Despite his pretense at maybe being interested in medical malpractice related tort reform, Obama and his buddies on the left have done absolutely nothing to make it a real part of any "reforms" they have proposed, either in the past, or now as part of "Obamacare".

Why?  Well, Mark Tapscott has some thoughts on that in his column today:

What caught my eye...concerns a little known fact about a long-forgotten class-action lawsuit filed in 1994 by three young trial lawyers, one of whom just happens to be sitting in the Oval Office today as president. The case was Selma S. Buycks-Roberson v. Citibank Federal Savings Bank.

Obama and his colleagues claimed in the suit that Citibank had had rejected loan applications by the plaintiffs simply because they were black, or because they lived in predominantly black neighborhoods. In short, the suit was one of thousands filed during the 1990s claiming racial bigotry, not poor credit histories, explained high rejection rates among minorities applying for mortgages.

Whatever you think on that issue, here's what struck me: After four years of haggling, Citibank settled with Buyck, a Chicago woman, out of court.  She received $60,000. Obama and the other lawyers on the plaintiff side got $950,000.

Democrat Senate Finance Chairm Max Baucus released his committee's version of health care "reform" a few days ago, but in the end it pleases pretty much no one.

Liberals don't care for it because it doesn't openly ram a government run system through in the light of day.   I suppose they don't like the idea of having to try and hide what they're really up to?

As for conservatives, the reasons to oppose it are a good bit more obvious...

TheWSJ does a good job of suming it up:

To sum up, the Baucus-Obama plan would increase the cost of insurance and then force people to buy it, requiring subsidies. Those subsidies would be paid for by taxes that make health care and thus insurance even more expensive, requiring even more subsidies and still higher taxes. It's a recipe to ruin health care and bankrupt the country, and that's even before liberal Democrats see Mr. Baucus and raise him, and then attempt to ram it all through the Senate.

And therein lies the primary problem of any Republicans getting on board at this point with a "bi-partisan" proposal.  Before it's over, a committee proposal has to get through the full Senate...and then it will inevitably be made even worse in a conference committee with the liberals from the House of Representatives.  Which means that the final product would look a whole lot closer to the current House version than anything most Americans would prefer to see become law.  read more »

Illegal Immigration watchdog-in-Congress Tom Tancredo has an op-ed piece out today about the hubbub over Joe Wilson, and he makes an important point about all of the loopholes that were (and still are) in the various health care bills, specifically when it comes to illegal aliens.

Conservatives tried to bring these facts to the forefront of the healthcare debate, but the media and the Democrats simply ignored them or repeated their lie that illegal aliens would not receive government funded healthcare.

But Joe Wilson forced them to face the facts.  On Friday night, Obama announced that he wanted to use the SAVE program and bar illegals from the Health Insurance Exchange.   

This does not mean Obama was telling the truth when Joe called him a liar.  On the contrary, it is an admission that before Joe called out Obama illegals were eligible. ...

In other words, if Obama wasn't "lying", then why the hurry to make that change in the bill?

Exactly.

The latest on Obamacare... 

The Wall Street Journal looks at the implications of Obamacare on labor unions...as in it will amount to one great big early Christmas present with all sorts of goodies, (like forced unionization of some health care workers for example).  Just another example of the type of garbage one can usually expect to be buried in any bill that has "comprehensive" in the title.

For years, the "number" of people in America who don't have health insurance has been a moving target.  "Moving" in the sense that liberals keep jacking up the number in order to condition the public to believe that there's a "crisis" and the we simply must do something, ANYTHING, now...regardless of what liberties we give away in the process.

Well, either Obama accidentally ingested some low grade truth serum or perhaps his teleprompter sabotaged him, but during his big health care speech to Congress he stated that there are thirty million uninsured in America...as opposed to the more recent favorite number, forty-six million.

And oops moment?

Who knows?  But what we do know is as recently as several weeks ago, the number was forty-six million.  Today it's thirty million.  And Obamacare's not even law yet!

Just imagine how many more Americans we can get insured if we don't pass this bill.

Actually, some are suggesting that it's a conscious attempt by Obama to take the issue of insuring illegal immigrants off the table...as in, if the number's smaller, people are less likely to think he's including them in any future coverage.

Which explains why they've been so prickly about responding to the "Obamacare covers illegal aliens" charge...which probably also means they've got some polling that tells them that's killing the bill with moderate and conservative Democrats.  read more »

As if Americans didn't have enough reasons already to oppose, or at least be suspicious of, this hits just keep on coming.  The latest is a deeper look taken at the pending Democrat plans by Mark Mix over at the Wall Street Journal.

It turns out that the thousand plus pages have been hiding early Christmas presents to the Democrat's buddies in the unions, ranging from bailouts of their own health care plans to the forced unionization of American health care workers.

From the article:

The Senate version opens the door to implement forced unionization schemes pursued by former Govs. Rod Blagojevich of Illinois in 2005 and Gray Davis of California in 1999. Both men repaid tremendous political debts to Andy Stern and his Service Employees International Union (SEIU) by reclassifying state-reimbursed in-home health-care (and child-care) contractors as state employees—and forcing them to pay union dues.

Following this playbook, the Senate bill creates a "personal care attendants workforce advisory panel" that will likely impose union affiliation to qualify for a newly created "community living assistance services and support (class)" reimbursement plan.

The current House version of ObamaCare (H.R. 3200) goes much further. Section 225(A) grants Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius tremendous discretionary authority to regulate health-care workers "under the public health insurance option." Monopoly bargaining and compulsory union dues may quickly become a required standard resulting in potentially hundreds of thousands of doctors and nurses across the country being forced into unions.

Here's a look at the latest results of our "Obamacare" poll.

We've been asking people what they think the result will be of the push for national health care "reform".  The results so far...

• Full blown nationalized/socialized "Obamacare" will become law:  15%
• A "compromise" allowing continued free-market insurance along with a "public option" run by the government:
• 11%
• A compromise that places new, heavy regulations on free-market plans, but no "public option": 18%
• Real reform allowing portability, purchase across state lines, expanded choices and maybe some tort reform: 9%
• No bill at all, (Obama's "waterloo"): 48%

What's your opinion?   Click here and take our poll.

You can always tell when a politician has an election coming up that they're a little worried about.  They start to talk like this:

Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., announced Wednesday that she would not support a bill that included a public option because she believed it would be too expensive.

Lincoln told the Elder Law Task Force at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences that a public option would create another entitlement program.

"And we can't afford that right now as a nation," she said.

I guess the only surprise is that it took her this long (and a month of being back home) to come to that conclussion.  And I'm sure that the fact that she's up for re-election next year in a state the didn't go blue even with Obama at the top of the ticket has nothing to do with it.

But we'll take what we can get.

Don't get too secure though, keep speaking out.  Especially if you live in Arkansas.

Click here to contact your members of Congress on the health care issue.

Imagecolumn: 

It’s time for some honesty in the current debate over the CIA’s interrogation methods of terrorists.  The argument isn’t really over whether we were too harsh, given that even Obama has said we would continue turning terrorists over to other governments, knowing full well that those guys play rougher than we do.

It’s all about politics.

Soon after his inauguration as President, Obama stated that he didn’t want to re-open an investigation into CIA interrogations of terrorists because he knew that it would become a tremendous, political distraction – which is exactly why he’s changed his mind.

Normally, the last thing a guy with Obama’s messianic ambition would want is for all of Washington to become sidetracked with such a divisive issue, much less one that exposes the political weaknesses of his own party.

For years, national security, or “keeping the country safe”, has been one of the few issues where polls have fairly consistently shown Republicans with an edge over Democrats, and it’s an issue that would be highlighted by a divisive over how the CIA went about its business in the aftermath of September 11th.

In such a debate, the burden of proof (politically) would be with CIA opponents, a point underlined even further by the recent release of the Inspector General’s report, which demonstrated that “how” the CIA did its thing provided valuable intelligence on the Al Qaeda network.  Not the least of which was what amounted to 9-11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s “rolodex” of terrorist contacts.  All in all, pretty useful information.

So what’s changed Obama’s mind about a new investigation?  Two words: health care.  Specifically, the fact that the liberal ambition of a single-payer, government run program is politically dead – and its potential forerunner, the proposed “public option”, is dying due to massive grassroots opposition among Republicans, conservatives, moderates, independents and even some Democrats.

The more Obama and the nation have focused on his health care reform plans, the more massive the opposition has become, the lower his approval ratings have gone and the greater his need for a distraction.

Over half the country opposes his health care plan, and those with “strong” feelings one way or another oppose it by two to one.  And Obama’s own public approval numbers just hit a new low of fifty percent in the latest Gallup poll, the third fastest drop in presidential approval in the poll’s history.

Even political handicapper Charlie Cook, (who usually sees donkey’s in his sleep), admitted in a recent political report that “the situation this summer has slipped completely out of control for President Obama and Congressional Democrats”.

Despite accusations to the contrary, the grassroots opposition has been just that, “grassroots”.  Its mere size and intensity underlines the fact that no Republican conspiracy is driving this train.  It’s too big, and if they were this capable where the heck were they last November?

And isn’t Obama supposed to be the guy with the massive grassroots structure, capable of virtual push-button organizing?  The failure to effectively counterpunch says that a lot of his supporters aren’t buying what he’s selling, which indicates not many of them knew what he was selling to begin with.  They just knew he wasn’t they guy that they had been conditioned to hate.

Which brings us back to Obama’s decision to let Attorney General Eric Holder start investigating the CIA.

Obama figures that he’s already won one race against George Bush, (considering the fact that he “wasn’t Bush” was the primary reason he won), so why not re-open the Bush files with all that stuff that got the people who supported him so worked up to begin with and get them reenergized?

In other words, it’s time to re-shuffle the deck.

He figures that in the current political dynamic health care will be a bust, so he has to change it and then try to salvage health care reform in the new environment.  And then hope that he can use the next year to deal with the political fallout before the 2010 elections.

In the end, Democrats will probably come to regret going after CIA officers doing their jobs defending Americans.  Politically it leaves them open to the charge of being weak on national security, not to mention the risks to our country’s ability to gather valuable intelligence, (a concern that reportedly has new CIA Director Leon Panetta on the verge of quitting after just half a year on the job).

It’s a risky gamble.  There’s a reason why “24” has been one of the most popular shows on TV for eight years.

But it’s a gamble Obama’s willing to take in order to re-shuffle the deck.
 

Our most recent poll asked, "What do you think will be the results of the push for national health care reform?"

The results?  Well, it seems that conservatives are feeling a little optimistic.

Here's the breakdown:

• * Full blown nationalized/socialized "Obamacare" will become law: 14%
•  
• * A "compromise" allowing continued free-market insurance along with a "public option" run by the government: 11%
•  
• * A compromise that places new, heavy regulations on free-market plans, but no "public option": 17%
•  
• * Real reform allowing portability, purchase across state lines, expanded choices and maybe some tort reform: 9%
•  
• * No bill at all, (Obama's "waterloo"): 49%

If you haven't done so yet, click here and join our campaign to Stop Obamacare and say "NO" to socialized medicine.  Contact your members of Congress.  Post a link to it on Twitter or Facebook.  Put our widget on your websites if you have any.

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