Healthcare

[jabcat]

 There is no reason to change our whole way of doing business when a smaller fix would solve the problem.

That's the one  :thumbsup:

[natcat86]

I actually have some quite firm beliefs on some things political - concerns about what leaders are saying and doing.  I just think we need to handle with care, that political views should not get in the way of our MAIN focus, including unity among believers - as much as is possible.  There are issues that can divide us, and issues that can unite us.  How should we approach those topics, and which ones should we spend most of our time on?  Hard to know sometimes - I know some of these are important issues, but easy does it, eh?

If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men.  Romans 12:18

Amen Jabcat, I am still a relatively new christian and before I became a christian had a very worldly, human centred view point. I am still new at making Christ the centre of all my thoughts/ideas and ideals. Some people seem to be converted and they automatically seem to think like Christ, for me it seems to be one area at a time. I am very greatful that the Lord has Chastened me this evening regarding this issue  :happygrin: It has to be Jesus when you can feel told off then feel wonderful peace right?!
:cloud9:

[jabcat]

Bless you.  We're all still learning.  Shoot, ANYthing I say that may have any merit at all, I need to hear it and grow in it myself.  And yes, Jesus is working on you and me.  It's a sign we are His children that He loves and is bringing into His image.

despise not the chastening of the LORD; neither be weary of his correction:
For whom the LORD loves he corrects; even as a father the son in whom he delights.
Pr. 3:12,13


For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.  Eph. 2:10

James.

[Raggedy Anne]

On Health Care - for those who missed the Special Comment by Keith Olberman last month on this life and death issue, it was a very solid argument:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/vp/33217642#33217642

[Molly]

Magnetic Discs Could Kill Cancer Cells
AOL News
posted: 9 HOURS 54 MINUTES AGO
comments: 107


Nov. 30) –- Doctors may have discovered an unlikely tool to kill cancer cells: tiny magnetic discs, too small to be seen by the naked eye. The discs are just 60 billionths of a meter thick, said the French news agency AFP.

The so-called "nanodiscs" are made of an iron-nickel alloy, the agency reported. When they are subjected to a magnetic field, the discs vibrate. This movement damages the membranes of cancer cells and causes them to self-destruct.

Elena Rozhkova, who co-authored the new study, has high hopes for the clinical application of nanodiscs, said AFP. She said that subjecting the discs to a magnetic field for about 10 minutes was enough to destroy 90 percent of cancer cells in lab tests.

Another scholar, Jon Dobson of Britain's Keele University, speculated that the body's own defenses could be persuaded to cooperate with the discs, said the agency. He suggested that antibodies could be used to guide the discs to tumor cells.

"This provides an elegant and rapid technique for targeting tumor destruction without the side effects associated with systemic treatments such as chemotherapy," said Dobson.

2009 AOL LLC. All Rights Reserved.
2009-11-30 15:31:37

[Molly]

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5585125669588896670#

"Intelligent Design--Unlocking the Mysteries of Life"


[Scientists say goodbye to Darwin, and hello to God]


Natural Selection is replaced by Irreducible Complexity.

You guys will love this film.   :Sparkletooth:

[fullarmor2]

   This thread reminds me of Transponder  for some reason.  I wonder how he is doing. 

[Molly]

The Health Care Bill No One Can See

December 19, 2009 - by Richard Pollock

Harry Reid has yet to present a final health care reform product to his colleagues. Not that anybody would understand what's in it anyway


There was an air of unreality in the United States Senate when I entered the Capitol building on Wednesday to record some  PJTV interviews. I sat down with five U.S. senators to discuss the imminent future of the long-embattled health care bill.

We are approaching the eleventh hour for Sen. Harry Reid's (D-NV) slowly dying health care legislation, which he insists will be passed before Christmas. This is the same bill that was to be enacted last summer, then by August, then after Labor Day, and then before Thanksgiving.  Now it may be a Christmas present for the country.

The senators gave good information and offered sharp criticism of the bill.  What I had not expected was to discover that, well ... there is no bill.

What about the 2,074-page document we've been reading about that purports to be health care legislation? Oh, they replied, that bill was pulled by Reid more than a week ago along with the public option, which is now dead.

So Mr. Reid has no bill for senators or the public to read. No one knows what will be in the new bill. And the new, concealed bill still has to be "scored" by the Congressional Budget Office before the Senate can debate it and before an increasingly skeptical public can make their opinion known.

But Senator Reid was vowing to keep the U.S. Senate hostage while he and his allies worked behind closed doors to craft a bill he will eventually unveil to the public. He says he will give the senators 72 hours to digest it before a vote. And this bill probably will exceed 2,074 pages.

So there is no plan — neither a public option nor expanded Medicare. Then what is there?

It can be anything Mr. Reid and his pals want to dream up in their private, well-appointed Capitol Hill sitting rooms.

"The irony is," said Senator Christopher "Kit" Bond (R-MO), "the president campaigned on total transparency. ... What kind of bill is this?"

Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) told me that the request for lawmakers to vote on such a massive bill sight unseen was unprecedented. "I haven't seen anything like this on a bill of this magnitude," he mused.

"Unbelievable," Senator Bob Corker (R-TN) said. It is the "most closed process" he has seen in his lifetime.

Senator Johnny Isakson (R-GA) was pretty fired up.  "I've been in elected office for 32 years. ... Here we are with a 2,074-page bill and no one knows what's in this bill."

Senator Mike Johanns comes from Nebraska, the same state as wavering Democratic Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE).  "About a week from now," Johanns laments, "we'll cast a final vote redesigning everyone's health care and today we don't know what's in a final bill."

Johanns observed that even Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill), the second-ranking Democrat, confessed he was kind of clueless about what would be in the final bill.  Durbin admitted on the Senate floor on December 10: "Most of us know the fundamentals, but we don't know the important details."

Two-thirds of a year into our intense national debate, and it's pretty amazing that there are no details for the public to read, analyze, or debate on health care reform.

So without a real bill, senators have been reduced to shadowboxing over the complex 2,000-page bill that doesn't exist. The process is such a non-process that it has produced a surreal environment.

In "normal" times, pulling a bill would spell its doom. But we do not live in normal times. The president and his party are determined to pass "something," regardless of whether it is good or bad.





It's presidential face-saving time — a time to salvage a reputation that is heading south. That's what it has come to. Desperate to achieve some kind of success, the president is forcing the Senate to pass a bill it has not seen with a vote now scheduled as early as this weekend or as late as Christmas Eve. Turn away from your mistletoe and turn on C-SPAN for breaking news.

But isn't this the era of the Obama presidency, where there was supposed  to be openness and transparency in government?

On January 21, 2009, the president issued an eloquent statement — almost poetic — on how information can really be a truly valuable national asset:

Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their Government is doing. Information maintained by the Federal Government is a national asset.

So here we are, eleven months into his young administration, and we are seeing a pivotal bill born of the worst possible process: no openness, tons of secrecy, and back room wheeling and dealing.

And are the "good government" types screaming? How about those ethics groups? Are they foaming at the mouth?

The reality is that hardball Democratic Party practices do not seem to connect with Democratic Party ideals. Their idea of governing is to cut deals behind closed doors, to anoint winners and pummel losers. Has anyone told them it is the most corrosive and cynical way to govern in a democracy?

The Washington Post laconically reported last Monday:

The full contents of the legislation probably will not be known until Tuesday, at the earliest, when the Congressional Budget Office is expected to provide an official cost analysis.

That was last Tuesday. There hasn't been a CBO ruling. Hence there is still no bill to examine.

After eight years of screaming about President Bush's secrecy, it is interesting that the mainstream media is largely mum about the legislative abuse now underway.

Even in small town city councils, most bills have to be read three times and public meetings convened before a bill becomes law.  This principle has died on the national scale.

For PJTV, I tried to pin down where the secret Democratic Senate meetings were being held on health care. They turned out to be a movable feast. Some were announced; many never were. No one knows who sat in what meetings and on what topics.

We don't know how AARP fared in influencing details of the bill. Or how SEIU shaped the bill. Or what Big Pharma was promised for its endorsement of an early Obama plan.

Citizens cannot see who authored which provisions, who won big federal favors, or who will get new privileges in the Brave New World of Big Brother delivering health care.

No one knows ... yet.

A penchant for secrecy is a style of governing that is well known in many authoritarian countries. We don't have to stretch our imagination to see these governing styles on display in Iran, China, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea.

Thankfully America isn't Venezuela. And Obama has not become Hugo Chavez.

I suspect the face of authoritarianism here may arrive with more benign faces. It may emerge with subtle velvet hands like those used by regulators out of the European Union's faceless bureaucracy. There, regulations are hatched in private among elites, then paternalistically dispensed to their citizens. The EU model is driven by an impenetrable bureaucracy that has little accountability, protects special groups, and informs the public in a genteel way about what it is they can and cannot do.

This may be more in tune with the Obama administration and so-called "progressives." As they stand in awe over Europe for its many "superior" ways, they may be looking at a neo-European governing style as a role model.

Rather than assume their penchant for secrecy with the health care bill is an aberration, this could become their governing norm.

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/the-health-care-bill-no-one-can-see/

[sparrow]

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5585125669588896670#

"Intelligent Design--Unlocking the Mysteries of Life"


[Scientists say goodbye to Darwin, and hello to God]


Natural Selection is replaced by Irreducible Complexity.

You guys will love this film.   :Sparkletooth:

Watching this now...
Thanks for the link.

[sparrow]

15:56 - 18:00 or so:  the bacterial flagellum motor thingy....

way cool.

sorry. vocabularly escapes me at times like this.  :laughing7:


Edited to add: vocabularly?
spelling escapes me, too.
:laughing7:

I love this kind of stuff.

[Molly]

15:56 - 18:00 or so:  the bacterial flagellum motor thingy....

way cool.

sorry. vocabularly escapes me at times like this.  :laughing7:


Edited to add: vocabularly?
spelling escapes me, too.
:laughing7:

I love this kind of stuff.

Wait until you see how that amazing molecular motor is manufactured, based on a complicated set of instructions that must first be given to the manufacturing plant.  Where did this information come from? There is NO doubt that there is an Intelligence that designed this process.  And this is only one of thousands of such processes that make possible that mystery we call life.

You know, Sparrow, the sad thing is that scientists have known this for decades, but were not allowed to tell the general public about it because the 'communists' holding the purse strings would stop funding their work.  So they try to tell us in all sorts of subtle ways that the evidence shows that God exists and designed life, but now that is finally all changing.  It can no longer be denied.

A healthy science is a science that observes and reports the truth as it is observed.

"What we're seeing in the DNA molecule is actually an artifact of mind, an artifact of intelligence, something that can only be explained by intelligent design."


16For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him:

17And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.

--Col 1

[Cardinal]

 :cloud9: Cool video...... :thumbsup:

[Molly]

Cash for Cloture: Demcare bribe list, Pt. II
By Michelle Malkin  •  December 21, 2009 02:48 AM

A month ago, I compiled Part I of the Demcare bribe list as Harry Reid rushed before Thanksgiving to secure his first cloture vote on the government health care takeover. (Quick re-cap: $300 million Louisiana Purchase for Landrieu; $300 million California doctor payments; AARP goodies; abortion and union lobby concessions.)

Here's Part II of the Cash for Cloture bribe list all in one handy place (hat tip again to my friend ChristinaKB for the apt phrase she first coined on November 21 for the Demcare wheeling and dealing).

GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell alluded to all this backroom dealing on the floor early this morning before the cloture vote, but lamely refused to name names on the Senate floor.

Let the sun shine in.

1. Sen. Ben Nelson's "Cornhusker Kickback." The CBO says the Nebraska Democrat sellout's special Medicaid expansion subsidy will initially cost an estimated $100 million. The Hill reports that while Nelson credited Nebraska's governor for giving him the idea to lobby for the government preference, Nebraska's governor assailed the payoff:

"Nebraskans did not ask for a special deal, only a fair deal," Heineman said in a statement Sunday. In response, Nelson fired off a letter Sunday to Heineman saying he's prepared to ask that the provision covering Nebraska's Medicaid share "be removed from the amendment in conference, if it is your desire."

2. New England's Special Syrup. Vermont and Massachusetts will get similar (though less generous) special treatment by the feds in covering Medicaid expansion costs. Combined with Nebraska's tab, the exclusive clique's payoffs will cost taxpayers $1.2 billion over 10 years. At least.

3. Corruptocrat Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd's Christmas wish: Hospital helper. He's plunging in the polls and in need of a little bacon to bring home.

A $100 million item for construction of a university hospital was inserted in the Senate health care bill at the request of Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., who faces a difficult re-election campaign, his office said Sunday night. The legislation leaves it up to the Health and Human Services Department to decide where the money should be spent, although spokesman Bryan DeAngelis said Dodd hopes to claim it for the University of Connecticut. The provision is included in a 383-page series of changes to the health care bill that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., outlined Saturday. ...The one sought by Dodd provides $100 million for "a health care facility that provides research, inpatient tertiary care, or outpatient clinical services." It must be affiliated with an academic health center at a public research university in the United States "that contains a State's sole public academic medical and dental school." The money can cover a maximum of 40 percent of the facility's construction costs.

4. "Some insurers are more equal than others" tax exemption. The WSJ reports that nonprofit insurance companies will be exempt from a new, nearly $7 billion tax to pay for Demcare. Democrat Sens. Ben "Blank Check" Nelson and Carl Levin of Michigan pushed hard for the tax exemption, which will exempt insurers in their states.

5. The Frontier freebie. Several lucky states will see an increase in Medicare payments to hospitals and doctors, the NYT reports, — "where at least 50 percent of the counties are 'frontier counties,' defined as those having a population density less than six people per square mile. And which are the lucky states? The bill gives no clue. But the Congressional Budget Office has determined that Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming meet the criteria."

6. More Democrat hospital bennies. Also via NYT: "Another provision of the bill would increase Medicare payments to certain "low-volume hospitals" treating limited numbers of Medicare patients. Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa and chairman of the Senate health committee, said this 'important fix' would help midsize Iowa hospitals in Grinnell, Keokuk and Spirit Lake. Another item in Mr. Reid's package specifies the data that Medicare officials should use in adjusting payments to hospitals to reflect local wage levels. The officials can use certain new data only if it produces a higher index and therefore higher Medicare payments for these hospitals. Senate Democrats said this provision would benefit hospitals in Connecticut and Michigan."

7. Bernie Sanders' socialized medicine sop. He wanted a public option. Instead, he got socialized medicine satellite clinics funded to the tune of at least $10 billion. In his remarks early this morning before the cloture vote, he gloated about the funding as a crucial step toward universal care. Via the Burlington Free Press:

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., scored a big victory, too, with the inclusion in the amendment package of $10 billion to expand community health centers across the country — including at least two more in Vermont.

"We are talking about a revolution in primary care here," Sanders said. Funding community health centers in an additional 10,000 communities would extend primary care to 25 million more Americans. 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. The House version of the health care reform bill contains $14 billion for these initiatives. Sanders said he was hopeful the final amount, which will be hammered out in negotiations between the House and Senate, would be closer to $14 billion.

Vermont has 8 community health centers and 40 satellite offices. "New funding would make it likely centers could be opened in Addison and Bennington counties," Sanders' home state paper reports.

8. Fla.-Pa.-NY Protectionism. Via Politico: "Three states – Pennsylvania, New York and Florida – all won protections for their Medicare Advantage beneficiaries at a time when the program is facing cuts nationwide."

And you know there are many more untold payoffs — paid by stealing your money — yet to be stuffed into this bureaucratic monstrosity.

http://michellemalkin.com/2009/12/21/cash-for-cloture-demcare-bribe-list-pt-ii/

[fullarmor2]

     It seems like all we ever hear is them talking about spending more money that we do not even have!    I want to hear them talking about  taking extreme steps towards getting  government spending reduced.     

[Molly]

    It seems like all we ever hear is them talking about spending more money that we do not even have!    I want to hear them talking about  taking extreme steps towards getting  government spending reduced.    

Run for office and then you can talk about it yourself.  :Sparkletooth:

www.goooh.com



I place the economy among the first and most important virtues, and public debt as the greatest of dangers...We must make our choice between Economy and Liberty, or profusion and servitude.

--Thomas Jefferson

[Molly]

Know the TRUTH about the Government Health Care Bill H.R.3200 - Key Points

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcBaSP31Be8


This is an older version of the bill as it is dated August 11, 2009, but it gives a flavor about what one might expect to find in a 2700 page senate bill which is almost twice as  long as the Russian novel War and Peace.


Whatever the agenda is here, it is way beyond the scope of healthcare.  It shows the direction those creating this legislation wish to move the country, even if they have to do it in tiny increments now that the 'Massachusetts miracle'  has stopped the runaway super majority in the house and senate.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nEoW-P81-0


"The Price of Liberty is Eternal Vigilance."

--Thomas Jefferson




33And Jacob said, Swear to me this day; and he sware unto him: and he sold his birthright unto Jacob.

34Then Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentiles; and he did eat and drink, and rose up, and went his way: thus Esau despised his birthright.

--Genesis 25