Captain's Quarters -

Patriotism may be the last refuge of the scoundrel, but children are the first. Always be wary of those wanting new programs & whatnot "for the sake of the children."

"That idea sounds a lot like the current State Children’s Health Insurance Program, which was eventually created by the Republican Congress in 1997."

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Wow, Hillary is so evil and powerful she can get Republicans to do her bidding.

“Under this approach, health care reform is phased in by population, beginning with children,” the memo says. “Kids First is really a precursor to the new system. It is intended to be freestanding and administratively simple, with states given broad flexibility in its design so that it can be easily folded into existing/future program structures.”

How totally wicked of her. I just know the American public will read this and be stunned that a politician wants to create a program that is simple and administered by the states and will cover uninsured kids.

Glad Politico found this -- it will make a great campaign ad for Hillary: working for kids since 1993 and able to work with Republicans to create health care reform!

Trackbacked by The Thunder Run - Web Reconnaissance for 10/02/2007
A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day...so check back often.

Here in Illinois something like 60%, around $400 million, of SCHIP goes to adults. It started as KidCare and was expanded to FamilyCare. When the adults lose their SCHIP coverage they will be moved over to Medicaid.

As ridiculous as Ed's posting is, he deserves thanks for unearthing this small pearl of far-right-wing wisdom:

... making Big Government as transparent as possible in every aspect not essential to national security or law enforcement should be a major priority for conservatives.

Funny how evil and oppressive Big Government is -- right up to the point where it actually starts exercising police powers! Suddenly then it's time to shut up and get in line.

This isn't any kind of principled conservatism. It's flackery, pure and simple -- crafting the argument very carefully so that it serves the immediate interests of a party in power. Mark Tapscott just isn't clever or talented enough to avoid tipping his hand, in this case. Ed, it's a shame you've sold out so completely to this kind of thing.

Are pigs flying, yet?

Are you convinced the PIAPS is making inroads?

Personally, I think the GRIFTERS are falling short.

But the media won't tell you a thing!

You're on your own.

While Hillary's "health care" proposals were so bad when Bubba was president, it make the 1994 elections go to the Pubbies. Not that those clowns knew what to do with the majorities they had! (But that's not the issue, today.)

Again, Hillary's got more money that most people could dream of collecting, if they went out, hat in hand, asking for funds, just going door-to-door.

Does George Soros even vote in this country?

Hillary "could" propose a diet where a woman loses her hips. And, ya know what? Nobody would believe a word of what her limitations on intake would deliver. So, let her promise the moon.

She can't deliver that one, either.

You mean a politician tried to work the "it's for the children" angle to sneak a program through Congress? And our spineless Republican representatives in Congress took the bait? Say it ain't so. Surely those same spineless Republicans have never tried the same tactic on other issues, right?

... making Big Government as transparent as possible in every aspect not essential to national security or law enforcement should be a major priority for conservatives.
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How true! I hope Captain's Quarters readers will start agitating to have Cheney's secret energy task force records released.

Federally funded health care will be a complete disaster, just like our underperforming, overfunded public "schools".

We'll soon be hearing about greedy doctors, how taxes need to be raised, raised and raised some more, excuses for lengthy waiting lists, excuses for sub-standard care, excuses for denial of service, excuses and coverups for everything.

Qualified physicians/nurses will leave the profession in droves and new ones won't enter into it.

Why go to school for 24 years, for lousy pay, long hours, ridiculous case loads and abuse from Democrats?

Be a lawyer - law school is easy, the profession is a rigged racket and Democrats will ensure each and every attorney has plenty of counterproductive, lucrative work.

Hillary's plan will, at best, very slightly improve care for the "poor" while making care for those of us in the middle, vastly more expensive and far less accessible.

And once the government gets control of healthcare, they ain't gonna give it back, no matter how lousy a job they do at providing it.

I simply don't share the rank horror conservatives have about "big government health care," which, as far as I can tell from other industrialized nations, is more efficient than our quasi-private health insurance programs, where people are often forced into bankruptcy over needed surgery or expensive treatment.

And like the above comment said, this hardly vilifies Hillary, it turns her into a longtime champion of children's health care -- something I'm not sure any GOP nominee would want to emphasize.

*cue ominous background music* "Hillary... she advocated for HEALTH CARE FOR KIDS"

Yeah, that'll scare 'em in heartland America.

DU

Typical.

Little kids were trotted out with signs and chants for SCHIP.

And the real kicker was watching Pelosi breathlessly announce in a news conference that she was praying for the President to change his mind on the veto (it's for the children!)

There's the transparency.

Hillary Clinton's memo is interesting if unsurprising. Now, when are we going to get the details of Cheney's engery task force? Oh wait, Republicans are against releasing internal memos when they are written by one of their own.

Signed,

Carol H, not "Carol Herman", just so no one accuses me of being an imposter.

HillaryCareI was an unmitigated political disaster for the First Lady.

The Great Society's Medicare and Medicaid programs also are tottering on the verge of financial ruin. Americans have figured out that the HMOs who are denying them care were created at the behest of the U.S. government, employers, and the labor unions that own and control the Democrat Party.

As for S-CHIP, it was a well-intentioned, but mistaken, GOP attempt to fund health care for poor children on a command-and-control model. By expanding it to include rich kids, the Democrats show that they want total government control of health care, following the failed command-and-control Stalinist models of the past. The GOP should have stuck to a voucher program for poor children that is means-tested.

Doctors have been bailing out of Medicaid for years, as fraud, waste, and abuse in the program proliferates. Children will end up denied care if this plan is enacted, while program costs explode.

Dr. David Gratzer and Regina Hertzlinger have written at length about how government control of health care has failed all over the world, Michael Moore notwithstanding.

"as far as I can tell from other industrialized nations, is more efficient than our quasi-private health insurance programs"

Yes, they are "efficient" in telling patients they have to wait 6-12 months for "emergency" treatment or for something as basic here as an MRI.

They're also good at telling patients that drugs and surgeries common in the United States, don't exist or are not available.

"where people are often forced into bankruptcy over needed surgery or expensive treatment"

In Europe, they don't go bankrupt, they're just refused treatment and they die. Much more efficient!

Europe is also quite efficient in delivering substandard facilities. Nonsocomial infections run rampant in Euro hospitals. They cannot afford to adhere to JCAHO standards there, with facilities that would be shut down in our country.

I wish the "health care is a right" crowd would just create/fund their own health care system and leave the rest of us who actually have worked in health care and know it will be an absolute disaster, out of it, but unfortunately, we'll be pulled into the abysss by ignorant lawyers like Hillary Clinton, once again.

Mechanical Eye:

Where do you ge the idea that " ... other industrialized nations, is more efficient than our quasi-private health insurance programs...?" From Michael Moore? In Canada, their Supreme Court ruled the Canadian single payer system unconstitutional because it failed to deliver the required level of care. Private health care is growing in Canada and for years Canadians have purchased private insurance to come to the United States for urgent medical needs.

If you want to know the truth about the efficiency of comparitive healthcare systems in the industrial world just look at cancer survival rates. Higher survival rates go with earlier diagnosis and is a great measure of access to medical care. Guess what? The US leads the world in this statistic. That is because the current US medical system delivers the most efficient care and has the greatest access to medical services. If we adopt the European model our cancer survival rates will decline to socialized levels. So if you like socialized medicine I hope you don't get cancer.

http://www.lesjones.com/posts/004642.shtml

Wait!! Nancy is 'praying'??? Where is the separation of church and state on that one?

This is just another welfare program that will start off small and grow into a monstrosity with tentacles reaching into everyone's wallet.

Must be all that transparency... we can see right through THAT one! Thanks, Dems...

Dawn writes: ...Little kids were trotted out with signs and chants for SCHIP.

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I guess those were adult midgets that Bush had surrounding him the other day when he was talking about "No Child Left Behind" or when he had the "snowflake babies" up there while vetoing embryonic stem cell research.

Please don't give me a lecture on how Dems use kids as political props. No one is better than Republicans at that game.

"Qualified physicians/nurses will leave the profession in droves and new ones won't enter into it."

But it'll be fine! We'll import all the doctors we need from the developing world.

Yes the socialists (and their useful idiot trolls) will use "the children" to enslave us.

The usual trolls were trumpeting the fact that many of the posters on this blog were "products" of the public schools (most of them not by choice). Since you conservatives are the "product" of public schools, you can't complain when the socialists tax the hell out of you...they have a claim against your salary. After all, the taxpayers "invested" in you...sooner or later they will want to cash in on their "investment". Same goes for “children's healthcare”.

The socialists won't be happy until you are all slaves. Most of the trolls are too simple minded to realize the strategy...hence the term "useful idiot".

The President can and should veto the massive SCHIP expansion. For one thing he's not running again so he should do the proper thing.

That said, he must put forth some modification to SCHIP that will cover all children at 150% of poverty and below. I think the requirement that a state insures 97% of children in the bracket before they can expand SCHIP to cover adults and children of wealthier families.

Too often however, this White House does not make a coherent case to the public about their reasons for action. They can not let this be another case of that. The White House should use SCHIP as a launching point for an honest debate on health care the emphasizes that the high tax method advocated by the Democratic Presidential candidates is not the answer.

I wasn't lecturing you Teresa.

I saw the kids and they were trotting.

"We'll import all the doctors we need from the developing world."

Like the UK. Like the ones who were so incompetent, they couldn't even pull off a suicide bombing. But could they clear the waiting lists?

We already have a nurse shortage. Unless Hillary lowers professional standards or reintroduces slavery, the shortage of providers will escalate, even to maintain the soon to be 6 month waiting lists for treatment.

Anyone who thinks it's a picnic to see patients all day, is delusional. With an older/sicker/cheaper population and with more providers taking easier jobs (not patient care), the shortage will only grow more acute.

Physicians across the country are already advising students who are thinking of getting into medical school, to go to law school or business school instead. The money will be better, the hours will be shorter and the academics are far, far less rigorous.

Hillary and Michael Moore will be able to go around and/or outside the crappy system they champion, but most of us will not.

I was being sarcastic NoDonkey. I'm just really looking forward to Hillary and the true-believers telling us that doctor/nurse is just "a job that Americans won't do anymore".

Rob - I understood you were being sarcastic, just ran with it.

Once the government becomes, in effect, the only buyer of health care, government will squeeze the producers for lower prices. Where else can those who provide health care go?

But any "savings" will be illusory and short-term.

Single payer will depress investment in health care, medical technologies, pharmaceuticals and while will discourage talented young people from pursuing a career in health care.

But it'll be fine! We'll import all the doctors we need from the developing world.

Wait!!

Conservatives are AGAINST big government??

coulda fooled me...

PLEASE, please help me,
Is there anything in the U.S that you agree on?
Trying to follow American politic's is giving me a headache.
The left,right war and extreme polarisation of your people is weakening your country around the world.
I have addressed this to your left as well. You politise everything like a religious doctrine (both sides).
The energy wasted in destroying eachother could be used more wisely.
Your enemies must be pissing themselves laughing watching what you have become.

mags,

That's our country. It's always been like this.

See, for example, the Civil War, reconstruction.

If our enemies think this is something new, then they are even more stupid than I thought.

Nodonkey,
I am sorry then,i was unaware that you have wanted to kill eachother for years.Is there a lack of cohesive unity through nationistic pride?

Then i have no idea what America stands for, do you?
Your stupid enemies are watching you tear your president to bits-as a powerless lame duck.
The U.S has long since given up the position of moral authority ,happy to torture,imprison without trial,rendition and by doing so lacking allies.
That is why your enemies are laughing at you ,they have made you give up things that we believed made 'America'.

Mags:

During WWII our enemies got us to give up habeas corpus, freedom of the press and a market economy. They also got us to bomb and kill civilians, both friends and enemies, by the hundreds of thousands. We also abused prisoners, soldiers committed crimes, shot prisoners and survivors of ship sinkings. I guess the Nazis and the Japanese got us to give up our moral authority 60 plus years ago.

Jerry,
The allies tried to hold the enemies accountable through the trials in nuremburg and elsewhere,to show they were different in moral fibre.
War does make people react in terrible ways,other countries have learnt from this? This is why you need real evidence of a threat before sending your children to war.
The futility of war and lest we forget.Are you saying that atrocietes carried out 60 years ago justifies carrying them out today.
Do you want to be different from the nazi's?
Honestly the double standards and hypocrisy when 'bringing democracy' has weakened you.

Mags:

You must think I am German or Japanese when I refer to We. I was referring to the action of the United States military in the Second World War. I as far as I can tell no US political leaders, military commanders were ever put on trial for their actions. You might not know that Grand Admiral Doenitz called Admiral Chester Nimitz as a defense witness at his trial for war crimes associated with the U-boat campaign to show that the US submarine force operated under the same rules of engagement that the Germans did. He was successful in showing this. So we did have a double standard. The US and its allies could engage in virtually every form of warfare that the Germans and Japanese did and not face a penalty. Remember, our Soviet ally (well they started the war as Hitler’s ally) ran an empire of concentration camps that far exceeded the Nazis, engaged in arbitrary torture and executions of POWs, and as they entered German territory the Red Army engaged in a systematic campaign of rape and looting unsurpassed in the modern age.

You also make reference to the futility of war. Tell that to the surviving European Jews or the Chinese or Filipinos living under Japanese occupation at the end of 1945; or the African American slaves liberated during the US Civil War if war is futile. For that matter ask the people of France, Belgium and the Netherlands if they thought the war fought to liberate them from Hitler was futile.

I think you need to do your homework. What makes the action US and Western Allies different from the Nazis, Japanese and indeed our Soviet Allies is the nature of our democratic political system. Sometimes free countries must prosecute a war with the utmost brutality and violence to bring it to a successful conclusion for the cause of freedom. Our action to date in Afghanistan, Iraq and global war on Islamic extremism would make our WWII leadership and people wonder if we are serious about this.

Why don't you learn to think for yourself instead of watching for the meme of the day on some antiwar site.

jerry,
I know we are getting off topic.WW2 was not a war of choice i agree. Here in the u.k it is fine to learn of give opinion of say the bombing of Dresdon but at the time you can see why they done
it.Recently a group of very young soldiers who were in ww1 and shot for cowardice have been pardoned.Some of our atrocities are addressed so we can learn from mistakes.
We have a great deal to learn from the northern ireland troubles.
All i am saying that as an outsider the U.S seems happy to carry out things that once you would condemn.It is like you are a fraud. Torture,rendition,held without trial,secret prisons ,all this has achieved is to give your enemies propaganda.
Did you see how smug the iranian president was when talking in the U.S.
Carrying out acts that once you would condemn causes confusion.
I thought i understood the u.s morals and values,i obviously don't.
The anti-war bit at the end is one of the reasons i find it hard to discuss things with America,next you will call me a leftie.
Are you aware that other countries do not label themselves depending on who they vote for.
Don't dismiss me,i really want to know what America stands for.

Mags:

Nothing in your response addresses my point about conduct of war or its ultimate utility in preserving freedom. Normally I would harangue you but I sense that you are young and uneducated. Instead I would recommend that you read some of your own history and ponder these questions before returning here.