While the Republicans dwell in the land if make-belief with their “corporations are people my friend” mentality and their wish to deny you health care by repealing the law also known as “ObamaCare,” reports are surfacing showing more ways the health care law is benefiting the economy – by creating more jobs.
President Barack Obama’s effort to bring the health-care system into the digital age is boosting a couple of software startups — ZocDoc and Practice Fusion — that are trying to do just that.
ZocDoc, which lets patients book medical appointments via the web, said today that former Senate Majority Leaders Tom Daschle and Bill Frist have joined the advisory board to help the New York City-based company expand.
Practice Fusion, meanwhile, announced today it raised $2 million in debt from a group of angel investors, following a $23 million round of financing last year. Physicians use Practice Fusion’s software to track their patients’ medical history, schedule appointments, prescribe medication and provide referral letters.
While companies big and small have spent years trying to crack the electronic medical records market, it was President Obama’s 2009 economic stimulus plan that sped up the process. As part of the plan, the government will invest up to $27.4 billion by 2021 to get health organizations on board.
So the reality of the situation is this; Republicans’ wish to repeal “ObamaCare” would not only affect you by once again allowing insurance companies to deny you care when you’re sick, even if you’ve paid your premium, a repeal will literally cost thousands of jobs in an already bad economy.
We often brag that we are the most powerful nation on earth. But are we also the most selfish and uncaring when it comes to our own citizens? Why is it apparently acceptable by some if our next door neighbor dies for something as trivial as a lack of healthcare or more specifically as in this case, dental care?
According to NBC affiliate WLWT, Kyle Willis‘ wisdom tooth started hurting two weeks ago. When dentists told him it needed to be pulled, he decided to forgo the procedure, because he was unemployed and had no health insurance.
When his face started swelling and his head began to ache, Willis went to the emergency room, where he received prescriptions for antibiotics and pain medications. Willis couldn’t afford both, so he chose the pain medications.
The tooth infection spread, causing his brain to swell. He died Tuesday.
We must be better than this.
We send our troops overseas to “free” other nations, and to teach these nations how “civilized” people should live. We want those nations to be able to live like us. We ask international governments to provide for their people by building schools, roads and hospitals among other things, and we expect the leaders of these nations to do these things, because in our minds, these are the basic and necessary needs of any citizenry.
But when it comes to our own there’s obviously a different standard, as our own citizens without healthcare die because they can’t afford pain medication and antibiotics.
Meanwhile, Republicans are still promising to repeal what they call, “Obamacare” – President Obama’s healthcare reform plan which would offer basic healthcare coverage to over 30 million Americans who presently have none. To congressional Republicans, this is a terrible thing for the leader of our nation to do. What would these Republicans have to say to Kyle Willis’ family? Oh, never-mind that question, Republicans consider Kyle’s death as the natural order of things, you know, eliminating the weak. Only the strong survives!
Tim Pawlenty showed his punkass side again. Last Sunday, Pawlenty went on Fox News and criticized his fellow Republican Mitt Romney and the health care bill Romney approved in Massachusetts. Funny thing is, when Pawlenty was given the opportunity to confront Romney at the CNN debate one day later, he punked out and showed the nation that he has no backbone.
Well that was then and this is now. Realizing that he crumbled while Romney was on stage with him, Pawlenty is trying to regain the ‘tough-guy’ front he never really had. So today, in the comforting confine of his own living room, and in front of his big bad computer, little Timmy went online and became ballsy tweeting to all who cared to listen, that he is once again willing to take on Romney.
After looking around the room and making sure Romney wasn’t there, Pawlenty took to twitter and tweeted the following;
But on CNN, and with Mitt Romney standing just a few feet away from him, Little Timmy emerged and the tough-guy persona he exhibited on Fox was gone.
As an elected congressman or woman for that matter, one of your primary responsibilities to the people who vote you into power is to be honest. However, Republican congressman Steve King from Iowa went on “The Last Word”with Lawrence O’Donnell and claimed that he lies to his constituents to keep the peace.
Only in America can a congressman come on television, say he’s a Christian, profess to know the truth about an issue, then deliberately withholds this truth from his constituents for fear of pissing them off! The issue in this case is whether or not President Obama is a Christian or Muslim.
Ladies and gentlemen, please allow us to introduce to you the Lying, Christian, Republican Congressman from Iowa, Mr. Steve King.
The push to end President Obama’s major initiative continues in the Republican House of Representative. After voting to repeal the law earlier in January, House Republicans are now talking about their next step in stopping Americans from getting the consumer protection and Health care the law provides. Their next step is cutting off its funding.
WASHINGTON (AP) — One of the House’s top Republicans says he believes the chamber will soon vote to block spending for President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul law.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor told reporters Tuesday that by the time the House approves a government-wide spending bill for this year, it will end up prohibiting the use of money for the overhaul. The House is expected to debate that legislation shortly.
That overhaul, which became law last year, is one of Obama’s proudest legislative achievements. Republicans have opposed it as a costly, big-government overreach.
Spending for government programs expires March 4 unless Congress approves new legislation providing extra funds.
Cantor, a Virginia Republican, and other GOP lawmakers want to use the spending bill to cut government expenditures across the board.
In a recent interview conducted by Ezra Klein of the Washington Post, with one of the original authors of the individual mandate – the piece of language in the health care reform bill that requires Americans to purchase health insurance, but is attacked by Republicans as “unconstitutional,” – was asked if the constitutionality of the mandate was ever questioned back in 1991 when the term was first used.
Mr. Mark Pauly, who was the lead author of a Health Affairs paper, was given the job to come up with a way to persuade President George H.W. Bush to adopt a health care policy where all Americans will be covered, while keeping the private health care providers in charge of the industry. The individual mandate was seen as the only way to accomplish this feat.
The question was asked by Mr. Klein; “Was the constitutionality of the provision a question, either in your deliberations or after it was released?” Mr. Pauly answered;
“I don’t remember that being raised at all. The way it was viewed by the Congressional Budget Office in 1994 was, effectively, as a tax. You either paid the tax and got insurance that way or went and got it another way. So I’ve been surprised at that argument. But I’m not an expert on the Constitution. My fix would be to simply say raise everyone’s taxes by what a health insurance policy would cost — Congress definitely has the power to do that — and then tell people that if they obtain insurance, they’ll get a tax break of the same amount. So instead of a penalty, it’s a perfectly legal tax break. But this seems to me to angelic pinhead density arguments about whether it’s a payment to do something or not to do something.”
Opponents of the law, which they have affectionately dubbed ‘ObamaCare,’ states that the law violates the Commerce Clause in the constitution, which, according to Article 1 Section 8 Clause 3 states that Congress shall have the power to: “regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes”. This its opponents claim, does not give congress the power to mandate commerce, or to make anyone buy insurance, thus, its unconstitutionality.
Proponents claim that the power given to Congress through the Commerce Clause of the Constitution is a grant of power, not an express limitation on the power of Congress to regulate the economy, thus, the law is giving Congress the power to improve the economy through the individual mandate and is therefore constitutional.
This ongoing debate prompted the next question from Mr. Klein, “…whether the individual mandate is a penalty for economic inactivity or whether it’s part of a broader system of regulations affecting a market for health care that we’re all participating in.” Mr. Pauly answered;
I see it in the latter way. We thought it was a good idea to do everything possible to encourage people to get insurance. Subsidies will probably pick up the great bulk of the population. But the point of the mandate was that there are a few Evil Knievals who won’t buy it and this would bring them into the system. In our version, the penalty was effectively equal to the premium of a policy. You paid the penalty and you got the insurance. That’s one of my puzzlements here: In the new law, the actual level of the penalty is quite small compared to the price of a policy. It’s only about 20 percent of the cost of a policy
In short, at the time this ‘individual mandate’ was implemented and presented to a Republican president, the common wisdom was that it would keep the government out of the healthcare sector. Requiring people to buy healthcare as the mandate did back in the early nineties, insured a larger portion of Americans and eliminated the need for a single payer government run option.
Because the private sector would benefit from the increased policies sales the individual mandate provided, Republicans signed on to the measure. Democrats on the other hand did not approve of the measure.
So why now the debate on the constitutionality of the individual mandate coming from the right? Simply put, there is now a Democratic President in the White House, and although he and other Democrats have now seen the need for the individual mandate as a way to allow the private sector to offer health care to all, Republicans now have a change of heart. So the debate, childish as it is, continues…
According to a report to be released Tuesday by the Department of Health and Human Services, there are around 129 million Americans under the age of 65 who have a pre-existing condition that will allow insurance companies to deny them care, or even drop their policy all together.
The report comes at a time when the Republican controlled House of Representatives are introducing legislation to repeal President Obama’s signature Health Care Reform bill, signed into law in March of 2010. The repeal is mainly to appease the Teaparty and their base supporters, as the measure will not pass the Democratic controlled Senate. And in the unlikely event that the repeal passes the House and Senate, President Obama has said it will be vetoed.
As reported by The Washington Post, the study found that one-fifth to one-half of non-elderly people in the United States have conditions that trigger rejection or higher prices in the individual insurance market. These conditions range from cancer to heart disease, asthma and high blood pressure.
A Republican aide calls the release of the report “political,” suggesting that it is an attempt to influence the repeal vote in the House of Representatives. Health and Human Services Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius told the Post, “Americans living with pre-existing conditions are being freed from discrimination in order to get the health coverage they need.”
Not if House Speaker John Boehner and his Republican allies get their way!
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