Sebelius to have health regulatory powers without having to get the approval of Congress first.

HHS would become federal giant under Senate plan
By: Susan Ferrechio
Chief Congressional Correspondent
November 26, 2009

A quick search of the Senate health bill will bring up "secretary" 2,500 times.

That's because Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius would be awarded unprecedented new powers under the proposal, including the authority to decide what medical care should be covered by insurers as well as the terms and conditions of coverage and who should receive it.

"The legislation lists 1,697 times where the secretary of health and humans services is given the authority to create, determine or define things in the bill," said Devon Herrick, a health care expert at the National Center for Policy Analysis.

For instance, on Page 122 of the 2,079-page bill, the secretary is given the power to establish "the basic per enrollee, per month cost, determined on average actuarial basis, for including coverage under a qualified health care plan."

The HHS secretary would also have the power to decide where abortion is allowed under a government-run plan, which has drawn opposition from Republicans and some moderate Democrats.

And the bill even empowers the department to establish a Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation that would have the authority to make cost-saving cuts without having to get the approval of Congress first.

"It's a huge amount of power being shifted to HHS, and much of it is highly discretionary," said Edmund Haislmaier, an expert in health care policy and insurance markets at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.

Haislmaier said one the greatest powers HHS would gain from the bill is the authority to regulate insurance. States currently hold this power, and under the Senate bill, the federal government would usurp it from them. This could lead to the federal government putting restrictions and changes in place that destabilize the private insurance market by forcing companies to lower premiums and other charges, he said.

"Health and Human Services ... doesn't have any experience with this," Haislmaier said. "I'm looking at the potential for this whole thing to just blow up on people because they have no idea what they are doing. Who in the federal government regulates insurance today? Nobody."

The health care reform legislation would rely on the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force for recommendations as to what kind of screening and preventive care should be covered. Last week, the group, which operates under HHS, drew sharp criticism for advising that mammograms should begin at age 50, a decade later than the current standard.

Critics of the bill said this was an example of how the new bill could empower HHS to alter health care delivery, but Democrats argue they would rather have the government making these decisions.

"There's an insurance company bureaucrat in between the patient and her doctor right now," Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., said on ABC's "This Week."

sferrechio@washingtonexaminer.com
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/HHS-would-become-federal-giant-under-Senate-plan-8586777-73718162.html

Climategate e-mails sweep America

Climategate e-mails sweep America may scuttle Barack Obama's Cap and Trade laws
by Gerald Warner Politics Last updated: November 26th, 2009


Just a few considerations in addition to previous remarks about the explosion of the East Anglia Climategate e-mails in America. The reaction is growing exponentially there. Fox News, Barack Obama’s Nemesis, is now on the case, trampling all over Al Gore’s organic vegetable patch and breaking the White House windows. It has extracted some of the juiciest quotes from the e-mails and displayed them on-screen, with commentaries. Joe Public, coast-to-coast, now knows, thanks to the clowns at East Anglia’s CRU, just how royally he has been screwed.

Senator James Inhofe’s Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works has written to all the relevant US Government agencies, acquainting them with the nature of the e-mails. But the real car crash for Obama is on Capitol Hill where it is now confidently believed his Cap and Trade climate legislation is toast. It was always problematic; but with a growing awakening to the scale of the scientific imposture sweeping the world, as far as the Antipodes, the clever money is on Cap and Trade laws failing to pass, with many legislators sceptical and the mid-term elections looming ever closer.
At the more domestic level, the proposed ban on incandescent light bulbs, so supinely accepted in this servile state of Britain, is now provoking a huge backlash in America. US citizens do not like the government coming into their houses and putting their lights out. Voters may not understand the cut and thrust of climate debate at the technical level, but they know when the Man from Washington has crossed their threshold uninvited.
The term that Fox News is now applying to the Climategate e-mails is “game-changer”. For the first time, Anthropogenic Global Warming cranks are on the defensive, losing their cool and uttering desperate mantras such as “You can be sceptical, not denial.” Gee, thanks, guys. In fact we shall be whatever we want to be, without asking your permission.
 Read the full article
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/geraldwarner/100018034/climategate-%20%20e-mails-sweep-america-may-scuttle-barack-obamas-cap-and-trade-laws/

Obama actually done something I agree with

I think it's great that first state dinner was with the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Wife. I like India and it's people like most countries it's not a perfect one, but I really have an appreciation for their culture. It's a very complex culture and has done a pretty good job in blending all the religious together. It can't be easy to make everyone happy. We know that too well here in the US. Indian culture is much more complex with many more people.

Obscene Wealthy are Getting Poorer

November 27, 2009
Dubai in deep water as ripples from debt crisis spread

http://artfreedomandhappiness.blogspot.com/2008/11/obsene-wealth-and-excess-in-middle-east.html


Obscene Wealthy are getting poorer 

The impression left by the Climategate emails is that the global warming game has been rigged from the start.

But the furor over these documents is not about tone, colloquialisms or even whether climatologists are nice people in private. The real issue is what the messages say about the way the much-ballyhooed scientific consensus on global warming was arrived at in the first place, and how even now a single view is being enforced. In short, the impression left by the correspondence among Messrs. Mann and Jones and others is that the climate-tracking game has been rigged from the start.

According to this privileged group, only those whose work has been published in select scientific journals, after having gone through the "peer-review" process, can be relied on to critique the science. And sure enough, any challenges that critics have lobbed at climatologists from outside this clique are routinely dismissed and disparaged.

This past September, Mr. Mann told a New York Times reporter in one of the leaked emails that: "Those such as [Stephen] McIntyre who operate almost entirely outside of this system are not to be trusted." Mr. McIntyre is a retired Canadian businessman who fact-checks the findings of climate scientists and often publishes the mistakes he finds—including some in Mr. Mann's work—on his Web site, Climateaudit.org. http://www.climateaudit.org/ He holds the rare distinction of having forced Mr. Mann to publish a correction to one of his more-famous papers.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703499404574559630382048494.html?mod=googlenews_wsj