instrument (aka Magnetic Resonance Imager) costs your hospital anywhere from $1 million to $3 million, and a top of the line MRI is even more than! How much profit is in those prices, after including R&D and marketing costs? I could only find one figure on that, and it was $800,000... but there was no posted figure on at which price-point the system sold.
   
   Now, consider that registered nurses (RN) nationwide with 2-9 years experience, on the average, are being paid between $22 and $32 per hour, and the average MD earns $171,000 per year. These factors all drive the cost of health care upwards. Medicines are necessary, and when you really need medicine it's probably worth whatever the cost, as are the hospital equipment and personnel. However... when the practical value of something exceeds it's affordability, most people are caught "on the horns of a dilemma". Among the uninsured there are generally only three options:
   1. Do without treatment and suffer the consequences.
   2. Get the treatment and pay the bill off at $10 per month for the rest of your life.
   3. Get the treatment and say to yourself, "Illegals don't pay for treatment, why should I?", and then don't pay the bill - making the cost of treatment for those of us who DO pay our medical bills even more expensive.
   
   Those of us with private medical insurance are generally thankful for it when we need it, and most of us can - and will - handle even the most expensive of deductibles when given a reasonable period of time in which to pay it off.
   
   Then we have those who don't worry about health insurance - the rich and famous. For the most part these people (the Rockefellers, Morgans, Tom Cruises and Elton Johns of the world) can afford to be "self-insurers" - sitting on their hordes of money until they find a practical need for it.
   
   Finally we have that group which breathes the rarified air of Washington D.C. - our elected officials. They have no vested interest in reforming health care, inasmuch as they pay for nothing when they become ill. Our Congress has the sweetest health care plan in the world... and WE pay for it! Don't we all wish we had jobs where we could vote for our own pay and benefits packages like our Congress does? Why would they be concerned about "what is best" for the rest of us?
   
   Do we really need our government, which failed in their attempt to operate a combination brothel and bar in Nevada a few years back, to run our health care system? Seized by the IRS for tax delinquency, our government geniuses managed a previously very successful and well-known brothel into bankruptcy. How incompetent must one be to fail at selling sex and alcohol?
   
   If you have read this far you may be asking yourself, "Okay, Mister Smartypants, what needs to be done?" And my Pollyanna-ish answer would be (here's where the government gets involved, but in a structural sense, rather than an administrative one), let our Congress pass legislation requiring that :
   1. If you want to "cap and trade" something, cap the costs of medicines. Global pricing would be a good first step, rather than Americans paying anywhere from three to fifty times more than people in other parts of the world. Why should we, alone, bear the burden of paying for Pfizer or Lilli's R&D costs? And "because we can afford it" is an unacceptable answer!
   2. Medicine and medical equipment must be made available to the community at a reasonable cost. My "law" would require that profiteering in medical supplies and equipment end immediately. The profit margins on medical supplies, equipment and services would be held to the generally accepted retail figure of 40% of production and delivery costs.
   3. The government would NOT be involved in the day-to-day administration of any health care plan, much less create a national health care plan. (Our government has ruined the Social Security program into which we all pay, and now they want us to let them run another program into the ground with our money? I would guess that the majority of us are stupid enough to let them get away with this BS "pie in the sky" dream of Obama's.)
   4. Immediately eliminate any and all taxpayer funded medical treatment for non-citizens! If they don't belong here legally - other than in jail for violating our border - they are entitled to exactly nothing.
   
   These ideas would be just the beginning, not the be-all and end-all answer, to reforming our health care industry. Everything needs a starting point - I'll leave the details to somebody smarter than I.
   
   I could be wrong about this... but it just seems like common sense to me.
   

"Prescription for America" - Infomercial or Propaganda?

ABC will air the special from the White House during prime time on June 24. "Prescription for America," to be moderated by ABC News' Charles Gibson and Diane Sawyer, will originate from the East Room and will feature the president explaining his plans for reforming the nation's health care system. Officials with the network claim they will air opposing views, that the audience that will offer up questions for the president during the program will be made up of Americans "who have divergent opinions" in the debate on national health care.

I will be surprised if any of several things happens at this ABC-Obama love fest:
1. "Officials with the network claim they will air opposing views" - that will be the first surprise, considering they have already refused to broadcast opposing views! ABC rejected an alternative health care ad submitted for airing during the prime time special on Wednesday.
2. If the audience "offers up questions for the president during the program", the audience will undoubtedly consist of nothing but Obama Democrats and Obama-sympathetic media (is there any other kind?), and the questions will be previously approved by Obama staffers to insure the president isn't caught with his teleprompters down.
3. The only "divergence of opinion" will probably be discussing how many billions of our tax dollars to throw away on this Marxist health care debacle.

A sales pitch is a sales pitch - no matter what the salesman may choose to call it. In this case it is relatively simple to understand:

BUY MY IDEA... and since it is MY IDEA,
there is no plausible reason to even offer possible alternatives,
much less discuss them.
I AM "THE ONE"!

For those of you who voted for him, we're ALL about to get what you deserve! NMP!