health care – Page 6

#rsrh 1989 to be revisited?

Thanks to Glenn Reynolds and Megan McArdle, this is going to be one of the funniest videos you’ll watch today:

That’s Representative Dan Rostenkowski being attacked at a town-hall meeting with his constituents. Afterwards, he plaintively asked his press officer how long it would be before the media foofaraw blew over. “Let me put it this way,” the flack is said to have replied. “When you die, they will play that clip.”

Admittedly, Dan Rostenkowski didn’t lose his job then – he got caught up in the 1994 tsunami, although he was probably on the way out then anyway – but then, in 1989 they weren’t putting practical video cameras in cell phones*. They also weren’t able to make footage showing a Congressman doing a high-speed getaway from his constituents instantly available to anybody with a decent Internet connection. And they didn’t have the capacity to let protest groups coordinate activities nationwide. But we have all these things now.

Enjoy your recess, Congress!

Moe Lane

*Heck, in 1989 what they considered a ‘cell phone’ looks strange and confusing to our eyes.

Bundling payoffs to pass health care: HOPE! CHANGE!

If this was happening in some other country, I would be laughing hysterically right now.

Taking a new position, Axelrod said the White House only objects to state-specific arrangements, such as an increase in Medicaid funding for Nebraska, ridiculed as the “Cornhusker Kickback.” That’s being cut, but provisions that could affect more than one state are OK, Axelrod said.

That means deals sought by senators from Montana and Connecticut would be fine — even though Gibbs last week singled them out as items Obama wanted removed. There was resistance, however, from two committee chairman, Democratic Sens. Max Baucus of Montana and Chris Dodd of Connecticut, and the White House has apparently backed down.

Since it’s happening in mine, I’ll merely note that there is no reason that anybody should be surprised by this (Hot Air certainly isn’t). The President does not have a name for keeping his promises. Also: if you gave money to the Democrats in the last decade because you wanted less corruption and favor-trading in Congress… well, let’s just say that all sales are final. And you aren’t getting any of that money back any time soon.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Health care: the DOOM that came for Blue Dogs. [UPDATED].

[UPDATE]: Welcome, Instapundit readers. Check out the new polling site Unlikely Voter, btw: not my site, but run by the guy who runs my site.

[UPDATE] I wasn’t joking about the ‘re-election money’ thing.

Here is something interesting: this paragraph (from an article begging Democratic legislators in Republican districts to sign off on health care rationing, for the greater glory of liberal urban Democrats)…

Hardened? Consistent? Solid? You must be joking. Look at the Rasmussen survey cited by Caddell and Schoen. Nine months ago, it showed likely voters supporting the Democratic health-care plan by 5-point margin. Then they opposed it by an 11-point margin. Then they favored it again by 5 points. Then they opposed it by 15 points. Then they were split. Then they opposed it by 19 points. Now the margin is back down to 11. Who knows where will it be next week?

…and this graph*:

…are coming from the same data source.

Continue reading Health care: the DOOM that came for Blue Dogs. [UPDATED].

Actually, Davey: make mine. Keep pushing this health care bill.

Because you ain’t so tough.

And this ain’t 2008.

Confident Axelrod challenges GOP: ‘Make my day’

One of the president’s top advisers confidently predicted Sunday that Congress will pass healthcare reform and dared Republicans to advocate repealing it during the 2010 elections.

We ran a Republican in Massachusetts on the explicit promise that he’d do everything in his power to spoke the wheels of your party’s disaster of a health care bill – and he won in a walk. We’ve got states like New Jersey calling for junking the current mess and starting over. And the ‘debate’ so far consists of a lot of people trumpeting their ‘no’ votes, almost nobody bragging about their ‘yes’ votes – and nobody brave enough to admit yet that they plan to go from ‘no’ to ‘yes.’ And you still want to dance? OK, then: let’s dance.

Davey.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

‘Health care do-over!’ sayeth… New Jersey.

They sayeth that, in fact, by a lot.

The Rutgers-Eagleton Poll released Thursday finds 81 percent of respondents wanting changes to the health care system, while 17 percent believe the current system works well enough.

But only 22 percent say Congress should pass the current reform proposals, while 68 percent want lawmakers to start over.

That’s two-thirds of adult voters in NJ who are calling for a mulligan. What’s the breakdown for likely ones? – And that’s a question that probably keeps the people on the list below up at nights:

Congressman	HCR	Christie?
Robert Andrews	Yes	Yes
John Adler	No	Yes
Frank Pallone	Yes	Yes
William Pascrell	Yes	Yes
Steven Rothman	Yes	No
Donald Payne	Yes	No
Rush Holt	Yes	Yes
Albio Sires	Yes	Yes

The list, of course, is the Democratic Congressional delegation for NJ. Payne and Holt Rothman [Oops!] are probably not too worried – they’re the only legislators on the list who had their counties carried by Corzine in the last election – and John Adler read the tea leaves a while back anyway. The rest of them need to… think about things.

Quickly. There’s only seven and a half months until the election.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

FINALLY: House GOP swears off earmarks.

Across the board, and no exceptions.

House Republicans approved a conference-wide moratorium on earmarks on Thursday, one day after a House committee enacted a ban on for-profit earmarks.

The Republicans’ moratorium is more extensive than the House Appropriations Committee’s ban in that it applies to all earmarks for all members of the caucus.

(Via Instapundit) Rep. Pence calls it a ‘clean break,’ which it is: I forget who out there has noted that this has been at least partially brought about by it being an election year. Which is fine by me; fear of the consequences of ticking off the voters is a perfectly good motivational tool for keeping legislators in line, as the upcoming Congressional elections are going to demonstrate. There’s going to be a goodly number of Democratic object lessons Congressmen who are going to wish that they had trusted their instincts in that regard, in fact. Continue reading FINALLY: House GOP swears off earmarks.

Hmm. What’s Spanish for “Hey, rubes!”

[UPDATE] Welcome, Instapundit readers.

I ask because Democrats from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus are trying to excise language from the health care rationing bill that would prohibit illegal immigrants from buying into insurance exchanges (see Hot Air for some analysis of what that entails). Putting aside for the moment whether or not this is a good idea, it’s an open question whether the CHC has the pull that it thinks that it has:

At a similar meeting at the White House in early November, which occurred just days before the House voted on its healthcare bill, the CHC failed to convince Obama to reject the Senate immigration language.

The result was a bloc of solid Democratic votes that remained up in the air until a deal was reached at the last minute to address the gap between the House and the Senate immigration restrictions during “conference negotiations.”

But the healthcare bill didn’t go to conference.

(Via AoSHQ) Let me sum that up: Continue reading Hmm. What’s Spanish for “Hey, rubes!”

Well, I’m tired of hearing him talk about it… #rsrh

…so I guess that we’re even.

“The time for talk is over. It’s time to vote. It’s time to vote. Tired of talking about it,” [Obama] told the crowd.

Note that the AP cut the comment later, as per their new Why even pretend to objective journalism? program. James Lileks once suggested – not seriously, I’m sure – that most design magazines and trade journals have had a lot of convenient fires ravage the portion of their archives that dealt with the Seventies; I wonder what excuse surviving news organizations will offer for the lack of certain types of data from 2007-2013. Asteroid strikes, probably. Very precise asteroid strikes.

Moe Lane

PS: If you’re tired of talking about this, Mr. President, you could always, you know, shut up or something.

PPS: Sorry, Mr. President. I haven’t had my coffee yet, and I get cranky when I haven’t had my coffee yet and I encounter people who want to blame everybody but themselves for a problem.

Durbin to Obama: ‘YOU LIE!’ #rsrh

[UPDATE] Welcome, Instapundit & Hot Air readers.

…well, as much as a Democratic party career politician can manage it, at least:

Which is to say, it’s even money that Dick Durbin (D, IL) isn’t sufficiently aware of the political battlespace to know that he had called the head of his political party a liar.

Moe Lane

[UPDATE]: Ed Morrissey is collecting reactions. And The New Ledger beat me out on using my own video…

My first thought was ‘Death panels,’ too…

…as per the first comment in this Hot Air post about Kent Pankow. But that’s absurd: we’ve been told by all sorts of people that such things could never, ever, ever happen under a government-run universal health care regime.

Suffering from brain cancer, Kent Pankow was literally forced to go to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. for lifesaving surgery — at a cost to family and friends of $106,000 — after the health-care system in Alberta left him hanging in bureaucratic limbo for 16 crucial days, his tumour meanwhile migrating to an unreachable part of the brain, while it dithered over his case file, ultimately deciding he was not surgery worthy.

Now, with the Mayo Clinic having done what the Alberta Cancer Board wouldn’t authorize or even explain, but with the tumour unable to be totally removed, the province will now not fund the expensive drug, Avastin, that the Mayo prescribed to keep him alive and keep the remaining tumour from increasing in size — despite the costs of the drug being totally funded by the province for other forms of cancer.

Kent Pankow, as it turns out, has the right disease but he has it in the wrong place.

And why would it never happen? Because the Master loves us and would never hurt us… look! A squirrel!

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.