Tomorrow Is Obamamas

Since the left considers Obama to be The Messiah, I guess that makes tomorrow "Obamamas." Yes, tomorrow we celebrate the birth of Barack Hussein Obama who was born on August 4, 1961 in Kenya ... er, Hawaii.

Stores should remain open late tonight so that we can do our last minute Obamamas shopping. If you haven't put up your Obamamas tree, you should do that as soon as possible.

Tomorrow, Obamaians everywhere will celebrate Obamamas with the traditional Pork dinner with all the trimmings. Afterwards, they will settle in and watch Michael Moore movies.

Let me be the first to wish you all, "Happy Obamamas."

New Evidence that Obama May NOT be a Natural Born Citizen

I have, for the most part, ignored the issue surrounding whether or not Obama was born in Hawaii or Kenya. I may have posted a couple of posts, but for me, I have always assumed that if there was any real credence to the rumor that Obama was not born in the United States, and if there is actually any real evidence to that effect, the evidence would eventually come out. The problem with conspiracies is that they are difficult to hide for very long, particularly if the government is involved.

One website claims to have a Kenyan birth certificate for Barack Obama. Pictures are posted, and I have to admit, they look more authentic than the Hawaiian certificate of live birth that has been floating around the internet.

The article is too long to copy and paste the whole thing, but here is the article and the photos. It's worth a look.

Cash For Clunkers On the Rocks

The Obama administration will suspend the "cash for clunkers" program unless the Senate provides $2 billion more for the popular car incentive plan, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said Sunday.

He said he expects the current $1 billion pool to be exhausted by the end of this weekend. The House approved an additional $2 billion on Friday and the administration is pressing the Senate to go along before its summer vacation begins at week's end.

"If we don't get the $2 billion from the Senate ... we would have to suspend the program next week," LaHood said in an interview with C-SPAN's "Newsmakers" show. He said the administration "will continue the program until we see what the Senate does and I believe the Senate will pass this."

At least one GOP senator questioned the need to speed the money.

"This is crazy to try to rush this thing through again while they're trying to rush through health care, and they want to get on to cap and trade electricity tax," said Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C. "We've got to slow this thing down."

I find it disturbing when I watch the car commercials on TV. Both local and nationwide ads are promoting this program. The administration intended the program not just to stimulate car sales, but to get gas guzzling, polluting vehicles off the streets and put more efficient vehicles on the streets. That apparently isn't happening. Many vehicles being offered are trucks, SUV's, and larger cars. Cars being traded in are often less than five year old, are no less fuel efficient that the ones being bought and no less polluting.

At least those taking advantage of the program are getting back some of their tax dollars.

Tax Hikes on the Way

I the "not so shocking news" category, administration officials on Sunday talk shows yesterday are admitting now that Obama plans to propose tax hikes to help pay for the Generational Theft Act as well as the health care system that is supposed to be self-supporting.

While out of one side of their mouths, they are proclaiming the recession to be over and that everything Obama has done is "working," they are now nixing the campaign promise of no taxes on those earning less that $250,000 a year. Higher income taxes as well as novel new taxes on things we'd never dreamed of taxing before are on the way.

Tim "Turbo Tax" Geithner was one of the administration officials making the rounds promoting the idea of new taxes, saying that now, it isn't a matter of if, but rather a matter of when.

Turbo Tax Tim doesn't mind new taxes. In fact he wants them, because he doesn't pay his taxes, but he gets to collect taxes from everyone else and spend our money.

ObamaCare 191

I wanted to expand a little bit on my comments about health care, and specifically, I want to look at Obama's quote in which he said that doctor will be paid for quality of care, not quantity of care.

On the surface, that almost sounds like a good idea. I want my doctor to be more concerned about delivering me the best quality care I can get, and not be concerned about running 100 patients through in a day. Wouldn't you agree that would be a good thing?

The problem is in the government trying to institute a system in which everyone gets the best care possible.

I think we have to look at that statement as two separate, and unrelated parts. First, doctors should get paid for the quality of care. As I said in my previous post, what this means is more government reporting. Your care may not get better. It may not change at all. It may even get worse. But your doctor is going to be required to report more to the government to insure that you meet certain "minimum" standards for care.

The "mimimum" standard is the key.

Just as in education in which quality has been consistently brought down to "minimum acceptable standards," the same will happen in health care. The government will determine what "minimum" tests you need to make a diagnosis or to treat a disease. They will pay for these tests. They will not pay for any additional testing your doctor might want to do that is outside of that "minimum standard" range. Ultimately, this is designed to be a "cost saving" aspect of the program, not a "quality improving" aspect of the program.

How about the "quantity of care" comment. You might think the two are linked, but they really are not. Currently doctors get paid from medicare on a "fee for service" basis. In some private insurance programs, HMO's and certain other situations, doctors get paid a flat fee or a salary instead of "fee for service." In those cases, often the doctor contracts with the insurer for that kind of reimbursement, or he works as an employee for the HMO or a medical group.

When Obama says he doesn't want to pay based on "quantity of care," that means he wants to eliminate a "fee for service" type of reimbursement system. Now, that doesn't seem to be the situation under the proposals going through congress right now. That seems to be a "down the road" kind of issue.

Eliminating "fee for service" (in other words, eliminating paying based on "quantity of care") means one of two things: The doctor will be paid a flat fee for a specified number of patients; or the doctor will become an employee of the health care system, ie, the government.

Eventually, under the democrats, all health care workers would be government employees.

Until then, Obama wants to see a system that would "capitate" reimbursements. What that means is doctors would no longer have an incentive to see as many patients as they do now.

Put another way: rationing.

America Doesn't Have a Health Care System

While here in Denver, I visited with a group of doctors. (No, I'm not sick). I had the opportunity to discuss with them our nation's health care system and the discussions under way in Washington to overhaul the system. One of the doctors said something that I think is rather profound. He said ...

"America doesn't have a health care delivery system. We have a disease management system."

I probed for clarification and learned that all insurance carriers (which includes government programs such as medicare and medicaid) require medical diagnoses for reimbursements. What that means is that if a person goes to a doctor and isn't sick, but simply wants to have a check up and a discussion with the doctor about what lifestyle changes, dietary changes and nutritional changes he should make in order to stay healthy, insurance will not cover that visit. If someone goes to the doctor and has abused his health all his life, however, and now needs medicine to manage a disease created by lifestyle choices, insurance will reimburse the doctor for that visit.

ObamaCare will not change this model.

In spite of the rhetoric you may have heard during the campaign a year ago, everything that's coming out of Washington now indicates that the system that is likely to pass through congress later this year (if one does) will simply operate much like medicare, only be available to more people. It will also have more "quality control" features and "cost saving" features.

"Quality control" features, I'm told, are essentially additional work for the doctor to report to the government that he is following all the correct procedures and doing all the correct tests for a given disease state. You should understand, that most doctors probably already do these tests and procedures, but now they have to report to the government that they are doing them, and they will be penalized for not reporting (whether or not they actually do the test.) This is supposed to save us money.

"Cost saving" features are essentially reduced reimbursement rates for tests, and the more frequently a test is done, the greater the chance that reimbursements will go down for that test. This is supposed to improve the quality of our care.

Most of the doctors that I visited with today are opposed to the proposals coming out of Washington. Some of those doctors even admitted to being registered Democrats and having voted for Obama. I did not find out from them what kind of system they would like to see or what changes to the current system they thought needed to be made.

I wish I had more time to discuss this with them. I'd like more answers.

A View From the Top

I'm still here in Denver (the Mile High City) today, and I must say the world here looks much different from where I usually find myself. On the whole Colorado is one of the more liberal leaning states in the "middle" part of the U.S., and Denver is a fairly liberal community. Walking around the downtown area, a couple of things struck me.

First, Colorado is supposed to be one of the "healthiest" states in America. More people bike, hike, walk and stay in shape than in any other state. At the same time, the number of smokers here is higher than average. I'm not sure what to make of that.

In the downtown area of Denver, there are far more panhandlers than what I see in the places I usually frequent. Many of these are clearly "professional" panhandlers. It amazes me how they have the right look and the right words to say, the right responses and the right attitude to collect as much money as possible. These people never get upset if you don't give them anything because they know that would turn off the next person coming down the sidewalk who might give them something. Some of them play instruments for money. Usually, very poorly. I saw one guy who carries around a guitar with a lot of duct tape on it. It didn't particularly look like it had been abused. I suspect the guitar had the duct tape added for the look it added when trying to beg for money. You can't beg for money very easily of you have a nice thousand dollar guitar, can you?

I also saw a number of Greenpeace volunteers trying to get people to sign environmental petitions. Mostly, they were preaching to the converted. The people engaging them were people sympathetic to their views. Others just walked by without making eye contact. I was tempted to start up a "discussion" but my writing skills are much better than my "live debating" skills.

I suppose this is pretty much like any other major city in the U.S. You meet all sorts. Still, it's an environment that I'm not used to. Frankly, I like my own environment better.