UPDATED: The Senate Sucks, The President Lies: Just Another Day In The USA

Democrats, Healthcare, Intelligence, Republicans, Ron Paul

He made the statement brilliantly. Nevertheless, it is a sad statement Ted Cruz made, to the effect that Congress was “a profile in courage” for attempting to carry out the will of millions of Americans, and roll back the calamitous ObamaCare.

Sen. Cruz is extremely bright, better able to distill politicking into principle than the son of Ron Paul.

WATCH:

UPDATE: Via Newsmax:

Freshman Sen. Ted Cruz, who has led the tea party wing of Republicans in Congress in their effort to defund Obamacare, is an intelligent and principled debater, says his old Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz.

Appearing Tuesday on CNN’s “Piers Morgan Live,” Dershowitz called the Texas Republican “one of the sharpest students I had, in terms of analytic skills. I’ve had 10,000 students over my 50 years at Harvard . . . He has to qualify among the brightest of the students.”

When Obeying Law Becomes a Political Bargaining Chip

Democrats, Healthcare, Law, Republicans

Nothing in the GOP budget proposal are the Democrats willing to accept, except for “one minor change sought by Republicans: setting new procedures to verify the incomes of some people receiving government subsidies for health-insurance costs.” (WSJ)

John Hayward at RedState.com puts this “concession” in context:

One of the “concessions” Democrats are supposedly offering to Republicans is a pledge to obey the parts of ObamaCare that require income verification for those who receive welfare subsidies through the tax code – a requirement they would otherwise feel free to ignore.
… it’s increasingly clear that the powerful feel no compulsion to obey the law. … We’re only talking about a shutdown because the Ruling Class freely disobeys the laws – and they are laws – requiring Congress to prepare a budget for the federal government. The President and his party are fighting to protect ObamaCare, which they never tire of reminding us is the “settled law of the land,” as if that’s supposed to quash all dissent… but they ignore portions of that law as they please. …In return, Democrats demand the repeal of sequestration, the only remaining shred of a law called the Budget Control Act of 2011.
…Many of President Obama’s Shutdown Theater antics have involved violations of the law. …But even as the aristocracy luxuriates in the highest level of power – the ability to not only pass laws, but ignore them – demands for compliance and obedience from the rest of us grow more strident. …

No doubt, the U.S. is mired in moral decay. A question for RedState.com: Where were you lot when Bush was flouting The Law?

The No-Good Obama Has Altered American Medicine For Good

Barack Obama, Healthcare, Regulation, Socialism, Taxation, Welfare

Dr. Ramin Oskoui spoke extremely knowledgeably, on the Laura Ingraham Show, about the precise connection between curtailed medical care and ObamaCare. These are a few of the many ways in which the creep-in-chief’s signature legislation will degrade American medicine:

* Cancer: The concept of personalized medical care and the use of specific, state-of-the-art drugs that work with the individual’s genetic make-up—these will diminish considerably. ObamaCare puts access to “crucial medical progress at great risk.”

* PET scans, for example, will be limited to three in a lifetime, although cancer patients often have that many during initial diagnosis.

ObamaCare aims to control costs, explained Dr. Oskoui. For cancer patients this is achieved by blocking the patient’s ability to seek out specialized doctors. Because insurance provides cannot adjust premiums and benefits, the only thing they can do to control costs is to limit access and care—they must limit the network of providers with which they contract.

Bundle payments: doctors get lump sums of money to care for patients with particular conditions. This coerces them to cut down on the use of costlier, newer drugs and tests. It also pits what the doctor earns for caring for these patients against his payment, reducing his incentives to offer the best of remedies if these are more costly.

After all, doctors in private practice are small businessmen. They cannot provide a service for less than it costs them to provide.

Even if ObamaCare collapses under its own weight, warns Dr. Oskoui, it has “already changed the medical landscape.” Many specialists have migrated to the hospital system because, as “favored providers,” hospital-based medics are allowed to bill more than they would when working for themselves.

Both the host and this intelligent cardiac surgeon have concluded that ObamaCare is not about the practice of medicine, but about wealth distribution.

It is a tax bill.

“The entire medical landscape,” observed Ms. Ingraham, “has shifted to help the few who didn’t want healthcare or couldn’t afford it. (A point made back in 2009 in “Destroying Healthcare For The Few Uninsured.”)

Dr. Oskoui: ObamaCare has transferred financial risk to the providers of healthcare and away from Big Pharma, the insurers, those receiving healthcare. The latter, and the electronic health-records manufacturers, profit.

Again: it’s a wealth-transfer program; an entitlement program.

Debt-Addled America

Debt, Democrats, Economy, Government, Republicans

“Like father, like son” goes a saying about the similarities between the behavior of a child and his parents. In the case of the nation, infantile America mirrors its squandering government with respect to debt carried.

Is there any wonder the American people, happliy gulled by the moron media, disapprove of Republicans for entertaining the idea of not raising the debt ceiling?

“American companies and consumers are embracing [debt], running up record amounts in 2013,” reports CNBC.

Total household debt, according to the Fed’s flow of funds report, is at $13 trillion, nearly back to its pre-crisis level in 2007 and a shade below government debt of $15 trillion. … The debt deluge doesn’t end there, either, with lots of loans being taken out as well by companies. U.S. loan volume alone totaled $1.53 trillion through the first three quarters, a gaudy 25 percent higher than the same period in 2012. …
…Consumer credit, for instance, surged past the $3 trillion mark in the second quarter of 2013 and continues on an upward trajectory, according to the most recent numbers from the Federal Reserve.
At $3.04 trillion, the total is up 22 percent over the past three years. Student loans are up a whopping 61 percent.

Warns financier Peter Schiff:

The belief that deficits add to the economy, and that debt can be dealt with in an imaginary future (that never seems to arrive) is the foundation upon which the President can chastise the Republicans as irresponsible suicide bombers. Using this logic, he can argue (with a straight face) that borrowing is the equivalent of paying. That the President can make this delusional argument is not so surprising (no lie too great for the typical politician to attempt). What is alarming is that the media and the public have swallowed it so willingly. As they call for limitless increases in borrowing, Democrats have offered no plan to reduce the current debt and they are unwilling to negotiate with Republicans on that topic. Yet somehow they have been perceived as the party of fiscal responsibility. …
… According to modern economists, an elimination of deficit spending will immediately cause a dollar for dollar decrease in GDP. For example, if the government stopped sending food stamp payments to poor people, then grocery stores would lose business, employees would be laid off, and the economy would contract. But this one dimensional view fails to appreciate that the purchasing power of the food stamps had to come from somewhere. The government can’t create something from nothing. Taxation transfers purchasing power from people living in the present to other people living in the present. In contrast, borrowing transfers purchasing power from people living in the future to people living in the present. The good news for politicians is that future people don’t vote in current elections (and current voters don’t seem to appreciate the cost to their future selves of current policy).