• Newt Gingrich,  Obamacare,  President 2012

    President 2012: Newt Gingrich, Paul Ryan and Medicare Reforms

    Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

    Former Speaker Newt Gingrich is out before he was ever in the 2012 Presidential race with his criticism of Rep. Paul Ryan’s Medicare reform plan.

    This morning Republicans are just beginning to assess the damage that former House Speaker and current presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has done to the GOP budget plan currently before Congress.  On “Meet the Press” Sunday, Gingrich denounced House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan’s plan to restructure Medicare, saying, “I don’t think right-wing social engineering is any more desirable than left-wing social engineering.  I don’t think imposing radical change from the right or the left is a very good way for a free society to operate.”

    On his radio program Monday morning, former Education Secretary Bill Bennett, who knows Gingrich well but is also close to Ryan, reacted angrily to Gingrich’s remarks.  Referring to Ryan’s Medicare plan as “right-wing social engineering” is, Bennett said, “an unforgivable mistake, in my judgment.”  Bennett went on to say that Gingrich “has taken himself out of serious consideration for the [2012] race.”

    Yeah, I would say Newt is toast for his hypocrisy alone on ObamaCare.

    The individual mandate is unconstitutional and is at the heart of ObamaCare. Newt understand this and in efforts to stand out from the GOP Presidential crowd has shot himself in the foot.

    Say good night, Gracie.

    Here is today’s video of Gingrich trying to climb back after his Meet the Press performance yesterday.

  • Obamacare

    ObamaCare Poll Watch: One Year Later 59% Continue to Oppose

    On the one year anniversary of its signing, Americans continue to oppose President Obama’s health care reform legislation.

    One year after President Barack Obama signed the health care reform bill into law, a new national poll indicates that attitudes toward the plan have not budged.

    According to a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Wednesday, on the one year anniversary of the signing of the law, a majority continue to oppose the measure, but some of the opposition is from Americans who think the law is not liberal enough.

    Thirty-seven percent of Americans support the measure, with 59 percent opposed. That’s basically unchanged from last March, when 39 percent supported the law and 59 percent opposed the measure.

    “It’s worth remembering that opposition to the bill came from both the left and the right last year, and that has not changed either,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. “In 2010, about a quarter of the health care bill’s opponents disliked the bill because it was not liberal enough – the same as today. That works out to 13 percent of all Americans who oppose the bill because it did not go far enough. Forty-three percent oppose it because it was too liberal.”

    The passage of health care reform was seen as the signature domestic achievement of the president’s first two years in office. The law was a major issue in the midterm elections and with many Republicans continuing to push to either repeal or defund the plan, health care will most likely remain a very important issue in the 2012 election.

    There are two ways to look at the poll’s overall numbers. One is that 59 percent oppose the law. The second is that if you add the 13 percent who oppose the law because it’s not liberal enough to the 37 percent that support the law, you come up with 50 percent of the American people who disagree with the Republican leadership on the issue. The GOP gained control of the House and many state houses and legislatures in the November election on the basis, many experts said, of their strong opposition to what they said was “government controlled health care.”

    In what was seen as a largely symbolic move, the GOP controlled House voted earlier this year to repeal the law. At the same time, a number of legal cases that aim to overturn the measure are advancing through the federal court system.

    With all this in mind, the poll continues to indicate a partisan divide, but also a gender gap among people who oppose the health care law.

    Just repeal this bad legislation before its taxes and Medicare cuts come into full force in 2014. Not only will ObamaCare bankrupt state governments, but will also hurt employment prospects for millions.

  • Obamacare,  Polling

    Poll Watch: Wide Disparity in Health Coverage Persists Across American Metropolitan Areas

    According to the latest Gallup poll. California and Texas have the highest rates of uninsured residents.

    Close to half of adults (46.1%) living in McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, Texas, had no healthcare coverage last year — nearly three times the national average — and the highest percentage across the 188 U.S. metropolitan areas that Gallup and Healthways surveyed. Texas and California account for 9 of the 10 metro areas with the highest rates of uninsured residents. The four metro areas with the lowest rates of uninsured were in Massachusetts, each with about 1 in 20 adults lacking coverage.

    And, the uninsured rates are the highest in largely Hispanic metropolitan areas.

    The 10 metro areas with the highest uninsured rates have a significantly higher Hispanic population than the 10 metro areas with the lowest percentage of uninsured adults. On average, 44.5% of residents surveyed in the 10 metro areas with the highest rates of uninsured are of Hispanic or Latino origin according to U.S. Census Bureau data from 2009. This compares with an average of 7.1% in the 10 metro areas with the lowest percent uninsured.

    In McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, Texas, where nearly half the population is uninsured, 89.8% of residents are Hispanic. The 46.1% who were uninsured in that metro area is close to the national average of 38.9% of Hispanics who were uninsured in 2010.

    Here is the chart:

    So, what does this mean?

    One year after the ObamaCare law passed, there continues large numbers of uninsured residents. Now, whether these are illegal immigrants of Hispanic origin is unclear. But, I suspect so, since their employers would not be providing them the opportunity to have insurance, nor would they qualify for Medicaid (while their American born children would.)

    The bottom line from Gallup:

    As the new healthcare law reaches the one-year mark, Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index data continue to find significant differences in coverage across the United States. There has also been no change, so far, in the percentage of uninsured adults at the national level, with 16.3% lacking healthcare in February of this year. The government, however, has only implemented certain parts of the law since it passage in March 2010 the bulk of the legislation, including the individual mandate, does not go into effect until 2014.

    Although the Obama administration continues to implement the law on course, it faces ongoing legal and political challenges from the states and Republican lawmakers. And a year later, the law still lacks strong public backing. Americans remain divided in their support for the law and more people believe the new healthcare reform law will worsen rather than improve medical care in the United States.

  • Mitch Daniels,  Obamacare,  President 2012,  Sarah Palin

    President 2012: Mitch Daniels Lays ObamaCare on the Presidential Table

    Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels

    Mitch Daniels is going right after President Obama and his hallmark ObamaCare legislation in a WSJ piece today.

    Unless you’re in favor of a fully nationalized health-care system, the president’s health-care reform law is a massive mistake. It will amplify all the big drivers of overconsumption and excessive pricing: “Why not, it’s free?” reimbursement; “The more I do, the more I get” provider payment; and all the defensive medicine the trial bar’s ingenuity can generate.

    All claims made for it were false. It will add trillions to the federal deficit. It will lead to a de facto government takeover of health care faster than most people realize, and as millions of Americans are added to the Medicaid rolls and millions more employees (including, watch for this, workers of bankrupt state governments) are dumped into the new exchanges.

    Many of us governors are hoping for either a judicial or legislative rescue from this impending disaster, and recent court decisions suggest there’s a chance of that. But we can’t count on a miracle—that’s only permitted in Washington policy making. We have no choice but to prepare for the very real possibility that the law takes effect in 2014.

    For state governments, the bill presents huge new costs, as we are required to enroll 15 million to 20 million more people in our Medicaid systems. In Indiana, our independent actuaries have pegged the price to state taxpayers at $2.6 billion to $3 billion over the next 10 years. This is a huge burden for our state, and yet another incremental expenditure the law’s authors declined to account for truthfully.

    Perhaps worse, the law expects to conscript the states as its agents in its takeover of health care. It assumes that we will set up and operate its new insurance “exchanges” for it, using our current welfare apparatuses to do the numbingly complex work of figuring out who is eligible for its subsidies, how much each person or family is eligible for, redetermining this eligibility regularly, and more. Then, we are supposed to oversee all the insurance plans in the exchanges for compliance with Washington’s dictates about terms and prices.

    Read it all.

    Republican Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels makes the case on why ObamaCare SHOULD be repealed, but if it is NOT then how to CHANGE it. Today’s piece is a blueprint to run for the Presidency in 2012.

    Daniels has chosen an issue that President Obama will have to defend as well as GOP Presidential front-runner Mitt Romney. It is a two-fer.

    All the Republican candidates considering a White House bid in the next two years have sought to distinguish themselves from challengers when it comes to healthcare reform. The issue is expected to be one of the defining ones in the Republican presidential primary.

    It’s understood that the candidates will be unanimous in calling for the law’s repeal, but Daniels wrote about the possibility it might be sustained, and laid out a game plan to undercut the law short of its full repeal.

    Next, Mitch goes to CPAC and goes into the conservative arena – one which Sarah Palin has for five years avoided.

  • Barack Obama,  Day By Day,  Obamacare

    Day By Day February 4, 2011 – True Colors

    Day By Day by Chris Muir

    ObamaCare will be ultimately held as unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court.

    The ONLY question is whether President Obama will be replaced by a new President who will sign the repeal legislation prior to the SCOTUS ruling.

    I say it will be close, especially when the GOP nominates a good candidate for 2012 who takes the ObamaCare issue directly to the presidential campaign.

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    The Day By Day Archive

  • Obamacare

    Shocker: 94% of House Physicians Voted for Repeal of Obamacare



    Not really shocking to me.

    What do doctors think of Obamacare? One good gauge is the views of doctors serving in the House of Representatives.  Of the 16 doctors currently serving in the House — perhaps an all-time high — all but one voted for Obamacare’s repeal.

    Why?

    Maybe this survery gives us a clue.

    Or, maybe it is due to the fact that Obamacare would effectively ban doctors from owning hospitals and from expanding those that they already own.

    Or perhaps doctors simply oppose Obamacare for the same reasons that so many other Americans do: because it would increase spending, debt, health costs, and federal power, while reducing liberty.

  • Obamacare

    ObamaCare: All Senate Republicans Ready To Repeal Obama Health Care Reform Law

    drobama5116834 ObamaCare Poll Watch: 75 Per Cent Want Health Care Law Changed

    Today, a Florida federal judge ruled that ObamaCare was unconstitutional and held that for the entire law, not just the individual mandate.

    Now, it appears that every Republican Senator is prepared to vote to repeal ObamaCare.

    Every Republican in the Senate now appears ready to revoke President Obama’s signature health care law. This comes as a federal judge, in Florida, strikes down key parts of the law as unconstitutional.

    The GOP holds 47 seats in the Senate.

    According to Sen. Jim DeMint’s office, 45 of them will co-sponsor the South Carolina Republican’s legislation – introduced last week – to fully repeal the health law. Republicans are “standing with the American people who are demanding we repeal this government takeover of health care,” DeMint said at the time.

    DeMint’s office told CNN it did not yet have confirmation that Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran would sign on. But CNN contacted Cochran’s office and confirmed that he would.

    Of course, President Obama would more than likely veto the repeal legislation. But, all those Democratic Senators up for re-election in 2012 would have to choose between supporting the President of their party or voting for repeal and saving their Senate careers.

    A win-win for the GOP.

    ObamaCare’s repeal is almost a certainty now – as I predicted even before passage.

  • Obamacare

    ObamaCare: House Votes to Repeal Obama Health Care Law

    In a bipartisan vote, the GOP controlled House voted to repeal the Obama Health Care Reform Law.

    House Republicans passed a bill to repeal President Barack Obama’s health care plan Wednesday, taking their first major step toward rolling back the massive overhaul that has dominated the American political landscape for almost two years.

    The vote was 245 to 189, and unanimous GOP support gave the vote the same partisan feel of the March vote to pass the law, underscoring once again the hardened political lines of the health care debate. Only three Democrats backed the repeal, a smaller number than Republicans had once predicted.

    But, hey, there are three more Democrats who voted for repeal than there were Republicans who voted for the law. There were NO Republicans who voted for the adoption of ObamaCare.

    Next, the bill will head to the U.S. Senate, where Democrat Senate Majority Leader Nevada Senator Harry Reid has vowed to not take up the bill. Even if the bill is considered and approved in the U.S. Senate, it is an absolute certainty that President Obama will veto the measure.

    The American people voted to replace the majority Congressional Democrats last November because in part because of ObamaCare. The Democratic Party and President Obama OWN it.

    ObamaCare will likely NEVER progress any further and WILL be repealed when the GOP regains the White House in either 2012 or 2016.

  • Obamacare

    ObamaCare: American Physicians Fear Obama’s Healthcare Reform


    Thomson Reuters National Physicians Survey

    United States physicians are not too happy or optimistic regarding ObamaCare.

    Nearly two-thirds of U.S. doctors surveyed fear healthcare reform could worsen care for patients, by flooding their offices and hurting income, according to a Thomson Reuters survey released Tuesday.

    The survey of more than 2,900 doctors found many predict the legislation will force them to work harder for less money.

    “When asked about the quality of healthcare in the U.S. over the next five years, 65 percent of the doctors believed it would deteriorate with only 18 percent predicting it would improve,” Thomson Reuters, parent company of Reuters, said in a statement.

    The U.S. House of Representatives began debate Tuesday on efforts to repeal President Barack Obama’s overhaul of the U.S. healthcare industry.

    Repeal of the bill is likely to fail in the Senate.

    A five page executive summary of the survey is here (pdf).

    Of course, American physicians see the problems associated with ObamaCare since they will be on the front lines.

    ObamaCare is a loser for the physicans and a loser for the quality of American health care – the doctors know. ObamaCare is a socialistic, redistributionist scheme that will bankrupt America unless there is medical care rationing.

    The House and Senate should vote for repeal.

  • Obamacare

    ObamaCare: Half of All Americans Under 65 Have Pre-Existing Conditions

    President Obama and Democrats are all smiles with passage of ObamaCare legislation

    Well, the debate gets back to who will pay for American’s health care -as the GOP House moves to repeal ObamaCare.

    As many as 129 million Americans under age 65 have medical problems that are red flags for health insurers, according to an analysis that marks the government’s first attempt to quantify the number of people at risk of being rejected by insurance companies or paying more for coverage.

    The secretary of health and human services released the study on Tuesday, hours before the House plans to begin considering a Republican bill that would repeal the new law to overhaul the health-care system.

    A vote is expected on Wednesday. But while Republicans may muscle through a repeal bill in the House, its prospects are slimmer in the Senate, where Democrats andindependents will enjoy a 53-47 majority.

    The new report is part of the Obama administration’s salesmanship to convince the public of the advantages of the law, which contains insurance protections for people with preexisting medical conditions.

    Republicans immediately disparaged the analysis as “public relations.” An insurance industry spokesman acknowledged that sick people can have trouble buying insurance on their own but said the analysis overstates the problem.

    Regardless, when the true costs of ObamaCare are known to the economy, Americans will support repeal and replacement.

    If the economy remains mired with high unemplpyment because employers will not add workers due to the fear of increasing health care costs for their newly hired emplpyees, voters will say good bye to Obama and his health care reform plan in 2012.