Mark Degasperis was furious his mother spent five days on a stretcher at Toronto Western Hospital waiting for a room with 25 patients ahead of her — until the Toronto Sun made a call and she was suddenly moved to a room yesterday.

“They were giving us the same old song and dance why she was in the emergency department with only a sheet draped around her. I couldn’t even call her because she didn’t have a phone,” Degasperis of Georgetown said.

Heather Degasperis, 60, has a dangerous bacterial condition and was sent by her doctor to Toronto Western because it has the experts for her condition.

“She is not well and wasn’t able to sleep and she wasn’t getting any better. She needed peace and quiet to sleep.

“This is a terrible environment. I suggested taking her to another hospital, but we were told there are long waits across the region and the doctors we need are here. So there was nothing we could do,” Degasperis said yesterday.

“I’m angry we pay such high taxes and the more money we throw at the health care system the worse it gets. People shouldn’t be lined up on stretchers in the emergency department. If you are sick you should get a room.”

The Toronto Sun

I just astounds me that there are Americans that still support this kind of system here when you constantly hear about these horror stories.  I could post something like this almost every day coming out of one of these Socialist countries and yet the idiots continue to follow Obama around mesmerized by his empty words because they sound good.  The left is definitely succeeding at turning Americans into government dependent morons.

While Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama fight over who has the better health plan for the uninsured, they say little about a more immediate challenge that will confront the next administration: how to tame the soaring costs of Medicare and Medicaid.The programs, for older Americans and low-income people, cost $627 billion last year — 23 percent of all federal spending. With no change in existing law, the Congressional Budget Office says, that cost will double in 10 years and the programs will account for more than 30 percent of the budget.

Economists and health policy experts say the programs are unsustainable in their current form, because they are growing much faster than the economy or the revenues used to finance them. Medicare’s hospital insurance trust fund is expected to run out of money in 11 years.

The News & Observer

23% of Federal spending.  Can you believe that?  We could eliminate these programs and cut Federal taxes by 1/4.  That would save me a few thousand well needed dollars a year and I don’t even get any benefit from either of these socialist handouts.

This is your Universal Health Care on a microeconomic scale and this is what the socialists want to do to our entire health care system.  How long will that take to reach the same unsustainable level, as is already happening in Europe?

Mississippi legislators this week introduced a bill that would make it illegal for state-licensed restaurants to serve obese patrons. Bill No. 282, a copy of which you’ll find below, is the brainchild of three members of the state’s House of Representatives, Republicans W. T. Mayhall, Jr. and John Read, and Democrat Bobby Shows. The bill, which is likely dead on arrival, proposes that the state’s Department of Health establish weight criteria after consultation with Mississippi’s Council on Obesity.

The Smoking Gun

With morons like these, who needs John McCain to change the face of the GOP?

In Massachusetts, which passed a mandatory insurance law last year, high costs are forcing the state to let more than 10 percent of the uninsured off the hook because they won’t be able to afford the premiums.Experts say the affordability problem is not going away. Medical inflation means the gap between what most people can pay and what health care truly costs gets wider every year.

The Bakersfield Californian

Romney likes to tout this as one of his grand successes as Governor of the Peoples’ Republic of Taxachusetts, but it’s a crock. As the article points out, the costs are inflating and the state is now giving a sizable amount of people a pass on the mandate rather than the $1,000 fine that was supposed to penalize those who did not abide by the new freedom stealing law.

Like Beltway Democrats, Governor Ted Kulongoski and his legislature wanted to broaden eligibility for Oregon’s “Healthy Kids” Schip program to 300% of the federal poverty level. They would also allow all families to opt in, regardless of income, though higher earners wouldn’t get subsidies. Again like Congress, Salem intended to pay for the expansion with cigarette taxes, which would increase to $2.02 from $1.18 a pack. That would be one of the highest state tobacco levies in the nation.

Democrats couldn’t dredge up the three-fifths approval required for a tax increase in the legislature, so they kicked the expansion over to the ballot. And already, Measure 50’s defeat is being blamed on $12 million in advertising by Big Tobacco. “What happened was, the tobacco industry bought the election,” Governor Kulongoski declared yesterday.

We’re surprised the Governor thinks voters in his left-leaning state are so easily gulled–especially in a contest between “healthy kids” and cigarettes. More persuasive is the notion that voters didn’t want to pass a state tax increase to finance a health-care expansion that Congress might soon pass, along with buckets of federal dollars. But most likely, voters understood that a tax increase on cigarettes is still a tax increase, and a highly regressive one at that. Only about 20% of Oregonians smoke, and most of those are lower income.

They may also have figured that to the extent tobacco taxes reduce smoking, they will soon not yield enough revenue to pay for ever-growing health costs. An analysis by William Conerly, a member of Governor Kulongoski’s own Council of Economic Advisors, found that a straight Schip expansion funded by a tobacco tax was unsustainable, with costs exceeding revenues by $115 million by 2017.

Wall Street Journal

That last paragraph is something that the Socialists on Capitol Hill never mention, but is common sense if you think about it for a minute or two. Raising taxes on cigarettes will eventually produce less smokers so what do we do at that point, when there are no longer enough smokers to fund the program and most of America’s kids are then addicted to the gubmint health care? The answer is easy. It will be another whopping tax increase on all of us, not just those who smoke.

You have to give the land of Hippie-dom some credit for having a little bit of sense anyway. They rejected this measure two to one.

CALGARY, AB—A typical Canadian seeking surgical or other therapeutic treatment had to wait 18.3 weeks in 2007, an all-time high, according to new research published today by independent research organization The Fraser Institute.

“Despite government promises and the billions of dollars funneled into the Canadian health care system, the average patient waited more than 18 weeks in 2007 between seeing their family doctor and receiving the surgery or treatment they required,” said Nadeem Esmail, Director of Health System Performance Studies at The Fraser Institute and co-author of the 17th annual edition of Waiting Your Turn: Hospital Waiting Lists in Canada.

The survey measures median waiting times to document the extent to which queues for visits to specialists and for diagnostic and surgical procedures are used to control health care expenditures.

“It’s becoming clearer that Canada’s current health care system can not meet the needs of Canadians in a timely and efficient manner, unless you consider access to a waiting list timely and efficient,” Esmail added.

The 2007 survey found the total median waiting time for patients between referral from a general practitioner and treatment, averaged across all 12 specialties and 10 provinces surveyed, increased to 18.3 weeks from 17.8 weeks observed in 2006. This is primarily due to an increase in the first wait, between seeing the general practitioner and attending a consultation with a specialist.

The Fraser Institute

If you need surgery here in the U.S. you get it within a matter of days or quicker depending on the urgency. There is no five month wait, like in the Socialist system, and yet Democrats want to bring this here.

RedState had this up the other day. Very creative and very accurate at pointing out the absurdity of this bill with a little humor:

H/T to Red State

Congressman Bobby Jindal is a model of fresh thinking on health care reform. His plan is bold yet coherent, his action items are doable, and his results would be the real change that Louisiana needs. Jindal’s message is one that should be part of campaigns across the country, including the race for the White House.

Congressman Jindal recently unveiled nine pages outlining his agenda to make high quality health care more available and affordable for the people of Louisiana. Nine pages. Too many candidates barely have nine words on their campaign website. Too few pro-actively talk about how to improve health care. And this is on an issue of central importance to voters everywhere.

Ouachita Citizen

There is way too much here for me to really summarize, but I have read over Jindal’s proposal and it’s not bad. While I would really like to keep the government out of this issue, I think it will take government to remove government. As Gingrich points out this is not an issue the Republicans can ignore any longer.

No, we do not have a health care crisis in this country, but Democrats learned a long time ago that if you repeat something enough times, people will start to believe it, true or not, so we must address it.

“Republicans are working on a plan that will provide access to all Americans to high quality health insurance, make sure that we increase the quality of insurance that we have in American, and we want to foster a sprit of innovation,” said Boehner on “Fox News Sunday.” “This is a plan we’ll see over the next coming months where we put the patients in charge of their health care.”

Politico

Boehner’s quote is pretty much a whole lot of nothing. I am interested to see what they will unveil and how much socialism will be attached to it. Bush was right to veto the SCHIP bill. The Democrats’ wanted expansion of the program to cover more than just poor kids is a foot in the door to government run communist health care and an extension to what the program was originally designed for. Because of how dirty the Democrats are playing, however, and how easily people can be swayed by propaganda, the GOP really has no choice but to come up with something. Bush stated repeatedly that he had no problem continuing the program as is, but the Democrats conveniently leave that part out of their dishonest campaign. They are the true obstructionists of this bill, not the Republicans, but as usual the GOP is letting them get away with painting it that way.

Wal-Mart Adds Drugs to $4 Program

H/T: boortz.com

Paul over at Power Line lays out the problems with expanding SCHIP to include children of higher-income families than proposed by President Bush and the Republicans. This is a precise, easily-understandable article that depends not on rhetoric, but on crunching some numbers. I’d suggest everyone read it to get some data-oriented perspective on the dangers of expanding SCHIP and how it really is not feasible for the government or the families it claims to help.

Paul’s last word:

Why are the Democrats pushing so hard for a middle class entitlement program that will promote inefficiency and waste, wreck the private market, and become fiscally unsustainable by 2013 if not before? It looks like an effort to lure middle-class families into government-run health care.

Sort of like HillaryCare.

UPDATE: Grover Norquist has more on SCHIP expansion on NRO.

After hearing Bush say Thursday that he was going to veto the bill in part because it would allow families of four making $80,000 to place their children on the the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), Grassley blasted the president, saying his assertion was dead wrong.

“The president has been served wrong information about what our bill will do,” Grassley said Thursday between Senate votes. “There’s nothing in our bill that would do that. His understanding of the bill was wrong.”

Bush, in a morning news conference, told reporters that “Congress has made the decision to expand the program up to $80,000. … This is a step toward federalization of health care.”

Grassley said that a waiver to allow higher income families to utilize SCHIP has been taken out of the conference committee compromise forged between House and Senate negotiators over the past two days.

The House will vote next week on the final legislation, followed by the Senate. The Senate should reach 68 votes in favor of the bill, enough to override a presidential veto, but the House is far short of a veto override, meaning lawmakers will have to scramble to figure out whether to temporarily extend the program, which expires Sept. 30, or let it lapse. The compromise under consideration would increase spending on children’s healh by $35 billion and would be funded 61 cent tobacco tax increase.

Politico

You know what Chuck? You show me where in the Constitution you are granted the authority to steal money from me and give it to other peoples’ children and I’ll stand up and be outraged with you. Until then, shut the hell up and go back to the cornfields. It’s disgraceful that you would call yourself a Republican and support a tax increase for expanding Socialism.

Leavitt told the USA TODAY editorial board that Bush will veto a Democratic plan emerging from Congress that would add $35 billion in taxpayer subsidies to the Children’s Health Insurance Program over five years. In doing so, Leavitt said, Bush will urge Congress to join him in seeking coverage for all Americans.

“He’d like to see the larger debate begin,” Leavitt said. “The very best opportunity we have may well be in the next 15 months.”

USA Today

I guess everyone better warm up to the idea that this is coming, like it or not. The American people are too dependent on government in the 21st Century to live without the nanny anymore. The plan Clinton unveiled will cost $110 billion a year, which means it will really be closer to 200 to 300. This is fiscally abhorrent considering that we are nearing a national debt of $9 trillion dollars.

Now, Bush is evidently jumping on the bandwagon, no doubt in part to thinking that this is a way to pull people back to the GOP. I’m sure his idea is that if they can pass this during a Republican administration people will credit his party for “delivering health care to all Americans.” Of course, it’s just the opposite that will be true as the Republican base will be alienated even further than they already are and the fiscally conservative Libertarians and independents will be mortified.

Yes, welcome to yet another unsustainable entitlement, courtesy of Washington. Enjoy the waiting lists you’ll all be on to see your doctor. Hopefully, you don’t need an MRI. You’ll be waiting six months like they do in England. If you’re lucky, Grandma won’t need a hip replacement because she’ll be sticking it out, suffering for over a year like they do in Canada. Oh, and ladies, hopefully you won’t be in the situation that Karen Jepp was.  She had to drive from her home in Calgary down to Montana to deliver her quadruplets because the hospitals in Calgary were short neonatal beds.  At least she had the U.S. to drive to, though.  Where will you go?

You only have to look at every other nation that has a socialist system to see the failure that it is, but facts have never mattered much to the pro entitlement lobby. We need only look at the fiscal mess that Social Security and Medicare have become to know what the future of nanny state health care will hold.

His own plan is a blend of tax incentives, creative financing to help the uninsured without raising taxes or federal spending, and a state-based system that would depend on governors to fix the country’s health-care problems.

Romney insisted his plan would eventually help everyone get insurance. But he will not propose requiring everyone in the country to get insurance — as he did in Massachusetts.

“We’ll get all the way there, but it’s not through a mandate,” he said. “If some states were going to drag their heels, I’m not going to have the federal government step in.”

To help control costs, Romney would allow all Americans to deduct from their taxable income all of their health-care costs — including premiums and most out-of-pocket spending. Now, only people with a lot of expenses can deduct the cost from their taxable income.

That, said Romney, would provide a tax incentive to buy high-deductible, low- premium health-care plans. And that, he said, would lead people to spend less and make better, cheaper choices in buying health care. Overall spending on health care would drop by 6.2 percent, he estimated.

“You get better behavior in health care,” he said.

To help the uninsured, Romney would provide a package aimed at helping some people into existing government programs, driving down the costs of private health insurance and subsidies.

McClatchy

Romney says he can get the poor insured by helping them into existing government programs, but earlier in the article he was quoted as saying he can accomplish this without increasing spending or raising taxes.  How is that possible if more people are going to be on existing government programs?

“For anybody not under a government health program, it provides the resources to access health coverage,” Burr said in an interview this morning.

The proposal calls for raising money by taxing the health-care benefits that many workers now receive through their employers. Those health premiums now are tax-free.

The money then would be used by the U.S. Treasury to offer refundable tax credits. Individuals would receive $2,160, or up to $5,400 per family.

For those with employment-based coverage, the credits would be enough to cover the tax bill on all but the richest insurance plans, Burr said.

For people without employment-based health care, the tax credits could be used to pay for private health insurance or other health-care costs.

Raleigh News & Observer

Putting aside the fact that the Federal Government has absolutely no business whatsoever being involved in anyone’s health care, this bill is a tax increase. Sure, they may give you a credit, if I am reading this right, when you file your taxes, but that is after the end of the year when you get your lump sum refund. The tax will be steadily coming out of your check throughout the year I assume, so you are paying piece by piece each week and waiting for the government to give you your money back later on. No thanks.

Besides, I don’t see this passing the Senate anyway, because when they say the credit will cover the cost of all but the richest health care plans, they are talking about union members. The Democrats will never go for that.

“This is a country,” Dr. Day said by way of explanation, “in which dogs can get a hip replacement in under a week and in which humans can wait two to three years.”

What country? The USA? No the socialist utopia of Canada whose national doctors association just elected the most out spoken pro-privatization doctor as their new national president.

The full article here and is a must read.