Social Security

John Mackey: The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare – WSJ.com

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While we clearly need health-care reform, the last thing our country needs is a massive new health-care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new unfunded deficits and move us much closer to a government takeover of our health-care system. Instead, we should be trying to achieve reforms by moving in the opposite direction—toward less government control and more individual empowerment. Here are eight reforms that would greatly lower the cost of health care for everyone:

Read the whole article here…  John Mackey: The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare – WSJ.com.

Director’s Blog » Blog Archive » The Long-Term Budget Outlook

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Under current law, the federal budget is on an unsustainable path, because federal debt will continue to grow much faster than the economy over the long run. Although great uncertainty surrounds long-term fiscal projections, rising costs for health care and the aging of the population will cause federal spending to increase rapidly under any plausible scenario for current law. Unless revenues increase just as rapidly, the rise in spending will produce growing budget deficits. Large budget deficits would reduce national saving, leading to more borrowing from abroad and less domestic investment, which in turn would depress economic growth in the United States. Over time, accumulating debt would cause substantial harm to the economy. The following chart shows our projection of federal debt relative to GDP under the two scenarios we modeled.

via Director’s Blog » Blog Archive » The Long-Term Budget Outlook.

CBO: The Long-Term Budget Outlook

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Measured relative to GDP, almost all of the projected growth in federal spending other than interest payments on the debt stems from the three largest entitlement programs—Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

via Director’s Blog » Blog Archive » The Long-Term Budget Outlook.

Of NICE and Men – WSJ.com on Obamacare (or lack thereof)

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The NICE precedent also undercuts the Obama Administration’s argument that vast health savings can be gleaned simply by automating health records or squeezing out “waste.” Britain has tried all of that but ultimately has concluded that it can only rein in costs by limiting care. The logic of a health-care system dominated by government is that it always ends up with some version of a NICE board that makes these life-or-death treatment decisions. The Administration’s new Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research currently lacks the authority of NICE. But over time, if the Obama plan passes and taxpayer costs inevitably soar, it could quickly gain it.

via Of NICE and Men – WSJ.com.

White House Stands by Obama’s Claim That Single-Payer Health Care Works In Other Countries–It’s Just Not Sure Which Countries Obama Meant

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“I don’t know exactly the countries. I think if you talk to the people in the countries that have that system, they think their health care is pretty good,” White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told CNSNews.com Wednesday during the daily press briefing.

Asked again if he knew specifically which countries, Gibbs replied: “I assume Canada, Britain, maybe France. I don’t know the exact countries, but again, I don’t think the president is going way out on a limb that some people in other countries have a health care system that they like. Just as some Americans like the health care system that they have.”

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The criticism of single-payer health care – primarily as practiced in Canada and Europe – has been that operations and procedures are long-delayed or denied and health care is rationed to control costs. For example, in Canada, the average wait for a 65-year-old man to get a hip replacement is six months, according to the Freedom Works Foundation.

The average wait time in a Canadian emergency room is 16 hours and 18 minutes. Also, “the average cancer test and radiation treatment cycles vary between 6 to 8 weeks,” the foundation reported.

John Goodman, director of the National Center for Policy Analysis and author of the book, “Lives at Risk: Single-Payer National Health Insurance Around the World,” has reported that in Britain, “at any one time, there are about a million people waiting to get into hospitals. According to the Fraser Institute, almost 900,000 Canadian patients are on the waiting list at any point in time. And, according to the New Zealand government, 90,000 people are on the waiting lists there.”

via CNSNews.com – White House Stands by Obama’s Claim That Single-Payer Health Care Works In Other Countries–It’s Just Not Sure Which Countries Obama Meant.

The ‘Paygo’ Coverup – WSJ.com

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But Mr. Obama must think the press and public are dumb enough to buy it, because there he was Tuesday re-selling the same “paygo” promises that Democrats roll out every election. Paygo is “very simple,” the President claimed. “Congress can only spend a dollar if it saves a dollar elsewhere.”

That’s what Democrats also promised in 2006, with Nancy Pelosi vowing that “the first thing” House Democrats would do if they took Congress was reimpose paygo rules that “Republicans had let lapse.” By 2008, Speaker Pelosi had let those rules lapse no fewer than 12 times, to make way for $400 billion in deficit spending. Mr. Obama repeated the paygo pledge during his 2008 campaign, and instead we have witnessed the greatest peacetime spending binge in U.S. history. As a share of GDP, spending will hit an astonishing 28.5% in fiscal 2009, with the deficit hitting 13% and projected to stay at 4% to 5% for years to come.

The truth is that paygo is the kind of budget gimmick that gives gimmickry a bad name. As Mr. Obama knows but won’t tell voters

via The ‘Paygo’ Coverup – WSJ.com.

How to Stop Socialized Health Care – WSJ.com

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In other words, the public option is just phony. It’s a bait-and-switch tactic meant to reassure people that the president’s goals are less radical than they are. Mr. Obama’s real aim, as some candid Democrats admit, is a single-payer, government-run health-care system.

via How to Stop Socialized Health Care – WSJ.com.

American Thinker: Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis

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American Thinker: Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis.

Cloward-Piven Strategy to force national income by redistribution of wealth. Obama is an aherent and student of it.

George F. Will – The Toxic Assets We Elected

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George F. Will – The Toxic Assets We Elected.

“The Obama administration yesterday invited private-sector investors to become business partners with the capricious and increasingly anti-constitutional government.”