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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Friday, July 24, 2009

The definition of extortion and it's pseudonyms is as follows per Roget's Thesaurus.
Definition: intimidation for money; money to quiet informer
Synonyms: bribe, bribery, exaction, extortion, hush money, milking, payoff, protection, ransom, slush fund, tribute

Yesterday president Obama continued his "modus operandi" of intimidating anyone who disagrees with his stated and implied policies in an interview in the Oval Office

President Obama is leaning hard on the nation's schools, using the promise of more than $4 billion in federal aid — and the threat of withholding it — to strong-arm the education establishment to accept more charter schools and performance pay for teachers.

The pressure campaign has been underway for months as Education Secretary Arne Duncan travels the country delivering a blunt message to state officials who have resisted change for decades: Embrace reform or risk being shut out.

"What we're saying here is, if you can't decide to change these practices, we're not going to use precious dollars that we want to see creating better results; we're not going to send those dollars there," Obama said in an Oval Office interview Wednesday. "And we're counting on the fact that, ultimately, this is an incentive, this is a challenge for people who do want to change."
Part of his change is the allocating of 100 million dollars to the Secretary of Education to push Obama's education agenda. More than has ever been given to that cabinet position, even in the profligate later years of the Bush administration!

The effort has helped Obama enlarge the federal role in an arena dominated by state and local governments, but there is deep skepticism about his approach. Congressional Republicans say the initiative, coupled with another $650 million for school reform under Duncan's control, is wasteful.

"We just took a big old checkbook with a $5 billion total behind it and handed it to the secretary and said, 'Write a whole bunch of checks,' " said Rep. John Kline (Minn.), the top Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee. "I'm uncomfortable that we're doing that."

Obama says the money will be distributed to states that can demonstrate results backed by data that show student scores and teacher performance are improving.

"It's not based on politics, it's not based on who's got more clout, it's not based on what certain constituency groups are looking for, but it's based on what works," he said. "Now, what we're also doing, though, is we're saying this is voluntary. If there are states that just don't want to go in this direction, that's their prerogative." Source: Washington Post
Liberal translation: MY WAY OR THE HIGHWAY!

I thought the tax money he is spending came from all states. Not just those who go along with his programs! I have no objection to his attempt to get our children better prepared for life through good education.
But the simple fact is that every time monies are appropriated for "school and education". The teachers union and bureaucrats get the lions share of the money, and student still learn more about diversity, one worldism and every thing but the basic three "R". And no amount of money will change this fact!!

State officials will lose a great deal of their authority over the financing and delivery of health care under the House and Senate health bills, particularly in the area of Medicaid.

In the House bill, "America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009" (H.R. 3200), Congress would expand Medicaid to reduce the number of people without health insurance. But this expansion will create new inequities among and between the several states that administer the program. The House version also expands the federal role in the administration of Medicaid that will reduce the states' sovereignty and position as "laboratories of democracy."
And it appears that the Obama administratation will extend that reduction of equal rights for all states by restricting money for education to those who do his bidding, sounds all most DICTATORIAL!!

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Monday, November 10, 2008

 


Despite the fact that President elect Obama vowed to carry out an open and transparent Campaign. Now that he has been elected he appears to have reverted to the back room deals of Chicago politics!
Lost amid all of the jubilation of the Obama victory was the announcement by the Obama transition team that it had set up a separate transition program beyond the one that is paid for by the American taxpayer. Called the "Obama/Biden Transition Project," it is a 501(c)4 tax-exempt organization, with no limits on the contributions it can receive and no requirements to divulge the names of individuals or organizations that give it money. source: The American Spectator

It is believed in expert political circles that this is the first time in Our history that an incoming President has employed such deception in fund raising after he is elected.
Many believe that the nonprofit may also serve as a haven for Obama supporters and campaign loyalists who for one reason or another can't be employed by the Administration or in the federal government. "There are some people who have been with the Obama campaign from the beginning who are clearly political liabilities or who won't be able to qualify for a job,apparently because they can't get a security clearance". source: unidentified member of the Transition Team
At any rate, Obama campaign officials say there is no intention of shutting down the 501(c) 4 Project after the transition is over. I guess this is part of Obama's "Spreading The Wealth Around"!

It appears to this blogger that Obama and company are establishing a slush fund that can be freely and anonymously contributed to by people or groups who get favors from the new President. Not unlike some notorious foreign countries!
When Chicago elected Harold Washington as Mayor of Chicago in 1983.What ensued was called "Beirut on the Lake or Council Wars". By 1989 Richard M Daley was elected mayor. He is now destined to supplant his father, Richard J Daley (1955-1976) as the longest serving mayor in Chicago's history. Simply put, Chicago is Daley's town and has been for over 50 years. There have been eleven presidents elected in that span, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush 41, Clinton, Bush 43 and now Obama. Presidents come and go, the Machine lives on.

Do not believe it when democrats tell you Obama is a Hyde Park Liberal politician. He is cut from whole cloth of Chicago politics, as eveidenced by his slection of "pit bull" Ram Emanuel as Chief of Staff.A Mayor Daly operative for years.

Since the Democrats have been out of power for eight years, with the last Democratic President having left office in an ethical cloud of Biblical proportions (Monica Lewinsky, the perjury conviction, the last minute pardons for assorted lowlifes etc. etc.). Not so good for a city yearning for federal handouts. Even worse, during the Clinton administration various Clintonistas had been absorbed into the Daley Machine and vice versa. Some common names are Bill Daley and Rahm Emanuel.

So much for OPEN GOVERNMENT!

Posted by BILL at Monday, November 10, 2008 0 comments

Thanks to Jim Brown - OneNewsNow - 10/25/2008
On March 25,1995 Pope John Paul II issued his "Evanggluim Vitae because he believed the Secular World was promoting a culture of death not a culture that recognizes the sanctity of life from conception to natural death.
The Encyclical is very long so I will include only those quotes that relate to the theme of this Blog.

"The Second Vatican Council, in a passage which retains all its relevance today, forcefully condemned a number of crimes and attacks against human life. Thirty years later, taking up the words of the Council and with the same forcefulness I repeat that condemnation in the name of the whole Church, certain that I am interpreting the genuine sentiment of every upright conscience: "Whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia, or wilful self-destruction, whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as well as disgraceful working conditions, where people are treated as mere instruments of gain rather than as free and responsible persons; all these things and others like them are infamies indeed. They poison human society, and they do more harm to those who practise them than to those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are a supreme dishonour to the Creator".

"Unfortunately, this disturbing state of affairs, far from decreasing, is expanding: with the new prospects opened up by scientific and technological progress there arise new forms of attacks on the dignity of the human being. At the same time a new cultural climate is developing and taking hold, which gives crimes against life a new and-if possible-even more sinister character, giving rise to further grave concern: broad sectors of public opinion justify certain crimes against life in the name of the rights of individual freedom, and on this basis they claim not only exemption from punishment but even authorization by the State, so that these things can be done with total freedom and indeed with the free assistance of health-care systems.

All this is causing a profound change in the way in which life and relationships between people are considered. The fact that legislation in many countries, perhaps even departing from basic principles of their Constitutions, has determined not to punish these practices against life, and even to make them altogether legal, is both a disturbing symptom and a significant cause of grave moral decline. Choices once unanimously considered criminal and rejected by the common moral sense are gradually becoming socially acceptable. Even certain sectors of the medical profession, which by its calling is directed to the defence and care of human life, are increasingly willing to carry out these acts against the person. In this way the very nature of the medical profession is distorted and contradicted, and the dignity of those who practise it is degraded. In such a cultural and legislative situation, the serious demographic, social and family problems which weigh upon many of the world's peoples and which require responsible and effective attention from national and international bodies, are left open to false and deceptive solutions, opposed to the truth and the good of persons and nations.

The end result of this is tragic: not only is the fact of the destruction of so many human lives still to be born or in their final stage extremely grave and disturbing, but no less grave and disturbing is the fact that conscience itself, darkened as it were by such widespread conditioning, is finding it increasingly difficult to distinguish between good and evil in what concerns the basic value of human life".

Despite this admonition there those within the Catholic Church and many who hate the Catholic Church, who believe that abortion is a non-issue in elections. People like "Father" Pfleger(defender of Louis Farrakhan) and a few liberal Bishops have advocated the election of Obama/Biden. Both of whom are supporters of abortion and late term abortion!
Now we learn that Billionaire George Soros, in addition to a supporter of Obama, is bankrolling liberal Catholic groups that support abortion.

An investigation by the New York-based Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights finds that George Soros' Open Society Institute gave Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good $50,000 in 2005 and $100,000 in 2006.Soros defines his concept of an Open Society as:"An open society, in my definition, is an imperfect society that holds itself open to improvement". This includes being tolerant of new ideas and different modes of thinking and behavior! No wonder he backs Obama and abortion rights "catholica".



Catholic League president Bill Donohue suspects that Soros may also be funding the group Catholics United, an organization with which Catholics in Alliance has a formal relationship. Donahue contends both groups are "in the pocket of the Democratic Party" and are trying to sell Catholics the notion that they can be opponents of abortion and not seek to overturn Roe v. Wade if they support minimum wage and more welfare benefits.

"George Soros, who's basically an anti-American, far left-wing, pro-abortion, anti-Semite, anti-Catholic, is funding the Catholic left. Now, if the Catholic League were getting money from an anti-American, far right-wing, pro-abortion, anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic source, we'd be out of business in a New York minute," Donahue says. "By the way, George Soros lavishly funds Catholics for Choice, previously called Catholics for a Free Choice."

Donohue suggests Soros is attempting to make respectable the idea that one can be Catholic and promote abortion. However, Donohue notes Pope Benedict XVI has said some issues for Catholics are non-negotiable -- including abortion

Catholic League president Bill Donohue exposes the nexus between George Soros and two left-wing Catholic groups, Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good and Catholics United:

“In 2003, after left-wing mogul George Soros blamed Jews for anti-Semitism, the ADL branded his comments ‘obscene.’ Two years later, I accused him of anti-Catholicism when his group, MoveOn.org, posted a picture of a smiling Pope Benedict XVI holding a gavel outside the U.S. Supreme Court, along with the following inscription: ‘God Already Has a Job…He does not need one on the Supreme Court.’

“Why is this relevant? Because this same bigot is connected to two apologists for abortion rights, Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good and Catholics United. In 2006, Soros’ Open Society Institute gave Catholics in Alliance $100,000 (double the amount he gave in 2005), and in the same year Catholics in Alliance listed Catholics United on its 990 as an organization with which it has a formal relationship. John Podesta, White House Chief of Staff under President Bill Clinton from 1998 until 2001,who runs the Soros-funded organization, Center for American Progress, admits that he works closely with Catholics in Alliance and Catholics United. The Center for American Progress is also the sponsor of Faith and Public Life.Illinois born Podesta is presently head of the Liberals much anticipated Transition Team for Obama!

“Why would any Catholic organization take money from a man like George Soros? Because legitimate sources of revenue aren’t available? And why would Soros have any interest in funding Catholic groups? He doesn’t give the Catholic League any money, and if he offered, THEY would refuse it.

“The reason Soros funds the Catholic Left is the same reason he lavishly funds Catholics for Choice, the pro-abortion group that has twice been condemned as a fraud by Catholic bishops: they all service his agenda, namely, to make support for abortion rights a respectable Catholic position. On October 17, Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput accused Catholics in Alliance and Catholics United as doing a ‘disservice’ to the Catholic Church. He’s right. And now we know what really makes them tick.”

All those who believe in the Ten commandments must recognise that abortion is the modern day genocide of tiny infants who should be in the most safe place in the world, a mother's womb!
It is high time to stop pretending that we do not know what this nation of ours is allowing—and approving—with the killing each year of more than 1,600,000 innocent human beings within their mothers. We know full well that to kill what is clearly seen to be an innocent human being or what cannot be proved to be other than an innocent human being is as wrong as wrong gets.

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Thursday, July 10, 2008

IS SEIU TRYING TO BUY THE OVAL OFFICE?

This is one of the most important presidential elections workers have faced. Families are struggling, we’re fighting two wars, and a majority of Americans are now worried that their children will be worse off than they are".source SEIU home page


The election laws require that so-called "independent expenditures" by political committees be limited to communications, such as the ubiquitous TV spots and newspaper ads to which we have all become accustomed, but SEIU's PACs have paid for such campaign essentials as door-to-door canvassing for Obama, voter identification and registration, and even bus rental and food for pro-Obama rallies.


A number of the expenditures listed in their report to the Elections Commission, show such reimbursement of SEIU employees' per Diem expenses or food for an Election Day rally, can qualify as "communication" by only the most Clintonian parsing of terms. Instead, they look like the nuts and bolts of running a campaignOne union with a long time connection with Obama, and 2 million members,is attempting to buy the presidential election this November. The Service Employees International Union was solicited by Obama to help his election campaign, and they jumped in with both feetas this quote from2/15/08 by Jennifer Farmer of SEIU illustrates!

“The outcome of this election will decide whether we finally achieve quality, affordable healthcare for everyone, whether we have economic fairness, whether we bring our sons and daughters home from Iraq, and whether workers in America finally have the freedom to form unions without intimidation” said Dave Regan, President, SEIU District 1199. “We intend to mobilize our members in an unprecedented way in support of Senator Barack Obama,” Regan concluded.

SEIU outlined the key reasons for the Obama endorsement:



The SEIU announced on June 24th that they plan "a budget of $85 million for this election, targeting swing states for Obama's presidential campaign" and other candidates. In addition, SEIU Secretary-Treasurer Anna Burger said, "More than 100,000 SEIU members will be volunteering their time to ... elect Barrack Obama as our next president." (Which begs the question if the "volunteers' salaries and per Diem's will also be reimbursed.)source: American Thinker


As if to intentionally add new heights to political hypocrisy, the announcement followed by mere days Obama's pronouncement that the Democratic National Committee "won't take another dime from Washington lobbyists or special interest PACs. They do not fund my campaign. They will not fund our party".
The truth apparently is a stranger to Obama and his campaign as this quote attests.
The story also raises to new levels Obama's hypocrisy about PAC money, since he is accused of doling out just such donations in exchange for endorsements". source: Washington Post


Obama apparently learned a lesson from the mistakes of the Kerry campaign. By opting out of accepting cash donations directly from PACs. He became the first major party candidate to opt out of federal funding and the restrictions that come with it -- Obama steered the committees who support him, and whose support he even "begged" for, down a path which allows limitless spending on his behalf!

And to rub salt in the wounds of the Republican party, the media elite goes after Vets for Freedom for making a TV buy for John McCain,but they're giving Barack Obama a free ride as he surfs a wave of PAC money to the Democratic nomination, a wave that, if anything, is nearing tsunami proportions despite his boasts (aka: lies) that he doesn't accept money from Pacs.

Tuesday, April 08, 2008