Thursday, February 25, 2010

Do you want to know what healthcare in the US will look like in 10 years of the liberal/progressives get their way?

Here it is:

Leading article: The real lessons of this NHS disaster
Staffordshire Inquiry
The Independent
Thursday, 25 February 2010

The Health Secretary, Andy Burnham, yesterday described the appalling treatment of patients at Stafford hospital as "ultimately a local failure". This misses the point. For one thing, Stafford is not the only NHS hospital that has put patients' lives at risk in recent years. Basildon and Colchester hospitals were also discovered to have jeopardised safety in 2009.

What is more, Mr Burnham's efforts to quarantine this disaster suggest an unwillingness to face up to the scale of the problem that has been revealed. The failure in Stafford is not just the tale of one badly run hospital, but the failure of a regulatory system that did little to sound the alarm until very late in the day. From 2005 to 2008 Stafford hospital was judged by regulators and the Government to be performing well. It passed many inspections and the Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust even achieved foundation status, supposedly the benchmark of excellence.

Yet as yesterday's independent report on Stafford by Robert Francis QC outlines, the hospital was, during this time, drastically cutting staffing budgets and leaving patients to fester in soiled sheets. How did the inspectors miss this? The report says the hospital's management was pre-occupied with cost-cutting and meeting crude targets set by Whitehall. But so too, it would seem, were the regulators. The trust appears to have been judged on the quality of its balance sheet rather than the quality of care offered to patients.

The regulators not only turned a blind eye to the cost cuts, they seem to have rewarded the Trust for it. It is true that the Healthcare Commission, did, in the end, sound the alarm over Stafford after being alerted to higher than usual death rates. But that does not excuse the fact that it – along with other monitoring bodies – missed the problem for years, during which hundreds of patients died needlessly. The NHS's regulators clearly need to overhaul their own procedures.

As for ministers, rather than attempting to present what occurred in Stafford as an isolated example of bad practice, they should examine how their own targets contributed to the distortion of care on the ground. Lessons will never be learnt while the authorities insist on burying their heads in the sand.

And:

Up to 1,200 needless deaths, patients abused, staff bullied to meet targets... yet a secret inquiry into failing hospital says no one's to blame
By Fay Schlesinger, Andy Dolan and Tim Shipman
UK Daily Mail
Last updated at 1:45 PM on 25th February 2010

Not a single official has been disciplined over the worst-ever NHS hospital scandal, it emerged last night.

Up to 1,200 people lost their lives needlessly because Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust put government targets and cost-cutting ahead of patient care.

But none of the doctors, nurses and managers who failed them has suffered any formal sanction.

Indeed, some have either retired on lucrative pensions or have swiftly found new jobs.

Former chief executive Martin Yeates, who has since left with a £1million pension pot, six months' salary and a reported £400,000 payoff, did not even give evidence to the inquiry which detailed the scale of the scandal yesterday.

He was said to be medically unfit to do so, though he sent some information to chairman Robert Francis through his solicitor.

The devastating-report into the Stafford Hospital-shambles' laid waste to Labour's decade-long obsession with box-ticking and league tables.

The independent inquiry headed by Robert Francis QC found the safety of sick and dying patients was 'routinely neglected'. Others were subjected to ' inhumane treatment', 'bullying', 'abuse' and 'rudeness'.

The shocking estimated death toll, three times the previous figure of 400, has prompted calls for a full public inquiry.

Bosses at the Trust - officially an 'elite' NHS institution - were condemned for their fixation with cutting waiting times to hit Labour targets and leaving neglected patients to die.

But after a probe that was controversially held in secret, not a single individual has been publicly blamed.

The inquiry found that:

• Patients were left unwashed in their own filth for up to a month as nurses ignored their requests to use the toilet or change their sheets;
• Four members of one family. including a new-born baby girl. died within 18 months after of blunders at the hospital;
• Medics discharged patients hastily out of fear they risked being sacked for delaying;
• Wards were left filthy with blood, discarded needles and used dressings while bullying managers made whistleblowers too frightened to come forward.

Last night the General Medical Council announced it was investigating several doctors. The Nursing and Midwifery Council is investigating at least one nurse and is considering other cases.

Ministers suggested the report highlighted a dreadful 'local' scandal, but its overall conclusions are a blistering condemnation of Labour's approach to the NHS.

It found that hospital were so preoccupied with saving money and pursuit of elite foundation trust status that they 'lost sight of its fundamental responsibility to provide safe care'.

Health Secretary Andy Burnham accepted 18 recommendations from Mr Francis and immediately announced plans for a new inquiry, to be held in public, into how Department of Health and NHS regulators failed to spot the disaster.

But Julie Bailey, head of the campaign group Cure the NHS, condemned his response as 'outrageous' and backed Tory and Liberal Democrat demands for a full public inquiry into what went wrong.

Tory leader David Cameron said: 'We need openness, clarity and transparency to stop this happening again.' Gordon Brown described the scandal as a 'completely unacceptable management failure' and revealed that the cases of 300 patients are now under investigation.

He told MPs the Government was belatedly working on plans to 'strike off' hospital managers responsible for failures. The hospital could also lose its cherished foundation status.

Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said 'These awful events show how badly Labour has let down NHS patients. It should never again be possible for managers to put a tick in a box marked "target met" while patients are pushed off to a ward and left to die.'

The Francis probe was launched following a Healthcare Commission report on Stafford Hospital in March last year. It found that deaths at the hospital were 27 to 45 per cent higher than normal, meaning some 400 to 1,200 people died unnecessarily between 2005 and 2008.

This story continues and I urge you read the entire article. It's scary stuff....

Stafford Hospital caused ‘unimaginable suffering’
The Times
David Rose, Health Correspondent
February 25, 2010

Patients were routinely neglected or left “sobbing and humiliated” by staff at an NHS trust where at least 400 deaths have been linked to appalling care.

An independent inquiry found that managers at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust stopped providing safe care because they were preoccupied with government targets and cutting costs.

The inquiry report, published yesterday by Robert Francis, QC, included proposals for tough new regulations that could lead to managers at failing NHS trusts being struck off.

Staff shortages at Stafford Hospital meant that patients went unwashed for weeks, were left without food or drink and were even unable to get to the lavatory. Some lay in soiled sheets that relatives had to take home to wash, others developed infections or had falls, occasionally fatal. Many staff did their best but the attitude of some nurses “left a lot to be desired”.

The report, which follows reviews by the Care Quality Commission and the Department of Health, said that “unimaginable” suffering had been caused. Regulators said last year that between 400 and 1,200 more patients than expected may have died at the hospital from 2005 to 2008.

Andy Burnham, the Health Secretary, said there could be “no excuses” for the failures and added that the board that presided over the scandal had been replaced. An undisclosed number of doctors and at least one nurse are being investigated by the General Medical Council and Nursing and Midwifery Council.

Mr Burnham said it was a “longstanding anomaly” that the NHS did not have a robust way of regulating managers or banning them from working, as it does with doctors or nurses. “We must end the situation where a senior NHS manager who has failed in one job can simply move to another elsewhere,” he added. “This is not acceptable to the public and not conducive to promoting accountability and high professional standards.”

A system of professional accreditation for senior managers would be considered and the Mid Staffordshire trust might lose its foundation status.

Some NHS chief executives have received six-figure redundancy packages or moved to other trusts despite poor performance. Martin Yeates, the former chief executive at Mid Staffordshire, received pay rises that took his annual salary to £180,000, while standards at the trust deteriorated.

The Liberal Democrats claimed that he had also received a payoff of more than £400,000 after stepping down last March, though Mr Burnham said he had received “no more than his contractual entitlement”.

Again, it goes on and I suggest (assuming you think you can stomach it) you finish reading the article.... To say that government run healthcare is corrupt, dysfunctional and horribly managed is an understatement. Too which I respond to all the pro-single payer system supporters: "What makes you believe it will be any different here in the US?"

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

"UNBALANCED"?

Greenspan: U.S. recovery "extremely unbalanced"
On Tuesday February 23, 2010, 1:22 pm EST
By David Lawder
WASHINGTON (Reuters)

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said on Tuesday the U.S. economic recovery was "extremely unbalanced," driven largely by high earners benefiting from recovering stock markets and large corporations.

Small businesses and the jobless are still suffering from the aftermath of a credit crunch that was "by far the greatest financial crisis, globally, ever" -- including the 1930s Great Depression, said Greenspan in an address to a Credit Union National Association conference.

"It's really an extraordinarily unbalanced system because we're dealing with small businesses who are doing badly, small banks in trouble, and of course there is an extraordinarily large proportion of the unemployed in this country who have been out of work for more than six months and many more than a year," said Greenspan, who headed the Fed from 1987 to 2006.

With both housing starts and auto sales "dead in the water," he said he thought it would be difficult to make the case that the economy is poised for a strong rebound.

Greenspan did see signs pointing toward a modest recovery in job creation, saying that staffing levels at U.S. firms, which were deeply cut, remain below what is sustainable in the long run. But unemployment rate could still remain stubbornly high.

"The reason why the unemployment rate is going to be sticky is that as soon as employment starts picking up, a lot of the people who have not been seeking jobs are going to come back into the labor force, and they will keep the official unemployment rate in the 9 percent area, something like that," Greenspan said.

He also said it was important for U.S. policy makers to prevent perceived expectations of inflation that could push up yields on long-term U.S. Treasury securities, which would raise mortgage interest rates and prevent a recovery in the housing market.

The 10-year Treasury yield is the "one statistic that I watch every morning and every afternoon," he said.

At first I thought Al was talking about himself: "unbalanced" from all the 'irrational exuberance' regarding his appearance at the Credit Union National Association (not to be confused with the National Credit Union Association). For being one of a handful of people who played a huge role in the creation of this mess, you'd think he'd have more to say....

Go home to Andrea and watch the reruns of BHO's “immaculation”!

Sunday, February 21, 2010

We could "Call him Al" if anyone could find him...

Where's Al?
by Ken Connor
Townhall.com

In the face of the embarrassing Climategate scandal and an unprecedented winter season that has for the first time ever delivered measurable snowfall to all 50 states, Al Gore’s absence from the public stage has been conspicuous...

The bottom line is that intelligent, responsible people are getting tired of being made to feel guilty for every carbon credit consumed and every mile-per-gallon burned, especially when it’s becoming more and more clear that the current climate change hysteria is being fueled less by solid scientific evidence than by an extreme Green ideology that – much like Agent Smith in the Matrix movies – views humanity as a virus, a plague upon the earth that must be contained and ultimately eradicated. For the extreme enviro-ideologues, mankind’s devastating impact on the earth is a foregone conclusion; the appeal to “science” is simply a clever public relations tactic.

There aren’t many fields of scientific inquiry where the level of negligence, irresponsibility, and carelessness that characterizes the study of global climate trends would be allowed to prevail. Scientists take pride, above all, in their dedication to The Method. In order for a hypothesis to gain any traction, it much be researched, tested, replicated, and analyzed. Any 8th-grader will tell you that sloppy work in setting up your experiment, failure to account for relevant variables, or insufficient presentation of data will get you an F on your end-of-semester project. Yet somehow the entire globe has been taken captive by an ideology driven by shoddy science.

Algore and his crazy ideas runs parallel to Jim Carter giving advice to any president. The good news for Jim is that at least BHO is making him look good....

Saturday, February 20, 2010

But I'm sure they'll get a "fair" trial.....

Holder admits nine Obama Dept. of Justice officials worked for terrorist detainees, offers no details
By: Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent
Washington Examiner
02/19/10 3:52 PM EST

Attorney General Eric Holder says nine Obama appointees in the Justice Department have represented or advocated for terrorist detainees before joining the Justice Department. But he does not reveal any names beyond the two officials whose work has already been publicly reported. And all the lawyers, according to Holder, are eligible to work on general detainee matters, even if there are specific parts of some cases they cannot be involved in. Holder's admission comes in the form of an answer to a question posed last November by Republican Sen. Charles Grassley. Noting that one Obama appointee, Principal Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal, formerly represented Osama bin Laden's driver, and another appointee, Jennifer Daskal, previously advocated for detainees at Human Rights Watch, Grassley asked Holder to give the Senate Judiciary Committee "the names of political appointees in your department who represent detainees or who work for organizations advocating on their behalf…the cases or projects that these appointees work with respect to detainee prior to joining the Justice Department…and the cases or projects relating to detainees that have worked on since joining the Justice Department."


Why is it the more I learn about this adnministation the more uneasy I get about our national security?

Saturday, February 06, 2010

The end of the global warming hoax.....

The great global warming collapse
As the science scandals keep coming, the air has gone out of the climate-change movement
Margaret Wente
The Globe and Mail

But now, even leading scientists and environmental groups admit the IPCC is facing a crisis of credibility that makes the Climategate affair look like small change.

“The global warming movement as we have known it is dead,” the brilliant analyst Walter Russell Mead says in his blog on The American Interest. It was done in by a combination of bad science and bad politics.

I'll bet anyone no one in the MSM picks up on these type of stories....

Am I paranoid or does this make sense...?

Color me a paranoid, but this seems to make sense....

Tuesday, February 02, 2010

Oh no, the media isn't in the tank for BHO....

Backdoor taxes to hit middle class
Mon Feb 1, 4:09 PM
By Terri Cullen

Full story before being pulled...

NEW YORK (Reuters.com) --The Obama administration's plan to cut more than $1 trillion from the deficit over the next decade relies heavily on so-called backdoor tax increases that will result in a bigger tax bill for middle-class families.

In the 2010 budget tabled by President Barack Obama on Monday, the White House wants to let billions of dollars in tax breaks expire by the end of the year -- effectively a tax hike by stealth.

While the administration is focusing its proposal on eliminating tax breaks for individuals who earn $250,000 a year or more, middle-class families will face a slew of these backdoor increases.

The targeted tax provisions were enacted under the Bush administration's Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001. Among other things, the law lowered individual tax rates, slashed taxes on capital gains and dividends, and steadily scaled back the estate tax to zero in 2010.

If the provisions are allowed to expire on December 31, the top-tier personal income tax rate will rise to 39.6 percent from 35 percent. But lower-income families will pay more as well: the 25 percent tax bracket will revert back to 28 percent; the 28 percent bracket will increase to 31 percent; and the 33 percent bracket will increase to 36 percent. The special 10 percent bracket is eliminated.

Investors will pay more on their earnings next year as well, with the tax on dividends jumping to 39.6 percent from 15 percent and the capital-gains tax increasing to 20 percent from 15 percent. The estate tax is eliminated this year, but it will return in 2011 -- though there has been talk about reinstating the death tax sooner.

Millions of middle-class households already may be facing higher taxes in 2010 because Congress has failed to extend tax breaks that expired on January 1, most notably a "patch" that limited the impact of the alternative minimum tax. The AMT, initially designed to prevent the very rich from avoiding income taxes, was never indexed for inflation. Now the tax is affecting millions of middle-income households, but lawmakers have been reluctant to repeal it because it has become a key source of revenue.

Without annual legislation to renew the patch this year, the AMT could affect an estimated 25 million taxpayers with incomes as low as $33,750 (or $45,000 for joint filers). Even if the patch is extended to last year's levels, the tax will hit American families that can hardly be considered wealthy -- the AMT exemption for 2009 was $46,700 for singles and $70,950 for married couples filing jointly.

Middle-class families also will find fewer tax breaks available to them in 2010 if other popular tax provisions are allowed to expire. Among them:

* Taxpayers who itemize will lose the option to deduct state sales-tax payments instead of state and local income taxes;

* The $250 teacher tax credit for classroom supplies;

* The tax deduction for up to $4,000 of college tuition and expenses;

* Individuals who don't itemize will no longer be able to increase their standard deduction by up to $1,000 for property taxes paid;

* The first $2,400 of unemployment benefits are taxable, in 2009 that amount was tax-free.

Now....

Advisory: Backdoor taxes to hit middle class

Mon Feb 1, 8:07 pm ET
The story Backdoor taxes to hit middle class has been withdrawn. A replacement story will run later in the week.