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Barack Obama is not being truthful about McCain's health care plan. McCain would provide a refundable tax credit of $5,000 to all families, and $2,500 for single workers, to be used to help buy health insurance. On October 4, Obama said in Newport News, VA, "Senator McCain would pay for his plan, in part, by taxing your health care benefits for the first time in history. And this tax would come out of your paycheck. But the new tax credit he is proposing? That wouldn't go to you. It would go directly to your insurance company -- not your bank...

John McCain’s health care reform proposal was pretty impressive until he demonstrated his complete inability to defend it against a very weak attack. It sort of makes you wonder if McCain really knows how his own proposal works. Barack Obama is running around saying – and running ads to the effect – that McCain wants to institute a tax on employer-provided health insurance. This is what we used to call a Clinton truth. It is technically true, but designed to mislead. McCain’s plan recognizes that people’s reliance on their employers for health care benefits is the root of all kinds...

Author’s Note: Portions of this speech were lifted from a speech by Joe Biden. Others were taken with permission from Jon Delaney who may or may not have stolen some portions from Joe Biden. On this October morning of two thousand and eight, more than sixty years after President Truman first issued the call for national health care, we find ourselves in the midst of another historic moment: The opening of our first serious national dialogue on the issue of national lawn care. From Maine to California, from business to labor, from Democrats to Republicans, the emergence of new and...

Health Care: Consumer power has gained some ground during the Bush administration. Now voters have a decision to make — whether to extend that progress or roll it back.Like your HSA? If so, it's time to pay close attention to what the presidential candidates are saying about health care. The fate of health savings accounts — and of consumer-driven health care in general — could well be decided on Nov. 4. At one level — where most news reporting is focused — the health care debate between Obama and McCain is about tax policies and other strategies to expand coverage....

Interesting video of Canadians talking about their health care. Click on link to view...

$40 MILLION HEALTH CARE CAMPAIGN LAUNCHED IN MARYLAND AND NATIONWIDE

For a campaign that is offering a new kind of politics, it is unfortunate the Obama-Biden team has decided to sell its marquee policy proposal - a government-controlled health care plan - with the familiar Washington attacks that replace honest debate with scare tactics. Instead of telling voters what is new and positive about their plan, the Obama-Biden ticket is emphasizing the spurious charge that John McCain wants to tax people's health insurance....http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/10/americans_deserve_a_real_healt.html

Once again, what's good for the plaintiffs' lawyers is bad for everyone else, including those who need the latest medical breakthroughs to help save or improve their lives.

Excerpt from debate between Clinton and Obama January 31, 2008OBAMA: Senator Clinton has a different approach. She believes that we have to force people who don't have health insurance to buy it. Otherwise, there will be a lot of people who don't get it.OBAMA: I don't see those folks. And I think that it is important for us to recognize that if, in fact, you are going to mandate the purchase of insurance and it's not affordable, then there's going to have to be some enforcement mechanism that the government uses. And they may charge people who already don't have...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 9, 2008 – The Defense Department, in conjunction with the military services and the Department of Veterans Affairs, has created a framework to help wounded, ill and injured servicemembers not only survive, but also thrive as they transition from military service back into their communities. “We want them to really not only survive their injuries, but now thrive in what’s called oftentimes ‘the new normal,’” said Lynda C. Davis, DoD lead for case/care management reform for wounded, ill and injured servicemembers and their families. “We’ve been able to, jointly with the services and [Veterans Affairs], develop a framework...

Barack Obama is claiming that John McCain wants to run health care like Republicans have been running Wall Street - implying that McCain would let greedy private companies take advantage of average Americans. The ironic truth is this: Obama wants to run health care like Washington, and especially Democrats, have been running Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. That's likely to have more troubling consequences for the health of Americans and their economy. In simple terms, McCain's plan allows people to purchase health insurance across state lines. So a family in New Jersey that's currently spending $12,000 a year on insurance...

When you buy a Lottery ticket, do you buy the "Cash Option" or go for the 20 equal payments from the Lottery over 20 years? At first, I called this my Conservative test. But then I realized that true conservatives probably wouldn't buy a lottery ticket. Now I call it the self-reliance versus government test. The question is a good one to use to help undecided voters and men and women that you believe would vote Republican if they thought the issues through. Compare the payout on Lottery winnings with Social Security, Medicare, and government health insurance. It's amazing and...

Video at the link.

If you find yourself wanting to steal that McCain-Palin or Obama-Biden sign on your neighbor's lawn, you might want to factor that feeling in when you think about where you want to retire. More and more people are. Fact is, most retirees say they would like to live in a place where they fit in with the culture, and lifestyle choices increasingly tend to vary according to political party lines. ...Here are 10 great retirement spots that have skewed heavily Democratic or Republican in the past two presidential elections. Democratic: Chicago, Ill. Dearborn, Mich. Maplewood, N.J. Pembroke Pines, Fla. San...

Candidates for Better Healthcare by: Irene Warren, October 08, 2008 American leaders and healthcare experts met at the Heritage Foundation Tuesday to discuss the endless debate over national healthcare reform, as they looked to which 2008 presidential candidate had the most successful plan to revamp the nation’s economic system altogether. The latest cost-analysis study conducted by the National Taxpayers Union (NTU) states of both presidential nominees, U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and U.S. Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), “despite their different styles, the major party presidential hopefuls have one thing in common: both their agendas would add billions more to the...

Washington, DC -- While some Barack Obama backers are hoping to provide cover for his pro-abortion positions by saying he will advocate better health care, the Obama campaign is coming under criticism for refusing to say whether his governmental health care plan will require Americans to pay for abortions. Obama, who supports unlimited abortions throughout pregnancy for any reason, previously told Planned Parenthood his plan would include tax-funded abortions.

At last night’s presidential debate, Barack Obama led the charge for government run health care by declaring in no uncertain terms that health care is a “right”. I suppose he thinks Tom and the boys accidentally left that one out of the Constitution. Or maybe it is an extension (in his mind) of the right to life. But let’s think about this a minute. When our American form of government was created to form “a more perfect union” by insuring the “rights” of its citizens, it recognized only the “inalienable rights”. And to protect those rights, which I’m pretty sure...

With less than a month to go, presidential candidate Barack Obama wants to deliver a knock-out punch by hitting John McCain on health care. On Saturday Mr. Obama called his rival's health-care proposal "radical" and, in swing states, he is now blasting it in TV ads. Mr. Obama is also distributing mailers and organizing "Docs for Barack" meetings to rally voters. It's good politics for Mr. Obama. But it's bad policy. Mr. McCain's proposal -- to give every American the tax credit businesses get for buying health insurance -- is the right prescription for what ails our health-care system. The...

The centerpiece of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama’s health care platform is the creation of a national health plan and a new agency to help individuals purchase private health plans. “We now face an opportunity – and an obligation – to turn the page on the failed politics of yesterday’s health care debates,” Obama said in a speech posted on his Web site. “My plan begins by covering every American.” Obama’s health care platform also includes keen oversight of the health insurance industry, prescription drug reforms, cost-saving strategies, increased medical research and disease prevention. Thomas Gustafson, PhD, senior policy...

New Deal on Medicare by: Bethany Stotts, October 06, 2008 The New Deal policies of Medicare and Social Security started out as small programs in the Thirties, but this year’s Medicare expenditures will total about $391 billion. The Medicare Trustees have issued a “funding warning” for the program in their last two annual reports. According to the Medicare Trustees 2008 statement, “Underlying health care costs per enrollee are projected to rise faster than the wages per worker on which payroll taxes and Social Security benefits are based. As a result, while Medicare’s annual costs were 3.2 percent of GDP in...

Barack Obama's Health Care Record ARLINGTON, VA -- With Barack Obama lying about John McCain's health care plan today, please find below the facts about Barack Obama's health care record: BARACK OBAMA RECENTLY ACKNOWLEDGED HIS PLAN WILL COST AT LEAST $150 BILLION A YEAR Despite What He Claimed Today, Barack Obama Recently Said His Plan Will Cost At Least $150 Billion, Despite Earlier Claims That It Will Cost Much Less: Barack Obama Said On "60 Minutes" That His Plan Would Cost At Least $150 Billion. CBS' Steve Kroft: "How much is it going to cost? $150 billion it's going to...

NEWPORT NEWS, VA. -- As the presidential campaign entered its final month, Democrat Barack Obama issued a sharp assault on Republican John McCain's healthcare proposal Saturday, arguing it would lead to higher taxes for some families and knock as many as 20 million people out of their current insurance plans. The topic provided a new focus for the campaign, as Obama launched four television ads in battleground states criticizing McCain's plan. The candidates have spent the last two weeks sparring over the nation's financial crisis.

In Thursday's vice presidential debate, Joe Biden changed his tune on John McCain's health care plan - but he's still singing off-key. The centerpiece of McCain's plan is to alter the tax breaks the federal government grants those who purchase health insurance. Currently, every dollar your employer spends on health benefits avoids federal payroll and income taxes. If you don't have job-based coverage, you generally get nothing. McCain proposes to eliminate that inequitable tax break and replace it with a universal tax credit. Every individual would get a flat $2,500 tax break, while families would get $5,000, no matter where...

Volunteers In Medicine free clinic stopped accepting illegal immigrant patients in September because Martin Memorial officials say the health system no longer can afford to provide medical tests for them. Martin Memorial Health Systems provides diagnostic services and therapy — everything from blood analysis to body scans — for the Volunteers In Medicine clinic, which provides free care for impoverished, uninsured Martin County residents. Last year, Martin Memorial did $2.3 million in work for the clinic's 1,000 patients. "We have worked closely with Volunteers In Medicine," Martin Memorial spokesman Scott Samples said. "We both agree that neither of us has...

The rule of thumb for fact checkers of Thursday night’s vice-presidential debate was that every time Joe Biden sounded especially confident, he was saying something that wasn’t true. For the most part, these were gross exaggerations or convenient fictions aimed to allow him to make a point he couldn’t otherwise support. How to answer the charge that he and Obama voted for a budget resolution that called for taxing Americans making $42,000? Assert that John McCain voted for it too, although he didn’t. How to argue that we’re paying no attention to Afghanistan? Claim repeatedly that we spend more in...

Obama is lying about McCain's plans again http://www.thebulletin.us/site/index.cfm?newsid=20148771&BRD=2737&PAG=461&dept_id=576361&rfi=8

CHICO — A West Lindo Avenue resident said a second attempt in as many days was made Wednesday morning to steal marijuana from a garden in his backyard. The alleged victim told police he fired several rounds at suspects as they fled in a vehicle on West Lindo at about 4 a.m. Some of the man's neighbors said they heard at least six shots, but didn't see a vehicle. ... [REST OF ARTICLE AT LINK]

The California Nurses Association has begun airing an ad in battleground presidential election states that suggests voters should be concerned about John McCain's health and Sarah Palin's ability to be president if he should die in office. The ad, airing in Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio and Wisconsin, shows images of McCain and Palin alongside a graphic that suggests a heart monitor. Several charges against Palin are flashed on the screen, including "Opposed ‘Bridge to Nowhere' then kept the taxpayers' money" and "Wants to teach creationism in public schools," alongside a women singing "one heartbeat away." At the end of...

Elizabeth Edwards, the wife of former Democratic presidential candidate and former Sen. John Edwards (N.C.), on Tuesday linked the current economic downturn with problems in the U.S. health care system, the AP/Kansas City Star reports. Elizabeth Edwards, who has incurable cancer, has made several recent public appearances in support of efforts to expand health insurance to all residents. During a conference call on Tuesday, she said that problems with payments of medical bills often lead to home foreclosures, a major factor in the current economic downturn. Elizabeth Edwards also said that residents without health insurance often are less productive because...

Lawmakers and lobbyists who favor mental health parity legislation have said for months that the 110th Congress is the best chance in more than a decade to get a bill to the president’s desk. But the inclusion of the parity provisions in a financial bailout package is another in a series of high-risk gambles that could fell the parity legislation yet again, depending on whether the House clears the Senate’s new package this week. However, now that the mental health provisions have been added, at least one House member — key parity advocate Jim Ramstad , R-Minn. — is reconsidering...

Washington, DC -- Barack Obama claims he is the best candidate when it comes to improving health care for Americans and he touted better health care during the first presidential debate. However, his record is blemished with a vote against extending a health care program to cover pregnant women and their unborn children.

Drug Companies’ Elusive Profits by: Jesse Masai, September 30, 2008 What is the incentive to develop new drugs? What should it be? Those were the two questions emerging out of a book published and launched last week by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) in Washington, DC. The book, Innovation and Technology Adoption in Health Care Markets, was written by Anupam B. Jena and Tomas J. Philipson, both from the University of Chicago. “Cost effectiveness analysis may reduce incentives to develop new drugs. Drug firms may have too low incentives to develop new drugs,” they said in a joint statement. They...

Quick test: Which presidential candidate offers the most radical new approach for health care coverage in the United States? If you listen to the spin-meisters denouncing universal health care as “socialized medicine,” you’d answer Democrat Barack Obama. But by far, the most radical plan belongs to John McCain. The Republican candidate would essentially destroy the foundation on which the current health insurance system is based and replace it with a dubious plan to let the marketplace work its magic. “Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade with banking,...

It is vitally important that our readers circulate this information as widely as possible. Barack Obama, with his own words, conceded the health care reform issue to John McCain. Just one last point I want to make, since Senator McCain talked about providing a $5,000 health credit. Now, what he doesn't tell you is that he intends to, for the first time in history, tax health benefits. So you may end up getting a $5,000 tax credit. Here's the only problem: Your employer now has to pay taxes on the health care that you're getting from your employer. And if...

WASHINGTON - Joe Biden charged Thursday during a campaign stop in Pennsylvania that John McCain's tax proposals for health insurance would be "the largest tax increase in the history of America for the middle class." He was wrong. McCain does propose taxing the health benefits that some 156 million people get through the workplace. That's a major change, because now no income taxes are levied on those benefits, but it's not the whole story. So, as Biden explained, someone who makes $40,000 and gets $12,000 in health insurance benefits would end up paying income taxes on $52,000. But what Biden...

PORTLAND, Ore. - A patient treated for agonizing abdominal pain received this surprising news in the hospital’s paperwork: “Based on your visit today, we know you are pregnant.” Surprising indeed for 71-year-old John Grady Pippen. The staff at Curry General Hospital in Gold Beach gave the retired mechanic and logger the ridiculously happy news this month, along with some pain pills. Hospital administrator William McMillan says an errant keystroke caused the hospital’s computer to spit out the wrong discharge instructions for the grandfather.

LifeNews.com Note: Ken Conner is a pro-life attorney who was intimately involved in the fight to save Terri Schiavo and is the former president of the Family Research Council. He is now the chairman of the Center for a Just Society.A waste. A burden. That is how influential medical ethics expert Baroness Warnock views people suffering from dementia. Lady Warnock, a prominent adviser to the British government, told the Church of Scotland's Life and Work magazine that people suffering from dementia should be allowed to kill themselves rather than continue to burden their families and Britain's National Health Service. Sadly,...

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- A Shelby County man and his wife said two doctors amputated the man's penis without his consent, and have filed a lawsuit. According to the lawsuit, Philip Seaton, 61, went to have a circumcision last Octoberas part of treatment for a medical condition. Seaton said when he woke up from the procedure, he realized his penis had been amputated. Seaton has suffered mental anguish, pain, and has lost the enjoyment of life, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit was filed in Shelby County court last week against Dr. John Patterson, who performed the procedure, Dr. Oliver James,...

ORANGE – UCI Medical Center could lose Medicare funding after investigators found that anesthesiologists falsified surgical records, filling them out before patients were ever put under on the operating table. Inspectors found serious deficiencies that "substantially limit the hospital's capacity to render adequate care to patients," according to the certified letter and report sent Aug. 15 to the hospital's administrator. The Register obtained a copy of the public record from Medicare officials after UCI failed to respond to a Sept. 12 request for the report and accompanying information. UCI officials sent the Register an e-mail today – after learning of...

WATERBURY -- Dr. John Conant thinks about early retirement every day. Twenty-three years into his career, the 55-year-old Waterbury urologist loves his profession and his patients, but he's frustrated by the continuing fights with Medicare and private insurers over reimbursement rates, pre-authorizations and other issues. He's not alone. Nineteen percent of Connecticut physicians who responded to a recent survey say they are contemplating a career change. Ten percent say they plan to leave the state because of the practice environment. The survey, which polled 4,000 licensed physicians practicing in the state, drew 1,077 responses. It was commissioned by the Connecticut...

"Canadian officials want to know why a wheelchair-bound man waited for 34 hours in a Winnipeg hospital's emergency waiting room before dying from a bladder infection..."

BALTIMORE – A man alleging a Maryland doctor stapled his rectum shut during an operation — causing him to go without defecating for 17 days — took his federal lawsuit to trial Monday in Baltimore. Ronald Watkins, 64, of West Virginia, is suing Manuel Casiano, a doctor in Frederick County, for allegedly botching a 2004 surgery that left Watkins with permanent bowel problems. “The reason for suing Dr. Casiano is very simple: His rectum was stapled shut,” said Julia Lodowski, who with attorney Emily Malarkey is representing Watkins and his wife, Brenda.

HONEY, used for generations to soothe sore throats, could soon be substituted for antibiotics in fighting stubborn ear, nose and throat infections, according to a new study. Ottawa University doctors found in tests that ordinary honey kills bacteria that cause sinus infections, and does it better in most cases than antibiotics. The researchers have so far tested manuka honey from New Zealand, and sidr honey from Yemen. "It's astonishing," researcher Joseph Marson said of bees' unexplained ability to combine the nectar of flowers into a seemingly potent medicine. The preliminary tests were conducted in laboratory dishes, not in live patients,...

The government paid more than $1 billion in questionable Medicare claims for medical supplies that showed little relation to a patient's condition, including blood glucose strips for sexual impotence and special diabetic shoes for leg amputees, congressional investigators say. Billions more in taxpayer dollars may have been wasted over the last decade because the government-run health program for the elderly and disabled paid out claims with blank or invalid diagnosis codes, such as a "?" or "zzzzz." Medicare officials say even smiley-face icons could have been accepted. The report by Republicans on the Senate Homeland Security investigations subcommittee, obtained by...

…Psst. If I let you in on a little secret, you promise not to tell? Pinkie swear! Alright. I have never been to a political meeting in my life. OK. Now that’s out of the bag, I’ll let you in on another one. Thursday, September 25, 2008 I plan to attend my first Democrat party meeting… and I’m takin’ popcorn and candy. I’m not sure what to expect, but I figure it’ll be pretty cool. I think Whoopie Goldberg is the keynote speaker (I’m told she’s some Jewish chick from the Bronx). She’ll probably drone on about fiscal responsibility and...

In the YouTube video, Angelique Flowers, propped up with pillows, speaks just above a whisper – but her words are strong. "The law wouldn't let a dog suffer the agony I'm going through before an inevitable death. It would be put down. Yet under the law, my life is worth less than a dog's," says Flowers, 31, in her poignant plea to Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to legalize euthanasia. Flowers, a writer who has suffered with debilitating Crohn's disease for 16 years, died in August after she was diagnosed in May with advanced, aggressive colon cancer. She spent much...

Why flip-flop on specific policies one at a time, when a candidate can do so much more efficiently by calling a general retreat? Less than 48 hours after telling CNBC that his health-insurance plan was fully funded and would not get affected by a massive government bailout of the credit markets, Obama has reversed himself and put his expensive federal programs on hold. He also criticized his own running mate on the Today show this morning: Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said in an interview aired Tuesday that the cost of the mortgage bailout plan may rein in his ambitious plans...

In Sickness and In Health by: Malcolm A. Kline, September 23, 2008 Critics in both the media and academia who point to exploding costs and denial of care as maladies afflicting the U. S. health care system are getting part of the story right. “In the last seven years, we’ve had over [a] 100 percent increase in insurance premiums and only a 27 percent increase in earnings,” University of Utah economist Norman J. Waitzman said in a roundtable sponsored by Continuum, the university’s magazine. Waitzman is co-director of the Behavioral Science and Health program at the University. Unfortunately, too many...

An Obama-Biden ad falsely claims McCain says he wants to "do the same to our health care" that "Wall Street deregulation" has done to the banking industry. [snip]the full context reveals that McCain was referring narrowly to his proposal to allow people to purchase health insurance across state lines.

Officials at the U.S. Census Bureau recently released new health insurance figures purporting to show that the number of Americans officially classified as uninsured in 2007 was 45.7 million, down from 47 million in 2006. Despite the decline, the new figure is being spun as proof positive that America's healthcare system is still in awful shape. Advocates of socialized medicine are repeating it ad nauseam, arguing that the main problem with the country's health system is the massive uninsured population. After all, if a whopping 15 percent of the population is uninsured, then the current system must be failing. But...