Sunday, March 18, 2012

The Road to Repeal: Demonstration Next Week

Government-run health care is a looming disaster. Its full implementation scares the bejezus out of insurance companies, doctors, hospitals, and, not least, patients. I ought to know, being one of its victims. In my situation, my insurance company can refuse services they’ve honored for years — e.g., help with my sleep apnea equipment. More on that later.

First let’s talk about the demonstration next weekend in Washington, D.C., The Road to Repeal. It’s received some good grassroots support, including a number of Tea Party groups — just one more reason for the Obama administration to come after the Tea Parties via Internal Revenue witch hunts. Our Virginia Tea Party has been hit already so I’m encouraged to see this push-back.

Here’s the video from their publicity page (and a thank you to Vlad Tepes for helping me with this):


Here’s what they have to say about their reasons for the demonstration:

About the Event

Government run health care is the best example of everything wrong with the federal government.

It is financially reckless. No one knows what it will ultimately cost — or where the money will come from.

Additionally, ObamaCare will grow the federal government into every aspect of our lives. It will grow government into a massive bloated bureaucracy making health care decisions that directly affect you. In fact, the federal government must hire more than 17,000 IRS agents to enforce the law.

Oh wait: while many researchers agree with the opinion that ObamaCare will dangerously inflate an already bloated bureaucracy, we have to carefully check the numbers. Thus, I researched the “17,000 IRS agents”, since I’ve seen numbers ranging from 5,000 additional agents on up.

The only hard information I could find was from the Federal Register’s 2012 budget breakdown. It says the IRS will be the main beneficiary of the four percent budget increase allocated to the Treasury Department. I didn’t stop to do the math on how much money that means and if it could support so many hires.

Numbers aside, it is a sad fact that the Tea Parties are being targeted by the IRS. This is an old trick of Democrat administrations (and of Richard Nixon, by the way): bury the other side in expensive tax litigation.:

In the 1970s, Richard Nixon had an enemies list. Nixon asked the IRS to investigate tax returns of those on the list. Liberals were outraged. To be on Nixon’s list became a liberal badge of honor.

In the 1990’s Bill Clinton had an enemies list too. The Clinton administration targeted for IRS audit the National Rifle Association, the Heritage Foundation, the National Review, the American Spectator, Citizens Against Government Waste, Citizens for Honest Government, Concerned Women for America and the San Diego Chapter of Christian Coalition.
Don’t forget the Clinton girl friends or rape victims they targeted, too. It was ugly.

Today, Obama has an enemies list. The IRS is investigating conservative political groups, including the Tea Party, who oppose Obama’s agenda.

Just since the first of this year, Tea Party groups in Hawaii, Texas, Ohio, California, Kentucky, and Virginia report receiving inquiries from the IRS challenging their claim to non-profit status.

Up to 80 conservative/constitutionalist groups, including 9/12 Project groups around the country have reportedly received these letters. The IRS letters all come from a single office of the IRS in Cincinnati, Ohio.

The letters contain lengthy questionnaires asking for information well beyond the facts necessary under the IRC to establish the legal parameters of the 501(c)(4) designation.

[…]

For example, the Kentucky 9/12 Project applied for a non-profit designation in December 2010. The IRS return letter stated that there would be a determination within 90 days. The Kentucky group next heard from the IRS on February 14, 2012 in a letter containing 30 main questions with a total of 88 separate inquiries.

The IRS letter demanded the schedule and contact of every event sponsored by the group, speaker’s names and what the speaker said, and every written communication associated with the event. The letter demanded the names and personal information of every member and volunteer.

Other questions in the letter demand the names of donors and ask for the names of “board members or officers who have run or will run for office (including relatives)”

The letters give the groups two weeks to reply.

[…]

Why the sudden focus now by Obama and the Democrats on the grassroots citizen groups who changed the 2010 election by raising public awareness of the dangers of Obama’s out of control federal deficit spending, the bailout of Wall Street, the phony “Stimulus”, and the folly of ObamaCare?

I believe the answer is ObamaCare.

The ongoing implementation of the government takeover of American health care and health insurance is running into increasing public opposition. Every poll on the subject indicates growing awareness that health insurance costs are going up, not down as Obama promised.

Worse, more Americans than ever are without coverage as employers cancel insurance rather than pay increasing premiums.

The uncertainty of the cost of mandated coverage (the mandates change with the publication of each new regulation) is one factor restraining businesses large and small from hiring,
Thus, while I have a small quibble with the numbers of IRS agents assigned to fishing expeditions, I don’t doubt the motivations of the Left in their search-and-destroy missions. Thus this demonstration against their depredations is important:

Join thousands of patriots who oppose ObamaCare. Come to Washington, DC and be a part of the Road to Repeal Rally on March 24.

ObamaCare is set to be heard by the Supreme Court of the United States the following week and we need your help to send a strong clear message to the big government types who are bent on trampling our personal choice and freedom.

So numbers of IRS agents aside, can you see why people are ready to march on Washington again? Citizens are correct in their intuitive fear that this socialist proposition won’t work in the United States., though that doesn’t mean it won’t wreak havoc on our medical care.

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More Information

Join us on Saturday, March 24, 2012, for the Road to Repeal Rally.

[NOTE TO BUSY PEOPLE: It’s only two hours]

SIGN UP NOW!

The Venue

The Road to Repeal Rally will take place at Upper Senate Park [see URL for map].

The rally will begin at 12pm noon and will conclude at 2pm. Speakers and Coalition Partners to be announced soon. Save the date and do whatever you can to make it to Washington on March 24th.

The Speakers

We are proud to have a spectacular list of speakers on board from all over the country. Please visit frequently for an updated list of speakers.

There are a number of doctors, civic groups, tea party leaders from all over, politicians, and at least one blogger, Jim Hoff of Gateway Pundit.

If this event is at all doable for you, please attend. This is a crucial pushback against a malignant infiltration by government.

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I said at the beginning I’d explain what ObamaCare is doing. Medical providers of all kinds are freaking about what is likely to happen down the road. Thus, the mask I need for sleep apnea will no longer be paid for by my insurance since they upped the level of severity required to qualify. So I either pay or go without. For the time being, I’ve chosen to go without, though I will continue with the medication the doctor prescribed for my resulting fatigue. The insurance company won’t pay for that, either. Since I need to be able to function, we’ll pay for my medication out-of-pocket.

One reason I’ve decided to go without the mask is that I’ve never been able to make it work properly. No matter what kind I attempt, none of them remain pressurized for very long.

The insurance company suddenly doesn’t like the medication a gastroenterologist prescribed for stomach pain. I’ve used it on occasion for several years but now they want to switch to something that doesn’t work. But it’s cheaper. Since I don’t use it often, we’ll assess it when I run out of my current supply.

Imagine what it will be like when ObamaCare really kicks in.

Fortunately, prayer hasn’t been outlawed. Yet. So for anyone who feels inclined to utter a few petitions on my behalf, I’d really appreciate them. And yes, MS, I like atheists’ prayers equally well. No arguments there.

18 comments:

Anonymous said...

What has the prospect of a state funded health service got to do with an insurance company not honouring the terms of their agreement with a customer? Not much, so far as I can see ...

An NHS success story.

<a href="http://callofthepatriot.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/bolton-wanderers-player-collapses.html>More NHS employees producing the goods when it matters.</a>

Anonymous said...

@Dymphna,
If you lived in the UK you'd get your meds & equipment gratis.

Insurance companies on the other hand ... don't get me started.

Anonymous said...

Here's that 2nd link again.

laine said...

"@Dymphna,
If you lived in the UK you'd get your meds & equipment gratis". Such assurance from Anonymous. And if instead of getting it she's put on a waiting list according to age and need? Or if those services are delisted from coverage by a cash strapped government? (Both those things happen on a regular basis in my so-called socialized healthcare jurisdiction (as with every last one of them, private care is growing to compensate for all the shorcomings of socialized care). Or if she doesn't want a government that turns everything it touches into expensive excrement running her health care? Or if she doesn't want other taxpayers enslaved to pay for her health care? But for Anonymous, it's all about the "freebie". Well, it's not free for somebody, and socialists ALWAYS exceed that somebody's willingness and ability to pay for strangers. Obama started "fixing" something that wasn't broken as over 70% of Americans were satisfied with their health care coverage. Would the same be true of British citizens?

Dymphna said...

Thanks, laine, for explaining it. I wasn't going to try because the chasm of experience is too large to jump with language.

I can get all sorts of expensive, high-tech testing and quick response to things like my torn rotator cuff and follow-up surgery & rehab.

However, more chronic, not-quite-defined disorders are being denied for any but the wealthy. So I've learned work-arounds with nutrition, supplements, etc., which the govt is making noises about regulating also. I hope that door isn't shut on consumers by the feckless FDA.

The socialist paradigm of cradle-to-grave benefits has ended in a HUGE never-ever-been employed surplus: the dole class.

Obama's attempt to paste on a huge, corrupt bandaid to a complex market-driven medical care system is a recipe for corruption and disaster. Both of those are occuring already, in anticipation.

Lots of sad stories out of Canada about the waiting times for surgical procedures. That doesn't happen here, but it will when we go social.

Other countries have far lower costs for medicines because their governments are able to use their collective power to drive down the price Big Pharma demands here.

Maybe sometime I'll have the energy to write the ugly story of Cephalon and its star product, Provigil.

More later - after I come back from the doctor.

Anonymous said...

But for Anonymous, it's all about the "freebie". Well, it's not free for somebody, and socialists ALWAYS exceed that somebody's willingness and ability to pay for strangers. Obama started "fixing" something that wasn't broken as over 70% of Americans were satisfied with their health care coverage. Would the same be true of British citizens?

Why don't you ask them? Because putting a question here, doesn't mean that it would be, or that it wouldn't be.

And it's not "all about the freebie". Get a grip of yourself.

And it's not a case of a taxpayer funding something for "strangers". It's a case of funding health care for fellow citizens - including yourself.

Look at it this way: it's a matter of negative freedom. If I become seriously ill tomorrow, I will have access to all the health care I need, I'll get a visit by a GP out of hours, I'll be uplifted by an ambulance & taken to hospital, I'll get any necessary operations or treatment, and I won't be financially ruined by this.

I'll keep my job, keep my home, keep my savings, and will be able to concentrate on getting my health in order.

We don't have Ty Pennington running around the country finding people who have been ruined financially just because they fell ill, & having loads of business people & working stiff build a big old house for "strangers".

I guess those people should be left homeless, eh? After all, it's all about the "freebie".

Anonymous said...

It goes back to basic political philosophy. Do we all want to live in the "state of nature"? As Hobbes put it, life would be pretty grim: a war of all against all, nasty brutish and potentially very short indeed.

Or do we have a state, a government which will carry out certain tasks in order to ensure that its citizens have a life worth living?

If we do, then the question is only one of degree. What functions does the state serve then - in its citizens' interests?

Order, through a police force. Okay, let's agree to that in principle. A system of laws, okay let's agree to that too. There are lots of things we can put on that list. One of them is to maintain a health service, to help ensure the health and well being of the state's citizens.

Citizens can then concentrate on earning a living, under conditions which ensure their own health & well being, & which maintain an overall order, in which they can live.

No system is perfect - no system run by human beings anyway - but overall the notion that the state exists to look after its citizens is fundamentally sound.

Anonymous said...

Pardon me, but I remember that many organizations are exempted from furnishing membership information to government agencies since the days of the civil rights struggle because the Klan was using membership lists to terrorize the membership. What's happened to this rule?

It's certainly appropriate in this context, because I suspect the IRS may abuse its powers to harass the membership of the 9/12 Project if the organization caves in and furnishes its membership list.

Anonymous said...

"Other countries have far lower costs for medicines because their governments are able to use their collective power to drive down the price Big Pharma demands here."

I beg to differ.

Other countries have far lower costs for medicines because our for-profit free market economy subsidizes the development of medicines that those socialist countries distribute for less - sometimes based on ignoring the patents held by our innovators.

When we stop rewarding the free market in medicine, we will see a decrease in medical innovation - including new and improved drugs, medical devices and operations.

In addition, socialism will reward the wrong people as paper-pushing bureaucrats award contracts based on low costs, bribes to them, or the fact that they or theirs will benefit financially from societal adoption of medical products and procedures in which they and theirs are personally invested.

Socialized medicine is a very bad development for health care on a variety of levels - including the idea that bureaucrats may deny or mandate medicines and procedures as a form of political payback. The medical 'enemies' list will make the IRS look tame.

Are you ready for your mandatory abortion or beneficial lobotomy?

Then, there is the Obamacare requirement that all people be RFID chipped in the near future. We are talking years here rather then decades.

RFID chips will enable the federal government to COMPLETELY track and control - and tax - every single aspect of your existence from birth to death - a death which - for most - will be hastened by denial of the very medical care which provided the ready excuse for the government to RFID chip you and everyone that you know.

Egghead

Anonymous said...

Take this weekend: Look at the work done by the paramedics, a cardiologist who happened to be attending the match, and the staff at the hospital in London who are still looking after Fabrice Muamba. If that young man pulls through, it will be because of the magnificent work of the NHS.

The thing is, I'd receive the same care if it ever happened to me. So would anyone else.

I'd be able to get back on my feet (hopefully) and eventually get back to earning a living & being a useful productive citizen once again, after that unexpected health issue. It's a question of negative freedom. To use Berlin's expression, I'd have no "doors" shut in my face. I'd get my health in order & then get back to my old life.

So it's not a question of a "freebie". That's just nonsense. Nor is it a question of paying for "strangers". Again, childish nonsense.

It's a question of the role of the state - and whether providing a safety net for all its citizens health and well being is a legitimate function for a state to perform.

If you're a citizen then you too could need those services one day. Are you a "stranger" to yourself? Are your own family members? Of course not. Everyone pays, and everyone benefits (potentially).

As for insurance companies ... that's another story altogether now, isn't it. Puttint your health and well being in the hands of insurance companies - that's just crazy!

Anonymous said...

My goodness! Someone is on their high horse today - and is all set for a big fall....

Evil Obamacare is intentionally designed to drive our nation into submission (to an Islam-led United Nations) through utter bankruptcy.

Do you really think that Obamacare is going to provide private health care benefits on a public budget - with an aging native population - with unlimited immigration - with intentionally interbred Muslims using vastly more than their fair share of health resources WITHOUT contributing any money as a form of state-sponsored Sharia Law on the native citizenry?!

Your 'negative' freedom is your enslavement of others for your own purposes. Negative indeed! Evil!

Egghead

Dymphna said...

Okay- back from our family doctor's office & the pharmacy.

This was an emergency appt, not scheduled. The doctor sutured a cut (what I really needed was an IQ test for holding the knife in such a way as to slice deeply into my thumb. No nerve damage, dg). She also assessed a weird skin infection and gave me a scrip for ointment.

We then went over my regular meds & she wrote some that will be in need of refills soon.

Office visit, per state & federal guidelines for insurance providers: a $40.00 "co-pay". If our income had been deemed "poverty level" it would've been $5.00. Fortunately, we're still a ways above that.

The ointment, covered by insurance was a few dollars.

This is an increase in office visits costs, since ~2007, of about 150%. And the office is gearing up to hire more ppl to handle the govt paperwork, which is already starting.

This has been my family doc since the early 90s. Back when I didn't have insurance but was working, I was seen at the Free Clinic. This is a volunteer service by docs, nurses, pharmacists, admin, etc. and was open several evenings a week.

By coincidence (not planned) the doc I chose for my mother when she came to live with us back then - and who had Medicare - was the same one who treated me at the Free Clinic. So after the Baron got a 'real' job & I switched over to a 'real' doctor's office, I chose her private practice. We don't always agree, but she's dedicated and is an excellent diagnostician.

[She also does missionary medical work on her vacations. The woman gets around...]

Mostly due to the switch from a market-based model to a centralized bureaucracy model, costs will continue to rise and quality, of necessity, will continue to erode. That's the nature of the beast.

Who will pay the enormous costs that arise from a centralized command medical system? You and me and our children. Those costs will escalate and they'll spread across the population in unfair ways, sad to say.

Just for starters, businesses will hire fewer ppl to avoid the penalities that come with insurance requirements. That's just one...fewer small businesses will emerge as owners are reluctant to take on the onus of all the regulations.

It's a strange moral calculus that says I must pay for my own transportation, housing, and food, but that my medical care is a "right". In the UK, I would also have to pay for the privilege of watching my TV (if I had a TV) and I'd be hit with value-added taxes every whichway...

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Our native Indian populations fought hard against ObamaCare. They have already suffered enuf from govt medicine and they know exactly what is in store for us.

It ain't pretty. That's why the wealthier tribes have opted to pay for their own private care.
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BTW, medical insurance and the medical system both work well at the catastrophic level described in some comments.

Routine care is what's being ruined.

Anonymous said...

@Egghead,

Heading for a big fall eh? Not today though.

Your President may be an advocate of Islam & may bow down before the big Saudi chief, but it does not follow from that slight problm the good old US of A has, that the NHS is "evil".

That's just nonsense.

Is this evil?

If you think so, do explain why.

Good luck with that.

It may well be the case that in the context of America as she is today, any project whatsoever dreamt up by Oh! Bummer! will in the long run be bad for America and the free world.

But it does not follow from that that each and every state funded health service is "evil". That's just silly talk.

Btw if I ever do have a big fall, I know that the NHS will get me back to health again, & I'll get my sick pay for up to 12 months as I'm lying in hospital, so when the day comes that I am up and about again I can resume my life as it was before ... that's "evil"?

Obviously not.

Anonymous said...

That's not to say that the NHS is some golden organisation which is an example to all - far from it (I know!)

The big problem with having a state organisation that size, staffed by management who aren't able to hack it out in the real world, is that you get all sorts of weird decisions being made, a lot of "horizontal" style so called management, a lot of ass-covering and massive indifference and incompetence.

You get careerists who are more interested in climbing the greasy pole and cutting costs (or cutting costs in order to climb the greasy pole) who end up in a position to make decisions about the safety of patients - not good, obviously.

There is a lot to criticise in the NHS - believe me, I know.

But I know two friends who have had massive medical problems, and who received cutting edge treatment at the best hospitals we have - all free. I know for a fact that one of those fellows was in line for hugely experimental surgery, and that would all have been free - even the hotels around the specialist hospital gave patients & their families discounted rates btw. So there is a lot of good things that can be said about the NHS too.

Like everything else in life, nothing's in black and white. There are many grey areas.

Anonymous said...

Hey Anon, do us a favor and give yourself a nickname so that we can address you instead of the other anons.

I am less interested in your opinion of socialized medicine than a typical Russian's....

You are living in the past on so many levels, hoping - as the seniors here are - that you can outlast the coming political, social, and economic collapse intentionally wrought by foreign socialism (which is just another name for Marxism) being inflicted on naive Westerners who have been undone by their own ignorance and greed.

Socialism is ALWAYS evil because individuals benefit from either the threat or use of government force to steal as much money as possible - and sometimes health, safety, and lives - from their fellow citizens. Eventually, the government itself just steals everything from everyone - and we are fast closing in to that point.

Just because YOU and your friends benefit from an immoral system does NOT make that system moral.

Now add tens of millions of Muslim immigrants to the system; watch Muslim immigrants breed as much as possible in polygamous marriages and marriages with young girls; watch Muslim immigrants purposely interbreed in multiple generations of forced cousin marriages; watch Muslim immigrants knowingly cause their own (grand)children to bear horrendous birth defects; watch Muslim immigrants cite Sharia Law to refuse to pay into socialized medicine while demanding far more than their fair share of medical and social benefits; watch Muslim immigrants refuse to be treated by non-Muslims; watch Muslims become doctors and nurses who refuse to treat non-Muslims.

When Your Doctor Is a Muslim: Medical Terrorism Comes to America

It's time to confront this taboo: First cousin marriages in Muslim communities are putting hundreds of children at risk

Egghead

laine said...

The holier than thou Anonymous seems unfamiliar with the concept of private insurance including for catastrophic events (and certainly long past understanding individual responsibility instead of collective). He/she keeps presenting a false choice between going bankrupt or first class treatment under socialized medicine (not guaranteed at all especially outside major cities). The "everyone pays" remark is a bald faced lie. In countries with a graduated tax system, soon approaching half the populace pay no net taxes yet all collect tax funded benefits. In particularly corrupt socialist jurisdictions like Greece, over half do not pay into the pot from which they make withdrawals. This is unsustainable, so something has to give. Anonymous describes the halcyon temporary plateau when socialism appears to work while makers outnumber takers. However, socialism makes takers, as Anonymous himself illustrates, people who not only take but fool themselves that somehow they are not robbing someone else of the fruits of their labor. He's sick, so it's only "right" that he gets to take more than he ever paid in. So who eventually goes without when the next person wants to withdraw more than he paid and the next and the next? Who's the loser who paid and paid and then doesn't get to collect? Food is even more important to life than health care. Why does Anonymous not promote a government run supermarket where everyone shops for their needs but only half the people get stuck with the bill? He's hungry, and someone else has got money...When too many people see it as the job of the state meaning other people's money to take care of them, socialism stops appearing to work. Socialism both turns previous makers into takers (the black American family that was pulling even with whites economically in the 1960's is now typically a single mother on food stamps) and imports takers (immigrants, not just Muslims who never pay in enough to cover their costs to native populations). The net immigration to all western countries and Australia has been of this parasitic nature for the past couple of decades, the 3rd world swamping the lifeboats. Anonymous lives in a fool's i.e. temporary paradise. Hard to believe he/she actually lives in Britain, because the cracks are becoming cavernous there. Britain is in the running to be the first country on that side of the Atlantic to slide into anarchy as El Ingles and others have carefully documented for GOV readers.

Anonymous said...

All immigrants are a problem for a socialist system, but Muslim immigrants cause, by far, the egregious problem due to the reasons that I listed above.

Marxists have imported Muslims to the West to financially, socially, and politically murder Western civilization more quickly than other immigrants would.

Other immigrants might assimilate or provide some societal benefit, but Muslims are a different story.

Egghead

Dymphna said...

@ egghead:

Other immigrants might assimilate or provide some societal benefit, but Muslims are a different story.

I think we need to pick and choose on that one. I know a number of Muslim immigrants who have "assimilated". In fact, several have come into our rather poor area and made a good living by buying up deteriorating country stores and creating mini-marts that are geared to the wants of the indigenous population (black and white). They create a good environment in what had previously been "stores of woe".

They admire America...but they send their children to private schools bec. they don't think much of our education system. One of them, once he found out that the Baron was a math tutor, treated him with great respect. He said in his culture (Persian) teachers are greatly revered. (Once the B. went into a computer job making much more money, the "respect" was less in evidence.)

This particular man and his family worked like dogs to make their business flourish. When they had made their "share" (or as the owner said to me when I inquired how business was going - "oh, my dear, I am making the killing"), they sold out and moved north to invest the money.

The family consisted of one man and his wife, a nephew who was an electrical engineering whiz, an old mother who didn't speak English, and two lively children. Oh, and a brother who came down on weekends to provide some relief at the cash register.

Once the store reverted to local indigenes, it gradually reverted to its former shabby state: less inventory on the shelves, the hot food was less fresh or inviting, and the owners were less customer-centered. It was sad to watch it fail...
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Meanwhile, in the nearest university town, there are other Iranians - they are among the educated elite, teaching middle-of-the-road academic subjects as tenured academics. Their families fled in the late '70s and '80s. They have assimilated but like our store owners, they also keep their own tradiitions. Just as other immigrant groups have.

I agree we have much to be concerned about in regard to groups who push an aggressive salafist doctrine. But many others have come for educational and economic opportunity and they need to be cut out of that equation.