Truthful Politics

I have been reading the Congressional Budget Office's preliminary analysis of H.R. 3200. It is interesting reading in light of what other pundits are saying. One such person is Rush Limbaugh, and on his show he made an interesting comment regarding the CBO's analysis of the bill. You can read the transcript of August 14th where he says "this monstrous, 1,017 page bill, after it passes -- ten years after it passes -- there's still 17 million uninsured Americans! It does (I am sure he meant to say NOT but it is missing from the transcript) even accomplish its primary, advertised objective." Well shall we see what the CBO analysis actually says?

In the Congressional Budget's analysis on page three it says "...those provisions would yield a significant INCREASE (emphasis mine) in the number of Americans with health insurance." Here is the part Rush left out, "by 2019, CBO and the staff of JCT estimate, the number of nonelderly people without health insurance would be REDUCED (emphasis mine) by about 37 million..." Now here is where Rush Limbaugh picks it up again, "...leaving about 17 million nonelderly (sic) residents uninsured..." Now Rush decided not to continue from here but I will, "(nearly half of whom would be unauthorized immigrants."

Now first of all Rush called them Americans, ummm Rush are you sure you meant to call unauthorized immigrants Americans? I think I need to go back onto Limbaugh's site and see what he has to say about that subject. I wonder what Limbaugh's position is on illegal immigrants getting health insurance...

I will be attending a conference Wednesday through Friday in San Diego. It is the Creative Freelancer Conference and I will be writing my posts from there.

In the works:
Health care costs and who is going to pay for it?
Under Medicare/Medicaid doctors only take so many patients. Will this happen under the new health care bill if passed?
I also will be posting about the conference.

Over the weekend I had a chance go through Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity's transcripts and researched their citing. Just to let you know that anyone can do this and if you have a computer at home you do not even have to leave the house.

Let us start with Sean Hannity's transcript of his July 23rd show. Sean begins the show by saying "Now we here at "Hannity," we're not going to let that happen. Tonight, we're going to show what happens when the government takes your life and death decisions into its own hands."

He begins with Ainsley Earhardt a FOX news correspondent, telling Sean's viewers about Major General William Davies (no relations), US Army (Ret) who suffered from pain in the chest and went to a hospital who told him they were not sure what caused it, but possibly indigestion. Maj. Gen'l. Davies would not take that for an answer so he proceeded to go to a cardiologist in Carlisle, PA, Doctor David Kahn. After being on the treadmill for only a few minutes it was discovered that there was a problem with his heart. Dr. Kahn stated that "the quickest way to get him studied was to take him to the hospital, so I did." How wonderful of Dr. Kahn to be such a concerned doctor, but how does this show what will happen when the government takes your life and death decisions into its own hands? I am sure for every wonderful story as this, there are more that show how horrible our health care system is. For example my brother-in-law had the symptoms of a heart attack on a Friday night, he went to their local small-town hospital. He was then transferred to a slightly larger hospital in Kingston, NY for tests that could not be performed at Margaretville Hospital. It was discovered that he had blockage in one of his arteries and he was immediately sent to Albany Hospital to have a stint put in. Total time - from Friday night to Monday. His doctor did not drive him to the hospital, his wife did and then the ambulance. My sister will even tell you, 'do not have a heart attack on a weekend, they will just make you comfortable and keep you alive until the weekday.'

He then goes on to talk about Katherine Hale a cancer survivor but again her story can be repeated numerous times and it shows what is wrong with our system.

Now though the plot thickens. Sean Hannity goes on to talk about Shona Holmes from Canada, who was diagnosed with a "brain tumor" and came to the US for treatment because she would have to wait a few months for certain testings in Canada. Well there seems to be some hoopla over her story and I am not going to repeat them here, suffice it to say she did have a medical problem and did need to have it taken care of. However, I can cite the same thing here in the US. I recently was caregiver to my 94 years old aunt who lived in NJ. I called a doctor to get her an initial visit once I had her here in NC. This doctor was highly recommended to me by hospice. This was in June of 2009, do you know when his first available appointment was? January of 2010, my aunt passed away July of 2009. I did eventually find her a doctor and she did have an appointment soon after she moved down here in June.

Now to Sean's next example of how bad national run health care is; Katie Brickel, a cancer survivor, from England. Katie was approached by Conservatives for Patient's Rights, a group started by Richard Scott who founded Columbia Hospital Corporation. Here is a little tidbit on CHC, shortly after it's merger with Hospital Corporation of America, it was investigated by the government for Medicare/Medicaid fraud in the late 1990's and paid 1.7 billion in fines, one of the largest settlements ever made. Just a little side note-HCA was started by two members of the Frist family, one being former majority leader of the US Senate Bill Frist (R); however, Mr. Frist sold all his shares of stock in 2005, but not without some controversy (again I will not go into details here but you can search it). CPR has on their website a pamphlet for you to read under their Resources section called Medicaid's Cost, Like Medicare's, Have Risen Far More Than the Cost of Private Health Care the only thing I can say is yes as long as there are companies out there, like you ran Mr. Scott, and carry out fraudulent practices against the system, yes then the cost will rise. On to Mrs. Brickel, she and others claim they were mislead by CPR as they were told they were going to do a documentary on whether health care in the US should be nationalized and that what she had said was "skewed out of proportion."¹

To wrap up his show Mr. Hannity goes back to Mr. Davies regarding his health care and this is how Major General Davies sums up what would have happened if it was under this current bill "I can only suppose that given, you know, the circumstances that I was facing, if that happened in Canada or the United Kingdom, that perhaps I could have died. That's the conclusion I can draw." (bold inserted by me) So I suppose what happened to Mr. Davies to begin with is not saying that our system needs to be fixed? So this is how Mr. Sean Hannity wants everyone to believe that the bill HR 3200 will devastate our current wonderfully run health care system. I can only suppose... that does say a lot to prove it to me. How about to you?

¹Times Online

UPDATE: I am glad to see that Rachel Maddow also reported on Richard Scott.

First I need to say I am an ex-Republican turned Democrat during the 2008 presidential campaign. However, I try to look at issues and research the he said/she said blather that is on the Internet and emails through a non-partisan eye for this site. I try my hardest to keep my political ideas out of this site and report on the issues as best as I can and am able to do.

I really have no opinion as of yet one way or the other on the healthcare bill HR3200. I have been reading it, I printed it out in small print and did it by printing front to back and I have a total of 328 pages not 1,000 and some that is reported by others. Now mind you, yes I can get 1,000 pages by going to one government site that is printing it in huge letters, I preferred going to Thomas.loc.gov and printing out from their site. So far I am not stuck on the language, I don't find it very legalese as suggested. Yes there are a lot of references to other bills, and yes I do plan on going to some of those bills and seeing what they are referencing but first I want to get through HR3200.

I want to tell a little bit about myself and why I am concerned about healthcare. I suffer from Fibromyalgia and Meniere's disease. My husband has worked for a company for the past eight years and had/has wonderful health insurance. Until about two years ago. His insurance has changed every year for the past four years and has steadily gone down in what they cover, and they have also increased our deductible - we pay a deductible even we see a preferred provider, and there is also a cap (which has transferred among the different insurance companies) and I am steadily getting to the top of that cap. Why? because of my Meniere's mostly. The testings conducted; hearing test, vertigo testing and other tests, are not cheap and they take a big chunk out of my allowed amount. When I saw the huge chunk taken out due to an outpatient knee surgery (arthroscopy) and testings in the last four years my heart sank. I stopped going to the doctors and now try to go once or twice a year for just my yearly check-up (oh and they also cut into my cap so that yearly mammogram, whatever it costs, is deducted from my cap). Recently I was lucky enough to finally get approved for social security disability and will soon be covered under Medicare so all of this really is a moot point for me. Yes for me, but not for others who will be going through this and other things, and I am a concerned person and care about my fellow citizens and if I can help them to understand what is going on politically in a truthful manner I am going to try.

Day One:
I spent the morning reading HR3200 and the afternoon listening online to MSNB'c Rachel Maddow - taking notes to research what she said.

Day Two:
I went online to Sean Hannity to listen to his sound bites regarding HR3200. I had to sign up and pay for this service, no I did not pay the money so I will not get to hear what Sean had to say and research his citations. So I went to Rush Limbaugh's site. I am still there and still reading through his shows transcripts. Thank you Rush for putting them online and not charging us a fee.

continuation Wednesday August 19, 2009

Please notice the city change.

A health care town hall meeting will take place from 6:30-8 PM in Greensboro, NC on August 19, 2009 at the Teamster's Union Hall on Sandy Ridge Road.

This meeting is to make your voice heard now that health care reform is closer than it has ever been, as proclaimed on the flier. I do hope this is for us to make our voices heard and not to have a screaming match as has been the norm at most town hall meetings lately.

I want to know what is being done in Washington and Raleigh to make my health care more affordable and to report on what was asked and said at this meeting so I will be attending.

If you are interested in attending, the flier invites everyone to bring a friend and to please RSVP to Heather Welborn - Call: 704 609-5906 or email her at hwelborn@seanc.org.

Look for my follow up post on Friday the 21st.

I am sorry but these two blogs have been down for a few months while I dealt with an illness in my family. I was finally able to bring my aunt home the end of June which was originally planned for the fall. We had a wonderful five weeks together until she passed from this world on the 29th of July at 10:30 PM.

May she finally rest in blissfull, painless, sleep until she is ready to come back again.

Cathy
Editor