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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: mph who wrote (76127)	12/19/2009 9:46:42 PM
From: Sully-	1 Recommendation Respond to of 90947

'reduce access to care or diminish the quality of care' By: Kathryn Jean Lopez The Corner More Kristol: <<< CBO is explaining that the legislation's claim to fiscal responsibility requires cutting in half the rate of growth of per capita Medicare spending. And, according to CBO, absent magical greater efficiencies in the delivery of health care, accomplishing those fiscal goals might well require reducing access to health care and/or diminishing the quality of health care. So less access and lower quality is a very real possible consequence of this legislation. This is a point critics of the bill cannot allow to be lost in all the hubbub. >>> corner.nationalreview.com

To: mph who wrote (76127)	12/29/2009 10:47:42 PM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

Once Patients Pay, Health Costs Will Fall IBD Editorials Posted 12/28/2009 07:11 PM ET Health Care: The push to reform the system is going in exactly the wrong direction. Instead of minimizing patient involvement in payment for treatment, Washington should be seeking to increase patients' role. The cost of American medical care is so high that it's thought by some to be a tragedy. About one-sixth of the economy is made up of health care expenditures. On average, each American runs up $7,290 a year in medical bills. Bringing down the costs — without sacrificing quality of care — is a reasonable objective. But supporters of the health care legislation recently passed in Congress have lost sight of the spending problem — if they ever had any clear concept at all. There are two reasons why per-person health care spending in the U.S. is far higher than even Switzerland at $4,417 a year, or Luxembourg at $4,162, which rank second and third in the world. One, America has the best health care on the planet. The smartest doctors, the finest in diagnostic equipment, top-flight treatment and advanced drugs don't come cheap. Two, our system encourages overuse. And, as any ninth-grade economics student will confirm, an increase in demand forces prices higher. Obviously, public policy that diminishes the quality of care would be counterproductive. Dealing intelligently with the latter, however, would yield positive results. The accompanying chart shows why we have a health care cost problem. Patients have little direct connection in paying for their care. Their role has fallen significantly. Meanwhile, the government's involvement has grown, as has that of the insurance industry. Because so many Americans rely on an insurance policy or a government program to pay their health care bills, the internal governors that temper the rest of their purchases are turned off. When a visit to the doctor's office or a diagnostic test costs them a mere $10 or $20 co-payment out of pocket — or there is no charge at all — cost has little impact on their decision to see a doctor. "By not knowing the full costs associated with health care, consumers demand more and 'overuse' it," Kenneth E. Thorpe explained a few years back in Health Affairs. Americans would be more judicious in seeking health care — they would self-ration — if the right incentives were in place. An effective way to cut overuse and bring down costs would be to encourage through public policy the use of health savings accounts. If consumers used HSAs to pay the full amount for medical care at the point of service rather than letting employer-funded insurance or a government program pay the bills, the demand would fall. The Democrats' health care legislation, however, puts more distance between Americans and the payment process and promotes dependence on government. That will only drive down consumers' out-of-pocket expenses even further and force overall health care spending upward. Under such a regime, the system will be worse off than it is now. investors.com

To: mph who wrote (76127)	12/30/2009 1:24:10 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 90947

** I knew it! Prez Obeyme blames Bush! U.S. Knew of Airline Terror Plot Before Christmas FOXNews.com The Associated Press contributed to this report. The U.S. government had intelligence from Yemen before Christmas that leaders of a branch of Al Qaeda there were talking about "a Nigerian" being prepared for a terrorist attack, the New York Times reported Tuesday. A senior official told the Times that President Obama was told in a private meeting Tuesday while vacationing in Hawaii that the government had a variety of information in its possession before the thwarted bombing on a Detroit-bound flight last week that would have been a clear warning sign had it been shared among intelligence agencies. The newspaper said the information did not include the name of the Nigerian. A CIA official prepared a report on Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab after a meeting with the suspect's father, who shared information about his son's extremist views, CNN reported Tuesday. The report was sent to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, but it sat there for five weeks and was not disseminated, a "reliable source" said. "Had that information been shared... [he] might have been denied passage on the Northwest Airlines flight," the source reportedly said. A CIA spokesman said Tuesday: "We learned of Abdulmutallab in November, when his father came to the U.S. embassy in Nigeria and sought help in finding him. We did not have his name before then." "This agency, like others in our government, is reviewing all data to which it had access, not just what we ourselves may have collected, to determine if more could have been done to stop Abdulmutallab." The president acknowledged Tuesday that a "systemic failure" on multiple levels allowed Abdulmutallab to board the flight, amid growing evidence of missed warning signs. The president, in his most extensive comments so far on what went wrong in the security process, said information about the terror suspect was not properly shared among agencies. He said that information, particularly a warning to authorities from the 23-year-old suspect's father in Nigeria, should have landed him on a no-fly list well before he boarded the Northwest Airlines flight in Amsterdam. "The warning signs would have triggered red flags and the suspect would have never been allowed to board that plane for America," Obama said. "A systemic failure has occurred, and I consider that totally unacceptable." Senior U.S. officials told The Associated Press that intelligence authorities are now looking at conversations between the suspect in the failed attack and at least one Al Qaeda member.** They did not say how these communications with the suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, took place -- by Internet, cell phone or another method. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters, said the conversations were vague or coded, but the intelligence community believes that, in hindsight, the communications may have been referring to the Detroit attack. One official said a link between the suspect's planning and Al Qaeda's goals was becoming more clear. Obama said a mix of "human and systemic failures" contributed to what could have been a "catastrophic breach of security." A senior administration official, speaking with reporters on condition of anonymity, said enough was known about the suspect to stop him, but the government didn't connect the dots. "It is now clear to us that there were bits and pieces of information that were in the possession of the U.S. government in advance of the Christmas Day attack -- the attempted Christmas Day attack -- that had they been assessed and correlated could have led to a much broader picture and allowed us to disrupt the attack," the official said. The suspect was not on the "no-fly" list or a separate list that would have required secondary screening at an airport. Obama said there were several "deficiencies" in the intelligence-gathering process, and that information about the suspect "could have and should have been pieced together." "It's becoming clear that the system that's been in place for years now is not sufficiently up to date to take full advantage of the information we collect and the knowledge we have," Obama said. The comments come as the administration launches a review of airport screening and the terror watch list system. The president said a preliminary review is due to him by Thursday. "We need to learn from this episode and act quickly to fix the flaws in our system because our security is at stake and lives are at stake," he said. The Associated Press contributed to this report. foxnews.com