Free Republic

This Investors Business Daily editorial was sorely needed; a one stop shop of debunking the myths being spread by Obama and the Democrats about health care reform. Start with the question, "Is reform needed at all?" The editorial destroys common "statistics" used by Democrats to show how badly our system needs reforming. Other examples: • Health care reform will save money. Few of the plans now coming out of Congress will save anything, says the CBO's current chief, Douglas Elmendorf. In fact, he says, they'll lead to substantially higher costs in the future - costs that will be "unsustainable." As...

Its time for the democrats in Congress to remember why humans have two ears, Two eyes and only one mouth, they are supposed to look and listen twice as often as they speak. While they continue to talk to each other about Obamacare and a government-run heath option, poll after poll are saying that the people of America say NO WAY. A New Rasmussen study reports by a big margin (50%-35%) American voters disapprove of a government run health option. Last month 41% of American adults thought setting up a government health insurance company to compete with private health insurance...

Congress: It didn't take long to run into an "uh-oh" moment when reading the House's "health care for all Americans" bill. Right there on Page 16 is a provision making individual private medical insurance illegal.When we first saw the paragraph Tuesday, just after the 1,018-page document was released, we thought we surely must be misreading it. So we sought help from the House Ways and Means Committee. It turns out we were right: The provision would indeed outlaw individual private coverage. Under the Orwellian header of "Protecting The Choice To Keep Current Coverage," the "Limitation On New Enrollment" section of...

Reporting from Washington -- President Obama suggested at a town hall event Wednesday night that one way to shave medical costs is to stop expensive and ultimately futile procedures performed on people who are about to die and don't stand to gain from the extra care. In a nationally televised event at the White House, Obama said families need better information so they don't unthinkingly approve "additional tests or additional drugs that the evidence shows is not necessarily going to improve care."

ABC News: Dr. Orrin Devinsky, a neurologist and researcher at the New York University Langone Medical Center, said that elites often propose health care solutions that limit options for the general public, secure in the knowledge that if they or their loves ones get sick, they will be able to afford the best care available, even if it's not provided by insurance. Devinsky asked the president pointedly if he would be willing to promise that he wouldn't seek such extraordinary help for his wife or daughters if they became sick and the public plan he's proposing limited the tests or...

President Barack Obama said it is “not logical” to think that a government-run health care program competing with private health insurers would eventually drive the private firms out of business. The concern expressed by many Republicans and some private insurers has been one of the leading arguments against the president’s plan to establish a “public option” health care program. At a White House press conference on Tuesday, Obama said: “Why would it drive private insurance out of business? If private insurers say that the marketplace provides the best quality health care; if they tell us that they're offering a good...

President Obama dusted off a campaign slogan on Monday, sharply dismissing those who have expressed skepticism that the nation’s health care system will be overhauled by Congress this year. “Yes we can,” Mr. Obama said. “We are going to get this done.” In an appearance in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House, Mr. Obama praised an agreement reached last week by drug companies to help close a cap in Medicare’s prescription drug coverage. He said the pharmaceutical industry’s pledge to spend $80 billion over the next decade to reduce the cost of drugs would pay for a portion...

A Republican senator seeking a bipartisan health deal spoke Sunday of "dialing down" expectations while one of President Barack Obama's Democratic allies questioned whether the White House had the votes necessary for a such a costly and comprehensive plan during a recession. Obama's proposal to provide health insurance for some 50 million Americans who lack it has become a contentious point for a Democratic-controlled House and Senate struggling to reach a consensus Obama desperately wants. Much of the concern came after the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that the plan would cost $1 trillion over 10 years but cover only...

Free health care is a very expensive proposition. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat, and Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, Connecticut Democrat, are sponsoring a massive health care bill to extend coverage to 50 million Americans who supposedly do not have it. On Tuesday, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the cost of the Kennedy-Dodd health care bill would run to at least $1.6 trillion over 10 years and that it would cover just one-third of the so-called "uninsured." Sen. Judd Gregg, New Hampshire Republican, said the bill easily could top $2 trillion. Using the CBO estimate, Utah Republican Sen. Orrin...

CHICAGO – The nation's largest group of doctors began their annual meeting as a potential obstacle to President Obama's health care overhaul. After a big pep talk from Obama himself, they ended it Wednesday by signaling they won't close the door on one of his key proposals, a public health insurance plan to compete with private insurers. While the Obama administration would have preferred a strong endorsement, the vote by American Medical Association doctors is a victory of sorts for the White House and the group will continue to be a player in the health care reform efforts. "They're going...

WASHINGTON -- If you have any sense that you may be getting sick in the years ahead, I suggest you get sick immediately. If you will be in need of surgery or any other medical procedure, do it now! If not immediately, be certain that you hand yourself over to the healthcare professionals before October 15 of this year. That is the date on which President Barack Obama hopes to sign his healthcare bill once it has gone through the congressional baloney grinder. At the heart of President Obama's plan is his stated goal to cut medical costs. That might...

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reports that a government overhaul of America’s health care system would cost at least $1 trillion and would mean the loss of private coverage for an estimated 23 million Americans, according to a preliminary analysis issued Tuesday. Leading Democrats, however, say the CBO’s numbers do not take into consideration the savings that the plan apparently would create. They say some of the costs could be covered by taxing certain “unhealthy” foods, such as sugar. The overhaul is based on the plan put forward by Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and is being promoted by Sen. Christopher...

President Barack Obama’s address to the annual meeting of the American Medical Association today didn’t break new ground, but attempted to assure doctors and their patients that his prescription for overhauling the health care system would be good for them. For patients, he made a sweeping pledge that “no matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise: If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period. If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter...

President Obama pushed hard Monday for a health care overhaul, saying the system is "a ticking bomb" for the budget that could propel America down "the route of GM" without a legislative fix. Obama went before the American Medical Association in Chicago to declare anew that the existing system leaves too many uninsured and forces "excessive defensive medicine" by doctors worried about malpractice suits. He also declared once again that he does not favor socialized medicine and cautioned people to beware of "scare tactics and fear-mongering" by critics who make this claim. Obama did tell his audience of physicians and...

With the clock ticking on health care reform legislation, President Obama has guaranteed American taxpayers that his administration will pay for any overhaul without adding to the deficit. Lawmakers, however, don't have quite as firm a handle on how they'll actually accomplish it. Though Obama has outlined nearly $950 billion in savings and revenue to offset the cost of a program tagged at about $1 trillion over the next decade, some fear the actual price tag could be much higher and question whether Obama's estimates about a coming windfall in government savings are accurate.

No excerpt allowed, story here .

The fact is, the Democrats' proposals are a liberal wish list of expansions of the role of government in health care, combining an array of taxes, regulations, incentives, and mandates aimed over time to create a massive and unfunded new entitlement that would limit patient choices, ration care, and bankrupt the Treasury. The Democrats' plan would force everyone into the system through an individual mandate and lead employers to drop their health coverage; their new public insurance plan would then price private insurers out of the game and attract the refugees from private coverage into the public system. All of...

Senior Adults in America have every reason to be frightened of Barack Obama's new healthcare proposal. The plan will ration the care provided to seniors and the poor. Obama has called for over 300 million in cuts both to Medicare and Medicaid, upon which millions of seniors and the poverty-stricken disabled depend for their medical care.

NEW YORK (AP) — ABC News will present a prime-time interview with President Barack Obama on health care issues next week. The network's special will air June 24 at 10 p.m. Eastern, on two-hour tape delay. Charles Gibson and Diane Sawyer will moderate the White House discussion with a live audience, also taking questions submitted by viewers. That morning, Sawyer will interview Obama for "Good Morning America." Gibson will anchor that evening's edition of "World News" from the White House Blue Room.

SNIPPET: "Because costs of dealing with chronic diseases of the aging make up the largest wedge of America’s health-care pie, physicians’ widespread disgust with Medicare reimbursements and increasing frustration with Medicare red tape present a crucial obstacle to the Obama administration’s drive for universal health care in America. About 40 million people have Medicare insurance, not only those 65 and older but also younger disabled people. Dr. Marc Siegel, an internist and associate professor of Medicine at the NYU Langone Medical Center, in a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, wrote that with more doctors dropping out of one...