health care

Hey, Let’s Subsidize Crack!

Calvin Freiburger Canada, cocaine, conservatism, crack, drugs, health care, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, hypocrisy, insanity, Left, liberalism, libertarianism, nanny state, politics, responsibility, socialism, statism, Steyn

Hat tip to Mark Steyn for today’s example of Canadian healthcare insanity:
Vancouver health officials will distribute new crack pipes to the city’s non-injection drug users this fall as part of a pilot project aimed at engaging crack cocaine smokers and reducing the transmission of disease such as hepatitis C.

The program, part of Vancouver’s harm reduction strategy, is expected to start in October and run for six months to a year, said Dr. Reka Gustafson, a medical health officer with Vancouver Coastal Health.

The intent is to connect health care workers with crack cocaine smokers to evaluate how many of the drug users are in the city and what equipment they need to lower their risk of catching diseases such as hepatitis C, HIV and even respiratory illnesses.

A kit with a clean, unused pipe, mouthpiece, filter and condoms will be handed out to the participants, Gustafson said. It’s not known at this time how many drug users will take part in the pilot, which is estimated to cost between $50,000 and $60,000.

“There’s been a shift to crack cocaine smoking and we want to make sure the services we provide are the services they need … if we’re providing syringes and what we need are pipes, we’re not serving them,” Gustafson said […] “It’s just understanding and knowing the health consequences of crack cocaine smoking.”
Which is why they’re going help facilitate its continued practice with taxpayer dollars. Because as long as you’re using a clean pipe, cocaine’s pretty much harmless, right?

I guess Canada has abandoned all pretense that self-destructive behavior shouldn’t be encouraged. And too bad they still haven’t figured out that prevention doesn’t decrease healthcare costs. One of Steyn’s commenters, Henry Hawkins, knocks this one out of the park:
The reason they want to get clean needles and crack pipes out on the street is because 95% of addicts don’t keep theirs clean, of course. However, once you’ve passed out a clean pipe or clean needle, **it’s only sterile for that first use**. From then on it’s dirty and stays that way. It will be used again. And again, and again, and again.

But Henry, they’ll teach them all about the importance of sterile works! They have a program and everything! And the addicts will ignore them. Such education programs have been common for over forty years. I’ve been working with addicts since 1986. There is a uniquely evil kind of ignorance that tells would-be do-gooders that the addict who won’t change his behaviors despite the likelihood of death by gunshot, overdose, AIDS, organic damage, mugging, and a thousand others ways an addict manages to die, will for some reason see the light and change out of fear of contracting hepatitis. If you want to kill an addict, give him uncut heroin or a government health department social worker. They are equally deadly.

So now, thanks to Vancouver Coastal Health, there will be many, many thousands more dirty pipes infected with hepatitis and other nasties out there in the addict community than there were before. Same number of addicts, just several thousand extra infected crack pipes, so the individual chance of infection is significantly raised.

But, but, but.. we give them pamphlets!

Arrrgh.
If you think it can’t happen here, think again. The nanny-state mentality is deeply entrenched in the minds of our ruling class, and where drugs are concerned, something tells me libertarians’ steadfast anti-government principles will evaporate right before our eyes.

Yes, Let’s Emulate the UK on Healthcare

Calvin Freiburger big government, bureaucracy, Europe, Great Britain, health care, socialism, statism, UK
Another healthcare horror story from across the pond (hat tip to WISN):
Nurses casually stepped over a patient as he lay dying on a  hospital floor.
Peter Thompson, 41, was left in a corridor for ten hours before someone noticed he had passed away.
In a final act of indignity, hospital auxiliaries pulled his lifeless body across the floor in a manner his family described as like ‘dragging a dead animal’.
The scenes which shame the NHS were all captured on CCTV. Staff thought Mr Thompson was merely drunk and left him to ‘sleep it off’.
Yesterday a coroner condemned the death as ‘wholly preventable’.
An inquest heard that the father-of-one, who had consumed a cocktail of drink and drugs, could have been saved had he received emergency treatment.  
The hospital’s accident and emergency department was just 200 yards away.
As WISN’s Justin Earl rightly notes, “these hospitals, doctors, and caregivers are overwhelmed, underfunded, and understaffed.” But those things can’t fully explain a dead body left unattended in a hallway for ten hours. Indifference to, or willfull avoidance of, human suffering ultimately stems from a crisis of moral decency.

How Not to Discredit Pro-Choicers

Calvin Freiburger abortion, conservatism, dishonesty, health care, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, Jill Stanek, lying, politics, pro-choice, pro-life, Salon, social issues

Pro-life blogger Jill Stanek has been critiquing a Salon blogger, Mikki Kendall, who claims she almost died because of a doctor who refused to perform an abortion. Stanek raises some good, important questions about the credibility of Kendall’s story, but she undermines her own work by claiming to have found a smoking gun that’s anything but.

Stanek first highlights this quote from Kendall’s original piece:

I don’t know if his objections were religious or not; all I know is that when a bleeding woman was brought to him for treatment he refused to do the only thing that could stop the bleeding. Because he didn’t do abortions. Ever.

Then Kendall’s follow-up quote:

Some say I should name and shame the doctor that refused to do the procedure. If I knew why he refused I might have done just that, but since I know that there are many possible reasons that he did not do it? I’ve left him to deal with the internal procedures in place.

Stanek’s reaction:

Excuse me? Kendall’s entire Salon story was built upon her accusation that a heartless, negligent, anti-abortion doctor was willing to let her hemorrhage to death rather than provide a life-saving abortion.

And she has now admitted her story was a big, fat, fabricated lie.

Except the quote shows nothing of the sort. At most, Kendall’s latest words admit she doesn’t know the doctor’s motives, whereas she earlier implied that she knew the doctor had personal objections to abortion. That “inconsistency” is shaky enough, but the main problem is that it does nothing to show Stanek’s allegation that Kendall’s story “was a big, fat, fabricated lie.” It doesn’t change any of the much more germane details of the story, like what Kendall’s condition was, whether the doctor did in fact refuse, or whether the incident occurred at all.

Jill Stanek, as well as the folks at NewsBusters who re-posted her piece, simply can’t afford to be so careless when it comes to ensuring the evidence backs up their arguments.

New on NewsReal – Boston Professor Hails Obama for Declaring War on Deficits. Wait, What?

Calvin Freiburger big government, budget, charity, collectivism, conservatism, debt, demagogues, Democrats, GOP, health care, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, Left, NewsReal, Obama, Paul Ryan, spending, Tea Party

My latest NewsRealBlog post:

To love your country is to hate red ink.

Sounds like a Tea Party slogan, doesn’t it? This concise declaration of fiscal responsibility would look at home on many a conservative bumper or amid a sea of protest signs, but incredibly, it was uttered by Boston University history professor Andrew Bacevich as—I kid you not—a glowing endorsement of President Barack Obama’s April 13 speech on the federal budget. On the Daily Beast, Bacevich declares that the 44th president has “expanded the operative definition of patriotism to encompass belief in balanced budgets”:

This is surely a good thing. So too is the president’s willingness to finger the essence of the problem: a widespread desire for an endless free lunch—people coveting government benefits without a willingness to pay for them.

Obama also performed a useful service in pointing out that any serious effort at deficit reduction will have to target the Big Four: Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and national security.

Regarding that last category, the president promises to reassess not only military missions and capabilities, but also America’s role in the world. In our post-unipolar moment, such a reassessment is long overdue. Yet to have more than cosmetic results, Obama will have to take on some very sacred cows and some very powerful interests.

I defy you to find a more surreal reaction to Obama’s remarks. We’ve previously discussed how Diamond Barry’s proposed budgets have been so bloated they call for new taxes by the trillions to sustain them. The president might have said on Wednesday that he wants to reduce the deficit by $4 trillion over the next twelve years, but as Mark Knoller of noted right-wing mouthpiece CBS News reports:

Budget totals issued by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in February project 10 years of deficits totaling $7.2 trillion between 2012 and 2021. Another two years at that rate would bring the 12 year total to $8.6 trillion.

The Obama 12-year plan would cut the projected deficit total in half, but would leave another $4 trillion in deficits that would be added to the National Debt, which now stands at $14.27 trillion.

Separately, OMB expects the Debt to double over the next ten years to a mind-boggling total of $26.3-trillion in 2021. It’s estimated the Debt that year would cost U.S. taxpayers $928-billion in interest payments. Four trillion dollars in deficit reduction would reduce the Debt to just over $22-trillion, and still inflict $700-billion in interest on the federal budget.

Read the rest on NewsRealBlog.

New on NewsReal – The Obama Presidency in Review, and a Preview of Hope and Change 2012

Calvin Freiburger Barack Obama, debt, Democrats, economy, health care, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, Left, liberalism, NewsReal, politics, spending

My latest NewsRealBlog post:

To nobody’s surprise, President Barack Obama has formally announced that he will seek reelection with a video that’s clearly geared toward motivating fans rather than attracting newcomers, as it’s decidedly light on reasons why the incumbent Democrat should be given four more years in the White House.

Fortunately, Newsweek White House correspondent Daniel Stone gets a bit more specific on the Daily Beast, laying out the case he expects Team Obama to make. Let’s take a look at his points, as well as the flip side.

Last week’s economic report showed an unemployment rate continuing to fall—incredibly slowly. It’s not good enough, but it still is progress, Obama will say. Defending the actions the administration took—especially the $987 billion Recovery Act—will fall to Joe “the stimulus sheriff” Biden, who will be fortified by a team of crack researchers preparing colorful graphs showing lines with positive slopes. Obama the president had trouble arguing the hypothetical that “we’d be worse off if I did nothing,” but Obama the candidate might have better luck. Any Republican will publicly doubt him, but would only be able to offer the same hypothetical that he or she would have done any better.

On the other hand, Obama’s going to have to explain the fact that he explicitly claimed his stimulus plan was needed because it would prevent unemployment rising to 8%, we passed it…and unemployment rose past 8% anyway. He’ll have to answer for record job losses. And while the latest economic news is encouraging, it’s tentative—labor force participation is still low, and Obama is unlikely to support one policy that could accelerate recovery further still:

The United States has stood alone while the rest of the developed world has moved forward with a pro-growth strategy of slashing corporate tax rates. The Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) reports that its 30-nation membership cut corporate tax rates an average of 7.1 percentage points in the past decade, and the United States will have a federal corporate tax rate one-third higher than the OECD average of 25.7 percent.[2] When Japan’s corporate tax rate is lowered, the United States is one of three nations that will not have reduced the rate.

Corporate taxes are considered the most inefficient of all tax systems. They increase the cost of capital and slow economic growth. Nearly every economist believes that that tax burden falls on individuals, namely the workers and shareholders of the company. A more efficient corporate tax system would increase economic growth and boost the labor market.[3]

Read the rest on NewsRealBlog.

ALL Alert: Catholics vs. Catholic Health Association

Calvin Freiburger abortion, ALL, Catholic Church, Catholicism, health care, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, pro-life, religion, Religious Left, social issues
This just in, from Michael Hichborn at American Life League:

CATHOLICS URGE BISHOPS TO END RELATIONSHIP WITH CATHOLIC HEALTH ASSOCIATION

Washington, DC (9 February 2011) – American Life League is urging the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to dissolve its relationship with the Catholic Health Association, following a series of reports linking CHA to support for abortion.

American Life League cited the following reasons for the USCCB to end its ties with CHA:

• CHA fully endorsed pro-abortion Obamacare, in direct opposition to the U.S. bishops
• CHA member Catholic Healthcare West gives millions of dollars to pro-abortion, pro-same-sex marriage organizations
• CHA’s recent Chairman of the Board was a “co-architect” in the creation of Healthy San Francisco, which covers birth control and abortion on demand
• CHA president, Sr. Carol Keehan, maintains a duplicitous position in claiming that local bishops have the authority to interpret the U.S. bishops’ ethical and religious directives (ERD), while maintaining that St. Joseph’s Hospital properly applied the ERDs in approving and performing an abortion in 2009.

“It’s clear that CHA is more interested in politics and money than maintaining Catholic teaching,” said Michael Hichborn, director of American Life League’s project, Defend the Faith.

Last month, in an online video report entitled, “Nun-Catholic Healthcare,” ALL revealed that CHA spends one fourth of its annual budget to pay its six highest paid employees, including Sr. Keehan’s $900,000 salary.
 

“When one considers that the mission of the USCCB is to ‘support the ministry of bishops with an emphasis on evangelization,’ maintaining a relationship with a group like CHA can only hinder that mission,” said Hichborn.

American Life League was cofounded in 1979 by Judie Brown. It is the largest grassroots Catholic pro-life organization in the United States and is committed to the protection of all innocent human beings from the moment of creation to natural death. For more information or press inquiries, please contact Jim Sedlak at 540.659.7685.

Republicans Move to Repeal ObamaCare

Calvin Freiburger Congress, Democrats, GOP, health care, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, NewsReal, strategy

My NRB colleague Joseph Klein has a good look at the potential and pitfalls of the strategy. He notes that, since the Democrats still control the Senate and White House, ObamaCare won’t actually be repealed before 2012, but House Republicans have another way they can get policy results in the short term:

The Republican-controlled House also has the power of the purse, which its leaders say they intend to exercise by denying funding for implementing and enforcing key portions of Obamacare. But in order to make this stick, the Obama administration must be prohibited from moving discretionary monies around to make up for any shortfall in direct Obamacare funding. That means making it a criminal act for any Executive branch employee to use any monies appropriated by Congress to implement or enforce any portion of Obamacare unless there is an express Congressional appropriation specified for that purpose.

The time to impose such spending limitations with criminal sanctions is during the lead-up to the vote on raising the debt ceiling that will be occurring in a few weeks.  This is the opportunity for the Republicans who are serious about cutting discretionary spending across the board, and stopping any spending on Obamare, to exercise maximum leverage.

President Obama will either have to blink or face the consequences of a government shutdown due to his intransigence on Obamacare and other wasteful spending. That’s a battle the Republicans should win hands-down if they stick to their guns.

Indeed. Republicans squishy on the repeal because it won’t pass need to understand something: without the presidency or a veto-proof Congress, the GOP shouldn’t expect to pass much of its own legislation into law at all. The objective for the time being isn’t to pass good laws, but to block bad ones where possible and to keep forcing the Democrats to explain their position on things like health care to the American people, in particular their insistence on keeping something the country doesn’t want.

Without losing sight of other important business, Republicans should periodically reintroduce ObamaCare repeal bills until Election Day 2012, to keep the bill’s failings – and its supporters’ folly and hubris – fresh in the public’s mind.

On Wisconsin, On Wisconsin…..

Calvin Freiburger conservatism, extremism, good news, GOP, health care, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, lawsuits, Left, ObamaCare, Scott Walker, states, Wisconsin

Our new governor, Scott Walker, has announced that Wisconsin will be joining the lawsuit against ObamaCare. It’s gonna take me a while to get used to the sensation of the State of Wisconsin doing the right thing….

Of course, state Democrats are reacting to the shift in power with their usual class and grace.

Around the Web

Calvin Freiburger blogosphere, GOP, health care, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, Julian Assange, Kirsten Powers, Left, Michael Steele, movies, NewsReal, patriotism, Star Wars, War on Terror

Happy New Year, everyone!

Kirsten Powers gets thrown off balance by a nasty run-in with the truth.

“I admire those who join armies, whether America’s or the Taliban’s.” Just don’t question their patriotism.

RedState has a troubling rundown of the problems with Michael Steele’s would-be RNC successors.

Some pinhead named Tad Lumpkin shills for Julian Assange on Big Government. Andrew Breitbart, call your office; this guy’s gotta go.

Another day, another debate about social issues on NewsReal. Do you think there’s a “true” definition of conservatism?

The internet is abuzz with acclaim for Red Letter Media’s third and final takedown of the Star Wars prequel trilogy. These reviews have been amusing (if extremely off-color), and made some fair points, but they’re drastically overrated, and seem to mostly coast on people’s raw, blind hatred of the prequels. (More here.)

The Democrats Hate Democracy

Calvin Freiburger Barack Obama, big government, bureaucracy, Congress, democracy, Democrats, health care, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, Krauthammer, Left, liberalism
Exhibit A, courtesy of Charles Krauthammer:

A month ago, Medicare issued a regulation providing for end-of-life counseling during annual “wellness” visits. It was all nicely buried amid the simultaneous release of hundreds of new Medicare rules.


Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D.,Ore.), author of Section 1233, was delighted. “Mr. Blumenauer’s office celebrated ‘a quiet victory,’ but urged supporters not to crow about it,” reports the New York Times. Deathly quiet. In early November, his office sent an e-mail plea to supporters: “We would ask that you not broadcast this accomplishment out to any of your lists . . . e-mails can too easily be forwarded.” They had been lucky that “thus far, it seems that no press or blogs have discovered it. . . . The longer this regulation goes unnoticed, the better our chances of keeping it.”

So much for Democratic transparency — and for their repeated claim that the more people learn what is in the health-care law, the more they will like it. Turns out ignorance is the Democrats’ best hope.
And regulation is their perfect vehicle — so much quieter than legislation. Consider two other regulatory usurpations in just the last few days.
On December 23, the Interior Department issued Secretarial Order 3310, reversing a 2003 decision and giving itself the authority to designate public lands as “Wild Lands.” A clever twofer: (1) a bureaucratic power-grab — for seven years up through December 22, wilderness-designation had been the exclusive province of Congress, and (2) a leftward lurch — more land to be “protected” from such nefarious uses as domestic-oil exploration in a country disastrously dependent on foreign sources.
The very same day, the president’s Environmental Protection Agency declared that in 2011 it would begin drawing up anti-carbon regulations on oil refineries and power plants, another power grab effectively enacting what Congress had firmly rejected when presented as cap-and-trade legislation.

For an Obama bureaucrat, however, the will of Congress is a mere speed bump. Hence this regulatory trifecta, each one moving smartly left — and nicely clarifying what the spirit of bipartisan compromise that President Obama heralded in his post-lame-duck December 22 news conference was really about: a shift to the center for public consumption and political appearance only.

Read the rest. It’s an outrage that this country has gotten to a point where unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats can make de facto laws outside of the legislative process, contrary to the will of the people, and that a political party called Democratic of all names relies upon this sleazy, un-American, anti-democratic process to implement its agenda. Let’s hope the incoming Congress has at least a few Republicans who have the spine to call this out as the disgrace it is.