That’s Right Nate

It was thirty years ago, when the United States Olympic Hockey Team inspired by the fiery speeches of new President Ronald Reagan stunned the world and struck a blow against the iron curtain by defeating the Soviet Union and their allies the Fins to win the 1980 gold medal at Lake Placid.

This year, the great threat to our liberty comes not from Soviet style communism, but from Canadian style health care.  With America’s hockey mom Sarah Palin providing the inspiration through her timely tweet, “YES!!! USA. 5-3 with 44 seconds to go… YES AMERICA!!! Sweeeeeet…”   I believe they heard her twitter account all the way to the Ottawa where it sounded like the voice of liberty crying out in the night, “Prime Minister Harper tear down your health care system.”

The game itself was a grueling affair with end to end action.  Though Canada tied it twice, the Americans never trailed.   They never backed down from any challenges as if they knew that even if they were checked hard and injured, they would not have to wait for days in a state run hospital.  Maybe they were simply healthier from the many breakthroughs in sports medicine perfected under our health care system.

The Americans have the youngest team in the Olympics while the Canadians consider to frantically look for a linemate to pair with superstars Sidney Crosby and Rick Nash.   The obvious answer here is somebody named Stills.  The Canadians aren’t eliminated by any stretch of the imagination, but the question remains–will they be too sickly to climb up to the podium if they do medal.

I am so proud of my fellow gun owners for their united opposition to Obama’s health care proposals.   The Gun Owners of America group recently warned it’s 300,000 members that if the health care bill passes, the government could declare citizens medically unfit to carry a gun.   This is the same thing Hitler and the communists did, when we take away the rights of the mentally unbalanced to own firearms simply because they may have issues with rage or paranoia or may pose a threat to themselves or others, we lose our second amendment rights.   Executive Director of the group Larry Pratt called for resistance saying, “you end up having a gazillion people lose their gun rights because of some medical record that someone doesn’t like, where they say, ‘Oh, that might be a danger to their self or others.”

I cannot abide having these hard earned rights taken away from my fellow countrymen simply because they’re mentally unbalanced.   President James A. Garfield gave his life protecting the rights of the mentally unhinged to own firearms.   He was fatally shot by Charles Guiteau on July 2, 1881 when his assassin decided that God had commanded him to kill the ungrateful president who refused to hire him.   There are hundreds of thousands of people like me inspired by Garfield’s sacrifice who will not let it be in vain by taking away gun rights for the criminally insane.

The other reason that gun owners like myself oppose any kind of health care reform is because as private citizens we have to pay for not only a gun, but also for ammunition for that gun.  If we shoot somebody, it hardly seems fair that our tax dollars also pay to treat them for that gun shot wound.  In fact, since the reason you shoot somebody is to do harm to them, many of us would just as soon that the person we shoot not be able to get medical care in the first place.

Unfortunately, since the days of the Old West, medicine has improved greatly.   In those days, a belly shot was almost a sure death sentence.  Today, doctor’s are able to do a remarkable number of things to treat gun shot wounds and unfortunately, gun manufacturers have simply not kept up, especially in the area of causing infection.   This is definitely a call for both gun and ammunition manufacturers to step up their games.   If all gun shot wounds can be easily treated, do we really have the right to bear arms.

In what can only be called a national tragedy, the Democrats were able to pass a health care bill through the House of Representatives yesterday, despite the impassioned pleas of 99.9% of the congressional Republicans.   The move will no longer allow insurance companies to deny coverage to people with expensive pre-existing conditions like cancer, heart disease, or rape.   The program will also create a government created insurance plan referred to as the public option.

House Republican Leader John Boehner decried the bill stating, “Americans want a common-sense approach to healthcare reform, not Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s 2,032-page government takeover that increases costs, adds to our skyrocketing debt, destroys jobs with tax hikes and new mandates, and cuts seniors’ Medicare benefits.”

Friend of this blog, Congressman Jack Kimble (R-CA) said, “This just makes coming into work on a Saturday that much harder, especially during college football season.   I’m worried that I’ll have to give up my congressional health care now.”

The raucous debate over health care began earlier in the morning, when 83 year old bully John Dingle, using the same gavel he had used to help shove medicare down our country’s throat,  badgered Republicans who tried to interrupt the Democratic Women’s Caucus from speaking.  Anybody who has ever been married can tell you how hard it is to get a word in edgewise with a woman even without your crazy old grandpa banging his gavel everytime you try to speak.

What made matters especially troubling for some Republicans was the defection of Joseph Cao (R-LA) who was the sole Republican to vote with the Democrats in their 220-215 victory.  “Now I understand how our brave men felt at Pearl Harbor,” said Kimble referring to Chao’s betrayal, “He ninjaed us.”

The health care battle now moves onto the Senate, where things don not look good for the Democrats.    Cao may be a Republican, but he obviously felt some pressure representing a very liberal city like Los Angeles.   The Senators represent states, not districts and are less vulnerable to that kind of pressure.  Joe Lieberman (?-CT) has already said the he will not let a bill with a public option come to a vote in the Senate.

[We're very lucky tonight to have a guest column by Congressman Jack Kimble (R-CA) who is writing in praise of Senator Joe Lieberman (?-CN)]

I happen to be a great fan of Joe Lieberman.  I took some heat for this in 2000 when he was brainwashed by Al Gore and ran against our beloved President Bush.  I have to admit, I could even feel empathy for the many Democrats who were crestfallen at the thought of Joe being denied the Vice-Presidency in such a close election.    I’ve been a big fan of Joe Lieberman for nearly 20 years since he first won my heart as Willie on the television show Alf.  His deadpan, put upon, whining delivery has served him well as a Senator as well.

Though Joe is older now, I can attest that he looks like a man half his age in a spedo.  He’s living proof that with good living, you really don’t need health care.   Today, he took a lot of flack from his own party, or former party, or whatever the Democrats are when he announced he would not vote for a health care bill with the public option and in fact he wouldn’t even vote to end a filibuster unless the public option was removed from the legislation.

Joe’s problems with the public option is the same as my own:

1. The government cannot handle things like this efficiently and it would do a terrible job insuring people.
2. The public option will increase competition and lower the profit margins of insurance companies at a time when they can least afford it.
3. The public option will lead to communism by 2012.

Joe has said that he would to keep the rest of the bill and in 3 or 4 years revisit things to see if we might want to investigate the possibility of creating a trigger that if reached would possibly bring us the public option.   Without the public option, the current program will work to lower health care costs and insure people by fining people heavily if they don’t buy health insurance   This will help the insurance companies by increasing their profits and help the uninsured by making them by health care.

Joe has once again shown himself to be a figure of integrity and courage.  A lot of people would have been scared to stand against the public option when like Lieberman, they were so heavily financed by the insurance industry.   I had the same problem just last year when I had to make the difficult decision of supporting the tobacco industry despite the fact that they heavily funded my campaign.  I made the right choice and went with my conscience the same way that Joe Lieberman has today.  This is truly what being a member of Congress is all about.

In my mind, I’ve been wrestling for sometime now with how to find an American alternative to the socialist public option health care that President Obama wants to force on us.  Thanks to bold and courageous Americans like Bill and Chelsea Caudle, I think I’ve found a solution.

According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Bill worked for a plastics company before getting laid off from the job he had held for the past 20 years.   Unfortunately, his wife Chelsea was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.   At age 40, the family faced some tough choices.   With 3 children, one as young as 14 years old, the Caudles faced mounting medical bills and Bill knew what he had to do.  He enlisted in the United States Army.   As soon as he was processed at Fort Knox in Kentucky, Chelsea was able to start chemotherapy.  Bill had paved a way for patriotic Americans to get health care while saying “no” to socialism.

By joining the military, millions of uninsured in this country can be covered and at the same time we can preserve insurance company profits, which are so important to our nation’s economy.  It is estimated that there are over 45,000,000 uninsured in this country.   If only 5% of those people would join the military, that would give us another 2.25 million soldiers—that’s more than enough for our commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as Colombia, Pakistan, Iran, and North Korea.  Heck, that’s enough for us to invade Iceland for no apparent reason and still meet our commitments.   Best of all, with 45,000 dying every year from lack of insurance, the American public could stomach a very high casualty rate, knowing that a lot of the soldiers would have died anyway.

The ancient Romans guarded citizenship in a way that Americans should envy.   You couldn’t just become a Roman citizen.  One route to citizenship was joining the military.   Should we not guard our health care just as preciously?

How would you feel if you owned a TGI Fridays and the Applebees down the street started giving out free food?   That’s how America’s doctors and insurance companies must feel now that there is an explosion of these free clinics.  And who are these culprits who are trying to bring down the free market?  They’re the usual suspects–the people who hate this country and are using sick people to try and bring it down.

The National Association of Free Clinics is being promoted by such pinkos as Keith Olbermann and Oprah’s Dr. Oz and funded by Americans just like you.   The problem is that free health care will always draw those who are “unable to pay”.   You know why they’re unable to pay?   Because there is free health care.   Anyone who has ever had their parents postpone a vacation to the Grand Cayman Resort so that they could get braces, knows that people can afford health care if they’re motivated.  The problem is these well meaning liberals sap the motivation by giving it away for free.

Doctors who work these clinics are the lowest form of scabs.  They choose to feel good about themselves and by doing so hurt the business of other doctors.   And what about the insurance companies?  Why buy insurance if you simply have to wait for a free health cinic to come to your city.  If America is serious about health care, the first thing we need to do is shut down these clinics.   There can be no free lunch in America or if there is, there should be no free Heimlich Maneuver for choking victims.

Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka--the 37th Greatest Mormon of All-Time

It strikes me as absurd that liberals want to put down our health care system.   They complain that we pay more than any other country and our health care is only the 37th best in the world right behind Costa Rica and ahead of Slovenia.   Well, that may be true, but is 37 bad?  Heck no.  The 37th best health care in the world is still world class.  When I was growing up a man by the name of Casey Kasem did a top 40 radio show and you know what, they played the 37th top song one time, just like the number one song.  Let’s not stop there though–Here are some other #37s.

The Billboard 37th hottest song right now is Uprising by Muse–I’m sure it’s great.

Rolling Stone rates Bob Marley and the Wailers’ No Woman No Cry as the 37th greatest song of all time.

Internet Movie Database users votes Taxi Driver as the 37th greatest movie of all time.

TV.COM rated CSI: NY as the 37th most popular show on television now.

The 37th greatest tv episode of all time is Chrylser Theatre’s “Kicks” from 1965.

Terry Kath of Chicago was named the 37th best rock guitarist by DigitalDreamdoor.com.

Topper Headon of The Clash was ranked the 37th best rock drummer by the same website.

In 1998 The Sporting News named Hank Greenberg as the 37th best baseball player of all-time.

The Sporting News called Deon Sanders the 37th greatest football player of all-time.

The 37th ranked college is The University of Maryland according to ULinks.com.

The 37th best restaurant in the world is Le Quartier Francais, South Africa according to San Pellegrino’s 2009 awards.

Beeradvocate.com rates Surly Brewing Company’s Furious as the 37th best beer in the world.

The 37th greatest Mormon is Jimmy “Super Fly” Snuka

The board of RandomHouse.com named The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder as the 37th greatest novel of all-time.

The 37th greatest television quote is  “…if it weren’t for you meddling kids! (The bad guy, “Scooby Doo, Where Are You?”) according to TV Land.

So you see, if you intend to call our health care system anything less than world class, then you need to make the same comments about a whole lot of great things.  That’s why no matter what the liberals and democrats may claim, top 40 isn’t that bad at all.

Today the Senate Finance Committee defeated the public option in a double header 15-8 and 13-10.  This is great news for this country as the public option appears on it’s last legs.  Despite the best efforts of President Obama, only 2/3 of Americans favor the public option and only 3/4 of doctors are in favor of it.   Those numbers are even lower in the Southern United States where the country has it’s highest percentage of NASCAR related injuries.

This setback will hopefully kill the public option leaving us with a health care reform that will safeguard the interests of the insurance industry by mandating that people buy coverage or pay a very severe fine.   This is the type of reform that I believe everybody should be able to get behind.     The heroes of the day for the 1/3 of who oppose the public option were Democratic Senators Blanche Lincoln, Kent Conrad, and Max Baucus who in statesmanlike fashion supported this country’s insurance industry over the powerful sick people lobby which continues to push for public funding.

Baucus said that his own bill without the public option, “is not easy on insurance companies.”  I am assuming that he is referring to all the people who insurance companies would now have to do paperwork for because his bill would mandate them buying insurance.   As many of these people are young twenty-somethings in good health, the insurance companies would probably be willing to do it.

At this time of economic uncertainty it really doesn’t make much sense for us to throw stones at the one industry in this country that is booming.   Last year, insurance companies made a 428% profit.  Can our economy afford to knock that down?  I don’t think so.

The most recent Congressional Budget Office study finds that a strong public option would save $85 billion more than a system that uses triggers like the Blue Dog Democrats would prefer.    The key is that a strong public option would be tied to medicare rates and would only pay doctors about 5% over what they make treating medicare patients.  The strong public option would save $110 billion dollars compared to $25 billion for the weaker plan.

The comments section of Ezra Klein’s article in today’s Washington Post Online was filled with angry reaction today as people pointed out that a public option was unfair to doctors.   Readers posted comments like “how about we just put guns to doctors heads and force them to perform surgery on us? That’d probably save even more money, no???” and “does CBO also give statistics as to how many doctors would shut their doors with this reimbursement??”.   To me this is the real beauty of the conservative movement in this country—caring about the less fortunate even when they won’t stand up for themselves.    We have frequently gone to bat for insurance companies and now we’re coming to the aid of doctors even though 73% of doctors are in favor of the public option.

It is imperative for us to stand up for these doctors’ rights against their wishes not simply because it’s the right thing to do, but also because the other 27% of doctors who prefer no public option, could close up their practices and either go back home to whatever country they came from or leave medicine for some other more lucrative field.   As a country, let’s agree to stand up for the rights of doctors no matter how much they oppose us doing so.

Chicago is extremely lucky to have two major newspapers in both the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times.   They are both world class journalistic institutions filled with thought provoking opinion and brilliant journalism, I bet.  Lynn Sweet, a reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times, made quite a name for herself by asking about the Henry Louis Gates arrest at a health care press conference.  Now she’s broken a huge scandal by catching Barack Obama in a bold faced health care lie.

It seems that on his current health care tour, President Obama has been telling the story of Otto Raddatz whose insurance company canceled Raddatz’s policy when he needed it the most, in chemotherapy for stage IV non-Hodgkins lymphoma, a form of cancer.  The insurance company canceled Mr. Raddatz’s policy because he had a pre-existing condition – gallstones.   The fact that Raddatz was unaware of the gallstones and that they were unrelated to the cancer is moot.

What Obama was saying before Ms. Sweet busted him was, “One man from Illinois lost his coverage in the middle of chemotherapy because his insurer found that he hadn’t reported gallstones that he didn’t even know about. They delayed his treatment, and he died because of it.”

This is simply not true.   Mr. Raddatz did not die because of the insurance company canceling his coverage.   Getting his coverage was restored was as simple as having his sister Peggy Raddatz, a successful attorney, continually hound the Illinois Attorney General until she could get the attorney general to file an appeal, then after it was rejected the first time submit a second appeal.  When Mr. Raddatz eventually did die, it was not the result of the interruption in his insurance coverage and probably was unrelated to constantly fighting his insurance company for the last 4 years of his life.

For shame President Obama.   Our system worked exactly the way it’s intended to.   Anybody with a relative or friend who is a high priced attorney willing to doggedly pursue their case, can get the medical care they need.   I first saw this story on the front page of AOL today.   I’m proud that Chicago has the type of journalist who will doggedly pursue the truth.  Yes, it is true that 45,000 people die every year in this country because of a lack of health coverage, but look how many live.  Isn’t that really what health care is all about.