47. Healthcare Reform?

This issue looks at Israel’s response to Obama’s demands regarding apartment construction in Israel and exposes some of the reasons why so many people are against the recently passed Healthcare Bill.

OUR ISRAELI CONNECTION

One Jerusalem reports
The Obama administration’s manufactured crisis over permits to build apartments in an established Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem appears to have had its desired effect. Reports out of Israel are saying that the Netanyahu government is capitulating to demands by the Obama administration that include a building freeze in Jerusalem, inclusion of Jerusalem and refugees in talks with the Palestinians. These talks were supposedly going to be over procedures for future talks, now Israel appears to making them substantive. If true, Israel is making a big mistake.

Earlier this week, former Ambassador John Bolton wrote that the Netanyahu government’s policy of appeasing Obama had failed. Bolton maintains that Netanyahu believed that placating Obama on the Palestinian issue would lead Obama to effectively take on the Iran nuclear issue – something he has not done. Israel’s concessions will guarantee that the Obama administration will increase pressure on Israel. It will also signal to the Palestinians that if they stamp their feet Israel will bend.

In Obama’s first year in office he has sought to punish other American allies. In South America he sided with leftist anti-American forces against the legitimate government of Honduras. The Hondurans refused to be cowed by Obama. They stood their ground. They had few allies in the United States but they made their case to the American people. After several months of a standoff with Obama, the Obama administration abandoned its support of the bad guys.

IT’S NEWS TO ME


Due to the historic nature and far-reaching implication of the recently passed Healthcare Reform Bill, I am devoting this entire section to it. I was privileged to participate in the demonstration against it outside the Capitol Building on Saturday. Here are some reasons why I joined the protest:
 
Congress has no Constitutional right to force Americans to purchase any commodity, including insurance. The bill mandates health insurance coverage by everyone. If it’s insurance today, what will it be tomorrow? It’s all about power, and the quest for power never ends. The President has been focusing on the “goodies” of the bill that go into effect immediately, without mentioning the costs that won’t go into effect until he’s out of office. According to the Cato Institute, the cost of the bill will far exceed what has been advertised. Medicare, for example, over its first thirty years, cost seven times what proponents estimated. When have costs not skyrocketed when the government has gotten involved? The Congressional Budget Office estimates the cost at $940 billion, but many costly provisions and spinoffs of the bill are not included.
 
Consider the fact that anyone with any condition must be covered under the mandatory insurance. Insurance companies, no matter how much you may hate them, will not be able to afford this. Premiums must increase or the companies will fold, paving the way for a public option with even more controls. Many analysts predict that premiums will increase 10% to 15% in the first year, rising to a 100% increase in ten years. Some estimates have premiums doubling in just three years.

According to the New England Journal of Medicine, 46% of doctors may be forced to give up their practices. They know that treatment decisions will be made by bureaucrats in the Federal Government, not by doctors or patients. The bill imposes fines (to be collected by the IRS) beginning in 2014 for not having coverage. The fine for small business is graduated, penalizing employers who pay their employees well.
 
Then there’s the way the bill was passed. To get the vote of pro-life Democrats, Obama promised to issue an Executive Order preventing the funding of abortion. The problem is that legally, no executive order can circumvent a law passed by Congress. Thus, what he promised to do was meaningless since it would happen after the bill had passed. According to Jay Seculow of the American Center for Law and Justice, this Executive Order places HHS Secretary Sebelius at the helm of the funding process – a cabinet member who has a long and documented history of supporting abortion. In response, 38 states are poised for legal action against what many see as the biggest power grab in U.S. history.
  
WRITING TIPS


How Observant are You?
 
What do the following words have in common? (Disregard the meaning of the words.)
facetious, abstemious, abstentious
 
They all have all the vowels in alphabetical order.
What is the unit of measure for determining the effectiveness of an evangelist? the biligram

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010 at 3:59 pmand is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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