Posted on 07/29/2009 12:55:10 PM PDT by tobyhill
After days of intensive negotiations, a group of key moderate Democrats on Wednesday announced that they reached a health care reform deal with the White House and congressional leaders.
The compromise would cut the cost of the $1 trillion-plus package by $100 billion, according to one member of the fiscally conservative Blue Dog Coalition. The deal would also ensure that the proposed government-run insurance program would not be forced on anyone.
"We have reached an agreement that will allow health care reform to move forward," said Rep. Mike Ross, D-Ark.
Seven Blue Dogs had held up passage of the bill in the House Energy and Commerce Committee over concerns about cost and the speed at which Democrats were advancing the legislation. The committee is the only House panel that hasn't voted on the bill.
Ross said four of those seven agreed to the compromise Wednesday. But that gives Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., enough votes for passage.
With the announcement, the committee is set to meet Wednesday afternoon for a mark-up of the bill. A mark-up is where lawmakers finalize legislation.
Ross said the deal includes an assurance that House leaders won't bring the package to the floor until September even if the bill passes out of committee this week.
The Blue Dogs who signed on to the deal are Ross, Rep. Baron Hill, D-Ind.; Rep. Zack Space, D-Ohio; and Rep. Bart Gordon, D-Tenn. Those on the committee who did not sign on are Rep. Charlie Melancon, D-La.; Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah; and Rep. John Barrow, D-Ga.
Melancon said the compromise still doesn't go far enough for him in cutting the cost of the package.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
bye bye America. I am speechless.
What will they do when it is called for a vote on Friday?
Sounds like they want to be able to tell their voters they read it. Or maybe they are hoping the voter response will be so intense that the leadership will drop it. Either way, they will be there for Pelosi if they have to be. There is no such thing as a Blue Dog.
Hold on. It says it will not go to the floor until after the break, this is some good news. We must not stay quiet. We must protest this bill like no other. We have August! Stay strong
If they vote for this not even Acorn can save them in ‘10.
Everyone knew the Lap Dogs would roll. The Republicans blew their chance in the last election to stop the Socialist takeover.
Just maybe the GOP will learn to fight back since they have nothing more to lose at this point.
Part of the “deal” is that it won’t be voted on till September so that way when the Lap Dogs go home they can claim to their constituents that they are still “working for them”.
I just received this email. Please share with your address book.
Some of what goes on in Congress
This is a YouTube video that was made of US Rep. Tom Price-6th Dist. on Wednesday. Tom is a member of the House Healthcare Committee, and the video was shot in the Wed. Committee meeting. Please share this with everyone you know.............this healthcare legislation MUST be defeated. Please share this video. Tom has said that our Constitution is being burned right before our very eyes. We must, Democrats and Republicans alike, let our “leaders” know that this plan is unacceptable. There has to be a better way than a government takeover! If the Government takes over, it will be one of the most colossal blunders in the history of this Nation!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SD_YOlUBoIk
For non-fascists, this may be the best of all possible worlds.
The bill will not have even been passed by the House, yet, it will be out in the open for all to see.
It means that this piece of legislation will hang on the hook, like a piece of rotting meat, for over a month. Everyone will be able to read it, analyze it, critique it, attack it, run ads against it, etc., for over a month before it’s voted on. It give us time to hammer our representatives about its completely unacceptability.
I suspect that by September, there may not be a single “Blue Dog” Dammocrap still willing to support it.
This may be the biggest gift the POS (Party of Satan) gives us this year.
What’s the old joke? “A guy walks into a bar and sits down next to an attractive woman, seductively dressed and says, “Would you have sex with me for $1K?.” She looked shocked, but said, “I’d think about it.” “How ‘bout $500?” he goes on. She replies, “Oh, maybe.” Then he asks, “How about $50?” and she becomes indignant. “Just what do you think I am?” she demands.
He says, “Well, we’ve already established what you are. Now we’re just dickering price.”
I think that’s how it goes.
For later.
It’s not going to the floor till after the break so the Rats don’t have to face their voters having just Socialized our health care.
Once this un-American bill becomes law, despite the protestations of Obama and supposed 'safeguards', we're all screwed. They can change the rules anytime they want...and they will, guaranteed. If you're over 60, buy your plot, now and forget about the expensive life-saving operations once available or anything once covered by medical insurance that may improve your quality of life. Obama and the Democrats want you to die and get out of the way because you'll be a 'drag on the system'.
Did I mention that we're all screwed?
Will wait to end of Congressional business on Friday to believe them, “deal” or not.
In phone calls, faxes, and anywhere at all these BDs can be reached, we need to plant the question in their minds, “Can Pelosi and the House Dems be trusted to support your re-election in 2010?” I don’t think they CAN be trusted and would happily throw these BDs under the bus in favor of true Dem sycophants they can count on.
If the BDs are smart, they’ll listen to their constituents, the ones who can REALLY make sure they’re re-elected.
Oh I won't go quietly into the night by any means, but with the bluedogs vote we can't stop it. We can go to our reps town halls (I will) and scream and holler to make ourselves feel like we tried but the pol's don't care what we think anymore. We can win at the polls in 10 but I'm afraid it will be too late and too much damage will be done. God, I hope I'm wrong. The Americans woke up 8 months too late.
http://suewidemark.netfirms.com/nazieuth.htm
Lessons from History:
Euthanasia in Nazi Germany
by PJ King
Present day death proponents of the “right-to-die” movement disavow any analogy between what they are selling and what happened in Nazi Germany in the 1930’s. And, if one does not examine the facts too closely, there appears to be none. After all, Hitler was bent on exterminating the Jews, even though he destroyed a few thousand others before he found his focus. His was a dictatorship, not a democratic nation. His agenda was political, not moral. He fed on hate, not compassion. And one could add to the list.
However, if we look back to German society of the twenties and thirties, we find a civilized culture not so unlike our own. As a nation, Germany took pride in its art, its culture, and its science. People engaged in business, went shopping, enjoyed their families, followed the news. Genocide did not seem a likely development. But the seeds had already sprouted, though few foresaw into what kind of twisting vines they would soon grow.
In 1920 was published a book titled The Permission to Destroy Life Unworthy of Life, by Alfred Hoche, M.D., a professor of psychiatry at the University of Freiburg, and Karl Binding, a professor of law from the University of Leipzig. They argued in their book that patients who ask for “death assistance” should, under very carefully controlled conditions, be able to obtain it from a physician. The conditions were spelled out, and included the submission of the request to a panel of three experts, the right of the patient to withdraw his request at any time, and the legal protection of the physicians who would help him terminate his life. Binding and Hoche explained how death assistance was congruent with the highest medical ethics and was essentially a compassionate solution to a painful problem.
Death assistance, according to the authors, was not to be limited to those who were able or even willing to ask for it. They would have such mercy extended as well to “empty shells of human beings” such as those with brain damage, some psychiatric conditions, and mental retardation, if by scientific criteria the “impossibility of improvement of a mentally dead person” could be proven. The benefits to society would be great, they said, as money previously devoted to the care of “meaningless life” would be channeled to those who most needed it, the socially and physically fit. Germans needed only to learn to evaluate the relative value of life in different individuals.
An opinion poll conducted in 1920 revealed that 73% of the parents and guardians of severely disabled children surveyed would approve of allowing physicians to end the lives of disabled children such as their own. Newspapers, journal articles, and movies joined in shaping the opinion of the German public. The Ministry of Justice described the proposal as one that would make it “possible for physicians to end the tortures of incurable patients, upon request, in the interests of true humanity” (reported in the N.Y. Times, 10/8/33, p. 1, col. 2). And the savings would redound to the German people if money was no longer thrown away on the disabled, the incurable, and “those on the threshold of old age.”
A 1936 novel written by Helmut Unger, M.D., further assisted the German people in accepting the unthinkable. Dr. Unger told the story of a physician whose wife was disabled by multiple sclerosis. She asks him to help her die, and he complies. At his trial he pleads with the jurors to understand his honorable motive: “Would you, if you were a cripple, want to vegetate forever?” The jury acquits him in the novel. The book was subsequently made into a movie which, according to research by the SS Security Service, was “favorably received and discussed,” even though some Germans were concerned about possible abuses.
With the public now assenting, the question turned from “whether” to “by whom” and “under what circumstances.”
The first known case of the application of this now-acceptable proposal concerned “Baby Knauer.” The child’s father requested of Adolph Hitler himself that his son be allowed death because he was blind, retarded, and missing an arm and a leg. Surely, in his condition, he would be better off dead. Hitler turned the case over to his personal physician, Karl Brandt, and in 1938 the request was granted.
Over the next few months, a committee set out to establish practical means by which such “mercy deaths” could be granted to other children who had no prospect for meaningful life. The hospital at Eglfing-Haar, under the direction of Hermann Pfannmuller, M.D., slowly starved many of the disabled children in its care until they died of “natural causes.” Other institutions followed suit, some depriving its small patients of heat rather than food. Medical personnel who were uncomfortable with what they were asked to do were told this was not killing: they were simply withholding treatment and “letting nature take its course.”
Over time Pfannmuller set up Hungerhauser (starvation houses) for the elderly. By the end of 1941, euthanasia was simply “normal hospital routine.”
In the meantime, no law had been passed permitting euthanasia. Rather, at the end of 1939, Hitler signed this letter:
“Reichleader Bouhler and Dr. Med. Brandt are responsibly commissioned to extend the authority of physicians to be designated by name so that a mercy death may be granted to patients who, according to human judgment, are incurably ill according to the most critical evaluation of the state of their disease.”
Interestingly, physicians were not ordered to participate, but merely permitted to if they so wished. It was to be a private matter between the doctor and his patient (or the family if the patient was unable to speak for himself).
Brandt, testifying at his trial in Nuremburg after the war, insisted:
“The underlying motive was the desire to help individuals who could not help themselves and were thus prolonging their lives in torment. ... To quote Hippocrates today is to proclaim that invalids and persons in great pain should never be given poison. But any modern doctor who makes so rhetorical a declaration without qualification is either a liar or a hypocrite. ... I never intended anything more than or believed I was doing anything but abbreviating the tortured existence of such unhappy creatures.”
Brandt’s only regret was that the dead patients’ relatives may have been caused pain. Yet he justified even that: “I am convinced that today they have overcome their distress and personally believe that the dead members of their families were given a happy release from their sufferings.” (A. Mitcherlich & F. Mielke, The Death Doctors, pp. 264-265.)
Decide for yourselves whether parallels can be drawn between Germany in the thirties and forties and the world scene in the nineties. (Or better yet, today!)
“Moral issues are always terribly complex, for someone without principles.” - G. K. Chesterton
Is this like, "do it or we break your legs"?
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