Well, the stimulus plan isn't going to do any of this either. But Buchanan is only saying that the stimulus won't do what our leaders say it is going to do, so I'm not sure how he's missing the point.

What's wrong with wanting an RV? Didn't some of the emergo superfriends recently take an RV trip around America to promote their books (which, presumably, were printed on paper)?

My un political brother today emailed this to me from the East Coast . He has family in the medical care field . I also received the same email from a local political junkie in my state of Washington . This is wrong .

Stimulus Plan Will Ruin Your Health Care

Commentary by Betsy McCaughey



http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039...

Feb. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Republican Senators are questioning whether President Barack Obama’s stimulus bill contains the right mix of tax breaks and cash infusions to jump-start the economy.

Tragically, no one from either party is objecting to the health provisions slipped in without discussion. These provisions reflect the handiwork of Tom Daschle, until recently the nominee to head the Health and Human Services Department.

Senators should read these provisions and vote against them because they are dangerous to your health. (Page numbers refer to H.R. 1 EH, 600 page pdf version).

The bill’s health rules will affect “every individual in the United States” (445, 454, 479). Your medical treatments will be tracked electronically by a federal system. Having electronic medical records at your fingertips, easily transferred to a hospital, is beneficial. It will help avoid duplicate tests and errors.

But the bill goes further. One new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective. The goal is to reduce costs and “guide” your doctor’s decisions (442, 446). These provisions in the stimulus bill are virtually identical to what Daschle prescribed in his 2008 book, “Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis.” According to Daschle, doctors have to give up autonomy and “learn to operate less like solo practitioners.”

Keeping doctors informed of the newest medical findings is important, but enforcing uniformity goes too far.

New Penalties

Hospitals and doctors that are not “meaningful users” of the new system will face penalties. “Meaningful user” isn’t defined in the bill. That will be left to the HHS secretary, who will be empowered to impose “more stringent measures of meaningful use over time” (511, 518, 540-541)

What penalties will deter your doctor from going beyond the electronically delivered protocols when your condition is atypical or you need an experimental treatment? The vagueness is intentional. In his book, Daschle proposed an appointed body with vast powers to make the “tough” decisions elected politicians won’t make.

The stimulus bill does that, and calls it the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research (190-192). The goal, Daschle’s book explained, is to slow the development and use of new medications and technologies because they are driving up costs. He praises Europeans for being more willing to accept “hopeless diagnoses” and “forgo experimental treatments,” and he chastises Americans for expecting too much from the health-care system.

Elderly Hardest Hit

Daschle says health-care reform “will not be pain free.” Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them. That means the elderly will bear the brunt.

Medicare now pays for treatments deemed safe and effective. The stimulus bill would change that and apply a cost- effectiveness standard set by the Federal Council (464).

The Federal Council is modeled after a U.K. board discussed in Daschle’s book. This board approves or rejects treatments using a formula that divides the cost of the treatment by the number of years the patient is likely to benefit. Treatments for younger patients are more often approved than treatments for diseases that affect the elderly, such as osteoporosis.

In 2006, a U.K. health board decreed that elderly patients with macular degeneration had to wait until they went blind in one eye before they could get a costly new drug to save the other eye. It took almost three years of public protests before the board reversed its decision.

Hidden Provisions

If the Obama administration’s economic stimulus bill passes the Senate in its current form, seniors in the U.S. will face similar rationing. Defenders of the system say that individuals benefit in younger years and sacrifice later.

The stimulus bill will affect every part of health care, from medical and nursing education, to how patients are treated and how much hospitals get paid. The bill allocates more funding for this bureaucracy than for the Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force combined (90-92, 174-177, 181).

Hiding health legislation in a stimulus bill is intentional. Daschle supported the Clinton administration’s health-care overhaul in 1994, and attributed its failure to debate and delay. A year ago, Daschle wrote that the next president should act quickly before critics mount an opposition. “If that means attaching a health-care plan to the federal budget, so be it,” he said. “The issue is too important to be stalled by Senate protocol.”

More Scrutiny Needed

On Friday, President Obama called it “inexcusable and irresponsible” for senators to delay passing the stimulus bill. In truth, this bill needs more scrutiny.

The health-care industry is the largest employer in the U.S. It produces almost 17 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product. Yet the bill treats health care the way European governments do: as a cost problem instead of a growth industry. Imagine limiting growth and innovation in the electronics or auto industry during this downturn. This stimulus is dangerous to your health and the economy.

(Betsy McCaughey is former lieutenant governor of New York and is an adjunct senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. The opinions expressed are her own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Betsy McCaughey at Betsymross@aol.com

Last Updated: February 9, 2009 00:01 EST

This is a clear example of politics as usual times 10. Change We Can Believe In?

I completely agree with your point about politicians and our addiction to fear as a motivator for political action. This is exactly President Obama and the Congress' advertising campaign for the "stimulous" package is so scary. President Obama and Congress has done nothing over the past couple of days but talk about how dire the situation is and how imperative it is for us to pass this bloated bill, that nobody, including Democrats, thinks is actually going to stimulate the economy. That's not to say that the bill is not funding a number of worthy causes or that it might, long-term, help us "recover" in the sense which you're speaking of. But, the fact is that it is being billed as a "stimulus package" which will supposedly help reverse or ameliorate the current economic crisis, in the sense that you're criticizing. If it was being advertised as a proposal for long-term development and recovery, that'd be one thing. But it is being billed as a something that is necessary for the current moment and it is being steamrolled through Congress and onto the American people with one of its supporters' main arguments being that of fear. Fear that if we don't pass this hundreds-of-billions-of-dollars bill, the economy will collapse. I'd just like know if you consider the Left's rhetoric at this point a part of the same problem or if you're going to play favorites like you regularly accuse conservative Evangelicals of doing.

The thing that gets me is that I rarely see you or any of the other emergent leaders talk about the fear tactics exploited by the Left. The Right does it too and its not right, and its good that they be criticized. But somehow the Left never seems to get criticized on this blog, even in the ones that are trying to seem even-handed.

Fear is the basis for demanding support of this bill, just as the $700B TARP Program shepherded by the Bush Administration and Nancy Pelosi last fall. Americans are threatened with utter demise, but if Congress simply passes over tons of borrowed money to the Treasury Department and now to the other departments as well, this at last will fix the problems you see.

You're so right. Why didn't I see that. :)

It is my understanding that the US government does not print money. Why are so many saying that Congress is doing this?. Don't the banks control the money flow/supply? I give you credit, nuclear, for saying that the money is borrowed. How is it that there is all this hoopla about spending money in the USA, but not an eyebat at hundreds of billions for the "War on Terror" exacerbated by tax cuts and tax stimuli by the Rs?

Banks haven't controlled the money supply since 1912 when the Federal Reserve was established.

Try: http://www.gettomontv.com/

Quick video about the money supply (and a plug for his book which was released today).

Yes, I'm serious. Do you think the Federal Reserve is controlled or accountable to the U.S. government? Have you ever heard of "greenbacks"? Your statement about banks not controlling the money supply is both true and false. The Fed controls the levels by increasing or decreasing the deposits of the paper and coin generated by the mint. Thanks for the link.

The depression of 1920 was short-lived precisely because the government did nothing. In its first year the recession was deeper than the first year of the Great Depression, but it quickly rebounded because the market corrected itself and was not propped up by the State who thought it expedient to enact policies that otherwise couldn't be passed.

I really wish we'd read our history. I really wish we'd learn our lessons from FDR and Hoover. Both were interventionists, and both exacerbated the depression.

Complete balderdash. Not short lived, very hard to recover. FDR's actions created significant job growth. both then and now laissez faire capitalism led to massive crashes. These ideas are literally bankrupt.

Lotta RVs out there for sale cheap. Not likely to change. Making RVs definitely doesn't have a bright future and no political party will change that. I Don't see too many on the road either. I think those who live in Rvs are parking as often and as long as possible.

Brian is right and both parties need to wake up. Nobody out there is going to start lending so we can start spending. The banks are bankrupt. The economic house is collapsing like a big domino game and the days of happy motoring, malls and suburban sprawl are over.

I thought the bank and Insurance bailouts were wrong. The stimulus package could help but we need major cuts and the biggest expense is the bloated military budget. The urgency of time seems more real than the bank bailouts and the Republican adjustments are really lame. Rebuilding schools is a good idea and a good training ground for an energy efficient building program, will also reduce burdens on states and localities.

It is nice to have a president who can talk and who thinks in clusters of his own paragraphs rather than repeating the last 2 sentences beamed into his hearing device. I only wish he was the radical reformer he was accused of being.

On first glance, this article comes across as outrageously self-absorbed and smarmy. But on a second reading, it is remarkably honest and in its own way brave.

Not that I agree with a word of it: our use of oil doesn't flow from emotional neediness but from practical matters of chemistry and engineering -- distill oil into gasoline and what you have is a remarkably powerful fuel for running engines that can do useful work. One can argue about specific applications, like RVs, but if God forbid Brian McLaren should have a heart attack, a gasoline engine is -- still -- the best way to power a vehicle that will get him to the hospital quickly.

But at least McLaren is honest about what he wants, the end of the strong America of the 80s, 90s and the first few years of the 21st century, an America that had a potent military and a sophisticated market economy with energy drawn from fossil fuels. And if he is vague about just what he would replace it with, at least he doesn't pretend to be overly concerned with the prospect that material living standards might go down dramatically. What's important to him is that we be emotionally healthy.

Again, I think this is all pretty loopy. There's no guarantee that sudden poverty won't just drive us even crazier. But if Brian McLaren is a crackpot, at least he's an honest crackpot. His program, and the vision that motivates it, are right out in the open.

LV

Well, Lord_Voldemort, I have to wonder which viewpoint will be regarded as loopy one hundred years from now.

The carbon economy is doomed. Of course McLaren doesn't know what will replace it--nobody does. But it will be replaced, one way or another. The earth itself is crying out. The only thing we know now is that we must put our minds together and work for solutions.

And yes, maybe it will mean a lowering of our standard of living. Moving from an exploitative, consumer economy to one based on stewardship and conservation might force some people to forgo their Hummers--even their RVs.

Forward-looking people are often thought of as mad by their contemporaries. But history often demonstrates that that they, of all people, were really the most sane.

A very partisan piece as usual from McLaren (with the obligatory book promo), but he does make some valid points.

1) We should not expect (or desire) to return to the level of material prosperity we once enjoyed. We are reaping what we've sown.

2) On a detached philosophical level, it would certainly be nice to be free from our collective "addiction" to carbon, weapons, fear, possessions, money and political slogans. Sign me up for the 12-step program!

On a more practical level, however, McLaren offers little substance beyond the typical jabs at conservatives for their contribution to this mess (excessive military spending, de-regulated corporate greed, fear of non-WASPs, etc). When it comes to a discussion of progressive leadership and ideas, McLaren suddenly has nothing to remotely critical say.

How long can we keep looking back at the Bush years before we have to start being prophetic in the here and now? Even if you grant that Democratic Party control is the lesser of two evils, this should not be license for progressive and moderate Christians to give them a free pass on everything. Last I checked, right-wing Republicans don't have a monopoly on the use of fear, cheap slogans or military spending.

If McLaren is so concerned about addressing the complexities of the economic crisis with "the hard work of acquiring wisdom", surely an author as accomplished as he could have at least offered some ideas on how "trillions can be made caring for the planet wisely and caring for people justly." Apart from the stimulus package, where will this kind of money come from? How realistic is it to expect businesses to survive these days with a "triple bottom line — financial sustainability, social sustainability, and economic sustainability"?

Also, since America's "addiction to weapons" is high on his list, can we expect McLaren to use his influence to advocate against Obama's expensive Afghanistan war policy with even a fraction of his disdain for Bush's military strategy?

Whose Kingdom are we trying to build here?

"Whose Kingdom are we trying to build here?"

Indeed. That's the question McLaren is asking, buddy.

I believe that the core addiction among Jim’s list are numbers 4 and 5. They are what make all of us (CEO’s, stockbrokers, auto repairmen, secretaries, writers…) responsible for the economic mess and therefore make all of us responsible for cleaning it up.

The government can legislate and administer the best of all possible recovery programs, but we, who have caused the mess, will not have changed – at all. So we will merely take the money, tax breaks, and other incentives and recapitulate the problem all over again. WE HAVE TO DEAL WITH OURSELVES FIRST.

We are all addicted to having money and stuff, and the proof of it is that most of us, if confronted with it, will deny our addiction. Denial is the giveaway. And then of course there are our houses and apartments full of stuff, much of which we don’t need but merely want in order to massage our egos.

When each of us begins to face our own addiction we have a chance of making a difference. The hitch is that, alcoholics and drug addicts have a place to go for recovery – there is AA and a host of treatment and recovery programs. But where do we consumer addicts go to recover?

One would think that since Jesus taught, as Brian says, that we should not be egocentrically piling-up ‘stuff’ and that instead we should be focused on the needs of others, that we addicts could simply go to any Christian congregation where treatment and recovery would be the primary service offered – and we would all get better!
Except that people in most congregations I know of are not only in deep denial themselves, but are happy enablers of other consumer addicts. It’s not a complete desert out there, though. There are exceptions: the Amish, Old Order Mennonites, and other Anabaptists, along with a number of Catholic religious orders. But that’s a tiny fraction of the Christian world and most of us would not be able to find our way to any of those, or be accepted even if we did.

We need to create Christian recovery programs – convert our contemporary congregations into halfway houses which would be capable of helping all of us to begin living simply, sustainably, and faithfully instead of being pawns of an obsessively materialistic culture based on the bankrupt and immoral neoclassical economic model.

I feel so strongly about this that I created a website, www.christiansimpleliving.org, to promote that kind of change. You can’t buy anything on the site and you can’t even donate any money there, nor do you have to join anything, but I would appreciate anyone’s ideas on how we can get together and make a difference right here in our own families and towns and perhaps even spread the idea.

Then maybe we can recover and find a real solution to the crisis.

My point exactly. I would hope that McLaren is willing to critique the current administration when they don't live up to the ideals of God's Kingdom. So far, he still seems to write mostly about the GOP's failures and the Dems' bright spots. To be clear, I supported Obama too and I'm glad there's a new sheriff in town. My concern is that McLaren seems unable to untangle his allegiance to Obama from his allegiance to the non-partisan Prince of Peace.

If we as the Sojourners community hope to remain truly prophetic, we need to critique both the right and the left when they stray from the Kingdom values of peace and justice. Does the issue of the Afghanistan war not matter anymore now that Bush is out? Is FOCA in line with what we like to call "a consistent ethic of human life"? Just because Obama was the best person for the job doesn't mean we have to get behind all of his policies. Many progressives are unaware of his support for capital punishment for example.

After the last eight years of failed leadership, I understand how hard it is to resist the "victory lap" urge to take few more swipes at the GOP and cable's talking heads like Buchanan. They are easy to find fault with. But if "God is not a Republican or a Democrat," this should mean that followers of Christ will not be one-sided in speaking truth to power.

thecommonloon:
I apologize for not replying sooner to your comments. I got caught up in the Darwin's birthday thread and didn't see your reply right away.

You make some good points, and I thank you for your insights.

Blessings,
Don

I agree, Brian. Glad to see you back to a prophetic voice, after supporting someone who wants to "defend our way of life" which is exactly all the things you say. Since you campaigned for him, do you think you could talk to him about these things? The pro-consumerism, pro-militarism policies of Obama are a true disaster. He doesn't seem to have a clue as to the real problems, but is willing to mortgage the future in a futile attempt to protect the paradigms that you so eloquently tore down in Everything Must Change.