The ground is shifting under Americans' feet on health care
American health care is not about sick patients and their interactions with doctors and hospitals. Far from it. It is about power and money, with two of the four major players who currently split the loot rapidly losing their future place at the table. The major player, the Democratically run federal government and its entitlement programs, will soon be expanding control from 60% to 95% of our health care. Insurance companies that are funded as an employment benefit will no longer exist with the federal takeover. Neither will the health care conglomerates with their hospitals and employee physicians. Unsurprisingly, the medical malpractice edifice will continue to thrive.
Health care has been used by both political parties in their struggle for votes. But the Republicans have apparently ceded the issue to the Democrats, no one brave enough to fight a government takeover for fear of being labelled non-caring. The Republicans have agreed with the Democrats that we are just too stupid to understand things like health care savings accounts. They are too cowed by politics to propose legislation that could encourage purchase of insurance across state lines. It is apparently too much for them to allow insurance pooling of high-risk individuals. With most of the lawmakers being lawyers, tort reform is not happening. Sensible ways to bring down costs and allowing us to make informed decisions are just too complicated for us dumb yokels.
When the Democrats take over health care, insurance companies could exist only as a middleman in the government Ponzi scheme. There is no reason to have insurance if pre-existing conditions are not a factor. Actuaries, those employed by insurance companies to balance risk and profit, will not be necessary. In their place, the government will just have an open pocketbook, printing increasingly worthless money to pay for service while relying on bureaucratic inefficiencies to provide a barrier between patients and their doctors. Less access means less cost. Just ask the National Health Service in Great Britain.
Health care conglomerates that populate the landscape today are soon to disappear. They came into being because of sweetheart deals with local governments and anti-capitalist regulations. The only reason they have done well is that they are allowed to charge more for services than free-standing doctors. They have absorbed doctors who have seen their incomes plummet, the issue jump-started with the recent COVID-19 implications. When doctors are all government employees, they will cease to exist.
For years, we have been victims of an incestuous power play with government, the insurance industry, and health care conglomerates working together to keep competition out of the health care market and avoid the reality that we cannot practice medicine affordably with our current practices. The insurance industry knew that their days were numbered when the first serious discussions about "Hillary-Care" emerged. They profited as they could. Now they only represent the last fleas on a dying dog.
Since 11% of American workers are employed in the health care sector, 24% of government spending goes toward health care, 8.1% of consumer spending is for medical care, and 26% of non-wage compensation is for health care insurance, it could be argued that this is the most consequential part of the economy. It is undeniably an area in which the rich and powerful were going to do anything to stay rich and powerful. But the creative destruction created by capitalism and attendant competition barely existed in this segment of the economy. Any thought of risking something innovative to bring down costs got kneecapped by talk of government-run care. As a result, good ideas and innovations that could introduce competition were stifled.
One would think that taking health care off the table would disempower the Democrats. Just as keeping the poor in poverty keeps them getting elected, keeping people afraid of dying in the streets has worked for them and their mainstream media mouthpieces. But the Republicans are emasculated and defeated, glad that legislators don't have to participate in the same health care system as the ignorant masses.
The interesting thing about doctors becoming government employees will be how the Democrats manage to allow the medical malpractice industry to continue. Lawyers are one of the top three Democratic donors. Another is the government employee's union, something that never should have been allowed, where the employees can sue the government, which is represented by the politicians they fund. Equally nefarious logic will no doubt be used to justify lawyers maintaining their cash flow.
If the Supreme Court is brought into the fray with any of these changes, no doubt, the 16 new judges brought on by President Kamala Harris will approve.
THERE US NO GREATER THREAT TO AMERICA THAN THE LAWYER CLASS. THAT MEANS TED CRUZ AND LA RAZA BECERRA!
Cruz: Becerra ‘Never So Much as Distributed French Fries at a McDonald’s’
(CNSNews.com) – Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) spoke out Wednesday against the confirmation of Health and Human Services nominee Xavier Becerra, saying he is “woefully unqualified to lead that department,” because he has no medical or science experience or in logistics, having “never so much as distributed French fries at a McDonald’s.”
Becerra was confirmed Thursday by a narrow margin along party lines – 50 to 49 – by the full Senate.
“There are, unfortunately, numerous nominees in the Biden administration who are either extreme or unqualified for the positions for which they have been nominated, but of all of those nominees, I believe Mr. Becerra is the single worst cabinet nominee put forward by Joe Biden to serve in the cabinet,” said Cruz, speaking on the Senate floor.
The senator pointed out that Biden has repeatedly said that his top priority is defeating the COVID-19 pandemic, yet his nominee to run HHS is a “radical left-wing trial lawyer” who has no experience in virology, pharmaceuticals, running a state or local health care agency, or logistics.
The Department of Health and Human Services is on the front line fighting COVID-19. Mr. Becerra, by any measure, is woefully unqualified to lead that department. Mr. Becerra’s not a doctor. Mr. Becerra is not a scientist. Mr. Becerra has no health care experience whatsoever, has no medical experience whatsoever, has no experience in virology.
He has no experience with pharmaceuticals. He has no experience running a state or local health care agency. He has no experience in logistics. The Department of HHS is in the process of distributing and administering hundreds of millions of vaccines. Mr. Becerra has never so much as distributed French fries at a McDonald’s.
Mr. Becerra’s only qualification – and indeed the qualification that earned him this nomination – is he is a radical left-wing trial attorney.
Madam President, if a Republican president had nominated someone for HHS secretary with “zero health care experience, zero medical experience, zero pharmaceutical experience in the midst of a global pandemic, that Republican president would have been laughed out of the room.
Furthermore, he said that “all of the Democrats would have been lined up here thundering, ‘This is a president that doesn’t care about science!’”
“We would have heard Democrats telling us, ‘This is a president for whom defeating COVID-19 is not a priority, is not serious. This is a president,’ our Democratic colleagues would have told us, ‘who puts partisan priorities above defeating the public health menace of COVID-19. This is a president who is more concerned about appeasing his radical base than he is about protecting the public health and safety of Americans,’” the senator said.
Cruz said that if a Republican president nominated a nominee as unqualified as Becerra, “I feel confident the Democrats would have not been alone,” because “multiple Republican senators” would have stood up saying that we should have an HHS secretary who knows something about science, medicine, or pharmaceuticals.
Cruz pointed out that former President Donald Trump nominated two HHS secretaries – Dr. Tom Price, a medical doctor, and Alex Azar, who was president of a major pharmaceutical company.
Both had years and even decades of health care experience. As best I can tell, Madam President, Xavier Becerra’s only experience with health care is suing the Little Sisters of the Poor. Frankly, it should be a joke.
If a Republican president did this, a Republican Senate would discover the backbone to stand up and oppose it, and what I would say is sad is not a single Democrat is willing to stand up to Joe Biden and say, ‘No, try again. It’s a pandemic. Over a half million Americans have died. How about put someone in HHS that knows something about health care?’
Every senator who supports Becerra’s confirmation, Cruz said, should be prepared to answer to their constituents when they go home.
What Becerra does know about, he said, is persecuting citizens who don’t share his radical left-wing ideology,” Cruz said, pointing to Becerra’s time as attorney general of California where he “demonstrated a consistent pattern of contempt for privacy.”
“While attorney general, he used his partisan power to overcome the individual privacy rights of California. As attorney general, he demanded that thousands of registered charities annually disclose to his offices the names and addresses of major donors, even though California law didn’t require that, but he used government power to violate their right to privacy,” he said.
Instead of keeping it private for law enforcement purposes to examine irregularities, Becerra "published the information from nearly 2,000 organizations, subjecting donors and those nonprofits to harassment and abuse,” the senator said.
Cruz noted that “health care issues are personal” and sensitive.
“When you and I go to the doctor, we don’t expect our doctor to share our personal health care details with the world,” he said.
Cruz also pointed to the Supreme Court case that Becerra is involved in.
“Later this year, the United States Supreme Court will decide whether Mr. Becerra’s invasion of privacy violated the First Amendment to the Constitution while his disregard for privacy,” the senator added.
Becerra’s nomination is also concerning because of his opposition to conscience protections, Cruz said.
The next HHS secretary will be responsible for upholding the conscience protections that are written in the federal law to protect the rights of people of faith, whatever your faith, whether you’re Christian or Jewish or Muslim or whatever your faith might be, the right of professionals, of citizens under the First Amendment to live according to their faith, but Mr. Becerra, as attorney general, has aggressively defended a California law that forced pro-life groups to advertise for abortion, a law that the Supreme Court deemed unconstitutional under the 1st Amendment.
Think about that for a second. He was so radical, going after and persecuting conscience rights, he wanted pro-life groups to advertise for abortion, and it took the United States Supreme Court to strike it down and say, that is unconstitutional. Joe Biden wants him to bring the same heavy-handed zealotry to the Health and Human Services Department, and Mr. Becerra has not shown that it’s just free speech that he has antagonism to, but it is religious liberty as well.
It's ludicrous. It was facially absurd. It was driven by an unconstitutional animus towards people of faith, and it took the United States Supreme Court to strike it down and to say the policy that Mr. Becerra was defending is unconstitutional. Government cannot target people of faith.
An Immigration Crisis Customs Made by Biden
By Tony Perkins | March 18, 2021 | 11:37am EDT
Joe Biden hasn't abolished ICE, but he's done something just as bad. He's made it impossible for the agency to do its job. Just two months into the White House's amnesty experiment, the scene along our southern border is chaos. And who's fault is it? According to the administration: Donald Trump's.
"We recognize this is a big problem," Press Secretary Jen Psaki finally conceded after days of ignoring the situation. Then, to the surprise of no one, trotted out a familiar punching bag. "The last administration left us a dismantled and unworkable system and, like any other problem, we are going to do all we can to solve it."
Lately, you have to wonder what Joe Biden would do without his predecessor. He couldn't take credit for all of Trump's successes -- or blame him for all of his failures. That may have worked on the vaccine, but on this issue? The American people aren't fooled.
What they're seeing unravel at the border is a crisis of Biden's own making. If this president cared more about national security than catering to the extreme Left, there wouldn't be 13,000 migrant children -- alone, without their parents -- in U.S. custody. We wouldn't have coyotes and cartels selling women into sex trafficking rings or luring teenage boys into labor gangs or drug running. And even if the Biden administration had done nothing on immigration when they came into office, it would've been a good deal better than what they did do -- which was overturn all of Trump's progress.
"Now what you have," Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) said with disgust, "is an absolute mess."
She's right. When I was on my second trip to the border about a year ago, it was like a ghost town. Very few people were trying to get in illegally. Why? Because the process the Trump administration put in place stemmed the flow with a management system that protected our borders -- and upheld law and order. Was it inconvenient for people trying to get into the country illegally? Absolutely, but that's what breaking the law should be. The last thing America should be doing is turning the border into a welcome center where you're greeted with gift bags and maps, which is basically what the Biden team has done. It's insanity!
And now that things are approaching catastrophic levels, this White House is like a cat in a sandbox, trying to cover its tracks. Rep. Michael Cloud (R-Tex.) was part of the Republican delegation that just visited the border, and he says what they saw was tragic: overflowing facilities, young children separated from their parents, and local communities and immigration agents stretched thin and overwhelmed.
"It's sad to see that we're at this point," he said soberly. Unfortunately, this is what happens when the president of the United States puts out the call for people to ignore our laws and cross the border. Now, of course, Biden is backtracking under pressure, finally telling the caravans, "Don't come..." But it's too little, too late.
He's already abandoned the border wall mid-construction, Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) pointed out, ticking off all of the ways America's immigration policy has been upended. With a stroke of the pen, the president released almost anyone traveling with a child under 18 directly into the country. He's granted sanctuary status for a whole host of criminal offenses, including drunk driving and sexual abuse. He's restored unrestricted travel from hotbeds of international terrorism. He ended the agreement that people requesting asylum (usually for bogus reasons) wait in Mexico until their hearing is scheduled. And now, taxpayers are stuck with the tab for all of this -- and whatever surge in coronavirus cases come later.
Trump got control of the border, Rich Lowry insists. Biden threw it all away. And with it, any trust from the American people that this administration cares about the future of the country it's destroying.
Tony Perkins is president of the Family Research Council.
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