Sounds from the Bullhorn

Democratic Party leadership, you are surrounded! Put your bills down and step away from the podium.

There is an army of angry, likely voters just outside your door. If you attempt any further moves toward socialism, we will storm your polling places and show you how real democracy works.

We need to know that you are willing to end this standoff peacefully. Turn over one of your hostages -- we'll take "healthcare reform" -- and we'll give you a pizza or a high-priced polling consultant.

Now, let's talk about the terms of your surrender. We're prepared to only charge you with misdemeanor public indecency, and in exchange you must give us the following REAL healthcare reform bill that includes:

• real, substantive malpractice-related tort reform
• no tax increases
• no new government programs, and no expansions of any existing government program
• tax credits for individuals who purchase their own health insurance
• tax incentives for small employers who provide insurance for their employees
• the ability of health insurance providers to compete across state lines
• expand purchasing pools to allow trade associations, businesses and individuals to combine and qualify for large group insurance rates
• standardized coverage and payment terms - written for CONSUMERS to understand
• real enforcement of Medicare fraud and incentives to encourage doctors to accept new Medicare patients
• require insurers cover pre-existing conditions but ONLY if there is an FDIC-style pool for insurers to offset the cost of claims related to pre-existing conditions
• give all healthcare consumers access to create and control their health savings account

Comply with our demands, and we'll consider going easy on you in November. But the public indecency charge still stands.

Ten Great Reasons to Reject ObamaCare

There is a lot of information and misinformation out there about Hr 3200 — the healthcare reform bill. And much of it —the information and the bill — is confusing. I've read a fair amount (admittedly not all) of the bill. It appears to be written with the express goal of being indecipherable to the public. So let's skip a lot of the messy details (what exactly will the health advisory council's task be, will there be rationing or not, etc) and get right to the stuff of which we can be certain. There's a lot of good reasons not to like this plan. Here's my top ten:

1. Government does nothing efficiently. Why do we want them entrenched even more in our healthcare system?
2. The Supreme Court ordained the constitutional right to abortion stating that anti-abortion laws violate the sanctity of the private doctor/patient relationship. How can the Federal Government possibly get entwined in providing healthcare with any specificity? HR 3200 should be constitutionally dead-on-arrival.
3. Obama can't be trusted to play this straight. He's on record strongly preferring universal healthcare. No matter what this bill says, we must assume it moves the ball toward his goal.
4. There is no mention of Tort reform in HR 3200. Any plan that doesn't address the root of all waste in our health care system is worthless.
5. Medicaid/Medicare are about to go bankrupt — and those two quasi-public options are preferable to universal care. How, please tell me, can anyone possibly believe that ObamaCare won't end up costing 10 times the amount anyone is projecting?
6. Congress has repeatedly rejected moving their own plans to the "public option." If it ain't good enough for thee, keep it away from me.
7. This is a huge intrusion on States' sovereignty. No matter how praiseworthy the reform may be, it dramatically shifts healthcare policy to the federal government. And interstate commerce is a weak tool to justify this. The 10th Amendment isn't just a suggestion, folks.
8. It places insurance mandates on small businesses. This will crush profitability and drive up unemployment. There are better ways to get small companies to offer insurance — how about tax incentives instead of penalties?
9. The unions support it—why? Members of the largest unions already have health insurance via their collective bargaining extortion schemes. What's in it for the unions to "fix" the system? Be afraid. Be very afraid.
10. It's being rushed through. We shouldn't accept that any plan must happen in 3 months. The Democrats have been trying to pull this off for almost two decades — where's the crisis? Any problem worth solving is worth taking the time to solve right.

What do you think? Did I leave anything off the list?