"Let Grandma Die" Healthcare Bill

The scrooges of Christmas, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and company, are about to put coal in all our stockings, as they are on the verge of giving Americans the "gift" they most dread--ObamaCare, perhaps better labeled as the "let Grandma die" bill.

Thanks to Mr. Pro-Life himself, Ben Nelson, who just sold out the unborn, the Dems now have the 60 votes necessary to ram their snake oil "let Grandma die" healthcare bill down our throats. Nelson's Senate career is on its deathbed, but you can bet your last dollar his colleagues have something special in mind for him after he gets pummelled in the next election. Voters often have short memories, but in the case of their healthcare, I have the feeling Nebraskans will have the memory of an elephant, as will voters in the other 49 states.

Get all the dirty details from the American Thinker:

Reid gets his 60 votes - the Chicago Way
James Simpson

"Yesterday morning, while Washington, DC was getting blanketed with a record snowfall, Senate Democrats treated the entire United States to what may be the greatest snow job of all time. Biggoverment.com calls it 'the most corrupt piece of legislation in our nation's history,' and indeed it is.

Senator Ben Nelson agreed to support this massive healthcare restructuring plan which no one besides a few Democrat senators has even seen. The price for his support was 100 percent coverage of increases in Medicaid costs for his home state resulting from the legislation -- now and forevermore. It amounts to a flagrantly unconstitutional subsidy to Nebraska with taxpayer dollars from the other 49 states.

We should have seen this coming. When Senator Max Baucus revealed the Senate Finance Committee's version of the bill this summer, many of his fellow Senators balked. The upshot was that he took the eye-popping, unprecedented step of offering exclusions to the bill's provisions to these Senators' states!

This latest development demonstrates once again that, when it's a choice between principles and dollars, Democratic politicians reliably choose the latter. Nelson, who adamantly insisted he would not support any legislation allowing for federal funding of abortion in the healthcare bill, stoically holding out until the last minute, changed his mind pronto after accepting the Medicaid bribe.

With Nelson's agreement, the Senate has the 60 votes it needs to pass this monstrosity. And despite Senate Republicans' claims of having 'a strategy' to stop the bill, they appear to have gone out with a whimper. This is simply disgraceful. Not only was their 'strategy' a loser, when Senator DeMint finally did come up with a real strategy, only one Senator, Tom Coburn tried one of its tactics. When he did, the Democrats emasculated it by violating parliamentary rules.

As if to cap this moment of bottomless sleaze and corruption, Senate Majority Leader Reid scheduled the vote on this despicable travesty for 1 am, Monday morning. Either the Democrats are completely out of their minds in defying the will of the American people to pass this overwhelmingly unpopular, inarguably destructive legislation, or they know something we don't.

The Obama administration has saddled us with trillions in new debt to fund the 'bailout,' the 'stimulus,' and massive increases in federal spending. Not entirely unnoticed, but largely overlooked anyway, is the fact that much of this taxpayer funded spending paloosa is going to support Democrat constituents in both Democrat and Republican states. That money will very likely return to Democrat coffers later this year. Look for widespread reporting of sudden economic booms in selected sectors of the economy and/or selected geographic areas, providing the illusion of late-breaking resurgence to our economy... just in time for the election.

Now all eyes will move to House Democrat Bart Stupak, who, according to the Politico, is already working behind the scenes to scuttle Nelson's compromise. We'll see. But since no sitting Democrat Congressman or Senator has yet defied the Party leadership when the results turn on their individual decisions, it is doubtful the 'pro-life' Stupak will either.

After all, like everything else accomplished by this corrupt fraud of a President and his institutionally corrupt fellow Democrats, this legislation is 'historic.'"

This bill is no Christmas present to Americans. I think the Dems have their holiday mixed up. More like Halloween; we're all getting tricked.

In case you wonder why I call this bill the "let Grandma die" bill, read this, also from the American Thinker:

The coming doctor shortage
Rick Moran

"We already know that Obama and the Democrats aren't very good at math. Just look at the deficit.

But how's this for one of those old fashioned 'word problems' we used to get in math class back in the 4th grade?

A country decides to suddenly insure more than 30 million people while at the same time, cutting payments to medical schools and limiting hospital residencies. If you take more patients and add fewer doctors, what do you get?

Trouble, as this Business Week article by Pat Weschler makes clear:


'In 1997, lawmakers placed a cap on the number of medical residencies-hospital training required for all doctors-in order to contain costs under Medicare, which pays for most of these training slots. Today the U.S. is in the grip of a nationwide doctor shortage, brought on by an aging population demanding access to specialists. Medical schools have stepped up to the plate, announcing plans to add 3,000 new positions for first-time students by 2018. But because the residency cap is still in place, these efforts may not be sufficient.

The health-care overhaul is certain to compound the problem by flooding doctors' offices with newly empowered medical consumers. "Do the math," says Steven M. Safyer, president and CEO of Montefiore Medical Center in New York. "You give millions more people insurance, and it adds up to a much worse shortage."

The doctor crunch is already dire. Last year there were nearly 17,000 fewer primary-care doctors than needed in inner-city and rural areas, according to the U.S. Health & Human Services Dept. By 2025 there will be a shortage of as many as 159,300 doctors, predicts the Association of American Medical Colleges.'


So the government, already experiencing a doctor shortage, in its infinite wisdom sets up a system that ensures fewer doctors and then goes ahead and insures 30 million more patients thus guaranteeing a crisis?

Don't worry. They're going to fix it. Honest:


'Congress is now trying to reverse course. On Dec. 5, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), along with Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), and other sponsors, submitted an amendment to the health-care reform bill that would add 15,000 residencies at a cost to Medicare of about $1.5 billion, according to Atul Grover, a lobbyist with the medical college association. But because Congress is still looking to keep costs down, that figure may drop, if the change is approved at all, during the debate.'


They don't care that you are going to have to wait an eternity to see a doctor because the physicians they go to usher them to the front of the line. They don't care that you are going to have to wait half a day in a doctor's office for your appointment. They don't care if emergency rooms are going to be overflowing with poor people in even greater numbers than today because of the lack of primary care doctors, not to mention clinics in the inner city.

It will eventually dawn on the American people that they've bought a pig in a poke. But by then it will be too late and, like the sheep over in Europe who are forced to put up with this, they will get used to it."


More patients + fewer doctors = healthcare rationing = let grandma die.