Friday, August 14, 2009

Truth, Lies and Distortions

Is that Robert Gibbs, the porcupine, lurking in the grass, ready to throw his quills at protesters?


  • Because it is so vital to know the truth, and I am finding that none of my friends where I live seem to have taken an interest in actually finding the truth, I am sharing an email from the Republican National Committee:


  • Rhetoric: President Obama Promises Americans Can Keep Their Current Health Care Coverage. "You know, the interesting thing is we've actually been very clear on what we want. I've said I want to make sure if you have health care you are going to keep it..." (PBS's "The Newshour With Jim Lehrer," 7/20/09)
    • FACT: Analysis Shows Over 88 Million People To Lose Current Insurance Under Government Health Care Takeover. "Under current law, there will be about 158.1 million people who are covered under an employer plan as workers, dependents or early retirees in 2011. If the act were fully implemented in that year, about 88.1 million workers would shift from private employer insurance to the public plan." (John Shelis, Vice President, Lewin Group, "Analysis Of The July 15 Draft Of The American Affordable Health Choices Act Of 2009," 7/17/09)
    • FACT: Mayo Clinic Says Government-Run Health Care Will Force Doctors To Drop Patients. '[L]awmakers are on track to approve across-the-board federal payment reductions of $155 billion over 10 years for hospitals ... Mayo and similar health systems object to the sweeping cuts. 'Across-the-board cuts will be harmful to everyone and we think it is particularly bad to penalize the high-value organizations,' said Jeff Korsmo, executive director of the Mayo Clinic Health Policy Center. 'We will have to violate our values in order to stay in business and reduce our access to government patients.'" (Phil Galewitz, "'Model' Health Systems Press Case For Medicare Fix In Reform," Kaiser Health News, 7/20/09)
    • [I, Karen, will reiterate here that when one loses his job and must get new insurance, he MUST take the government plan once the government plan has begun.]
  • Rhetoric: President Obama Promises No Additional Taxes On Middle Class. "What I've said is, and I have stuck to this point, I don't want to see additional tax burdens on people making $250,000 a year or less." (NBC's "Today Show," 7/21/09)
    • FACT: Democrats' Plan Imposes 2.5% Tax On Uninsured Individuals. "The penalty assessed on people who would be subject to the mandate but did not obtain insurance would equal 2.5 percent of the difference between their adjusted gross income (modified to include tax-exempt interest and certain other sources of income) and the tax filing threshold ..." (Douglas W. Elmendorf, "Preliminary Analysis Of The Insurance Coverage Specifications Provided By The House Tri-Committee Group," Letter To Chairman Rangel, 7/17/09)
    • [Here, I will add that the bill states that the taxes necessary to fund this plan will NOT be called a tax. Huh?]

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Fox News contributor Major Garrett, an a Robert Gibbs press conference, asked Gibbs to explain why he is learning that some Americans are getting emails from the White House without EVER having written to the White House. He asked if the White House also seeks other information to identify those to whom they send their emails without ever having received an email from them or visited the web site. Ending the exchange, Gibbs said, "Let me go someplace else that might be constructive."

[Next time, Garrett - don't ask such a difficult question!]

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Researchers who have examined the effects of preventive care generally find that the added costs of widespread use of preventive services tend to exceed the savings from averted illness

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AmericanSeniors.org. ASA’s Four Pillars: (Time to cancel AARP and go with this group? - I have)

• Social Security Reform
• Medicare Reform
• Tax Reform (Fair Tax)
• Keeping Citizen Benefits
out of the hands of illegal
aliens
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Thursday, August 13, 2009

Democrats Questioning Democrat Tactics

Who is that hiding behind the trees? Is it a democrat, hiding from the truth?

From Camille Paglia
, a devout Obama lover: My party was populist, attentive to the needs and wishes of those outside the power structure. And as a product of the 1960s, I thought the Democratic party was passionately committed to freedom of thought and speech. Somehow liberals have drifted into a strange servility toward big government, which they revere as a godlike foster father-mother who can dispense all bounty and magically heal all ills. The ethical collapse of the left was nowhere more evident than in the near total silence of liberal media and Web sites at the Obama administration's outrageous solicitation to private citizens to report unacceptable "casual conversations" to the White House. If Republicans had done this, there would have been an angry explosion by Democrats from coast to coast. I was stunned at the failure of liberals to see the blatant totalitarianism in this incident, which the president should have immediately denounced. His failure to do so implicates him in it."
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At a John Dingell meeting a "protester" was walking around carrying a sign with a swastika. How horrifying, said Dingell! It has come to light that the man was given the sign by - now hear this- a Dingell organizer! The man was handing out pro-Obama literature. Does it look like, just maybe, Dingell and his friends are trying to marginalize we good Americans - to allow the media to position us as angry mobs? And why is the media not pointing out the busloads of union members from SEIU, and the ACORN members, etc. who are being bussed in to these meetings?
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It's a web ad on Craigslist: "You can work for change. Join motivated staff around the country working to make change happen. You can make great friends and money along the way. Earn $400-$600 a week." I assume this means that the 13 million emails Obama sent out to his campaign supporters is not panning out. So now WE THE PEOPLE will actually be paying for Obama's pro-government health care take-over workers, for we taxpayers continue to give many millions of dollars to ACORN and it's over 300 connected organizations, because the government continues to describe them as bi-partisan!
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I can tell that even some Democrats are becoming disgusted with their party leaders when a devout Democrat such as Pat Caddell says on Fox News that (in general) his Democrat party used to be for the little guy, but is now calling them names such as un-American, angry mobs and the like. He decried the Democrats who are now ignoring our rights to free speech.

And from Maureen Dowd, , another very liberal columnist: "The postpartisan, postracial, post-Clinton-dysfunction world that Barack Obama was supposed to usher in when he hit town on his white charger, with turtle doves tweeting, has vanished. The young grass-roots army that swept Obama into office has yet to mobilize now that the fight is about something complicated rather than a charismatic hope-monger. No, they can’t? Instead of a multicultural tableau of beaming young idealists on screen, we see ugly scenes of mostly older and white malcontents, disrupting forums where others have come to actually learn something. Instead of hope, we get swastikas, death threats and T-shirts proclaiming “Proud Member of the Mob.” President Obama has proven quicksilver instincts, but not in this case. You would think that a politician schooled in community organizing and the foul balls of a presidential campaign would be ready to squash this kind of nuttiness."

[Can we not see the agenda of the left? It is to paint us as violent, rude, angry, nutty and unworthy. We must make sure our questions are asked, but not in violent ways. And we must not cave in to their desires to shut us up. Our country depends on us and our willingness to stand up and be counted, in spite of the thugs the Democrats are planting among us.]
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Rasmussen now reports that Obama's approval rating has fallen to 46%. And yet our President continues to say that we should stop talking. I will continue to talk, for instance when he says that the health care reform includes no new taxes. Well, do you understand the reason?! The bill itself states that any taxes collected for this bill are not to be considered to be taxes! How truthful do you think that is?

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From DetroitNews.com weblog: Sen. Debbie Stabenow, Energy Leader (National Review, 08.10.09

Michigan just experienced its coldest July on record; global temperatures haven't risen in more than a decade; Great Lakes water levels have resumed their 30-year cyclical rise (contrary to a decade of media scare stories that they were drying up due to global warming), and polls show that climate change doesn't even make a list of Michigan voters' top-ten concerns.

Yet in an interview with the Detroit News Monday, Senator Debbie Stabenow (D., Mich.) - recently appointed to the Senate Energy Committee - made clear that fighting the climate crisis is her top priority.

"Climate change is very real," she confessed as she embraced cap and trade's massive tax increase on Michigan industry - at the same time claiming, against all the evidence, that it would not lead to an increase in manufacturing costs or energy prices. "Global warming creates volatility. I feel it when I'm flying. The storms are more volatile. We are paying the price in more hurricanes and tornadoes."

And there are sea monsters in Lake Michigan. I can feel them when I'm boating -(this said on the blog)

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Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Health Care Reform's Rationing Provisions


Do you know what President Barack Obama said earlier in the speech where he is quoted as saying: "I don't want the folks who created the mess do a lot of talking. I want them to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess. I don't mind cleaning up after them, but don't do a lot of talking?" He actually said, "We want to make sure that we listen to other people's ideas. We're going to bring labor and business together," he said.


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Congressman John Dingell has now said: "Well, the last time I had to confront something like this was when I voted for the civil rights bill and my opponent voted against it. At that time, we had a lot of Ku Klux Klan folks and white supremacists and folks in white sheets and other things running around causing trouble.

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Mort Zuckerman of MSNBC stated on tv recently: "you start to wonder whether in fact the word socialist is becoming a code word, whether or not socialist is becoming the new N-word for frankly for some angry upset birthers and others."

Cynthia Tucker’s guesstimate that 45-65 percent of town hall protesters are probably racist just shows how out of touch she is with main stream America, for this has not one thing to do with the skin color of anyone. It shows me that she is actually the racist.

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President Obama, without his teleprompter, actually made our case for us during a recent speech on health insurance reform by saying, "I mean, if you think about it, UPS and FedEx are doing just fine, right? No, they are. It's the post office that's always having problems." That comment provoked laughter from the audience. Exactly, Mr. President.

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Susan Ferrechio
Chief Congressional Correspondent

Regarding the section of the health care reform bill pertaining to a collection of personal data for the common good, she says: "I have spent 35 years in information technology," one woman in the audience said to Arlen Specter. "I read this bill very closely. You are about to concentrate more information about more Pennsylvanians and Americans in this bill in one place in the computers of Washington that has ever occurred."

Specter elicited laughs and boos when he responded, "With respect to privacy, we'll do everything we can to stop people from breaking into the files." Following the meeting, Specter said Wednesday he thinks people who have been angrily disrupting town hall meetings on overhauling the health care system are "not necessarily representative of America," but should be heard. Yes, Mr. Specter, it IS representative of the majority of us in America - just read the polls......

Diana Furchtgott-Roth, an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, said the provision in the House bill that calls for an ID card actually goes much further and would allow the government access to a patient's bank account, in order to determine ability to pay.

"What I see as being problematic is that the government can get into your bank account and see how much is in there," Furchtgott-Roth said.

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From Rich Lowry: Billy Tauzin cut a deal with the White House that is keeping his drug industry trade group PhRMA out of its customary place in the pantheon of Democratic hate groups — for now. Pres. Barack Obama goes out of his way to praise the drug industry. Tauzin has visited the White House half a dozen times and has committed to a $150 million advertising campaign on behalf of Obamacare. He’s become the “good German” of the health-care debate — that is, the good $2 million-a-year drug-industry lobbyist.

Tauzin agreed to pass along [an Obama promised limit of ] $80 billion in savings over ten years. It wasn’t clear what exactly PhRMA had gotten in return until congressional Democrats began to run afoul of the unacknowledged provisions of the deal. It turns out the White House had committed not to
not to do three things: impose more than $80 billion in savings, have the government set prices in the Medicare prescription-drug program, and import cheaper drugs from Canada. In other words, Obama has bought off the drug companies in order to make them tout his reforms. The Chicago Machine has sent a good soldier to the White House.

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Kelly Anderson Wright of American Thinker: excerpted
Last year, when Michelle Obama declared, "America is a mean country," I disagreed. As the white mom of multi-racial children, I knew our country had its share of race problems, but I never would have called America "mean."

Apparently, Michelle's "mean America" comment was simply premonitory. Last year, I was a sweet, naïve, middle class, white Italian-American businesswoman and single mother.
And now, as I, my friends, and even my elderly mother speak loudly at town hall meetings to tell our elected representatives we don't want government-run health care, we are being called Nazis, racists, political terrorists, rabid mobsters and angry, right-wing wackos, just because we are exercising our God-given right to freedom of speech.

Michelle, you are right, America is mean. The Obamanation is the meanest America I have ever known.
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Let's quote Dr. Ekzekiel Emanuel, Obama's pick to be health-policy adviser at the Office of Management and Budget and a member of the Federal Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research. Emanuel bluntly admits that the cuts [in health care] will not be pain-free. "Vague promises of savings from cutting waste, enhancing prevention and wellness, installing electronic medical records and improving quality are merely 'lipstick' cost control, more for show and public relations than for true change," he wrote last year (Health Affairs Feb. 27, 2008).

Savings, he writes, will require changing how doctors think about their patients: Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath too seriously, "as an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of the cost or effects on others" (Journal of the American Medical Association, June 18, 2008). "A young person with a poor prognosis has had few life-years but lacks the potential to live a complete life. Considering prognosis forestalls the concern that disproportionately large amounts of resources will be directed to young people with poor prognosis."

When fully implemented, Dr. Emanuel's system, in his words, "produces a priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most substantial chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated."
"Chances that are attenuated" , states Newt Gingrich, is a nice way of saying the young and the old are considered less worthy of health care and, under this system, will get less.
In our country, the road to dehumanizing, bureaucratic health care rationing begins with something called comparative effectiveness research (CER). It sounds completely innocent. In practice, CER means comparing different treatments for diseases to see which works best. And what doctor or patient would object to that, right?

The problem is that, in the context of a government-run health care system, comparative effectiveness research becomes a way to find a cheaper, one-size-fits-all approach to medicine that will limit health care choices for patients.

But don't just take my word for it. Congressional Democrats included $1.1 billion in the Stimulus Bill for CER. Report language explaining the bill noted that the treatments found to be "more expensive" as result of the research "will no longer be prescribed" and that "guidelines" should be developed to manage doctors.

Congressional Democrats also killed several amendments to the current health care bill that would have prevented CER from being used to ration care.
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From Mary Laney of the Chicago Daily Observer: England cannot get rid of its public healthcare now because bureaucrats running its public health system are now the third largest block of employees in the world. The protesters [here in America] know this. They also know that the numbers being given on those without insurance are wildly inflated as 40 million. Take out the 10 to 20 million illegal aliens, remove the 8 to 10 million who can afford insurance but choose not to get it, and the number shrinks considerably. It would be cheaper for the government to simply pay to cover those who can’t afford insurance than to spend 17% of the nation’s economy to rip up the best health care system in the world.
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Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Sunset For Seniors


David Keene
The San Francisco Examiner

Americans are finally getting a good look at the man in the White House. They’ve been thrilled by his speeches, love his kids and almost desperately want to believe he is who they voted for. It turns out, however, that he simply can’t tolerate disagreement.

In President Barack Obama’s view, those who disagree with him really ought to just shut up. His critics, after all, are the people responsible for the problems he was elected to solve, dupes and hirelings of those responsible, or dangerous kooks.

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Thirty-two (32%) of voters nationwide favor a single-payer health care system where the federal government provides coverage for everyone. A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 57% are opposed to a single-payer plan. Fifty-two percent (52%) believe such a system would lead to a lower quality of care while 13% believe care would improve. 87 percent of Republicans are opposed, and those not affiliated with either party reject single payer by a decisive 63-22 percent margin.

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From Phyllis Schafly: A congressional Town Hall meeting on Aug. 6 reminds us of a memorable political moment when Bill Clinton and his chief aides were in Little Rock celebrating his 1992 election. Heady with victory, Chicago staffer Rahm Emanuel demonstrated how he planned to punish political enemies by plunging his steak knife into the table and screaming, "Dead!" as he named each target. The SEIU goons [at the town hall meeting] were following White House advice: "Don't do a lot of talking," and if they encounter resistance, "punch back twice as hard."

On the other hand, there is evidence that Obama's "punch back" tactics are organized. MoveOn.org sent out a "Dear MoveOn member" email stating: "We've got a plan to fight back against these radical right-wingers. We've hired skilled grass-roots organizers who are working with thousands of local volunteers to show Congress that ordinary Americans continue to support President Obama's agenda for change. And we're building new online tools to track events across the country and make sure MoveOn members turn out at each one."

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Have you been wondering what is upsetting those of us who are questioning our Congressmen
in recent town hall meetings? The following excerpts explain a lot about our fears about
government controlled health care. Once again, extreme, radical thinkers have been appointed
by our President to important positions. Does he not even know any moderates? It must be oh,
so upsetting that the Internet and talk radio is now able to expose what our leaders have said,
are thinking and believing. Once, back in the time of delicious concealment of facts, radical
thinkers were not exposed to the masses.


By BETSY MCCAUGHEY - Deadly Doctors

At least two of President Obama's top health advisers should never be trusted with that power

[to decide medical protocols for Americans]

Start with Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. He has already been appointed to two key positions: health-policy adviser at the Office of Management and Budget and a member of Federal Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research.

Emanuel bluntly admits that the cuts will not be pain-free. "Vague promises of savings from cutting waste, enhancing prevention and wellness, installing electronic medical records and improving quality are merely 'lipstick' cost control, more for show and public relations than for true change," he wrote last year (Health Affairs

Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath too seriously,Feb. 27, 2008).

Emanuel, however, believes that "communitarianism" should guide decisions on who gets care.

He says medical care should be reserved for the non-disabled, not given to those "who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens . . . An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia" (Hastings Center Report, Nov.-Dec. '96).

He explicitly defends discrimination against older patients: "Unlike allocation by sex or race, allocation by age is not invidious discrimination; every person lives through different life stages rather than being a single age. Even if 25-year-olds receive priority over 65-year-olds, everyone who is 65 years now was previously 25 years" (Lancet, Jan. 31).

The bills being rushed through Congress will be paid for largely by a $500 billion-plus cut in Medicare over 10 years. Knowing how unpopular the cuts will be, the president's budget director, Peter Orszag, urged Congress this week to delegate its own authority over Medicare to a new, presidentially-appointed bureaucracy that wouldn't be accountable to the public.

But Emanuel criticizes Americans for being too "enamored with technology" and is determined to reduce access to it.

In the April 9 New England Journal of Medicine, Blumenthal, another of Obama's key appointees, predicted that many doctors would resist "embedded clinical decision support" -- a euphemism for computers telling doctors what to do.

Emanuel explained how business should be done: "Every favor to a constituency should be linked to support for the health-care reform agenda. If the automakers want a bailout, then they and their suppliers have to agree to support and lobby for the administration's health-reform effort."

Do we want a "reform" that empowers people like this to decide for us?

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJxmpTMGhU0 For those who have not actually seen it, you should watch this. Perhaps it should be sent to the White House for it's consideration. It is Hillary screaming about our right to debate any administration.


Monday, August 10, 2009

Dreams of Obama......

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from gormogons.com: Please recall that after Obama's election, but prior to his Inaugural, he first showed us his arrogance by always having on this podium a never before seen logo: Office of the President Elect!

It's All About Me!

Can any of us remember a time when a president of the United States had his own logo? While I only really remember Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton, Bush Jr. and Obama, I don't recall seeing a logo for any of the presidents before them. If I'm wrong, drop me a note, I'm not above admitting that I didn't know something. However, not only does Obama have his own logo (the portion of the picture at the left with the "O" shape containing the red and white stripes), the administration is busy using taxpayer money to adapt that logo into a logo for the national healthcare program (proposed logo is the one pictured).

What if president Truman had a logo and included it in the logo for the Central Intelligence Agency after he signed the Executive Order in effect creating the organization? What about George W. Bush putting a big, stylized "B" logo in the middle of the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence? Somehow, I don't think either of those would have gone over well at all.

But in walks Obama and we see cars tatooed with the logo and now it's being used as part of national program. Draw your own conclusions, but I know having a ruler's logo issued as part of national programs isn't in our history but exists in others that aren't too favorable.
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Let's recall what Michelle Obama said while in California during the campaign: "Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zone . . . Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual - uninvolved, uninformed." Do keep these words in mind while reading the following.....

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From a USA Today Op Ed by Steny Hoyer and Nancy Pelosi: These disruptions [by "angry, swastika-carrying mobs"] at town hall meetings are occurring because opponents are afraid not just of differing views — but of the facts themselves. Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American. Drowning out the facts is how we failed at this task for decades. Health care is complex. It touches every American life. It drives our economy. People must be allowed to learn the facts.

Well, we have learned the facts by actually reading the bill, which is more than most of you have done, and we don't like what we've learned! By the way - where was your precious right for opposing views to be heard when you closed Republicans out of the process, meeting in private, and denying that the Republicans actually DO have a plan. You just wouldn't listen to their opposing views, would you? We are attempting to teach to you the facts. You in Congress have attempted to drown out our opposing views by barring us from your meetings, by canceling your meetings, by calling us a 'manufactured mob', and by sending your union thugs in to intimidate us. And now you dare to state that when it is YOU who is drowning out OUR opposing views you are not un-American, but we are. At the time, I am sure you agreed with Hillary Clinton when she screamed that "we have a right to disagree with any administration". Now that the shoe is on the other foot, it is suddenly un-American. This statement alone shows all Americans your true character as well as your true agenda. It was your party which not so long ago declared dissent to be the highest form of patriotism....

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Last year, "Obama's sexy, he was hot, and everybody wanted a piece of that," said Candice Davies, a speech therapist in Cary who trained canvassers for last year's campaign and is trying to organize support for healthcare legislation. "Now, people are going to have to work for something that is not quite as slick or sexy."

The Los Angeles Times reports that "officials in charge of the network concede that opponents of the healthcare overhaul have been more organized than Democrats had expected.

But they say Organizing for America, which was known as Obama for America during the presidential campaign, is quietly and deliberately building a system of professional field organizers and trained volunteers that has already inspired thousands of community events and reached millions of people."

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Last week, after being reported in the Los Angeles Times, the White House confirmed it has promised Big Pharma that any healthcare legislation will bar the government from using its huge purchasing power to negotiate lower drug prices. Now we know why the drug firms are not resisting this new plan, for Obama has promised that the "price" they will pay will be limited to an amount stated by Obama. So much for the Congress actually writing the bill, and so much for Obama's promised transparency.

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