Wednesday, November 25, 2009

EM crews that respond to emergency 911 calls will only take you to he nearest hospital. Even if you travel to the city to see an internist or cardiologist who is affiliated with a major metropolitan hospital for a chronic medical condition that suddenly becomes acute. The EMT crews who man the ambulances are required to take you to the nearest hospital.

This is a good idea if you are suffering a heart attack, but if you end up in the emergency room of a rural or small city hospital, you better have them transfer you to the Big city hospital as soon as you are stabilized. If you do not the “TAB” for your treatment will cost you very much more because of provisions in the Pelosi House Health Care Bill.

A rural town’s only hospital very likely has the only outpatient surgery unit, the only radiology unit and the only clinical laboratory. Its outpatient clinic may be the only primary care practice in town, and it may have the only ambulance service and the only home health agency.

If the House health care bill becomes law, the Democrats’ plan stipulates below-market payment rates and a new government-run insurance company that would compete with cash-strapped rural hospitals.

Rural hospitals, which are normally small and operate on a tight budget, could be put in further financial jeopardy because the House-passed version of health care reform does not fix the disparity in Medicare reimbursements between rural and urban hospitals. Rural hospitals usually are paid far less than their urban counterparts, despite facing comparable rates of chronic illnesses such as heart disease or diabetes.

Currently, Medicare reimburses hospitals based on how their average labor costs – adjusted to account for the hospital’s geographic location – relate to the national average. This geographic location adjustment is supposed to represent an area that has relatively uniform costs.

However, if a hospital’s geographic area does not have uniform costs, hospitals can be short-changed and may end up having to pass the excess cost on to patients who carry private insurance.

The disparities are caused by Medicare’s “metropolitan/non-metropolitan” classification system. Under this system, hospitals located in metropolitan areas are paid at one rate and hospitals in non-metropolitan areas – usually the entire area of a state that is not within a particular city’s limits – are paid at a lower rate.

Rural hospitals are often placed in financial straits because costs in the non-metropolitan areas, and financial difficulty translates into shoddy care and the transfer of the lost reimbursement from the Federal government to the patient. This is a double “whammy” courtesy of the Democrats and Rhinos who eventually will pass this travesty if Americans do not wake up and stop it!!

Maggie Elehwany the VP for NRHA told CNSNews.com; “Because these are small facilities, they often operate at a very narrow margin. Many of them are the only access to care for patients within miles and miles and miles,” she said. “They generally have a low [patient] volume but they still have to have a basic level of equipment and update their HIT [Health Information Technology] and things like that.”

“Medicare’s way of saving money is sort of bit like a Costco purchase – the more you do, you’ll make out okay because you’re doing such a high volume of business – that just doesn’t work in rural areas,” she said.

These disparities mean that rural hospitals are forced to pass the costs of Medicare patients not covered by government on to patients with private insurance, a system put at risk by a government-run public option, one that could siphon off those privately insured customers.

If this does not convince you people, who like I do, live in a small city not close to a BIG crime ridden city that the politicians consider US as only “fly over” communities. This provision in the Pelosi Bill should awaken you to the fact that they do not care about us except at election time when they beg for our votes!



 

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Saturday, August 08, 2009

WE CANNOT JUST TALK OUR ENEMIES TO STOP THEIR ATTACKS

No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism...Winston Churchill

You would not know it if you relied on the Obama propaganda network, aka:major newspapers and TV networks,but we are still fighting two wars. Iraq and Afghanistan, with North Korea rattling the nuclear sabres and an Iran that is rapidly approaching nuclear weapon capability. We can little afford to ignore the military needs of our country. After all that is one of the main reasons why we have a federal government!
President Obama is not commander in chief of our health care and economy. He is Commander in Chief of our Armed Forces. acting like he is the designate to destroy our military preparedness. Never in the history of my life and it has been a long and lucky life has a president chosen to reduce spending on our defense in a time of war!

But as this report submitted in the Heritage Foundation web site by William Rivers will illustrate, that is what our POTUS is doing!

"President Obama’s purportedly “flat” defense budget is in actuality a declining budget, beginning with 3.81 percent of GDP in 2010 but dropping to 3.01 percent by 2019. Considering that research and development for new weapons programs is taking the brunt of the blow, the United States is staring at a repeat of the 1990’s Clinton procurement holiday from which the military still hasn’t recovered.

Now in 2009, after seven years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, personnel and essential equipment have suffered tremendous strain. The Obama Administration celebrates its victory over cutting seven F-22s from the defense budget, but in 2008 the Air Force had to ground over 300 F-15s in response to an incident where one of the aged fighters “broke in half” during a training exercise. Never mind that the F-22 was supposed to replace those legacy fighters, we’ve still got the F-35. Right?

Already over a trillion dollars, the F-35 program is $38 billion over budget and 27 months behind schedule according to the GAO. And now, Pentagon leaders may decide to make cuts to that program, as well. So after killing the F-22 on the grounds that the F-35 is the silver bullet solution, now we’re eyeing the F-35 for future cuts? What exactly are America’s airmen and women supposed to use, paper planes?

The solution is simple. Heritage has advocated that President Obama commit to spending four percent of the nation’s GDP on core defense programs—excluding funding for Iraq and Afghanistan. Mr. Obama has already promised three percent of GDP to ‘science,’ so defense would hardly be a stretch. Protecting Americans is the first job of the federal government. A commitment to a larger defense budget will ensure that the military can buy enough next-generation equipment to fight and win for the next 40 years".

Obama was once quoted as saying that "if they bring a knife to a fight we will bring a gun".Well, apparently he doesn't feel that strong about the men and women who go to fight his wars. He might as well send them to battle with sticks and stone for their sling shots!

This man must be stopped by the voters in the voting booths in 2010 and then sent out to write more books in 2114!!

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

THE SUPPOSED BASTION OF ADVOCACY FOR SENIORS FOR THE LAST 30 OR SO YEARS HAS BEEN THE
AARP.They have amassed millions of members and has been an active advocate for seniors in Washington on many issues including Medicare and prescription benefits for seniors.
But since Obama has taken over the Oval Office they have been strangely silent on two issues that will affect seniors in an adverse if not a fatal way.
The two issues which they should have been opposing both in their lobbying efforts in the halls of Congress, and in the Media are the Presidents call for Universal Health Care and the impending tax on dividends on stocks.

Yesterday the Health Insurers and the AMA , an organisation that has less than 50% percent of the practicing doctors as members, went to the White House to say "Me Too" to the "Messiah" in Chief. They collectively promised to cut health care costs if they were allowed a seat at the decision table of the framers of Obama's socialised medical plan.They said they could cut heath care costs over the next ten years by 2 trillion dollars if they were included in the planning. A desperate and dangerous promise to avoid being left out of the "deal".
In his budget proposals, Obama has accounted only for revenue to cover about half of the projected cost of turning health care coverage over to the government. The $2 trillion in savings would be spread across the board, but could help the federal government cover those costs and extend coverage to the nearly 50 million uninsured.
What these statistics do not tell you is that 20 million of the estimated 50 million( I believe it is closer to 40) are illegals! So really we are talking about dumping the best medical care in the world for 20 million people.
If you doubt we have the best care, just visit a Mayo clinic and see the hundreds of patients seeking care from Canada, England, Germany and South American countries where socialized medicine is the law.

The only ways the medical care costs can be lowered is to eliminate waste, and allowing bureaucrats to enter the medical care system is no way to do this, as you will see in the Postal Service and Amtrak! The other way is to ration care, as they are doing in every country where socialised medicine is used. Rationing is a threat to everyone over 62 years old!

This is a grave threat to anyone over the age of eligibility for Social Security. If you study and follow the foreign models you will find that "old" patients are routinely denied angioplasty,open heart surgery, hip replacement and any life saving expensive treatments for Cancer. Palliative care is the road all seniors will be shunted down!

Then there is this threat to seniors that AARP should fight.
"President Obama's "Budget Blueprint" proposes to raise the tax rate on dividends and capital gains from 15 percent to 20 percent.[1] This tax hike would hit senior citizens particularly hard, as it would depress the value of stocks held in many types of retirement savings plans they rely on for income to supplement their Social Security benefits.

These plans include 401(k)s, 403(b)s, IRAs, and self-directed state, local, and federal government employee retirement funds. As of December 31, 2008, these plans invested $4.4 trillion in stocks--just over of 54 percent of all their assets.[2]

Capital gains and dividends taxes decrease stock prices in two ways: They reduce the after-tax value of the dividends and capital gains earned by stocks, and they increase the cost of capital for businesses, thereby reducing future business profitability.

To determine how much Obama's proposed tax hike would reduce the value of retirement savings plans, the value in current dollars of the yearly revenue raised by the tax increase (as shown in the Budget Blueprint) is discounted by the latest available price-to-earning ratio of the S&P 500 to calculate the aggregate decline in stock prices. This is a widely accepted methodology.[3]

According to this calculation, the tax hike would cause stock prices to drop almost $93 billion. As the percentage of all stocks held in retirement savings plans is approximately 30 percent,[4] nearly one-third of the decline in stock prices would fall on stocks owned through these plans. This works out to $27 billion of lost value for current and future retirees unnecessarily redistributed to Congress. That works out to $434 of lost retirement savings for each family.

Seniors' Income Would Fall

The $27 billion of lost wealth would lower the incomes of seniors dependent on retirement savings plans. Seniors sell stocks held in these funds after they retire to pay for their living expenses, including basics such as housing, food and medical care. When the stocks they sell decline in value, seniors have less money to pay their bills, and their budgets are squeezed tighter.

Seniors dependent on retirement savings plans already experienced a precipitous decline in purchasing power due to the current recession. From the end of 2007 to the end of 2008, they lost more than $2.6 trillion of value--more than 24 percent of their total worth--because of the decline in stock prices.[5]

Unlike the decline in stock values due to the recession, the stock price decline caused by the dividend and capital gains tax hike is irrecoverable because the additional tax lowers stock prices permanently--or at least until the tax hike is reversed. On the other hand, the lost value from the stock market decline will reverse as economic conditions improve".

These two proposals that Obama has on his agenda will Punish Seniors! Will AARP fight them???

Source:Curtis S. Dubay, Senior Analyst in Tax Policy in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.

Saturday, May 09, 2009

Yesterday in his usual dulcet tones the president spoke of the budget cuts that he was making. He said some people will think that 16.7 billion dollars is a small thing, but he thought 17 billion dollars was real money even in Washington.
Of course I am paraphrasing his actual words, but the essence of his speech was that he was making a real effort to cut the budget.
He didn't bother to tell the public, whose tax dollars he has spent at a $100 million per day rate for the first 100 days he has been president. That 3/4 of the cuts were in the National defense budget! This all takes place, when he just announced that he was sending 21 thousand more troops to Afghanistan, and the generals who are directing the war against the Taliban say they will need many more to defeat them.

Across the ocean in the Russian capitol the Russians were rattling their sabres by demonstrating their military might at the same time. Rows of missiles and tanks rolled through Moscow's Red Square and dozens of combat jets roared overhead in the Victory Day parade in the largest show of Russia's military might in its post-Soviet history.

Victory Day, marking the defeat of Nazi Germany, is Russia's most important secular holiday, and the parade reflected the Kremlin's efforts to revive the nation's armed forces and global clout.

In a speech opening the parade, President Dmitry Medvedev said the nation's armed forces are "ready to give adequate response to any aggression."

The parade displayed about 9,000 troops, more than 100 combat vehicles, including new Topol-M intercontinental ballistic missiles. For the first time, it featured the state-of-the art S-400 air defense missiles which Russian officials say are unrivaled in their combat capability.

Meanwhile,as Obama was announcing his budget cuts, he did not tell us that they amount to less than .0007 % of the 62.9 trillion dollar unfunded liability that the Federal Gov. will have for the next ten years servicing entitlement programs. The programs are estimated to cost 71 trillion dollars, but 62.9 trillion is the amount unfunded that will come in the form of futures taxes!
Not one of the cuts that Obama made and is "crowing" about are in the area of domestic agencies and funding!Source:Congressional record

This completes a trifecta of insults to those who serve our country that Obama is guilty of perpetrating since taking control as Commander In Chief.
Besides the cuts in the military budget that were part of Obama's debt reduction announced yesterday. There is this; the Obama administration is asking Congress to slash almost in half a 43-year-old Justice Department program that provides death, disability and education benefits to the families of slain police and public safety officers.

President Obama's 2010 budget reduces funding for the Public Safety Officers' Death Benefits Program from $110 million this year to $60 million for next year's budget.

And in keeping his campaign promises to the anti-Iraq war ilk. Obama will begin withdrawing troops from Iraq this June and complete withdrawal by August 2010.But this premature withdrawal will leave the elite forces like the Green Berets in a vulnerable position that is reminiscent of Viet Nam.
As the U.S. readies the pullout of its major combat units from Iraq, officials are concerned that the Pentagon's Green Berets and other elite anti-terror warriors staying behind won't have the helicopters, equipment and other logistical support they need.

The uniquely trained special operations forces are scattered across Iraq, generally carrying out the more secretive missions, pursuing AL-Qaida and other terrorist suspects. As they do that, they must rely on their brethren in larger, conventional military units to fuel their helicopters, fix their trucks, transport them from place to place and provide them with the support troops they need and even the food they eat.

Those support systems, however, will begin to drop off as combat brigades begin leaving Iraq later this year and are not replaced.
There are currently 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, including up to 5,000 special operators such as Army Green Berets and Rangers, Navy SEALS, and Marine and Air Force special operations units.

Ken McGraw, a spokesman for the Pentagon's Special Operations Command in Florida, said officials are aware that the elite forces will continue to conduct missions across Iraq and will need support from other military units.

"It is a responsibility of the operational commanders in Iraq to balance their capabilities to meet the requirements of the units that remain behind as others draw down," said McGraw.

Roger Carstens,said Roger Carstens, a retired Army Special Forces officer now with the Center for a New American Security who gathered information in Iraq and Afghanistan last year for a report on the status of the military's special operations forces, said commanders told him that such logistical worries are what keep them up at night. Teams in far-flung locations, he said, worry that they will have to leave those areas when the major combat units pull up stakes and leave, taking their motor pools, security guards, analysts, medical care and helicopters with them.

"The guys on the ground are concerned," said Roger Carstens, a retired Army Special Forces officer now with the Center for a New American Security. "They're not sure how this is going to play out. Everyone is worried and all they're trying to do is raise their hand early in the game before it happens.I believe the need to do more than "raise their hand". This betrayal demands a march on Washington before we have a massacre on our hands. The enemy is salivating at the opportunity to pick off these deserted warriors who will be left unsupported.

Is this the change we expected from Obama?

Friday, February 06, 2009

DON'T FORGET TO PROTECT OUR COUNTRY WHILE STIMULATING!

“Remember Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a Democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” – John Adams, letter to John Taylor, April 15, 1814

One hundred and ninety years ago one of our founding fathers said that Democracy commits suicide, and from the way Americans have accepted the rash interpretations of the Constitution in the past fifty years. It appears he is right on point!

Our Supreme Courts decisions in Roe vs Wade and the decision allowing the burning of our flag have been just two examples of the way we have allowed our freedoms and morals to degenerate.
Then there is the way we have allowed the horde of illegal aliens to not only cross our borders but to stay here, and the drive to make everything politically correct has furthered the slide down the slippery slope!

Through it all we have up to now been able to remain the Worlds military super power, and by being powerful we have not garnered much love, but we are still free of attacks on our soil since 9/11/01.

Now comes the "change master" and the "spendulus" package that is well over 900 billion dollars at the time I write this blog.
When the public complains that we are spending money we do not have, and will not have for the foreseeable future. The Democrats talk about cutting the expenditures for the military. After all they are about making America the model welfare state that other countries have tried and failed to produce.

Most of the weapons systems that we ask our brave men and women to take into battle are old and rapidly becoming obsolete. Take the F-18 fighter plane. It was put into use by the military in the 1980s after being designed and approved for production in 1976.
F/A-18 Hornets are currently operating in 37 tactical squadrons from air stations world-wide, and from 10 aircraft carriers. They are, or were scheduled to be replace by the F-22, but guess where the Democrats plan to save money?

While the Republicans in Congress have identified the "stimulus" bill as a PORK spending bill, and are trying to rip out the pork. I believe the whole bill should be scrapped and a new bill that includes money to quick start the economy by including tax cuts and help to the "home owners". The favorite target of liberals is the military, and I have enclosed an excerpt from The Patriot Post written by Ollie North for your information about the lack of concern that some Democrats have to keep our military preparedness.

"Additional "savings" have been identified by others on Capitol Hill. Reps. Barney Frank and Barbara Lee have announced that they want to "trim" what they call "Cold War-era" weapons from the 2010 budget. Included in their "cut list" are the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter ($6.1 billion), the F/A-22 Raptor ($4.5 billion), the Marines' V-22 Osprey ($1.3 billion), the DDG-1000 destroyer ($3.5 billion) and the Army's Future Combat Systems ($3.7 billion).

Even though Iran succeeded in putting a satellite in orbit this week -- demonstrating the capability to launch nuclear-tipped ICBMs -- Rep. Frank persists in claiming that ballistic missile defense ($8.9 billion) is on the chopping block, as well, adding, "We don't need all these fancy new weapons."

In an increasingly dangerous world, in the midst of a war and serious global economic woes, this kind of thinking is lunacy. The Obama administration and their liberal allies on Capitol Hill need to set aside their deep-seated, pathological antipathy toward America's military and invest in the defense of this nation.

In the aftermath of the "Daschle Debacle," Mr. Obama acknowledged, "I screwed up." It is now time for him to make the same admission about his efforts to gut our defense budget. Spending more on defense -- not less -- is not only good for our economy but also good for all of us".SOURCE: OLIVER NORTH

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