Archives for August 2015

While the media focuses on the public spat between Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump and Fox News, a prominent health care expert says Trump’s praise for single-payer health care systems in Canada and Scotland doesn’t survive an examination of the facts.

During Thursday’s GOP debate, Bret Baier of Fox News opened up a section of questions about Obamacare by asking Trump about his shifting position on health care reform.

“Now, 15 years ago, uncalled yourself a liberal on health care. You were for a single-payer system, a Canadian-style system.  Why were you for that then and why aren’t you for it now?” asked Baier.

Trump responded that his opinion back in 2000 related to the situation at the time and does not reflect his position now.

“As far as single payer, it works in Canada. It works incredibly well in Scotland. It could have worked in a different age, which is the age you’re talking about here,” answered Trump, before moving on to discuss his endorsement of allowing health care policies to be purchased across state lines.

Grace-Marie Turner is president of the Galen Institute and battled Obamacare as well as the Clinton health care reform efforts in the 1990s.  She says the first thing to remember is that Canada and Scotland have two different systems.

“The Canadian system is a single-payer system.  The government is the payer, both the provinces and the federal government for all health care services.  In Scotland, it is really socialized medicine, in which the government owns hospitals and employees physicians.  So they’re two different systems,” she said.

She also doesn’t buy Trump’s argument that circumstances were that much different 15 years ago, when the GOP front-runner embraced the single-payer approach.

“He’s basically saying that either one of them would have worked better and could have worked in this country in the year 2000, which is relatively recently and I don’t know how much has changed in the sense that we might have been able to have done socialized medicine in the year 2000?  I think not,” said Turner.

Regardless of the structure, Turner says the realities in both countries are far from what Trump describes.

“It probably would work very well for him because he would be able to go wherever he wanted  and pay for his own care privately.  But for individual citizens, that’s not true,” said Turner.

“In either [Canada or Scotland], you face long wait times, unless you can escape and go someplace else for your care.  If you are stuck in either one of those systems, in which you need care, you get in the queue and you will wait weeks, sometimes months , sometimes years to get the care that you need,” said Turner.

And she says the waiting game is only getting worse.

“A wonderful think tank in Canada, the Fraser Institute, keeps track of wait times for medical care in the country.  In 1993, there was about a nine-week wait for surgery or treatment,” said Turner.  Today, it’s 18 weeks on average.  So it’s doubled in those 22 years.”

And that’s only for necessary treatment.

“They’re even worse for what we call elective surgeries, like hip, knee or back surgery.  That wait?  Forty-two weeks or ten months, neurosurgery is 31 weeks,” said Turner.

Turner says life is even more miserable for Canadians unfortunate enough to have their procedure scheduled late in the years.

“If a hospital reaches its budget the first of December, it will close the rest of the year.  So if you had a surgery scheduled for the tenth of December, you’re going to have to get back in the queue,” she said.

Turner also points to research from Forbes magazine health care expert Avik Roy, pointing out the contrast in cancer survival between the U.S. and Scotland.  The overall five-year survivability numbers show 73.8 of Americans surviving five years or more after their cancer diagnosis, compared to 52.7 percent in Scotland.  Double digit differences also exist for specific cancers, including prostate, colon and breast cancers.

Roy has served as a health care adviser to former Gov. Rick Perry, R-Texas, during this campaign.  Perry and Trump have taken numerous shots at each other.  However, Roy’s numbers on the cancer differential come from a 2008 CONCORD Study.

In his debate answer, Trump also pushed for health insurance policies to be purchased across state lines.

“What I’d like to see is a private system without the artificial lines around every state. I have a big company with thousands and thousands of employees. And if I’m negotiating in New York or in New Jersey or in California, I have like one bidder. Nobody can bid,” said Trump.

“You know why? Because the insurance companies are making a fortune because they have control of the politicians, of course, with the exception of the politicians on this stage.  But they have total control of the politicians. They’re making a fortune,” he added.

While endorsing the purchase of policies across state lines, Turner believes that answer suggests Trump doesn’t fully grasp the current system.

“As a large company, he can self-insure his employees.  Therefore, he is under a provision of law called ERISA that allows him to operate as one health plan.  He doesn’t have to have individual negotiations with individual states,” said Turner.

“He already has, as a major employer, as do tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of major employers operated exactly the way that he’s describing we should,” said Turner.

 

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review dive into the GOP mess as Trump supporters stand firm with their candidate in the wake of the Megyn Kelly controversy and GOP leaders seem eager to dismiss conservative critics along with Trump.  They also react to the Black Lives Matter movement hijacking a Bernie Sanders rally in Seattle.  And they discuss news that Hillary Clinton aides Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin are not complying with a judge’s orders to turn over emails.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Elaina Newport of the Capitol Steps review the most comical aspects of the first presidential debate of the 2016 campaign.  They also check out the Steps’ new selections featuring George W. Bush touting his brother Jeb to be the next president and Hillary Clinton trying to keep Joe Biden out of the Democratic campaign.

Rep. Ted Yoho, R-Fla., is blasting President Obama for likening Republicans to Iranian hardliners and other alleged falsehoods, and he is also furious at his own party’s leadership for not fighting harder on this and other issues.

On Wednesday, President Obama defended the Iran deal during a speech at American University in Washington.  His most controversial statement came while addressing what he called the “kneejerk partisanship” of the Republican Party.

“Just because Iranian hardliners chant ‘Death to America’ does not mean that that’s what all Iranians believe.  In fact it’s those hardliners that are most comfortable with the status quo.  It’s those hardliners, chanting ‘Death to America’ who have been most opposed to the deal.  They’re making common cause with the Republican caucus,” said Obama.

Yoho, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee fired back at Obama’s comparison.

“Number one, it’s not presidential.  I mean to throw (one of) his own political parties under the bus like that and compare us with the hardliners.  .  Let’s look at who the hardliners are.  The hardliners in Iran, the people chanting ‘Death to America’, that would be their Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khameini and their president, President Rouhani,” said Yoho.

The congressman says Obama is also disingenuous in insisting no stronger deal was possible and the alternative to the deal is military conflict.

“He was saying, ‘If it’s not this deal, it’s war.’  No it’s not.  The alternative is a better deal and you get a better deal by putting sanctions on there harder and bringing the P5 nations back together and negotiating a better deal,” said Yoho, who says if Iran was serious about acting responsibly there would be obvious signs.

“When Iran denounces terrorism around the world, that would be a start.  When Iran releases out four hostages, that would be a good faith gesture.  And when Iran stops chanting ‘Death to America.  Death to Israel’ and burning our flag, then I would listen to them.  They’re not ready yet,” said Yoho.

Obama also denied the existence of side deals between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, over the terms of inspecting sites suspected of nuclear activity in the future.

“Again the president is misspeaking.  Some people would call it a lie.  There are side deals because John Kerry even said, ‘Yes, there are deals and there are briefings on that,” said Yoho, who says one known term of a side deal completely mystifies him.

“One of the agreements is that there has to be environmental sampling.  In this agreement, Iran is charged with bringing environmental samples to have the IAEA look at.  How much faith do have in Iran sampling the area that’s in question?  I have zero faith that they’ll do that,” said Yoho.

Several congressional Democrats have announced their support for the deal this week while a number of House Democrats said they would oppose it.  The opposition got a major shot in the arm on Thursday, when Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., announced he would vote to reject the deal.  House Foreign Affairs Committee Ranking Democrat Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., announced he would do the same.

Yoho expects a lot more Democrats to follow suit.

“I think you’re going to see the Democratic members of the House vote against this deal, especially ones that sit on the foreign affairs committee.  The majority of them will vote against this,” he said.

If the deal were considered a treaty, it would require two-thirds support in the U.S. Senate.  The Obama administration refuses to classify the agreement as a deal.  In response, Congress passed the Corker-Cardin bill, requiring Congress to vote on the plan but it flips the script by forcing two-thirds of members in both the House and Senate to reject it in order to override a promised Obama veto.

Yoho understands why his party’s leaders took that route but wishes they had taken a different course by insisting that the administration classify the agreement as a treaty.

“Ideally, it would have been better to play hardball but with the lack of leadership we have in Washington both in the House and in the Senate, we’re not going to have that,” he said.

Congress is on summer recess.  The Iran vote will come soon after lawmakers return in September.  Other major debates will center on appropriations and the debt ceiling, more issues where Yoho thinks GOP leaders need to get much stronger.

“We have not had one discussion on the debt ceiling as a Republican conference all year long.  Again, this is a lack of leadership.  (House Speaker) John Boehner has not brought this up.  [Appropriations Committee] Chairman Hal Rogers has asked for hearings on this.  We’ve not had one,” said Yoho.

“I hope that we can get our act together in those 12 days to deal with the trillion-dollar spending that’s going to come up,” he added.

Yoho is also also unimpressed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s public vow that there would be no government shutdown.

“I’ve learned in poker you never show your cards ’til you’re ready to cash them in.  Nobody wants the government to shut down, but but you want to raise a trillion dollars in debt.  The American people don’t want that either,” said Yoho.

“They sent the Republicans the largest majority we’ve had in almost 90 years to lead this country.  If we’re not leading, we’re going to lose the trust of the American people,” he said.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are pleased that most Republican candidates performed well in a debate that easily drew the highest primary debate ratings ever, they cheer Carly Fiorina’s performance in the early debate and they quickly go through the performances of many of the candidates.  They also wonder why Pataki, Gilmore and Graham are running for president and Jim suggests an intervention for a gloomy Sen. Graham.  And we discuss the tough questions aimed at Donald Trump and his slamming of Fox News after the debate.

The Obama administration is moving forward with a new environmental rule requiring power plants to drastically reduce carbon emissions, a policy President Obama says will improve our health and our bottom line but critics say is a massive tax hike that won’t do the planet a bit of good.

Earlier this week, President Obama unveiled a new directive from the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, that mandates a 32 percent reduction in carbon emission by 2030.

“As one of America’s governors has said, “We’re the first generation to feel the impact of climate change and the last generation that can do something about it,'” said Obama.  “And that’s why I committed the United States to leading the world on this challenge, because I believe there is such a thing as being too late.”

Obama also tried to head off critics concerned about the impact of this rule on energy prices by saying his administration’s studies conclude the average American will save $85 per year on energy costs once this is fully implemented.

Senate Environment and Public Works Chairman James Inhofe, R-Okla., says this rule is just a bureaucratic reincarnation of failed legislative efforts on cap and trade through bills like McCain-Lieberman and Waxman-Markey.  Inhofe says once Americans found out what was in those bills they wanted nothing to do with them.  He believes the reaction will be the same to this EPA rule.

“When the people found out how expensive they are, and the cost is between $300-$400 billion, that translates to about $3,000 for every taxpaying family in America.  And then they find out that even if all these things were passed, it’s not going to have the effect of reducing [carbon dioxide] worldwide,” said Inhofe, who is also author of “The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future.”

The senator says the testimony of two other key players backs up his point, including then-Sen. Barack Obama during a discussion with the editorial board of the San Francisco Chronicle during the 2008 campaign.

“Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket,” said Obama in that interview.  “Because I’m capping greenhouse gases, coal plants, natural gas, you name it.  Whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, they would have to retrofit their operations.  That will cost money.  They will pass that money on to consumers.”

Inhofe also says former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson told him in a committee hearing that new emissions mandates on power plants and others wouldn’t actually make a difference in our climate.

“I asked her the question, ‘If we do all this stuff unilaterally in America, will it reduce CO2?”  She said no.  As a matter of fact it could increase CO2 because as we chase our manufacturing base overseas to China and other places where they have no restrictions, it would have the effect of increasing CO2,” said Inhofe.

Obama also tried to blunt conservative protests that new restrictions would hurt minority and poor communities the hardest.

“Even more cynical, we’ve got critics of this plan who are actually claiming that this will harm minority and low-income communities — even though climate change hurts those Americans the most, who are the most vulnerable,” said Obama this week.

“Today, an African-American child is more than twice as likely to be hospitalized from asthma; a Latino child is 40 percent more likely to die from asthma.  So if you care about low-income, minority communities, start protecting the air that they breathe, and stop trying to rob them of their health care,” he added.

Inhofe says the chairman of the Black Chamber of Commerce told his committee a far different story.

“It’d be the most regressive of all taxes that we’ve ever passed, going after the poorest people.  Think about it.  The lower your income is, the higher percentage you’re going to be spending on heating your home,” said Inhofe.

The senator believes the administration is simply toeing the line with the United Nations insistence that climate change is an immediate, pressing concern.

“It all comes from the United Nations.  Unfortunately, I think right now everyone is aware after having watched John Kerry as secretary of state trying to negotiate with the terrorists.  It’s, again, a dismal failure.  He’s one and there’s a lot of liberals like him who think there’s never been a [bad] idea that has come from a multinational organization, primarily the United Nations,” said Inhofe.

While the UN and America’s own government are insisting on much more stringent emissions in the United States, Inhofe says the world’s worst violators are just waiting to gobble up our companies and jobs.

“Right now, China is looking at us, just hoping that we’ll pass something here because that would chase our manufacturing base over there.  That’s exactly what they would want,” said Inhofe.

Beyond the economic impact is the simple fact technology does not exist to bring many power plants into compliance with the rule.  Obama says we need to have faith in American ingenuity, just as we did in drastically raising fuel efficiency standards in the auto industry.  Inhofe says the country simply can’t operate on the energy Obama wants to use.

“You can’t make that kind of reductions when you stop and realize that all the renewables put together right now only constitute five percent of the total energy it takes to run America,” he said.

But Inhofe is not without hope.  In the near term, Senate Republicans are pushing back with the ARENA Act, a plan sponsored by Senator Shelley Moore Capito of coal-rich West Virginia.

“What it does is pretty much negate everything that [Obama] is trying to do,” said Inhofe.  “It would rescind the rules.  It would require emission limits that coal plants can actually achieve, in other words they are possible.  It would allow states to opt out of any plan that is found to have a negative impact on their economy on their growth or on their energy reliability.”

Knowing full well that Obama will have his veto pen ready for any such legislation, Inhofe says an aggressive education campaign is needed to rally public support against this policy, just as it rallied against the earlier legislative efforts.

“Once their constituency learns that, number one, it’s not possible to do what they want and, number two, even if we did this would not have any effect on the overall emissions of CO2, then people are not going to be wanting to spend a tax of approximately $3,000 a family for something that doesn’t accomplish anything,” said Inhofe.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are glad Jon Stewart’s final show will be overshadowed by the GOP debates and they’re just glad he’s going away.  They also slam President Obama for saying Republicans have common cause with Iranian hardliners because they both oppose the nuclear deal.  And they sigh as Mitch McConnell promises there will be no government shutdown this fall, thus handing a major tactical advantage to the Obama administration.

President Obama made another impassioned push for Congress to support the Iran nuclear deal Wednesday, saying it’s the toughest possible agreement and the alternative is war, a conclusion that even some loyal Democrats fund infuriating.

During an hour-long speech at American University in Washington, Obama insisted the deal would mean Iran would never get a nuclear weapon, that inspections are air-tight and that opposition is largely a product of “kneejerk partisanship,” despite the misgivings of many Democrats.

Obama also noted that the most radical political elements in Iran also oppose the deal, linking them to congressional critics.

“They’re making common cause with the Republican caucus,” said Obama.

The president spent considerable time arguing that U.S. and allied negotiators hammered out the best possible deal with Iran and that opposition from either side of the aisle is tantamount to preferring military conflict.

“That sounds awfully demagogic to me.  The idea that the opponents of this agreement want war is ludicrous,” said former Clinton administration official Larry Haas, who is now a columnist and a senior fellow in U.S. foreign policy at the American Foreign Policy Council.

“The fact of the matter is the opponents of this agreement, of which I am one, fear that this agreement, because of how much it puts Iran in the driver’s seat, will make war more likely,” added Haas, who asks lawmakers of both parties to reject the tactics used by the administration to drum up congressional support for the agreement.

“This bifurcation between take this deal or go to war is ludicrous and no serious person should fall for that kind of demagoguery,” said Haas.

He says Congress, at the very least, should tell the Obama administration to demand a much tougher deal.

“Maybe the administration did a lousy job negotiating.  If it were up to me, I think a member of Congress should say, ‘This isn’t good enough.  Go back to the table.  We have an interim agreement which has restrictions on Iran.  You don’t know if you can do better unless you try harder,” said Haas.

Haas offered a handful of reasons he finds the deal completely unacceptable, starting with the framework for inspections.

“I think the inspection regime is insane.  Iran has far too much time to hide the nuclear progress that it’s made at new, suspicious sites,” he said, contending the 24-day wait to get into newly suspected nuclear sites could be extended weeks or months if Iran protests loudly enough.

Haas also believes the sanctions relief is horribly misguided.

“I think the sanctions relief, somewhere in the neighborhood of $150 billion, even if a small portion of it goes to the nefarious activities that Iran does (like) terror sponsorship, the revolutionary guard destabilizing of governments in the region, including U.S. backed governments…Iran becomes even more dangerous than it already is,” he said.

Finally, Haas flatly rejects Obama’s assertion that the deal prevents Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon indefinitely.

“This is a time-limited agreement.  The restrictions expire, depending on which ones you’re talking about, at between 10 and 15 years,” said Haas, who implores members of Congress in both parties to ask themselves some hard questions before voting on this agreement.

“Look down the road.  Do you want Iran to have the ability to develop nuclear weapons, either by cheating on this agreement or by letting the agreement expire, a regime that continues to chant, ‘Death to America?'” said Haas.

The path to blocking the deal is very difficult.  Normally a treaty would require two-thirds majority support in the U.S. Senate.  Because the Obama administration refuses to call this a treaty, Republicans responded with the Corker-Cardin plan which gives lawmakers the opportunity to review the agreement.  However, given Obama’s promised veto of any rejection, both the House and Senate would two-thirds of their members to defy the president.

Lately, the already long adds of that seem even slimmer.  In the past few days, Democrats like Sens. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., and Tim Kaine, D-Va., along with Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., announced their intention to support Obama.

Haas says that’s troubling but no reason for panic.  He says most Democrats have not announced their intentions and many of them have expressed serious concerns.  He also says several key House Democrats are already on the record as being opposed.

“Nita Lowey (D-NY), the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, Ted Deutsch, an influential Florida Democrat, as well as Steve Israel (D-NY), who was head of the Democratic congressional re-election committee in the last cycle, so that’s not exactly chopped liver,” said Haas.

He also says several weeks remain for citizens to push their members of the House and Senate before the vote in September.

“I’m not surprised that the opponents of this deal are having a hard time getting to the number that they need, but I think we’re still very early in the fight,” he said.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are pleased to see an FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server.  We also shake our heads as more Democrats line up in support of the Iran nuclear deal.  And we enjoy the liberal food fight that ensured after Kelly Osbourne suggested that Latinos are here illegally and all they do is clean toilets.  We also have some fun stereotyping our own nationalities.

A leading pro-life activist says the fifth undercover video depicting Planned Parenthood’s alleged profiting off the sale of aborted baby parts is the clearest evidence yet of criminal activity, and she says also says it’s possible that abortion providers are delivering babies alive and killing them outside the womb to preserve the value of their parts for sale.

Jill Stanek is National Campaign Chairwoman for the Susan B. Anthony List.  She is a former registered nurse who confronted then-State Sen. Barack Obama over his refusal to support legislation requiring life-saving measures to be directed to babies who survive abortions.  Stanek was also one of the leaders of the sit-ins at the office of House Speaker John Boehner this year to demand a vote on the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.

On Tuesday, the Center for Medical Progress released the fifth in a series of undercover videos.  This one prominently featured conversations with Melissa Farrell, director of research for Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast.  Farrell and the investigators hold lengthy discussions about obtaining intact fetus cadavers for research and how to word the transaction on any forms.

“If we alter our process, and we are able to obtain intact fetal cadavers, we can make it part of the budget that any dissections are this, and splitting the specimens into different shipments is this. It’s all just a matter of line items,” says Farrell in the video.

She also refers to creative billing for research firms for “additional time, cost (and) administrative burden.”

“This is the clearest video to date demonstrating that not only is Planned Parenthood involved in illegal baby parts trafficking for profit but also, to do that, they clearly often manipulate abortions, which is also illegal, to get baby parts in the most intact position that they can get them,” said Stanek.

Another critical moment in the video is when Farrell shows investigators a massive online order for intact cadavers.

“She read an order on camera that had just come in for 120 intact fetal cadavers and she accepted the premise of that order without even blinking,” said Stanek, who says that story gets even more disturbing.

“It didn’t make the final video cut, but in the full length transcript, when she’s talking about this buyer that wants 120 fetal cadaver specimens, it’s for a project to humanize mice, putting human cells into mice,: she said.

One of Planned Parenthood’s common defenses in recent weeks is to claim that any money it receives from companies is simply reimbursement for tissue procurement and shipping.  Stanek says that’s bogus.

“The  buyers, like from Stem Express, send their people to these Planned Parenthoods to find the body parts they want for these orders that they’ve been given, package the body parts themselves and ship themselves,” said Stanek.

“So all of the costs and all of the personnel involved in baby parts buying and selling is incurred on the part of the buyer.  Planned Parenthood doesn’t do anything to warrant even five dollars,” she added, noting that intact cadavers are worth hundreds and hundreds in payment to Planned Parenthood because of all the body parts that are valued by researchers.

“These videos are actually giving us a glimpse into the abortion world and the callous treatment for profit motive they have on committing abortions but then making as much as money off the victims of abortion that they can, which is something even the Nazis didn’t think of,” said Stanek.

The Center for Medical Progress promises more shoes will drop in future video releases.  While Stanek has no advanced knowledge of those she believes a case is building that babies are being murdered outside the womb as part of Planned Parenthood’s efforts to profit off of body parts.

“[They are] even potentially committing live-birth abortions because they don’t kill these babies ahead of time because that would poison the organs and not make them fit for sale,” said Stanek.  “There’s prima facie evidence that there may be born-alive abortions going on.”