AP Finally Reports The Truth

Congress gets bigger raise than average health care insurance companies get profit …

Stand for the truth, hold to the truth, question with confidence and boldness. The AP finally got around to it today … on a Sunday, where it’s likely to be buried:

Quick quiz: What do these enterprises have in common? Farm and construction machinery, Tupperware, the railroads, Hershey sweets, Yum food brands and Yahoo? Answer: They’re all more profitable than the health insurance industry. In the health care debate, Democrats and their allies have gone after insurance companies as rapacious profiteers making “immoral” and “obscene” returns while “the bodies pile up.”

Ledgers tell a different reality. Health insurance profit margins typically run about 6 percent, give or take a point or two. That’s anemic compared with other forms of insurance and a broad array of industries, even some beleaguered ones.

Profits barely exceeded 2 percent of revenues in the latest annual measure. This partly explains why the credit ratings of some of the largest insurers were downgraded to negative from stable heading into this year, as investors were warned of a stagnant if not shrinking market for private plans.

Congress just awarded themselves a 2.6% pay increase for the 21% approval rating they have achieved — More than the average profits of health insurance companies in 2008.

The average profit margin for health insurers last year clocked in at an anemic 2.2%.  What does that mean from the investor position?  They would have done better to put their money into FDIC-insured savings accounts at their local bank, let alone a CD or other guaranteed investment device.  A 2.2% profit margin would normally trigger a stockholder revolt.

When You Are Losing, Bribes Are Always Good

Democrats are said to offer physicians a deal — freezing Medicare payment cuts if the docs sign on to health care reform. This is pricey bribery even by Washington standards.

Sooner or later, health care reform is going to hit taxpayers’ wallets. House Democrats want to start right away with the rich, naturally. Their counterparts in the Senate are more circumspect or shifty, depending on your point of view. There, reform has a fiscally conservative facade that masks some very expensive wheeling and dealing.

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Truth In Advertising

And exactly how are we going to pay for all this out of control spending?

You notice with the government rationed health care debate, the one thing missing outside of common sense, is the WHY?

Government Control Leads to Denial of Care

The British media know the cost of health care rationing. From the London Times — Daughter saves mother, 80, left by doctors to starve:

An 80-year-old grandmother who doctors identified as terminally ill and left to starve to death has recovered after her outraged daughter intervened.

Hazel Fenton, from East Sussex, is alive nine months after medics ruled she had only days to live, withdrew her antibiotics, and denied her artificial feeding. The former school matron had been placed on a controversial care plan intended to ease the last days of dying patients.

Doctors say Fenton is an example of patients who have been condemned to death on the Liverpool care pathway plan. They argue that while it is suitable for patients who do have only days to live, it is being used more widely in the NHS, denying treatment to elderly patients who are not dying.

Ball, 42, from Robertsbridge, East Sussex, said: “My mother was going to be left to starve and dehydrate to death. It really is a subterfuge for legalised euthanasia of the elderly on the NHS. ”

Fenton was admitted to hospital suffering from pneumonia. Although Ball acknowledged that her mother was very ill she was astonished when a junior doctor told her she was going to be placed on the plan to “make her more comfortable” in her last days.

Ball insisted that her mother was not dying but her objections were ignored. A nurse even approached her to say: “What do you want done with your mother’s body?”

How The Lies Began: To Employees of Industrial and Business Establishments

This is how the Social Security Ponzi Scheme was sold to one and all. As you read this think about all the empty promises about government rationed health care … and ask yourself — WHY would we do this.

Beginning November 24, 1936, the United States Government will set up a Social Security account for you, if you are eligible. To understand your obligations, rights, and benefits you should read the following general explanation.

THERE is now a law in this country which will give about 26 million working people something to live on when they are old and have stopped working. This law, which gives other benefits, too, was passed last year by Congress and is called the Social Security Act.

Under this law the United States Government will send checks every month to retired workers, both men and women, after they have passed their 65th birthday and have met a few simple requirements of the law.

WHAT THIS MEANS TO YOU

THIS means that if you work in some factory, shop, mine, mill, store, office, or almost any other kind of business or industry, you will be earning benefits that will come to you later on. From the time you are 65 years old, or more, and stop working, you will get a Government check every month of your life, if you have worked some time (one day or more) in each of any 5 years after 1936, and have earned during that time a total of $2,000 or more.

The checks will come to you as a right. You will get them regardless of the amount of property or income you may have. They are what the law calls “Old-Age Benefits” under the Social Security Act. If you prefer to keep on working after you are 65, the monthly checks from the Government will begin coming to you whenever you decide to retire.

The Amount of Your Checks

How much you will get when you are 65 years old will depend entirely on how much you earn in wages from your industrial or business employment between January 1, 1937, and your 65th birthday. A man or woman who gets good wages and has a steady job most of his or her life can get as much as $85 a month for life after are 65. The least you can get in monthly benefits, if you come under the law at all, is $10 a month.

IF YOU ARE NOW YOUNG

Suppose you are making $25 a week and are young enough now to go on working for 40 years. If you make an average of $25 a week for 52 weeks in each year, your check when you are 65 years old will be $53 a month for the rest of your life. If you make $50 a week, you will get $74.50 a month for the rest of your life after age 65.

IF YOU ARE NOW MIDDLE-AGED

But suppose you are about 55 years old now and have 10 years to work before you are 65. Suppose you make only $15 a week on the average. When you stop work at age 65 you will get a check for $19 each month for the rest of your life. If you make $25 a week for 10 years, you will get a little over $23 a month from the Government as long as you live after your 65th birthday.

IF YOU SHOULD DIE BEFORE AGE 65

If you should die before you begin to get your monthly checks, your family will get a payment in cash, amounting to 3.5 cents on every dollar of wages you have earned after 1936. If, for example, you should die at age 64, and if you had earned $25 a week for 10 years before that time, your family would receive $455. On tile other hand, if you have not worked enough to get the regular monthly checks by the time you are 65, you will get a lump sum, or if you should die your family or estate would get a lump sum. The amount of this, too, will be 3.5 cents on every dollar of wages you earn after 1936.

TAXES

THE same law that provides these old-age benefits for you and other workers, sets up certain new taxes to be paid to the United States Government. These taxes are collected by the Bureau of Internal Revenue of the U. S. Treasury Department, and inquiries concerning them should be addressed to that bureau. The law also creates an “Old-Age Reserve Account” in the United States Treasury, and Congress is authorized to put into this reserve account each year enough money to provide for the monthly payments you and other workers are to receive when you are 65.

YOUR PART OF THE TAX

The taxes called for in this law will be paid both by your employer and by you. For the next 3 years you will pay maybe 15 cents a week, maybe 25 cents a week, maybe 30 cents or more, according to what you earn. That is to say, during the next 3 years, beginning January 1, 1937, you will pay 1 cent for every dollar you earn, and at the same time your employer will pay 1 cent for every dollar you earn, up to $3,000 a year. Twenty-six million other workers and their employers will be paying at the same time.

After the first 3 year–that is to say, beginning in 1940–you will pay, and your employer will pay, 1.5 cents for each dollar you earn, up to $3,000 a year. This will be the tax for 3 years, and then, beginning in 1943, you will pay 2 cents, and so will your employer, for every dollar you earn for the next 3 years. After that, you and your employer will each pay half a cent more for 3 years, and finally, beginning in 1949, twelve years from now, you and your employer will each pay 3 cents on each dollar you earn, up to $3,000 a year. That is the most you will ever pay.

YOUR EMPLOYER’S PART OF THE TAX

The Government will collect both of these taxes from your employer. Your part of the tax will be taken out of your pay. The Government will collect from your employer an equal amount out of his own funds.

This will go on just the same if you go to work for another employer, so long as you work in a factory, shop, mine, mill, office, store, or other such place of business. (Wages earned in employment as farm workers, domestic workers in private homes, Government workers, and on a few other kinds of jobs are not subject to this tax.)

OLD-AGE RESERVE ACCOUNT

Meanwhile, the Old-Age Reserve fund in the United States Treasury is drawing interest, and the Government guarantees it will never earn less than 3 percent. This means that 3 cents will be added to every dollar in the fund each year.

Maybe your employer has an old-age pension plan for his employees. If so, the Government’s old-age benefit plan will not have to interfere with that. The employer can fit his plan into the Government plan.

What you get from the Government plan will always be more than you have paid in taxes and usually more than you can get for yourself by putting away the same amount of money each week in some other way.

Note.–”Wages” and “employment” wherever used in the foregoing mean wages and employment as defined in the Social Security Act.

54% Oppose Government Rationed Health Care

Only forty-two percent (42%) of voters support the government rationed health care reform plans in Congress. Fifty-four percent (54%) are opposed. Forty-two percent (42%) are strongly opposed.
Rasmussen reported:

Now that the Senate Finance Committee has passed its version of health care reform, 42% of voters nationwide favor the health care reform plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats. That’s down two points from a week ago and down four from the week before.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 54% are opposed to the plan.

The numbers have been remarkably stable throughout the debate. With the exception of bounces following presidential television appearances, support for the plan has stayed in a very narrow range from 41% to 46%. Currently, 24% Strongly Favor the legislative effort and 42% are Strongly Opposed.

To destroy free people’s liberty, destroy their morality.

Medicare Biggest Denier of Claims

According to AMA’s National Health Insurance Report Card, Medicare denies 6.85 percent of its claims, higher than any private insurer (Aetna was second, denying 6.80 percent of its claims), and more than double any private insurer’s average.

What’s fascinating is that The American Medical Association (AMA) has endorsed a public option, despite the fact that “some member physicians at the group’s annual meeting [in June] likened the notion to communism.”

The Obama administration repeats ad nauseum that we need a government option to “keep insurance companies honest” and to make sure they don’t deny anyone coverage. Well what does one say about the fact that Medicare denies more claims than private insurers?

President Obama has promised that if we like our health insurance we can keep it. But will those who are forced into the public option–which has been estimated to be minimum of tens of millions of currently insured Americans in addition to those “46 million” currently uninsured–be satisfied with their care given that the government program Medicare’s denial of claims outranks any private insurer’s?

AMA is effectively endorsing a public plan that is the largest denier of claims. How the public option would provide health care to patients is hard to understand.

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Funny Video

Reid says Baucus government rationed healthcare bill will cost $2 trillion and dismisses $54 billion in savings on frivolous lawsuits.

The truth eventually comes out. The kill granny bill marches on. One day, you will be a granny and then what? Watch Soylent Green for the future.

Liberals government run healthcare rationing — Kill granny, save money, give money to Democrat constituents, elect Democrats for life. Yes withdrawing healthcare is a death sentence for many..

Baucus Health Care Rationing Bill Raises Taxes by $2.3 Trillion

You really have to read this entire piece by Jeffrey Anderson in the New York Post, to get a sense of how frighteningly dishonest the gimmicks used by Senator Baucus to get the CBO to sign off on his health care rationing bill were.

As others have noted, Baucus used all manner of budgetary gimmicks to oblige the CBO to give him the headlines he needed — a supposed pricetag of “just” $829 billion over 10 years, with enough other spending cuts and tax hikes to avoid adding to the federal deficit. But the CBO exposed the truth by taking the rare step of calculating what the bill would cost in its second 10 years.In its second decade alone, the CBO projects, the bill’s costs would triple — to $2.8 trillion. The taxes and fines it levies would also triple — to $1.8 trillion. And its cuts to Medicare and related federal health programs would quadruple — to $1.9 trillion.

In its first two decades combined, the bill would cost $3.6 trillion and would raise taxes by $2.3 trillion.

Baucus’ most elementary trick was to have the bill’s “first 10 years” include several years when it hadn’t really kicked in. It was scored for 2010 to 2019, yet it wouldn’t be in full swing until 2015 — when its costs would exceed those of its first five years combined.

In fact, the bill wouldn’t cost anything in 2010. In its real first decade (2011-20), it would cost more than $1 trillion.

Furthermore, the CBO projects that, by the end of 2030, the Baucus bill would have cut spending on Medicare and other existing health programs by more than $2.6 trillion.

In its first two decades combined, the bill would cost $3.6 trillion and would raise taxes by $2.3 trillion.

Pathway For The Elderly That Leads To Legal Execution

Being “made comfortable” is no longer the reassuring euphemism it once was, says Liz Hunt.

At around 4am on Monday, a friend of mine was woken by a call from the private care home in south-west London where her 98-year-old grandmother is resident.

“Mrs ——- has breathing difficulties,” the night manager told her. “She needs oxygen. Shall we call an ambulance?”

“What do you mean?” my friend responded. “What’s the matter with her?”

“She needs to go to hospital. Do you want that? Or would you prefer that we make her comfortable?”

Befuddled by sleep, she didn’t immediately grasp what was being asked of her. Her grandmother is immobilised by a calcified knee joint, which is why she is in the home. She’s a little deaf and frail, but otherwise perky. She reads a newspaper every day (without glasses), and is a fan of the darling of daytime television, David Dickinson. Why wouldn’t she get medical treatment if she needed it?

Then, the chilling implication of the phone call filtered through – she was being asked whether her grandmother should be allowed to die.

“Call an ambulance now,” my friend demanded.

The person at the other end persisted. “Are you sure that’s what you want? For her to go to hospital.”

“Yes, absolutely. Get her to hospital.”

Three hours later, her grandmother was sitting up in A&E, smiling. She had a mild chest infection, was extremely dehydrated, but was responding to oxygen treatment.

It was a happy ending – of sorts. My friend is reeling from the care home manager’s questioning. Had she really been asked to pronounce a possible death sentence on her grandmother, a woman with no underlying ailment other than old age? The issue of a “Do Not Resuscitate” order had never been raised with the family – if it had been, they would have dismissed the idea. And why was her grandmother found to be so dehydrated on her arrival at hospital that she remains on a drip: is this down to negligence, or something more sinister?

Withdrawal of fluids (and drugs) is one of the steps on the controversial palliative care programme known as the Liverpool Care Pathway, which has been adopted by 900 hospitals, hospices and care homes in England. The intention is admirable: to prevent unnecessary invasive treatment and help cancer patients to die comfortably.

But there is growing evidence that patients who don’t fit the criteria are being railroaded on to the Pathway, and into premature death.

The Daily Telegraph reported two cases this week. Hazel Fenton, an 80-year-old from Sussex, was admitted to hospital in January with pneumonia and put on the Pathway regimen. Her daughter, Christine Ball, fought to stop her mother from being left to “starve and dehydrate to death”. Nine months on, Hazel is doing well and is “happy”, Christine says. Jack Jones, a cancer patient from Merseyside, wasn’t so lucky. Doctors did not treat the 76-year-old’s pneumonia because they claimed his cancer was spreading aggressively. A post-mortem examination found otherwise. His wife has never managed to confirm that Jack was on the Pathway, but she has no doubt he was denied precious time with his family. Readers, I am sure, will have their own, similar experiences. I’d like to hear them.

We’ve long accepted the practice of easing terminally ill patients towards death, by upping the dose of morphine so that pain and consciousness are blunted until respiration is suppressed completely. Sensible people view it as the most compassionate of acts. But being “made comfortable” is no longer the reassuring euphemism it once was. While we’ve been preoccupied with the moral pluses and minuses of living wills, assisted suicide and euthanasia, legalised execution of some of society’s most vulnerable has become available, most probably at a hospital near you. How did we let this happen?

I’m trying to be charitable, but …

They were once the curse of the workplace; the colleagues who’d shuffle up, thrust a piece of paper in front of you, and ask you to sponsor them in some feat of endurance for charity. Refusal wasn’t an option if you didn’t want to be labelled the office skinflint.

The internet changed all that. Now, it’s an email that arrives to extort your cash, and it is easier to decline. It is also easier to give: just click on the link provided, key in credit card details and that’s it. A month rarely passes without a handful of requests. In recent weeks I’ve sponsored participants in the Great North Run, the Royal Parks half-marathon, and a bike ride for Breast Cancer Care. I relish ticking the box asking if I’m eligible for Gift Aid – and then seeing exactly what I’m depriving the Chancellor of.

But I’d no idea that the website hosting these requests for sponsorship was a beneficiary, too. Justgiving.com, Britain’s leading fundraising website, creams 5 per cent off the Gift Aid portion. This week it emerged that it made a £2.3 million profit last year, and £1.1 million from the London Marathon alone. Just giving? I thought I was! I want all the money to go to charity. In future, anyone who wants sponsorship from me will get it only if they use a non-commission website such as Bmycharity. You’ve been warned.

TV for toddlers lets the parents switch off

I’ve enormous sympathy for children brought up under the rule of the Television Taliban. By that I mean those smug parents who deny access to the box so that the little darlings can spend their time more gainfully by reviewing War and Peace, honing their interpretation of a Brahms piano concerto, or improving on Constable’s Haywain. So it is a source of irritation to learn that yet another bunch of experts is calling for a ban on television for the under-twos because it “stunts language development and shortens attention spans”.

That may be. But in my experience, TV for the under-twos saves relationships and safeguards sanity. It is the only form of respite care for parents driven demented by toddlers. Plonk one down in front of CBeebies or a DVD and you’ll get, if you’re lucky, 10 minutes’ breathing space. Mind you, with the ancient Bernard Cribbins threatening a comeback on kids’ TV, I’m not sure for how much longer that will hold.

Humiliated Blair was let off lightly

Peter Brierley’s son Shaun died in Iraq. Last week, he refused to shake Tony Blair’s hand after the memorial service at St Paul’s Cathedral because it had “blood” on it. “I understand soldiers go to war and die but they have to go to war for a good reason and be properly equipped to fight,” he said.

Many applauded Mr Brierley’s protest but some have criticised him for humiliating the former PM so publicly. I’m with the former. A day later, Cherie Blair was telling an audience at the Cheltenham Literature Festival that the decision to go to war had been “51-49”, but that her husband had been able to convince every one that it was really “70-30”. She reduced a turn of events that has impacted tens of thousands of lives here and in Iraq to little more than the flip of a coin, and a bit of spin. Even for her, this was insensitivity beyond belief. Heads your son died, Mr Brierley; tails and he might have lived. I think Mr Blair got away lightly.

Eighty-two is too old to rock

In an ageist society, the triumph of talent and experience over youth is to be welcomed. Most of the time. I love it that Tina Turner (69) can still shimmy with the best of them, that Cliff (69 today!) remains wired for sound; and Hallelujah for Leonard Cohen commanding sell-out tours at 75.

But four score years must be the cut-off point. It’s no longer so nice to see Bruce Forsyth (81) on prime-time. He’s fast becoming a hide-behind-the-sofa embarrassment. As for the quavering, wavering Andy Williams, who is lined up for Glastonbury next summer, when he’ll be 82 – now that is just too good to be true.

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