Free Republic

As haggling between House and Senate versions of national health care reform gets under way in Washington, Massachusetts residents may be feeling a bit of dejà vu. The insurance mandates and cost controls being negotiated on Capitol Hill are the same polarizing issues that echoed in Beacon Hill chambers three years ago. In 2006, then-Gov. Mitt Romney signed the nation's most ambitious and complex health reform initiative with the goal of providing universal health care coverage to all Massachusetts residents. Like the bill taking shape in Congress, the state's health legislation required all residents to obtain health insurance or face...

Obama Defends Self Against Black Critics WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama on Monday rebutted critics who say he isn't showing enough compassion toward black America, citing his health care effort as one example he says "will be hugely important" for blacks. Obama said another example is the billions of dollars in aid to states included in the economic stimulus bill, money that was used to save thousands of teachers, firefighters and police officers from losing their jobs. He said many of those workers are black. "So this notion, somehow, that because there wasn't a transformation overnight that we've been neglectful...

The Weekly Standard’s John McCormack reports tonight that Illinois Democrat Sen. Roland Burris is claiming credit for inserting a provision that may benefit ACORN. But it’s not just the ACORN angle that’s scandalous. It’s the race hustler shakedown. Why, oh, why do we need to be funding massive new federal bureaucracies to create separate “Offices of Minority Health” in six separate health care agencies:

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) gave his challenger in the 2008 presidential election a stiff review Sunday as President Barack Obama nears completion of his first year in office. "[Obama] said there would be a change in the climate in Washington," McCain said. "There's been a change. It's more partisan. It's more bitterly divided than it's been." (snip) "At least under 'Hillarycare' they tried seriously to negotiate with Republicans," McCain said."There's been -- there has been no effort that I know of that -- serious across-the-table negotiations, such as I have engaged in with Democrats and with other administrations. And that...

As the Congressional Budget Office explained: "A mandate requiring all individuals to purchase health insurance would be an unprecedented form of federal action. The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States." Yet, all of the House and Senate health-care bills being debated require Americans to either obtain or purchase expensive health insurance, estimated to cost up to $15,000 per year for a typical family, or pay substantial tax penalties for not doing so. The purpose of this compulsory contract, coupled with the arbitrary price ratios and...

WASHINGTON -- Bill Clinton yesterday rode in with an 11th-hour attempt to save the sputtering Senate health-care bill, as liberal backlash threatened to torpedo President Obama's top domestic priority. Clinton spoke out with the clock set to strike on Obama's self-imposed Christmas deadline for the Senate passing a bill. The White House aggressively took to TV to push back against liberal outrage -- while struggling, without success, to get the lone Democratic Senate holdout, Nebraska's Ben Nelson, on board. Clinton -- who saw his own attempt at a health-care overhaul crash on the shoals of Congress in 1994 -- wrote...

Democratic senators and congressmen have been trying to convince each other, particularly their more conservative colleagues, that they'll all be better off in the 2010 elections--and will avoid a repeat of their 1994 debacle--if they pass Obama-care. Bill Clinton, half of the central duo in the failed attempt to pass Hillarycare in 1994, recently addressed Senate Democrats and sang the party-line tune. Speaking to reporters afterward, Clinton said, "I think it is good politics to pass this and to pass it as soon as they can. .  .  . The worst thing to do is nothing." But the evidence cuts the other...

WASHINGTON – Invoking the memory of Edward M. Kennedy, Democrats united Saturday night to push historic health care legislation past a key Senate hurdle over the opposition of Republicans eager to inflict a punishing defeat on President Barack Obama. There was not a vote to spare. The 60-39 vote cleared the way for a bruising, full-scale debate beginning after Thanksgiving on the legislation, which is designed to extend coverage to roughly 31 million who lack it, crack down on insurance company practices that deny or dilute benefits and curtail the growth of spending on medical care nationally. The spectator galleries...

(McConnell: It's a 'Monstrosity of a Bill') (GOP: 'This Is Not True Health Care Reform') WASHINGTON (AP) -- Invoking the memory of Edward M. Kennedy, Democrats united Saturday night to push historic health care legislation past a key Senate hurdle over the opposition of Republicans eager to inflict a punishing defeat on President Barack Obama. There was not a vote to spare.The 60-39 vote cleared the way for a bruising, full-scale debate beginning after Thanksgiving on the legislation, which is designed to extend coverage to roughly 31 million who lack it, crack down on insurance company practices that deny or...

ON Fox News now, Vote is underway!!!

C-SPAN 2 is carrying the Senate floor debate live this afternoon.The Democrats control the floor right now. Earlier, Republican Senators Judd Gregg, Kit Bond, Jeff Sessions and David Vitter gave good speeches and dialogues on the budget-busting effects of ObamaCare.Maria Cantwell is speaking now. Mary Landrieu is excpected to speak shortly.The cloture vote is scheduled for 8 p.m. EST tonight.

The desperate Democrats never cease to amaze me. Let's try to think this through. They want to get government-run health care approved, so for the "big gun" to close the deal, they bring in the last Democrat to fail at getting it passed, Slick Willy, Bill Clinton. Clinton's job is to exert some old-fashioned arm-twisting to get more moderate Democrats in the Senate to pass Obamacare.

Just had the 218th vote, which is what they need to psas th ebill

Health Reform: House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer says it's constitutional to mandate insurance coverage. Congress, he insists, has "broad authority" to make us buy things to provide for the "general welfare." Democrats' Alice In Wonderland interpretation of what they consider to be a "living Constitution," where words mean what they say they mean based on political considerations, gets more bizarre by the minute. (snip) We've been down this road before. In 1994, Hillary Clinton's secretive health care task force was trying to nationalize health care. "A mandate requiring all individuals to purchase health insurance would be an unprecedented form of...

The national health care reform debate is far from settled, but one of the casualties is already clear: former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. Three years ago, Romney was heralded for his innovative effort to institute near-universal health care in his state. But now that the issue has emerged as a partisan fault line and the Massachusetts plan has provided some guidance for Democratic reform efforts, Romney finds himself bruised and on the defensive as the GOP rallies around opposition to President Barack Obama’s plans. When Romney came to Washington last week to speak to social conservative activists at the annual...

LIBERAL LIES ABOUT NATIONAL HEALTH CARE, PART 5September 23, 2009 (15) Democrats lost Congress in 1994 because President Clinton failed to pass national health care. I'm not sure if this is another example of the left's wishful-thinking method of analysis or if they're seriously trying to trick the Blue Dog Democrats into believing it. But I gather liberals consider the 1994 argument an important point because it was on the front page of The New York Times a few weeks ago in place of a story about Van Jones or ACORN. According to a news story by Jackie Calmes: "In...

Later this fall, President Obama will sign into law a landmark health-reform bill. Then the hard part begins. Barack Obama was advised early in his presidency to focus on just one thing at a time and postpone health care for another year. The advice was pressed on him not just from outside observers but from trusted aides inside the White House. He rejected it—and for that reason, among others, the health reform that's been delayed for a century, and which he will sign into law this fall, will carry his indelible stamp. Afterward, though, there will be no period of...

September 13, 2009 Ugly Corpse Of ‘HillaryCare’ Haunts Obama Tony Allen-Mills in Washington WATCHING President Barack Obama deliver his stirring speech on healthcare to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday, Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state, may have experienced a powerful sense of déjà vu. In 1993 her husband, President Bill Clinton, stood at the same podium beneath the US Capitol dome and issued a spirited defence of his own sweeping proposals — much influenced by her ideas — for a new system of national health insurance. Within a year the reform effort that became known as “HillaryCare” was...

Doctors said I'd had a miscarriage and did nothing as my premature baby fought for his life Like all mothers, Sarah Capewell will never forget the first minutes she spent with her newborn baby. She told her tiny son how much she loved him, gently kissed his face and took photos of him wrapped in the pretty blanket she'd bought for his birth. Then she held him tightly in her arms and watched helplessly as his body grew cold and he finally stopped breathing. Sarah pleaded for help from hospital staff from the moment he was born, but none came....

Obama cites new data in making case for health care overhaul, pushes plan at Minneapolis rally