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

To: Sully- who wrote (77823)	2/22/2010 1:03:41 PM
From: FJB	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 90947

I still believe this meeting is a trap. I just hope that the leadership arrives prepared to make sure their ideas & responses to Obama will be clear & concise refutations of Obama/Pelosi/Reid Care. Agree 100%. If they go, they better be ready.

To: Sully- who wrote (77823)	2/22/2010 1:40:47 PM
From: Sully-	1 Recommendation Respond to of 90947

Summit of Spin The Editors National Review Online President Obama would no doubt be delighted if Republicans were to accept the basic outlines of the Democratic health-care proposal: new regulations on insurers, a mandate that everyone buy insurance, and subsidies to help them do so. All the evidence of the last year suggests that this type of bipartisanship — a Republican surrender — is the only kind in which he is interested. Since Obama knows full well that no such deal is possible, the real purpose of his health-care summit is political. He must think that the Democratic proposal will look better in comparison to Republican ideas. He wants to make Democratic efforts to push through their bills seem like a reasonable response to the unreasonableness of Republicans. Republicans, for their part, understand perfectly well that Obama is not going to be bargaining in good faith. But they think that the public will give him the benefit of the doubt, so they will attend the summit. There they should do what they can to frustrate the president’s design. They should keep the focus on the defects of the Democrats’ proposals. Thus they should resist two temptations. The first is to dwell overlong on the advantages of their own free-market plans. When the president criticizes Republicans’ ideas, they should defend those ideas but move quickly back to the subject at hand. Building support for Republican reforms is a long-term project that requires the defeat of Obamacare in this legislative session. The second temptation is to complain about how Democrats have shut Republicans out of the legislative process. We doubt that most people much care about this issue. Republicans should talk about procedural issues only to highlight the Democratic legislation’s substantive defects: for example, its indefensible backroom deals. President Obama has refused to take responsibility for those deals, but congressional Democratic leaders cannot get off the hook. Republicans should ask them how it can be justified to exempt Floridians from Medicare Advantage cuts, or to exempt union health-care plans from new taxes. They should note that the legislation increases entitlement spending at a time when such spending already threatens to bankrupt our government; that it makes it more expensive to employ workers at a time when the long-term health of the labor market is already widely questioned; and that it will cause many Americans to lose their current health-care arrangements whether or not they want to. The president is glib. Congressional Republicans are not always as well-versed on health-care issues as they should be. Still, Republicans should not be too nervous going into the summit. Can they win this health-care debate? They already have been winning the larger one. article.nationalreview.com

To: Sully- who wrote (77823)	2/22/2010 2:09:08 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 90947

Making It Worse Ramesh Ponnuru The Corner One of the under-appreciated defects of the Democrats' health legislation is that it would sharply raise implicit marginal tax rates for low-wage workers. It would, that is, punish such workers for bettering their lot. After looking over the Obama administration's proposed changes to the legislation, Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute e-mails that the resulting legislation would be worse, in this respect, than either the House or Senate versions of the bill. He also says that high-income workers would have more of an incentive to drop their health insurance under Obama's proposal than under either the House or the Senate bills. "That would cause insurance markets to unravel even faster." corner.nationalreview.com

To: Sully- who wrote (77823)	2/22/2010 2:12:46 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 90947

Making It Worse, Ctd. Ramesh Ponnuru The Corner The National Right to Life Committee points out in a press release that the president's revisions make the Senate bill's abortion provisions slightly worse as well. For example, the Senate bill provides $7 billion to Community Health Centers, and includes no restrictions on the use of these funds to pay for abortions. The president ups the funding to $11 billion. corner.nationalreview.com

To: Sully- who wrote (77823)	2/22/2010 2:21:46 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 90947

The New, Even Worse ObamaCare By Mark Noonan on Obamacare Geesh: <<< In the course of unveiling Obama’s new health reform proposal on a conference call with reporters this morning, White House advisers made it clearer than ever before: If the GOP filibusters health reform, Dems will move forward on their own and pass it via reconciliation. The assertion, which is likely to spark an angry response from GOP leaders, ups the stakes in advance of the summit by essentially daring Republicans to try to block reform. “The President expects and believes the American people deserve an up or down vote on health reform,” White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer said on the call. Pfeiffer said no decision had been made how to proceed, pending the outcome of the summit. But he added that Obama’s proposal is designed to have “maximum flexibility to ensure that we can get an up or down vote if the opposition decides to take the extraordinary step of filibustering health reform.” Translation: If the GOP doesn’t cooperate with us in any meaningful sense, we’re moving forward on our own. >>> Me: if I were GOP Senate leader, I’d say “once you Democrats get to 59 votes, I’ll provide the 60th to bring it to the floor. This is because I care about our republic and don’t want Democrats to destroy our protections just to get this dog of a bill through.” Trust me on this one – the amount of garbage Democrats will have to insert in to the bill to get the 59th vote will ensure it is toxic to the American people. They’ve put lipstick on a pig, tacked on a bit of populist nonsense about limiting insurance rate hikes (as if ObamaCare won’t increase costs and deny coverage even more) and hope to spin things that the GOP isn’t offering any alternatives (except for all the alternatives we’ve provided…) and thus Democrats are fighting for the little guy and other sorts of pure BS they’re always on about. Once again – go ahead, Democrats: make my day. blogsforvictory.com

To: Sully- who wrote (77823)	2/22/2010 4:18:20 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 90947

White House Talks Compromise, but GOP Claims Health Care Plan is Merely Camouflage FOXNews.com The White House issued proposals Monday for health care reform that have won kudos from several Democratic lawmakers, a sure sign, say Republicans, of how little GOP input is in the plan. Republicans have agreed to show up at the White House Thursday for a summit on health care, but are heading there with a dim view of the outcome. "It's disappointing that Democrats in Washington either aren't listening, or are completely ignoring what Americans across the country have been saying," U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said in a written statement. "House Republicans welcome any good faith effort to start over on health care reform but the bill President Obama unveiled today is just more of the same government-run insurance, mandates and taxes the American people have overwhelmingly rejected," added Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind. The White House, however, insists that the bill is more than just camouflage, but rather represents compromise. "Senator McCain in the campaign had a proposal to add -- to add those dependents on to your parents' health care up to a certain age to allow for what is a gap in the uninsured based on when someone leaves the dependency of their parents and gets a job that provides health care," said White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, noting that provision has been included in the president's proposals. Gibbs argued that 160 Republican amendments were included in varying pieces of legislation that made its way through the House and Senate. "Inexplicably, all those ideas weren't good enough," he said. Indeed in its effort to appear bipartisan, the White House included in its health care proposals listed on its Web site a section on Republican initiatives that were included in the legislation passed by Congress and included in the president's latest plan. Among them were provisions to allow health insurance premiums to vary based on participation in employer wellness programs, grants to states to evaluate medical liability reform ideas, automatic enrollment by employers in health insurance and ability for employees to opt-out. The White House also listed several other GOP suggestions in its proposal -- A comprehensive Medicare and Medicaid sanctions database to enable law enforcement access to information related to past sanctions on health care providers, suppliers and related entities. -- Registration and background checks of billing agencies and individuals to decrease dishonest billing practices and exclude individuals who've submitted false or fraudulent claims. -- Expanded access to a health care integrity and protection databank to quality control and peer review organizations. -- Liability of Medicare administrative contractors for inclusion of providers not permitted to receive Medicare payments. -- Community mental health centers to increase individual access and submit to stronger rules for reimbursement. -- Recovery of overpayments made to providers and reduced bankruptcy protection for fraudulent health care providers. -- Real-time data review for claims and payments to identify and stop waste, fraud and abuse. -- Stronger sanctions for fraudulent use of Medicare or Medicaid beneficiary IDs. -- A study to be conducted on universal product numbers for items and services reimbursed under Medicare that may contribute to fraud and abuse. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday's discussion brings the nation "closer than ever to guaranteeing affordable health care to America’s middle class and small businesses, lowering costs and strengthening Medicare for seniors, holding insurance companies accountable, and reducing our deficit. The three House committee chairmen with jurisdiction on health care praised the president's plan as "moving in the right direction." "It incorporates key ideas passed by the House and Senate and appears to respond to concerns raised by many House lawmakers. We look forward to reviewing his plan in more detail," said Reps. Charles Rangel of New York, Henry Waxman and George Miller, both of California. But Republicans say none of their big-ticket items are included. "This week's summit clearly has all the makings of a Democratic infomercial for continuing on a partisan course that relies on more backroom deals and parliamentary tricks to circumvent the will of the American people and jam through a massive government takeover of health care," said House Minority Leader John Boehner. Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., said he'd prefer a piecemeal approach that skips the president's most expensive ideas. "We can't swallow the apple whole, which is what the majority's recent bills have attempted to do. We have to chew on it bite by bite. Since most changes in health care reform don't start for four years -- even though new taxes will start right away -- we can beat the time by doing significant piece after significant piece," he said. Other Democrats are hitting the president from the flip side. Rep. Anthony Weiner of New York said the proposal still contains no public option, which liberal lawmakers prefer. Rep. Joe Courtney, D-Conn., said he's pleased the president is attempting to bridge the partisan divide, but the White House really should have dropped the Senate plan for on an excise tax on insurers providing high-value "Cadillac plans" for high-risk workers. The president's proposal raises the exemption for families with plans worth $27,500 or more, higher than the $23,000 in the Senate plan. "While the proposal reflects significant progress, I continue to believe that the excise tax issue should be set aside and studied rather than imposing a tax eight years in the future. Delaying the tax by nearly a decade and hoping that it doesn't hurt working families is like throwing a dart in the dark," Courtney said. "I would respectfully argue that this entire issue be set aside and studied rather than imposing a tax eight years in the future." foxnews.com