The Dean of Harvard Medical School just gave the Obama health care plan a “failing grade,” saying it will harm America’s health and finances, and hamper the medical innovation needed to save patients’ lives. Dean Jeffrey S. Flier writes,

In discussions with dozens of health-care leaders and economists, I find near unanimity of opinion that, whatever its shape, the final legislation that will emerge from Congress will markedly accelerate national health-care spending rather than restrain it. Likewise, nearly all agree that the…

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The healthcare “reform” bill backed by Obama “would reduce senior care,” and “could jeopardize access to care for millions,” report healthcare experts at the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The bill also “increases medical costs” through inflation, increasing health-care costs to 21.1 percent of GDP by 2019.

The House of Representatives recently passed the bill by a vote of 220 to 215.

According to the federal experts, the bill would likely either cost much more than projected, or result in some “hospitals and nursing homes” deciding to ”stop taking Medicare…

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With much of the health care reform debate still focused on the wisdom of including a government-run, “public” health insurance “option,” too many opponents are neglecting a far more insidious feature of the Democratic proposals:  the mandatory purchase requirement.  Under each of the bills moving through Congress, every person living in the United States would be required by law to have health insurance.  And, if your employer doesn’t provide you with it, you’ve got to buy it yourself or pay…

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With the House version stacked bigger than Dolly Parton at about 2,000 pages, anybody who says they know for certain is lying. It’s not just the verbiage but how it will be interpreted in the years to come. Still, there’s more than enough to be alarmed enough to want to kill the bills off.
“Rather than overwhelm you with arcane details of each bill,” writes Robert Bidinotti in an engaging and highly annotated essay, “it is more important that you understand in…

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The Wall Street Journal calls the House version of President Obama’s health care plan “the worst bill ever,” noting that it will lead to “epic new spending and taxes, pricier insurance, rationed care, dishonest accounting,” and other problems.

At the Atlantic, Megan McArdle, who voted for Obama, explains how ObamaCare will cost much more than promised — at least $150 billion more.  That’s true even if promised cuts to Medicare included in ObamaCare actually take place — but as McArdle notes, even…

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Everything you need to know, right here. And the best part is, it’s only 1,990 pages long! Print it out and read it during a coffee break.

Seriously, with a document this long do you think anyone really knows what’s in it? Doesn’t that thought spook you?

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In the Washington Post, Robert J. Samuelson explains in the “Public Plan Mirage” how the so-called “public option” contained in congressional health-care reform bills is just a gimmick: “It pretends to control costs and improve access to quality care when it doesn’t.” Steve Chapman wrote earlier about the “‘Public Option’ Health Care Scam.”

In other news, a study by PriceWaterhouseCoopers found that the provisions in the Senate health care “reform” bill sponsored by Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) would add $1,700 a year…

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Health-care “reform” always costs more than predicted, as ObamaCare provisions have at the state level.  So the claim that the new, cheaper version of President Obama’s health care plan will cost only $829 billion, while not increasing the deficit, should be taken with a grain of salt.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid admitted that the actual cost will be more like $2 trillion, and health-care experts have given it a similar price tag of more than $2 trillion.

The reason for the…

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Detractors of capitalism decry that it caters to special interests. The opposite is actually true. Just look at what’s happened in the last year.

Most of Wall Street came to government asking for a bailout when the government-created housing bubble popped.

The Big Three automakers also went to Washington for largesse when their customers came to prefer Toyotas and Hondas.

Health insurance companies stand to make a killing if Obamacare passes.

T. Boone Pickens and Al Gore would make millions from environmental legislation.

Ludwig von…

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When the Senate Finance Committee votes on President Obama’s health care plan, it won’t even have the text of the bill in existence.  It will just be voting on a summary of what the bill will supposedly contain. Senate Democrats voted down Republican proposals that the bill’s text be made available to Senators and the public 72 hours before the vote.

And the bill itself is likely to be changed by Senate leaders at the last minute, right before the Senate…

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Earlier, ACORN was caught in a scandal, promoting child prostitution. Both Houses of Congress voted to cut off federal funds to ACORN.  Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and other ACORN supporters argued that this was an unconstitutional bill of attainder.

Hans Von Spakovsky, a legal scholar at the Heritage Foundation, explains why it is perfectly constitutional to cut off funds to ACORN, under controlling Supreme Court precedent.

ACORN receives taxpayer money despite a long history of financial fraud, vote fraud, and tax evasion.

Mickey Kaus, a Democrat,…

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Time magazine informs us

Pandemic diseases have a way of revealing our vulnerabilities in quick order. Already we have been humbled by the virus’s exploitation of our fragmented health-care system, as families without insurance overwhelm emergency rooms, schools flounder without nurses, and people without a sick-leave option choose between going to work with a raging fever or getting fired. At the University of Washington, some 2,000 students have reported having H1N1 symptoms. At Emory University in Atlanta, sick kids are relocated…

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Obama’s health care plan uses imaginary savings to finance massive new spending. His claim that it will not increase the deficit is based on the notion that he can squeeze $2 trillion in savings out of the current health care system to finance his plan’s huge costs.

Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, who once practiced medicine, points out in his column that these savings aren’t real, and that politicians falsely promise to pay for new programs through imaginary savings all the time:

“Obama said…

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A new study published in the journal Health Affairs calls into question claims by congressional Democrats and President Obama that mandatory coverage of preventive care services in public and private health insurance programs will lead to substantial cost savings.  The study looks specifically at diabetes care, an expensive to treat chronic condition, the worst side-effects of which can often be mitigated by early intervention and more coordinated care. It is often assumed that more and better preventive care could substantially lower…

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You just can’t trust President Obama’s claims about his health-care plan. He keeps on lying even after he is caught lying and his lies have become obvious.

The Congressional Research Service and the Washington Examiner say that illegal aliens WILL be covered by ObamaCare — contrary to what Obama claims.

Factcheck.org and the Associated Press’s Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar earlier reported that abortions would be covered by ObamaCare — contrary to what Obama claims.

Fact-checkers have repeatedly caught Obama lying about health-care.

But when Obama denied that his health-care…

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More legal experts are questioning the constitutionality of ObamaCare.  In today’s Washington Post, two former Justice Department lawyers, David Rivkin and Lee Casey, argue that a central provision of Obama’s health-care plan – the “individual mandate” — is unconstitutional, and beyond Congress’s powers under the Constitution, such as its powers to tax and regulate interstate commerce.

Earlier, other legal experts and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights criticized major provisions of ObamaCare, such as its affirmative-action and racial preferences, and its intrusive regulation of…

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That is if you find the usual crowd of holier than thou, environment-angelical, yuppie-types slightly annoying to navigate through while you purchase your organic produce and cage-free eggs. The aisles might just be a little less crowded since the Wall Street Journal published CEO, John Mackey’s op-ed on health care reform on 8/12.

“While we clearly need health-care reform, the last thing our country needs is a massive new health-care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new unfunded…

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The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights says Obama’s health-care plan is racially discriminatory. The House health-care bill backed by Obama is filled with “sections that factor in race when awarding billions in contracts, scholarships and grants” and give “preferential treatment to minority students for scholarships.” Taxpayers of all races will end up paying more because of these arbitrary racial preferences. The Civil Rights Commission has concluded that this racial discrimination is unjustified, and that it will neither “reduce health care disparities…

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In “Why Obamacare Is Sinking,” Charles Krauthammer argues that President Obama’s reliance on rhetoric is finally beginning to fail because “you can’t fake it in legislation.”

Only if the true impacts were made clear would legislation somehow force reality.  That day vanished long ago when the courts authorized Congress to delegate open-ended regulatory powers to some executive branch agency.  Today, regulatory laws are long on rhetoric (living wage, anti-discrimination, clean air bills) and vague.  The realities of the complex and costly tradeoffs…

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