Health Wars (9/1/09)

Let's take a breather from the town hall battle front and get back in touch with our inner wonk, shall we?

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'roided up preventative care - one of Red Barry's theoretical cost-slashing health care panaceas, or, as I prefer to describe it, "running to the doctor all the time - doesn't "bend the cost curve," but gooses it with a Liquid Heat chaser:

Preventive services for the chronically ill may reduce health-care costs, but they are unlikely to generate the kind of fantastic savings that President Obama and other Democrats have said could help pay for an overhaul of the nation’s health system, according to a study being published Tuesday.

Using data from long-standing clinical trials, researchers projected the cost of caring for people with Type 2 diabetes as they progress from diagnosis to various complications and death. Enrolling federally-insured patients in a simple but aggressive program to control the disease would cost the government $1,024 per person per year — money that largely would be recovered after 25 years through lower spending on dialysis, kidney transplants, amputations and other forms of treatment, the study found.

However, except for the youngest diabetics, the additional services would add to overall health spending, not decrease it, the study shows.

What's not to understand?  You undertake ridicuously expensive preventative measures to try and score a nominal savings on the back end.  The latter may or may not pan out, but the former are guaranteed.  So the only question isn't whether the overall cost will skyrocket, but by how much.  Or, in Hogzillian, we've got to Roman-orgy-ize trillions of bucks in order to cut health care expenditures.  And the White House wonders why his ersatzly "soaring oratory" endlessly recycling his moldering BSing points has become the butt of jokes?

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Meanwhile, back on the Hill, Dems flitter about randomly, trying to figure out what in the name of Barack, Gaia, and Teddy The Baptist they're going to do.

The #3 Obamunist in the House suggests precisely what Godbama has decreed he will never, EVER do - kick the public option can down the road:

The comeback for Democrats — if there is one — will begin in an all-important closed-door caucus meeting next week in the basement of the Capitol, where House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and her top lieutenants will try to undo the damage of the August recess and convince their wobbly members that a vote for health care reform will not cost them their jobs in 2010.

Leaders say their strategy is to convince members that nothing is set in stone and that they are more than open to negotiations. And they’re engaging in a softer sell, prioritizing health insurance reforms while pitching the public option as something that’s way, way down the road.

“We’re going to ask, ‘Where are you now? Is there something we need to add to get [you] to vote for this?’” said Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), who as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is charged with ensuring that the party’s most vulnerable members are reelected in 2010…

Clyburn, for his part, is advocating a “two step” approach in which the most widely supported health insurance reforms, like coverage for pre-existing conditions, go into effect immediately, while the public option is framed as a distant step — something that would go into effect in 2013, only after benchmarks and pilot programs are studied.

Clyburn has proposed setting up modest pilot programs for the public option in certain regions or states — an experimental way of seeing whether these health exchanges can actually work at the local level before they go nationwide.

Roughly translated, after seventy years of statist marination, the socialized medicine steak still isn't quite tenderized enough for the American palate to swallow, so let it soak four more years while we continue to chip, sandblast, and otherwise erode the stubborn foundation of health care freedom by enacting more interim measures that will drive up costs even faster, and then The Re-Chosen One can shove it down their throats in his second term.  Even if it always will taste like an old boot.

It is, in fact, the prudent thing to do: quietly braid the noose and unobtrusively slip it around the neck of the private health insurance market and tip-toe to the lever that opens the trap door and make a government health care monopoly a fait accompli.  Or, in other words, the frog in the boiling pot analogy.  If the public can see the national health care cramdown coming, as was the case fifteen years ago and is reprising itself now, the backdraft will be sulfuric.  If it drifts in like a fine mist, the people are enslaved without even realizing it's happening.  True, there's no "historic" bill-signing in the Rose Garden, complete with fireworks and cheerleaders and halleluliah choirs, but the deed would get done.  And that's probably the only way it ever will.

But that's not good enough for the Donk Poliburo.  Between their narcissism and their puerile impatience, they simply will not wait any longer to bask in the Jemimah glory of the crackdown they've lusted after their entire political careers.  Particularly now after being denied the cheery, adulatory throngs they considered to be their inherent right.

Not particularly practical for the immediate task of passing a maximum BarryCare bill that caused Blue Dogs' ears to bleed for the past month, but with the political pendulum well on its way to sweeping Republicans back into the majority, and with "pilot programs" certain to play out as disastrously as RomneyCare and DirigoChoice in Maine, the time for realizing their most cherished political ambition really is now.

So just how many swine is Crazy Nancy prepared to slaughter to hog-tie at least fifteen cerulian bow-wows?  And can Barney Fife's evil twin make those Azure Mutt sacrifices worthwhile?

Doesn't look like it from here:

Grassley, the GOP’s key negotiator, expressed similar determination, but made clear he doesn’t expect a public health care option sought by President Barack Obama to be in a final deal.

“I’m still hopeful, but I’m hopeful based on I think you’re talking about something a little less sweeping than what we talked about before,” Grassley told the AP in a telephone interview.

Grassley in the past has roundly criticized the public option, but went a step further Monday in saying the core group of senators agreed such a provision would not be in a bill.

“It’s pretty clear that’s something not on the table,” Grassley said. “It’s fair to say that not every one of the six is opposed to it, but they realize the reality of it.” …

“There are things that for months have been things I have said can’t be in a bill,” Grassley said. “There are some instructions from my caucus I have tried to take to the table: no public option, no rationing and tort reform.”

The thing to take from Grassley's comments is that there will be no Senate public option without reconciliation, for which it is doubtful Dirty Harry would have the votes,  Without the public option, House Blue Dogs who get, well, porked off to vote "yea" will be cementing the forfeiture of their seats next November for nothing, and be correspondingly less likely to roll those dice no matter how much bacon grease Crazy Nancy offers them in which to wallow naked.

Could whatever DID pass, if anything, be round-filed in the conference committee and Full Bore BarryCare be reimposed in its place, and then blitzkrieged through final passage in both houses?  I wouldn't put any act of jackbooted perfidy past the Donks, but after the exposure and resulting public furor of the past couple of months, this wouldn't be sneaking something past the sleeping sentries in the dead of night, but much more akin to a game of chicken in broad daylight.  The Pelosi/Reid axis would be game, but they'd have a paucity of BDs riding shotgun.

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Anybody care about another Obamedia poll that overstates The Golden Child's approval ratings by at least five percentage points and still shows them ten points underwater?  Do you think Barry O cares?  I doubt it, but he oughta anyway, if just for appearance's sake.

How about this RNC ad making a continued play for the geezer demographic?

Yeah, it's using the second gargantuan entitlement fixing to vaporize the economy beneath an astroidal bombardment of apocalyptic debt right behind Social Security as a fiscal deflector shield against gargantua #3 warming up in the wings.  But nothng can be done about the former without first stopping the latter, and the recognition that these are not your father's geezers is the most enterprisingly original thinking I can remember coming out of the GOP in recent memory.

Okay, the elderly are being stampeded into Republican arms like John McCain sent forty million evangelicals into those of George W. Bush in the 2000 GOP primaries.  It's either get out in front of them or get walloped unconscious by a fusillade of canes and walkers.  But given the paucity of Republican political acumen of recent vintage, even recognizing the obvious is a step forward.

Alright, then we're right back to the crapola:

Such exemplars of democracy, tolerence, and decency.  Makes me want to rent Tough Guys and watch Kirk Douglas kick those punks in the balls over and over and over.

And that's before I drop the cherry bomb atop the extremist sundae:

Request for Proposals

UHCAN Ohio is looking to engage in a short term contract with a person who has a background in working with faith communities in the Southwest Ohio area, primarily Cincinnati and its suburbs. The purpose of the contract is to engage faith community leaders to communicate with their congregations about the movement for national health care reform. We want to provide them with materials that will assist them to talk about the moral issues involved in the lack of health care for a large portion of our population, and the desire to do it during this great debate on health care in this country.

The health care reform work of UHCAN Ohio, and the coalition it staffs, Ohio Consumers for Health Coverage can be reviewed by going to www.ohioconsumersforhealth.org or www.uhcanohio.org

Deliverables:

1. Prepare a packet of materials with input from the OCHC leadership team that can be used by faith-based leaders and can be easily copied and distributed to faith leaders. Such materials are available from the Faithful Reform in Health Care web site, but may need to be supplemented with other materials and you may need to search further than the FRHC website. The packet should also be able to be posted on-line on the UHCAN Ohio and OCHC websites, with links to the appropriate original sites.

2. Reach out to forty faith congregations in the Cincinnati area and its suburbs, asking their faith leader to communicate to his/her congregation about federal health care reform in a religious/moral context. This will require face to face or at least individual phone conversations with pastors/leaders asking them to preach on the subject, or to carry out a discussion within the congregation, or to sign on to a letter to policymakers. We need a success rate of at least 33 percent. It will also involve providing them with the materials that will fit their situation.

In preparing a proposal keep in mind that because individual congregations respond to the instructions/directions they receive from their denominational leadership, this project will involve becoming familiar with the directives that have already been developed by regional or state offices of the various denominations and the various faith traditions, and probably conversations with key denominational staff to determine what is the most effective way to work within anyone denomination.

Time-Frame: End of August through October, frontloading the project so much of the contact initiation happens in late August, early to mid September.

In preparing a proposal please specify the number of hours and rate/hour required to carry out these deliverables. The contractor will be responsible for all expenses such as phone calls and mileage, so please build that into your rate. Expenses for copying materials will be borne by UHCAN Ohio.

Please submit a proposal to Kathleen Gmeiner, Ohio Consumers for Health Coverage Project Director, UHCAN Ohio, 404 S. Third St., Columbus, Ohio 43215. Questions may be directed to [redacted].

The proposal deadline is 5 PM Monday August 24, 2009.

Astroturfing churches.  I'd snarl something like, "Is NOTHING sacred to these people?" except of course that we know what they hold sacred: Godbama and his entire agenda.  Besides, false prophets love to invade the congregations of the brethren and lead the sheep astray.  I'd love to see those vipers and blind guides try that at EBC; either they'd leave transformed by the power of the blood of the Lamb, or they'd be duly warned of the fate of those who"cause[...] one of these little ones who believe in Me to sin."

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Finally, as a "palate cleanser," I think this vid will do just fine: