I'm pleased that the White House is finally responding to Republican health care ideas instead of pretending they don't exist.[1] But in doing so President Obama should follow his own sound advice and avoid making "wild misrepresentations".[2] Medicare vouchers would give everyone on Medicare the chance to decide for themselves which health plan to use, rather than leave that decision to government bureaucrats. Such proposals are the kind of health care reform that Republicans stand for: market-oriented, patient-centered, and result-driven.
The White House talking points leave the rest of my arguments unanswered. They don't respond to the idea that all individuals should get the same tax benefits received by those who get coverage through their employers; that we must reform our tort laws; and that we should allow Americans to buy insurance across state lines. The White House also fails to respond to the Nyce/Schieber study indicating that wages will fall if the government expands coverage without reducing health care inflation rates.
One last thing: after President Obama's speech tonight, listen for which pundits use the words "false", "scary", and "risky" in describing the proposals I put forward. That's how you'll be able to tell who the White House counted as "allies" worthy of receiving its talking points.
From NBC's Domenico Montanaro Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was invited to testify before the New York state Senate Aging Committee by its Chairman, Rev. Ruben Diaz. Instead of testifying, Palin has submitted written testimony, and publicizes it via her latest Facebook "Note." More: "The fact is that any group of government bureaucrats that makes decisions affecting life or death is essentially a 'death panel,'" she writes. (Although, "government bureaucrats," according to legislation in the bills, wouldn't be making decisions; the patients would.) In it, she defends her contention that there are, in fact, "death panels" in health-care legislation being considered in Congress -- despite independent fact-checkers repeatedly debunking the notion.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is again blasting the Democrats health care proposal, this time in an editorial for the Wall Street Journal. Palin's opinion piece was posted Tuesday on the newspaper's Web site, a day ahead of President Barack Obama's address to Congress on health care. She suggests options including equalizing tax breaks for people who do or do not get benefits through employers; providing Medicare recipients with vouchers to buy their own coverage and reforming tort laws.
For the second time since resigning the Alaska governorship more than a month ago, Sarah Palin is adding her voice to the fiery debate over health care. This time, Palin is hitting the pages of the Wall Street Journal as President Obama gets set to address a joint session of Congress on the issue. "Only in Washington could a plan that adds hundreds of billions to the deficit be hailed as a cost-cutting measure," writes Palin.
Instead, Palin argues the true solution to health care lies in "market oriented, patient-centered, and result driven" measures such as providing tax benefits for those who get health car coverage from their jobs, providing seniors on Medicare vouchers to buy their own coverage, and allowing people to buy health care insurance across state lines.
As President Barack Obama prepared to make a new pitch for healthcare reform, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin warned that Democrats sought a government system that would include "death panels."
While cautioning that Democrats "have never seriously considered" alternatives to their "controversial proposals," Palin suggested that healthcare reform should be pursued.
"Let's talk about real healthcare reform: market-oriented, patient-centered, and result-driven," she wrote.
Palin's commentary was published as Obama prepared to deliver a speech before a joint session of Congress, seeking to regain momentum in his bid to overhaul the US healthcare system.
Deja vu: Palin and death panels. Sarah Palin is talking death panels again. This time, instead of using Facebook, she is recycling this bugaboo in the pages of The Wall Street Journal this morning. Hoping to grab attention on the morning of the president's health care address to Congress, she criticizes Obama's desire to create an Independent Medicare Advisory Council, what she calls "an unelected, largely unaccountable group of experts charged with containing medical costs." Using Obama's words, the failed 2008 vice presidential candidate says this group "should guide decisions regarding that 'huge driver of cost ... the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives ...'
She also reiterated her claim that so-called death panels would make end-of-life decisions, a notion that has been widely discredited.
She suggests options including equalizing tax breaks for people who do or do not get benefits through employers; providing Medicare recipients with vouchers to buy their own coverage and reforming tort laws. The Huff Post linked The Atlantic article below. It is funny how the Huff Post dedicates a large portion of there site to Gov Palin!!
Sarah Palin, the former Republican vice presidential candidate, has every right to submit an opinion piece on health care to the Wall Street Journal's op-ed page, and they've got every right to print it. But Palin's existence in this debate does not (a) lend her voice any credibility and, beyond that, even if you believe that her experience as a state governor does give her at least a modicum of credibility, it does not follow that, because her voice is credible, it ought to be influential. Newt Gingrich is influential by rights; he's done the work, come up with original ideas, and been in the trenches. (Replacing Medicare with vouchers...not new or remotely plausible, even if GOPers do well in the next two elections. Quoting Ronald Reagan talking about that type of proposal...not new. Etc.)
Rick Moran: Sarah Palin has a good op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today where she identifies the major problem with Obamacare; whatever congress comes up with will have to be implemented by thousands of regulations written by unelected bureaucrats. Rep. Mike Pence of the National Republican Conference listed 53 new agencies, panels, and committees that would be created by H.R. 3200:
1. Health Benefits Advisory Committee (Section 123, p. 30)
2. Health Choices Administration (Section 141, p. 41)
3. Qualified Health Benefits Plan Ombudsman (Section 144, p. 47)
4. Program of administrative simplification (Section 163, p. 57)
5. Retiree Reserve Trust Fund (Section 164(d), p. 70) ..........etc (see link for list of 53)
"During the 2008 election Sarah Palin warned over and over about the perils of electing Barack Obama. Her warnings went unheeded, and everything she warned us about is coming to pass. This time, listen to what Sarah Palin is saying, and stop this massive government intrusion in our lives before it is too late."
"The summer left Obama in a weakened position," adds the Los Angeles Times' Peter Nicholas. "Once the dominant communicator in American politics, he has seen the healthcare debate sidetracked by false warnings that government 'death panels' would be employed to snuff out Grandma. Distractions arose over past remarks made by mid-level aides. Even a benign back-to-school speech that Obama gave to students Tuesday became a vehicle for conservative activists to warn of presidential 'indoctrination.'
Meantime, former Gov. Sarah Palin, R-Alaska, weighed in on the health care debate with an op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal, calling for "market-oriented" and "patient-centered" reform as opposed to a "top down government plan." She also continued fanning the flames on "death panels."
"Is it any wonder that many of the sick and elderly are concerned that the Democrats' proposals will ultimately lead to rationing of their health care by—dare I say it—death panels? Establishment voices dismissed that phrase, but it rang true for many Americans," Palin wrote. "Working through 'normal political channels,' they made themselves heard, and as a result Congress will likely reject a wrong-headed proposal to authorize end-of-life counseling in this cost-cutting context."
"Just as she has done in the past regarding Obama's push for a government takeover of health care, she will drive the discussion with her latest article."
"I don’t know if she wrote this entirely on her own or not, but it wouldn’t surprise me if she did and it doesn’t bother me if she didn’t. Most politicians have writers (even “Teh One”), but that isn’t the point really... Unable to argue based on logic and policy the left always goes back to its standard approach of demonizing the opposition, insulting those who disagree, and disparaging any who oppose [them]."
With tonight's speech looming and as a political figure who never seems to miss an opportunity to make headlines, in today's Wall Street Journal former Alaska governor Sarah Palin blasts Obama's healthcare policies. Palin's piece invokes a populist "we" rallying cry against governmental involvement in healthcare and reiterates many of the same, tired arguments, including "death panels," against healthcare reform that have been debunked time and time again in the past. But Palin has seemingly never let the truth stand in the way of a good story
"Once again her timing reveals her as a point guard who has mastered when and where and how to move on the court. The common sense suggestions she mentions will resonate with Americans. She is driving the discussion. Obama’s speech now becomes a response to her editorial!"
"Liberal heads will now spin like the exorcist, then explode... What they will not do is address the substance of her points addressed in her WSJ piece."
I can't tell if Sarah Palin is tacitly admitting that the death panel myth she helped propagate is completely farcical, or if she's still peddling it in an op-ed posted yesterday evening in the WSJ. If the sick and elderly are concerned, it's only because Palin and the GOP are spreading such disinformation. Secondly, what does she mean when she says rang true? Are we talking about Steven Colbert's truthiness? Are we talking about the emotional truth in memoir -- the oddly vivid recreation of long-forgotten and half-remembered events, which have the scent of truth even if the details themselves are mostly the product of the memoirist's often self-serving memory?
"The left will surely go ballistic over Sarah Palin’s latest op-ed published in The Wall Street Journal. Especially since she’s using common sense, something in short supply in Washington, DC these days."
"This opinion piece probably reflects how a great deal of Americans feel, and the distrust that they have in the government-- not as an entity as the Left would have you believe, but in the federal government's efficiency and its ability to cost-control. Anyone that possesses even a little knowledge of history and bureaucracy knows the dubious history of the fed's track record in those departments."
Sarah Palin blasted the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats for their plans to further bureaucratize health care in America. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed this morning, Palin argued that Obamacare will drive up the federal deficit, strain family budgets, and bolster the power of unaccountable government technocrats.
As I’ve maintained here before on PoliGazette, Palin is an ideal position to fight back against the dominant “progressive” and crony corporatist political and media elites. For example, as a free agent these days, she is not beholden to the health insurance lobby. Thus, in her op-ed, she is able to draw the obvious connection between big “unaccountable and unresponsive” insurance companies and big unaccountable and unresponsive government. Why should the American people put their trust in top-down bureaucratized “fixes,” when the unintended consequences of past and ongoing government failures largely created and exacerbated the problems in the first place?
According to a new op-ed by Sarah Palin in the Wall Street Journal, the former governor still disagrees with President Obama's plan to reform the country's health-care system. Among Palin's more salient objections are that the plan will introduce too much government control, will add burdensome weight to federal deficit, will fail to rein in costs associated with tort laws, and, yes, will even create "death panels" to save money. To be blunt, Palin's op-ed runs to just over 1,000 words, but people who have been keeping up on her Facebook notes have heard 90 percent of it before, albeit without such high polish. Still, it's a great one-stop shop for all of her major objections to the Obama administration's health-care plan.
Responses to Palin's editorial have, frankly, not surprised us. Some pundits, taking a lead from Marc Ambinder from The Atlantic (who can sound quite bonkers about hating Palin), say the former governor has absolutely no credibility in the arena of health care policy, and that should preclude her from being taken seriously in this public debate. Conservatives4Palin has a (really) lengthy response to Ambinder, the gist of which can be cheekily glossed, 'Who died and made Marc Ambinder pope of this dump?'
"The standard meme that this woman is an idiot needs to end, particularly in the face of this, in which Gov. Palin makes more sense than a hundred Nancy Pelosis. But then, for the left, it isn’t really about healthcare, is it?"
Who is Sarah Palin's new ghostwriter? After obviously composing her own Facebook blog posts and Tweets (well, her intellectual doppelganger Meg Stapleton might've helped) for months, recent Palin missives have been so... professional.
They are still full of self-serving lies! Don't worry about that! Sarah Palin would never let her name be attached to anything that wasn't full of self-serving lies. But, man, her Wall Street Journal editorial today? So boring.
"It's an excellent article. It actually focuses on some of the things introduced in the Health Care Freedom Plan... as common sense ideas to make the system work better, I'm glad to see her back in the fight."
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