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Sebelius to Get “Unprecedented New Powers” Under Health Bill

December 1, 2009 ancavge Leave a comment

Susan Ferrechio
Washington Examiner
December 1, 2009

A quick search of the Senate health bill will bring up “secretary” 2,500 times.

That’s because Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius would be awarded unprecedented new powers under the proposal, including the authority to decide what medical care should be covered by insurers as well as the terms and conditions of coverage and who should receive it.

“The legislation lists 1,697 times where the secretary of health and humans services is given the authority to create, determine or define things in the bill,” said Devon Herrick, a health care expert at the National Center for Policy Analysis.

For instance, on Page 122 of the 2,079-page bill, the secretary is given the power to establish “the basic per enrollee, per month cost, determined on average actuarial basis, for including coverage under a qualified health care plan.”

The HHS secretary would also have the power to decide where abortion is allowed under a government-run plan, which has drawn opposition from Republicans and some moderate Democrats.

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URL to article: http://www.infowars.com/sebelius-to-get-unprecedented-new-powers-under-health-bill/

The Devastating Truth About the Obama Health Plan

November 29, 2009 ancavge 1 comment

Jon Rappoport
Insoultions
November 29, 2009

We are at a defining and crucial moment in our history. A machine is in motion that will alter our future. If after you read this article, you agree with its main points, or at least feel they need to be heard, send it on to others. Find ways to make your voice count.

It is one thing to read and understand the details of the Obama Health Plan. It is another thing to grasp the kind of power this bill will create, and what that power, in the future, will mean and do.

I realize that many people reading this essay have no interest in alternative medicine. However, that field represents freedom of choice for millions of Americans, and if you want to deny that choice—because you have a mistaken notion about, and a misplaced faith in, how medical science actually operates—the medical facts I describe and cite below should bring about a new appreciation of what freedom looks like, and how important the job of protecting it is.

This might be the most important medical article I’ve ever written, and in 20 years as a reporter, I’ve written many.

As I begin this essay on Thanksgiving morning, I recall that, 15 years ago, I was preparing to challenge Henry Waxman for his seat in the US House, in the 29th District, Los Angeles. At that time, the issue was Health Freedom, the right of every American to choose how to maintain and improve his/her health. And here I am again, with the same issue—only this time, there is a gargantuan White House program in place to destroy that freedom from the top down.

And various alternative-health advocates, having lost their minds, are supporting it. Among them are people who actually believe the small affirmative nods from politicians, in the direction of alternative medicine, are signaling an enlightened age under the Obama Star.

Duped again. One more time.

I have never imagined Democrats or Republicans represented the American people. This time, it is the political Left, with their naïve belief in “science” and “humanitarian work” who are leading the country over a cliff.

In the same way climate-change researchers have recently been exposed as charlatans, manipulators, and elitists, the medical establishment has been laid open and flayed—only the revelations came nine years ago. And of course, the major media refused to chase down that story and shine a light on the criminals.

On July 26, 2000, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a landmark paper by Barbara Starfield (Johns Hopkins School of Public Health), “Is US health really the best in the world?” In it, Starfield revealed what many people inside the medical establishment already knew: every year, like clockwork, the medical system was killing huge numbers of people. This wasn’t a dream. It was too real. By all rights (but who cares about rights?) the game was up. The liars and the PR flacks and the public health agencies were going down. The drug companies were going to take a lethal blow. Hospitals all over America were going to have to confess their many sins. Of course, that never happened.

Each year in the US there are:

12,000 deaths from unnecessary surgeries;

7,000 deaths from medication errors in hospitals;

20,000 deaths from other errors in hospitals;

80,000 deaths from infections acquired in hospitals;

106,000 deaths from FDA-approved correctly prescribed medicines.

The total of medically-caused deaths in the US every year is 225,000.

This makes the medical system the third leading cause of death in America, behind heart disease and cancer.

In the wake of Starfield’s devastating report, other facts came to light: 2.1 million people in America, every year, are hospitalized as a result of reactions to FDA-approved medicines. Annually, 36 million serious adverse reactions to those drugs occur.

So, inclusive health coverage for many more Americans under the Obama Plan—with business as usual—means these horrendous figures will rise.

This is the dirty secret. This is what the political Left in this country, those avid defenders of “medical science,” must pretend isn’t there at all. And the Republicans are in the same position.

Obama and his allies are promoting a medical system that is the third leading cause of death in America. It’s that stark and it’s that simple.

This is where we begin, if we are to understand the Obama Plan.

The Plan involves appointing an “expert panel” to decide what treatments Americans should be given for what diseases, under the new regime.

Only a certified idiot would assume that, over time, alternative non-mainstream therapies would survive such an ongoing vetting. Hope may spring eternal, but common sense makes it easy to grasp the realities on the ground.

Alternative therapies will die out. They will be edged out. Those that remain will be permitted for a narrow range of conditions, or as adjuncts to standard drug treatments and surgery.

Chiropractors and acupuncturists, who are temporarily basking in the notion that Obama “really cares,” are in for a very rude awakening down the line. Their careers and practices will be significantly reduced. Not today, not tomorrow, but it will happen. Perhaps these practitioners only fret about the short-term. Perhaps they’re simply looking for a few scraps from the table as long as the meal lasts.

Veteran health and medical journalist Peter Chowka points out (http://tinyurl.com/gonzalex-obama) that Americans who want to take responsibility for their own health, who don’t want onerous medical insurance, would be drafted into the Plan, and they would pay for it. With no escape possible, their discretionary incomes would shrink, and many of them would no longer be able to buy the healthiest foods and the supplements they use to prevent illness.

This is another avenue along which alternative health would approach a dead-end.

There is also the strong possibility that doctors, under the Plan, will be telling patients they may not take nutritional supplements while in treatment. This will assume the status of an irreversible edict. In certain cases, “while in treatment” means years.

What happens to a person, conscripted into the mandated Plan, who is told by his doctor that he should/must receive a vaccine? Suppose this person says no? What are the consequences? Isn’t his refusal tantamount to saying he wants out from under the Umbrella? Will he then be labeled a defector? What penalties will he suffer?

Does a diagnosis of cancer imply a patient must submit to chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery? Can these treatments be forced upon him?

Perhaps, in the early days of the Plan, nothing untoward will happen. But then, as time passes, and the system assumes tighter and tighter controls, the hand of government will close around the recalcitrant patient’s neck.

Doctors, who are an integral part of the Plan, will surely be punished if they give unapproved (alternative) treatments to patients. Their licenses will be stripped.

And in order to make the Plan operate on a day-to-day basis, the records and bookkeeping data of every health-care practitioner in America will eventually be tracked on government computer networks.

Every person in America will have a traceable medical ID package. There is no way around it. The monitoring apparatus can’t work without it.

Orwellian consequences lie up the road in the field of psychiatric practice. In case you hadn’t noticed, the invention of “disorders” by committee is the preferred method for “discovering” more and more mental illnesses. Fairy-tale figures are thrown about by the American Psychiatric Association: 20% of Americans are clinically depressed; millions of children have ADHD and need a cheap form of speed called Ritalin.

To secure the future of the Global Village, people everywhere must agree that mental illness is no longer a stigma-label. Yet, the science is completely fraudulent. For evidence, consult the many works of psychiatrist Peter Breggin, who has done more than any other person to expose the guts of his own profession. Breggin establishes that mental disorders cannot be authoritatively diagnosed by a chemical or biological test. Conclusive tests do not exist. And worse, in this undefined and arbitrary territory, the drugs that follow diagnoses are killers. For example, 300,000 cases of motor brain damage, as a result of the administration of major tranquilizers.

Under the Obama Plan, you can bet your bottom dollar that psychiatric care will eventually become mandatory. A patient suddenly diagnosed with clinical depression or bipolar disease will be told he must take the drugs—and suffer their adverse effects.

Science will take a back seat to a “share and care” collectivist philosophy, in which the so-called mental health of the individual is said to improve the group, the community, the nation. Under this cover, the attack on the individual personality will expand. Very young children will be given more and more debilitating and dangerous brain drugs.

These are no Luddite predictions. This is about hard fact, and those who shy away from the psychiatric literature and its fraudulent pretensions are whistling in the dark, pretending they are humanitarians of the first order.

Under the Obama Plan, it will be very convenient to declare new pandemics every few seasons, because these phony non-epidemics provide an opportunity to herd the sheep into clinics and remind them who is running the show. The United States will eventually become a Medical State, and lessons will have to be imparted on training wheels: go here, take this vaccine; go there, take that drug; the epidemic is endangering the herd, and you must help your brothers and sisters.

These are the figures on the last several “epidemics.” They are not yearly; they are totals, to date; global totals, except in the case of West Nile (US only):

SARS: 774 deaths.

WEST NILE: 1159 deaths.

BIRD FLU: 262 deaths.

SMALLPOX: (terrorist threat): 0 deaths.

SWINE FLU: 7909 deaths.

To give perspective, 250 thousand to 500 thousand people die of ordinary flu-like illness every year.

Yet this astounding death rate accrues no interest as an epidemic. It is only the “teaching (brainwashing) moments” of the phony epidemics that are promoted by health agencies (e.g., CDC and WHO) and their pharmaceutical allies, who rake in billions by manufacturing new vaccines.

Yes, under the Obama Plan, there will be more declared health emergencies, and they will serve to cement the citizen to his new role as eternal patient in the medical march along bleak streets of the future.

Can you perceive the loss of individual freedom implicit in this universal system of health control, and can you see how the present bill before Congress is the gateway?

Do what you can to defeat the bill, and damn the torpedoes and syringes.

If you believe the US medical system is a beautiful thing in all its parts, and you want in, consider that other human beings don’t. You can have your wish, and you can help guarantee that your fellow citizens, who decline, can have theirs, too.

This country tends to run on slogans, and “healthcare for all” is the punch line being used to spread the word of a new era. But slogans don’t inform, they persuade. We’re at a moment when we need to see through the lie. The consequences are dire. The fake saints and prophets and their followers are preaching a message that contains a bomb.

Vast public ignorance about the US medical cartel and its true human effects is the delivery system for that bomb.

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Sources and comments: I’m fully aware that people reading the facts in this essay will be shocked, and they will have doubts. Here are the sources for those facts. Things are not what they seem.

Barbara Starfield, “Is US health really the best in the world?” JAMA, July 26, 2000. Contains statistics on medically-caused deaths in the US.

On January 8, 2001, the LA Times ran a piece by Linda Marsa on the effects of medical drugs in the US. Predictably, the story sank like a stone. It provoked no Congressional hearings, no arrests.

The article described, in a few key paragraphs, a world of trouble. Adverse medical events. From med drugs.

“A 1998 University of Toronto study found that roughly 100,000 Americans die of adverse [medical-drug] reactions each year, and 2.1 million more are hospitalized.”

Marsa offered, in her Times article, a quote from an associate professor of medicine at Harvard, Dr. David Bates, an author of a 2000 study on drug effects. The study found that “18 percent of patients complained of drug-related complications…” Marsa wrote.

Here is the quote from Dr. Bates: “People often have [drug-caused] symptoms for months, but they’re either reluctant to let their doctor know or they weren’t sure if they just felt lousy…But these numbers translate to 36 million adverse drug events per year.”

Marsa dug out an explanation offered for this horrendous stat by the then-commissioner of the FDA, David Kessler.

Here’s Kessler’s quote from the Times article: “‘If an adverse event occurs in perhaps one in 5,000 or even one in 1,000 users, it could be missed in a clinical trial but pose a serious safety problem when released in the market,’ noted former FDA Commissioner David A Kessler in a 1993 JAMA article.”

Kessler was trying to explain (away) 100,000 deaths and 2.1 million hospitalizations and 36 million adverse reactions PER YEAR from FDA APPROVED DRUGS. He failed dismally. He seemed to be saying, “We can’t do any better.” If true, then Kessler and his colleagues should have abandoned the Agency and sought work elsewhere.

To add up the death totals from recent phony epidemics:

SARS—See WHO “Summary of probable SARS cases with onset of illness from 1 November 2002 to 31 July 2003” (based on data as of Dec.31, 2003).

BIRD FLU—See WHO “Confirmed Human Cases of Avian Influenza A (H5N1)” (24 September 2009)

WEST NILE—See CDC, West Nile Virus, Statistics, Surveillance, and Control. Years are reported separately, 1999-2009. I included only US cases because I couldn’t find a good source for global cases.

To confirm that every year, between 250,000 and 500,000 people die from ordinary flu, see WHO Fact Sheet No.211, Influenza (Seasonal).

Read Dr. Peter Breggin’s classic, Toxic Psychiatry, St. Martin’s Press, 1991. Follow Breggin’s argument, through several chapters, that labeled mental disorders are not based on factual biological evidence, and see p.89-91 for evidence that at least 300,000 people are suffering from brain damage (tardive dyskinesia) as a result of being administered major tranquilizers.

Under the centralized Obama Plan, control of the US medical system will fall into the hands of several powerful groups. The FDA, for decades a foe of alternative medicine, will increase its stranglehold on the nutritional-supplement market. Over time, it will enact tighter rules concerning what supplements may be sold to consumers and under what conditions. It will close down more alternative clinics. The Department of Health and Human Services will assume greater power over the states, and those states which now allow wide latitude to alternative health practitioners will be squeezed. The pharmaceutical industry, through its vast political connections, will accelerate its strategies to impoverish, bankrupt, and take over nutritional-supplement companies and gain control of that multi-billion-dollar market.

These trends will not necessarily be reflected in the laws governing the US medical-insurance plan, but those laws will create greater centralization, which translates into a pipeline of force for the major players.

Even a casual observer of the psychiatric landscape realizes that diagnoses of mental disorders are on the full upswing. The American Psychiatric Association, a wholly owned subsidiary of the pharmaceutical industry, will continue to exploit the mental-health market and enable the labeling of the majority of Americans with at least one mental disorder. That would be a target goal for Big Pharma. Again, this is not about credible science. It’s about business.

Founded in 1992, the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), a minor bureau of the National Institutes of Health (a federal agency), has managed to derail, stall, and divert the progress of real alternative medicine. It has forwarded no breakthroughs. It has bogged itself down in conferences, reports, and committee deliberations. It has fooled a number of so-called alternative-health advocates into believing that the federal government supports non-mainstream health strategies.

Imagine what will happen when healthcare in this country becomes centralized to a much greater degree under the Obama Plan. If this one tiny agency, NCCAM, can now befuddle the alternative field with a collection of inept and self-seeking bureaucrats, gargantuan power held at the top of the federal government will make that diversion look like a raindrop in a hurricane.

The modern medical system has always utilized PR to make its case to the public. Such efforts, under a federally run health system, will intensify by a factor of a hundred, a thousand. Its themes will run the gamut: toxic chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery for all cancers, even when the science confesses these treatments are useless and life-destroying; more vaccines for childhood illnesses, even though unvaccinated children experience these illnesses and emerge with natural immunity to them; unnecessary and damaging hysterectomies; frequent mammograms that lead to unneeded biopsies and mastectomies; “discoveries” about mental disorders that indicate the (false) need for debilitating drugs over the course of many years, for adults and children…

It’s important to realize that, at the heart of medical PR, success in applying dramatic treatments for emergency-crisis-trauma patients has been exploited, to make it seem that the same degree of success applies over the full range of medical intervention. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The history of the decline of infectious disease is a history of improved sanitation, an alleviation of overcrowding, the rise of the middle class, and above all, the betterment of nutrition. This decline in disease occurred before the introduction of antibiotics and widespread vaccination. Under massively centralized medical care, in an environment where chemically saturated agri-business grows our food in depleted topsoil, there is a greater and greater need for nutritional supplements. But this vital avenue will be narrowed and blocked in the ways I have indicated above.

In my 20 years as a medical reporter, I’ve documented instances in which germs were used as cover stories to explain away illness actually caused by horrendous environmental conditions. This inhuman operation is easy to understand once you realize that some of the leading pharmaceutical firms (which make billions by drugging germs) are also chemical companies (which sell enormous amounts of toxic pesticides) and are also genetic-engineering companies (which develop food seeds that yield crops with lower nutritional values, crops that demand more toxic pesticides to survive, crops whose adverse health effects remain untested).

Under a national medical plan, these companies would be able to assert even more power than they do now. The ease with which environmentally/chemically caused illness could be explained away “as a virus” would be child’s play, because the same people would hold the medical and chemical strings.

Last but not least, medical-research fraud continues unabated, an out-of-control rampant crime. Occasional confessions published in medical journals do not stop the fraud, whose major source is illegitimate pharmaceutical influence. Under a centralized government-run medical monolith, these offenses will become harder to spot and correct, and easier to portray as real science.

See, for example, “20 Percent Of Cancer Studies Report Conflict of Interest,” ScienceDaily (May 13, 2009): “Nearly one-third of cancer research published in high-impact journals disclosed a conflict of interest, according to a new study from researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center. The most frequent type of conflict was [pharmaceutical] industry funding of the study, which was seen in 17 percent of papers. Twelve percent of papers had a study author who was an industry employee. Randomized trials with reported conflicts of interest were more likely to have positive findings…”

Also, from the Boston Globe (Boston.com), “Flaws are found in validating medical studies; many see need to overhaul standards for peer review” (August 15, 2005):

“…after a study that sent reverberations through the medical profession by finding that almost one-third of top research articles have been either contradicted or seriously questioned, some specialists are calling for radical changes in the system…almost one-third of the top papers that appeared in top journals over a 13-year period from 1990 to 2003, had been either contradicted or found to have potentially exaggerated results. All the articles had [prior to publication] undergone vigorous peer review, leading to questions about whether problems should have been caught by reviewers…”

URL to article: http://www.infowars.com/the-devastating-truth-about-the-obama-health-plan/

Affordable Health Care Choices Act of 2009: Unconstitutional

September 21, 2009 ancavge Leave a comment

Michael Connelly
Infowars
September 21, 2009

Well, I have done it! I have read the entire text of proposed House Bill 3200: The Affordable Health Care Choices Act of 2009. I studied it with particular emphasis from my area of expertise, constitutional law. I was frankly concerned that parts of the  proposed law that were being discussed might be unconstitutional.  What I found was far worse than what I had heard or expected.

To begin with, much of what has been said about the law and its implications is in fact true, despite what the Democrats and the media are saying. The law does provide for rationing of health care, particularly where senior citizens and other classes of citizens are involved, free health care for illegal immigrants, free abortion services, and probably forced participation in abortions by members of the medical profession.

The Bill will also eventually force private insurance companies out of business and put everyone into a government run system. All decisions about personal health care will ultimately be made by federal bureaucrats and most of them will not be health care professionals. Hospital admissions, payments to physicians, and allocations of necessary medical devices will be strictly controlled.

However, as scary as all of that it, it just scratches the surface. In fact, I have concluded that this legislation really has no intention of providing affordable health care choices. Instead it is a convenient cover for the most massive transfer of power to the Executive Branch of government that has ever occurred, or even been contemplated. If this law or a similar one is adopted, major portions of the Constitution of the United States will effectively have been destroyed.

The first thing to go will be the masterfully crafted balance of power between the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of the U.S. Government. The Congress will be transferring to the Obama Administration authority in a number of different areas over the lives of the American people and the businesses they own. The irony is that the Congress doesn’t have any authority to legislate in most of those areas to begin with. I defy anyone to read the text of the U.S. Constitution and find any authority granted to the members of Congress to regulate health care.

This legislation also provides for access by the appointees of the Obama administration of all of your personal healthcare information, your personal financial information, and the information of your employer, physician, and hospital. All of this is a direct violation of the specific provisions of the 4th Amendment to the Constitution protecting against unreasonable searches and seizures. You can also forget about the right to privacy. That will have been legislated into oblivion regardless of what the 3rd and 4th Amendments may provide.

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If you decide not to have healthcare insurance or if you have private insurance that is not deemed “acceptable” to the “Health Choices Administrator” appointed by Obama there will be a tax imposed on you. It is called a “tax” instead of a fine because of the intent to avoid application of the due process clause of the 5th Amendment. However, that doesn’t work because since there is nothing in the law that allows you to contest or appeal the imposition of the tax, it is definitely depriving someone of property without the “due process of law.

So, there are three of those pesky amendments that the far left hate so much out the original ten in the Bill of Rights that are effectively nullified by this law. It doesn’t stop there though. The 9th Amendment that provides: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people;” The 10th Amendment states: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are preserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Under the provisions of this piece of Congressional handiwork neither the people nor the states are going to have any rights or powers at all in many areas that once were theirs to control.

I could write many more pages about this legislation, but I think you get the idea. This is not about health care; it is about seizing power and limiting rights. Article 6 of the Constitution requires the members of both houses of Congress to “be bound by oath or affirmation” to support the Constitution. If I was a member of Congress I would not be able to vote for this legislation or anything like it without feeling I was violating that sacred oath or affirmation. If I voted for it anyway I would hope the American people would hold me accountable.

For those who might doubt the nature of this threat I suggest they consult the source. Here is a link to the Constitution.

And another to the Bill of Rights.

There you can see exactly what we are about to have taken from us.

URL to article: http://www.infowars.com/affordable-health-care-choices-act-of-2009-unconstitutional/

Man Protests Obama, Gets Snatched by Cops as Obamanoids Cheer

September 18, 2009 ancavge Leave a comment

Infowars
September 18, 2009

Editor’s note: No doubt the following incident will be grist for Chris Matthews’ mill later this evening. Chris will ask if the man was a racist and his guests will chime in that he is indeed a racist, even though the man’s remonstration was about government mandated health care (Obamacare at gunpoint) and abortion.

At a health care rally at a Maryland university, a protester began shouting, prompting boos and President Obama to pause. The man apparently yelled “Obama you’re a liar. Obama, your health care kills children. Abortion is murder.”

The man was promptly removed by police, much to the joy of rabidly cheering Obamanoids, who feverishly demanded the man be carted off for having the temerity to challenge Der Fuhrer.

Watch as the guy is being led up the stairs, an Obamanoid stood on the left spits on him but the cop sees it and carts him off too.

URL to article: http://www.infowars.com/man-protests-obama-gets-snatched-by-cops-as-obamanoids-cheer/

Obama: Legalize illegals to get them health care

September 18, 2009 ancavge Leave a comment

Stephen Dinan
The Washington Times
September 18, 2009

President Obama said this week that his health care plan won’t cover illegal immigrants, but argued that’s all the more reason to legalize them and ensure they eventually do get coverage.

He also staked out a position that anyone in the country legally should be covered – a major break with the 1996 welfare reform bill, which limited most federal public assistance programs only to citizens and longtime immigrants.

“Even though I do not believe we can extend coverage to those who are here illegally, I also don’t simply believe we can simply ignore the fact that our immigration system is broken,” Mr. Obama said Wednesday evening in a speech to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute. “That’s why I strongly support making sure folks who are here legally have access to affordable, quality health insurance under this plan, just like everybody else.

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URL to article: http://www.infowars.com/obama-legalize-illegals-to-get-them-health-care/

Pelosi’s Misleading Statement on the Constitutionality of Government Health Care

September 17, 2009 ancavge Leave a comment

Rob Natelson
The Tenth Amendment Center
September 17, 2009

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has issued a press release in which she purports to rebut those of us who have expressed doubts about the constitutionality of some health care reform plans.

Pelosi (or her ghostwriter) claims:

“The 10th amendment to the U.S. Constitution states that the powers not delegated to the federal government by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states… or to the people. But the Constitution gives Congress broad power to regulate activities that have an effect on interstate commerce. Congress has used this authority to regulate many aspects of American life, from labor relations to education to health care to agricultural production. Since virtually every aspect of the heath care system has an effect on interstate commerce, the power of Congress to regulate health care is essentially unlimited. (bolded in original).

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For several reasons, this is a highly misleading statement.

First, it fails to mention a concern expressed by many constitutional scholars, including those on the Left: Substantive due process.

“Substantive due process” is the doctrine by which the Supreme Court strikes down laws it deems unacceptably interfere with personal privacy or autonomy. Health care laws that, for example, limit one’s ability to fund and control one’s own health care could well run afoul of substantive due process rules.

Second, the statement fails to mention that, while the Supreme Court has upheld many delegations of power from Congress to executive branch agencies, the Court has affirmed repeatedly that there are limits. Some health care proposals involve wider delegations of authority than any since the New Deal’s National Reconstruction Adminisration (NRA) — which was invalidated by a unanimous Court.

Third, the Pelosi release disregards the fact that on several occasions the modern Supreme Court has struck down overreaching federal legislation, supposedly adopted under the Commerce Power. Also, on several occasions, the Court has interpreted congressional acts narrowly to avoid constitutional conflicts.

Fourth: Pelosi (or her speechwriter) clearly misstate the current Supreme Court’s test for laws under the Constitution’s Commerce Power. The statement that Congress can regulate “activities that have an effect on interstate commerce” should be that Congress can regulate “economic activities that have a substantial effect on interstate commerce.” Non-economic activities, such as some health care decisions, would have to meet a much stricter test. This may seem to be a minor mistake, but for legal purposes it is an important one, and one that, for the Speaker of the House of Representatives, is not easily excusable.

Finally, Pelosi (or her ghostwriter) commits the mistake of failing to look at wider judicial trends. One of these trends is the long-term movement by the Supreme Court toward interpreting the Constitution according to its real meaning – the original understanding of the Founders and Ratifiers.

And virtually no knowledgeable person thinks government health care is constitutional under that standard.

URL to article: http://www.infowars.com/pelosis-misleading-statement-on-the-constitutionality-of-government-health-care/

Judge Napolitano: Health-Care Reform and the Constitution

September 17, 2009 ancavge Leave a comment

Andrew P. Napolitano
The Wall Street Journal
September 16, 2009

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Last week, I asked South Carolina Congressman James Clyburn, the third-ranking Democrat in the House of Representatives, where in the Constitution it authorizes the federal government to regulate the delivery of health care. He replied: “There’s nothing in the Constitution that says that the federal government has anything to do with most of the stuff we do.” Then he shot back: “How about [you] show me where in the Constitution it prohibits the federal government from doing this?”

Rep. Clyburn, like many of his colleagues, seems to have conveniently forgotten that the federal government has only specific enumerated powers. He also seems to have overlooked the Ninth and 10th Amendments, which limit Congress’s powers only to those granted in the Constitution.

One of those powers—the power “to regulate” interstate commerce—is the favorite hook on which Congress hangs its hat in order to justify the regulation of anything it wants to control.

Unfortunately, a notoriously tendentious New Deal-era Supreme Court decision has given Congress a green light to use the Commerce Clause to regulate noncommercial, and even purely local, private behavior. In Wickard v. Filburn (1942), the Supreme Court held that a farmer who grew wheat just for the consumption of his own family violated federal agricultural guidelines enacted pursuant to the Commerce Clause. Though the wheat did not move across state lines—indeed, it never left his farm—the Court held that if other similarly situated farmers were permitted to do the same it, might have an aggregate effect on interstate commerce.

James Madison, who argued that to regulate meant to keep regular, would have shuddered at such circular reasoning. Madison’s understanding was the commonly held one in 1789, since the principle reason for the Constitutional Convention was to establish a central government that would prevent ruinous state-imposed tariffs that favored in-state businesses. It would do so by assuring that commerce between the states was kept “regular.”

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URL to article: http://www.infowars.com/judge-napolitano-health-care-reform-and-the-constitution/

Swine Flu Vaccination: An Injured Subject Speaks Out as Researchers Deny Link

September 15, 2009 ancavge Leave a comment

Adventures in Autism
September 15, 2009

A participant in the german H1N1 vaccine trials reports serious adverse reactions, including coughing up blood, but the lead researcher blows it off. Yet another story of problems in vaccine safety studies that are ignored.

Why test a vaccine exactly, if you already have decided what the outcomes can or cannot be? Apparently Heir Doctor will only accept ‘redness and swelling at the injection site’ as a side effect.

The article does not say which version of the vaccine he got. Wish there was more information on this case.

Swine flu vaccination: A test subject speaks out.

Original German article

21.08.09|Munich iFacebook

Translation into English by Erwin Alber

Munich – A harmless prick – and thereby possibly save thousands of people. This is what several hundreds of volunteers thought, who each collected a payment of 250 Euro for their participation in the study of the swine flu vaccine trial at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University.

One of them has now quit the trial: The Diploma-businessman Axel Sch. (40). He claims : “The vaccination has made me ill! – the test is irresponsible.” He says that within a few hours after the vaccination, on August 10, he had sweat on his forehead. “I felt totally beat. On the third day, my kidneys and head were aching and I got a fever. I then had a coughing fit – and the wash basin was suddenly red – it was blood!“

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LMU-medical researcher Frank von Sonnenburg, who is in charge of the country-wide study, doesn’t consider these accounts credible. He says that such side-effects cannot be related to the vaccine. He does not deny that, as with other flu-vaccinations, flu-like symptoms may occur as a reaction to the vaccination. “Additionally, there may be light pain, redness or swelling at the injection site.”

“Obviously many of the test subjects would have side-effects. We do such a study precisely because we want to find out any possible side-effects. If flu cases were to become more severe and we had not done any tests, – there would be a big outcry by everyone.”

Was the vaccine admitted too quickly to the study? The fact is that in this composition, the vaccine has not yet been applied to humans. The Federal Health Minister Ulla Schmidt explained on Wednesday that she had felt put under pressure by the pharmaceutical industry from the beginning. Criticism is being voiced with increasing frequency. The Paul-Ehrlich-Institute points out that side-effects to this vaccine are to be more expected than in connection with a normal flu-vaccine. The Paediatric Association points to a possibly increased number of unknown side-effects.

British researchers even warn about a neurological disorder known as the Guillain-Barré-Syndrome. They point to a vaccination campaign with a similar swine flu vaccine carried out in the USA in 1976, which resulted in the deaths of 25 people.

Probably because of this, the USA only test vaccines without so-called adjuvants. These lead to greater side-effects, explains study leader Frank von Sonnenburg. “The adjuvants produce more anti-bodies, which is why the body’s defensive reaction is also greater.” Kidney pains and bloody cough of the kind Axel Sch. Experienced were however not to be expected, even with this adjuvant. “We conduct a clean study.”

Axel Sch. however insists that his complaints were a result of the vaccination. “Surely it is no coincidence that they occurred directly after the vaccination.” He criticizes the university, saying that he was not properly informed prior to the study. He said that for three days he was flat on his back during this heat. “When I phoned the LMU, they simply asked me the question needed to fill in their form and told me to see my doctor.” He now wants the medical costs and loss of earnings compensated by the medical insurance covering the trial.

Axel Sch. has participated in medical trials even when he was a student. He had also had good experiences with an LMU flu-vaccine study. “This is the reason why I immediately consented when they asked me if I would test the new vaccine.”

Now his trust in research is gone, he is quitting the vaccine trial. In October he will fly to Latin America for professional reasons. He had looked forward to traveling unconcerned – by then he would have received the second of three vaccinations. “I’m not fearful just the same – I don’t belong to an at risk group. Also, the swine flu can’t possibly be as bad as the side-effects of the vaccine.”

URL to article: http://www.infowars.com/swine-flu-vaccination-an-injured-subject-speaks-out-as-researchers-deny-link/

Washington Post Refuses to Post Its Own Poll Findings: 54% Skeptical of Obamacare Plan

September 15, 2009 ancavge Leave a comment

Fred Lucas
CNSNews
September 15, 2009

Editor’s note: The Washington Post isn’t the crown jewel of Operation Mockingbird for nothing.

A Washington Post-ABC News poll conducted in the three days following President Barack Obama’s speech to Congress about his health care plan found that 54% say the more they hear about the plan, the less they like it.

This particular poll result was not mentioned anywhere in the story about the poll that was posted by the Washington Post on its Web site on Monday. The result did appear in the data sheet from the poll that was linked to the story.

The 54% who now say that the more they hear about Obama’s health-care plan, the less they like it is larger than the percentage who answered a similar question about then-First Lady Hillary Clinton’s health-care plan back in 1993 and 1994.

Read entire story

URL to article: http://www.infowars.com/washington-post-refuses-to-post-its-own-poll-findings-54-skeptical-of-obamacare-plan/

Health Care Deceit

September 15, 2009 ancavge Leave a comment

Paul Craig Roberts
Infowars
September 15, 2009

The current health care “debate” shows how far gone representative government is in the United States. Members of Congress represent the powerful interest groups that fill their campaign coffers, not the people who vote for them.

The health care bill is not about health care. It is about protecting and increasing the profits of the insurance companies. The main feature of the health care bill is the “individual mandate,” which requires everyone in America to buy health insurance. Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont), a recipient of millions in contributions over his career from the insurance industry, proposes to impose up to a $3,800 fine on Americans who fail to purchase health insurance.

The determination of “our” elected representatives to serve the insurance industry is so compelling that Congress is incapable of recognizing the absurdity of these proposals.

The reason there is a health care crisis in the US is that the cumulative loss of jobs and benefits has swollen the uninsured to approximately 50 million Americans. They cannot afford health insurance any more than employers can afford to provide it.

It is absurd to mandate that people purchase what they cannot afford and to fine them for failing to do so. A person who cannot pay a health insurance premium cannot pay the fine.

These proposals are like solving the homeless problem by requiring the homeless to purchase a house.

In his speech Obama said “we’ll provide tax credits” for “those individuals and small businesses who still can’t afford the lower-priced insurance available in the exchange” and he said low-cost coverage will be offered to those with preexisting medical conditions. A tax credit is useless to those without income unless the credit is refundable, and subsidized coverage doesn’t do much for those millions of Americans with no jobs.

Baucus masquerades as a defender of the health impaired with his proposal to require insurers to provide coverage to all comers as if the problem of health care can be reduced to preexisting conditions and cancelled policies. It was left to Rep. Dennis Kucinich to point out that the health care bill ponies up 30 million more customers for the private insurance companies.

The private sector is no longer the answer, because the income levels of the vast majority of Americans are insufficient to bear the cost of health insurance today. To provide some perspective, the monthly premium for a 60-year old female for a group policy (employer-provided) with Blue Cross Blue Shield in Florida is about $1,200. That comes to $14,400 per year. Only employees in high productivity jobs that can

provide both a livable salary and health care can expect to have employer-provided coverage. If a 60-year old female has to buy a non-group policy as an individual, the premium would be even higher. How, for example, is a Wal-Mart shelf stocker or checkout clerk going to be able to pay a private insurance premium?

Even the present public option–Medicare–is very expensive to those covered. Basic Medicare is insufficient coverage. Part B has been added, for which about $100 per month is deducted from the covered person’s Social Security check. If the person is still

earning or has other retirement income, an “income-related monthly adjustment” is also deducted as part of the Part B premium. And if the person is still working, his earnings are subject to the 2.9 percent Medicare tax.

Even with Part B, Medicare coverage is still insufficient except for the healthy. For many people, additional coverage from private supplementary policies, such as the ones sold by AARP, is necessary. These premiums can be as much as $277 per month. Deductibles remain and prescriptions are only 50% covered. If the drug prescription policy is chosen, the premium is higher.

This leaves a retired person on Medicare who has no other retirement income of significance paying as much as $4,500 per year in premiums in order to create coverage under Medicare that still leaves half of his prescription medicines out-of-pocket. Considering the cost of some prescription medicines, a Medicare-covered person with Part B and a supplementary policy can still face bankruptcy.

Therefore, everyone should take note that a “public option” can leave people with large out-of-pocket costs. I know a professional who has chosen to continue working beyond retirement age. His Medicare coverage with supplemental coverage, Medicare tax, and income-related monthly adjustment comes to $16,400 per year. Those people who want to deny Medicare to the rich will cost the system a lot of money.

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What the US needs is a single-payer not-for-profit health system that pays doctors and nurses sufficiently that they will undertake the arduous training and accept the stress and risks of dealing with illness and diseases.

A private health care system worked in the days before expensive medical technology, malpractice suits, high costs of bureaucracy associated with third-party payers and heavy investment in combating fraud, and pressure on insurance companies from Wall Street to improve “shareholder returns.”

Despite the rise in premiums, payments to health care providers, such as doctors, appear to be falling along with coverage to policy holders. The system is no longer functional and no longer makes sense. Health care has become an incidental rather than primary purpose of the health care system. Health care plays second fiddle to insurance company profits and salaries to bureaucrats engaged in fraud prevention and discovery. There is no point in denying coverage to one-sixth of the population in the name of saving a nonexistent private free market health care system.

The only way to reduce the cost of health care is to take the profit and paperwork out of health care.

Nothing humans design will be perfect. However, Congress is making it clear to the public that the wrong issues are front and center, such as the belief of Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) and others that illegal aliens and abortions will be covered if government pays the bill.

Debate focuses on subsidiary issues, because Congress no longer writes the bills it passes. As Theodore Lowi made clear in his book, The End of Liberalism,featured stories   Health Care Deceit the New Deal transferred law-making from the legislative to the executive branch. Executive branch agencies and departments write bills that they want and hand them off to sponsors in the House and Senate. Powerful interest groups took up the same practice.

The interest groups that finance political campaigns expect their bills to be sponsored and passed.

Thus: a health care reform bill based on forcing people to purchase private health insurance and fining them if they do not.

When bills become mired in ideological conflict, as has happened to the health care bill, something usually passes nevertheless. The president, his PR team, and members of Congress want a health care bill on their resume and to be able to claim that they passed a health care bill, regardless of whether it provides any health care.

The cost of adding public expenditures for health care to a budget drowning in red ink from wars, bank bailouts, and stimulus packages means that the most likely outcome of a health care bill will benefit insurance companies and use mandated private coverage to save public money by curtailing Medicare and Medicaid.

The public’s interest is not considered to be the important determinant. The politicians have to please the insurance companies and reduce health care expenditures in order to save money for another decade or two of war in the Middle East.

The telltale part of Obama’s speech was the applause in response to his pledge that “I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits.” Yet, Obama and his fellow politicians have no hesitation to add trillions of dollars to the deficit in order to fund wars.

The profits of military/security companies are partly recycled into campaign contributions. To cut war spending in order to finance a public health care system would cost politicians campaign contributions from both the insurance industry and the military/security industry.

Politicians are not going to allow that to happen.

It was the war in Afghanistan, not health care, that President Obama declared to be a necessity.”

URL to article: http://www.infowars.com/health-care-deceit/