It will come as a

terrible shock to some of you that I don't support the stimulus plan. I didn't support either of the previous

bailouts either. Perhaps I'm cynical but any time a politician starts using words like catastrophe and urgent I get

paranoid. A package this large, spending this much money needs to be carefully reviewed, not rammed down our throats

with all these threats of imminent disaster.

So far, from what I have heard and read of the stimulus plan, I

don't see it as anything but a new tax and spend bill of huge proportions. Get the government of our backs, stop

spending money we don't have and let those that made foolish mistakes suffer the consequences of their actions. It

will be painful but, in my opinion, less painful in the long term than adding still more debt resulting in still

higher taxes which can only lead to still more burden on an already stressed economy. In my mind it is more a

question of crash and burn now or crash and burn later, which will be the more painful is the queestion and I think

the later will be many times more painful.

All that aside, I have always opposed universal healthcare, the

foundations of which are being laid as a part of the stimulus package. Universal healthcare is pretty much a

universal disaster in almost every place it has been tried as evidenced by the fact that anybody who can afford to

go elsewhere and pay for medical care does. On top of that, our government is broke! We are up to our eyeballs in

debt, they say Social Security is bankrupt and now they want to take over (mis)management of healthcare? I see

another white elephant where we the people are going to get less than we pay for, we will end up paying more over

time and getting less for our money.

Below is an article that was sent to me today. I do not vouch for the

acuracy of the data but I believe he makes some valid points.

Bel
*************************


Tuesday,

February 10, 2009

To: Friends & Supporters

From: Gary Bauer


If You Are Elderly

– Be

Afraid, Very Afraid

President Obama’s press conference last night was long on fear
and short on facts. Once

again, he warned the country that our "crisis"
will become a "catastrophe" if we don’t immediately pass his

spending
bill. I always get suspicious when a politician wants everyone to shut
up and vote on a 700-page bill.

You can bet there are a lot of
"surprises" hidden in the fine print.

In the last 24 hours, one of those

surprises has been discovered
and analyzed by conservative researchers. It is now being exposed by
conservative

talk radio

–[SIZE=2

] the same folks the Left wants to force off the
air in the name of "fairness." Who would have

guessed that our president
would hide in a "must pass" piece of legislation a provision that
"rations" health care

and makes it more likely that your Granny will be
left to suffer or die?

The legislation sets up a new

bureaucracy, the National
Coordinator of Health Information Technology. This office will monitor
the medical

treatments your doctor is providing you to make sure that
Washington agrees that those treatments are appropriate

and
cost-effective. Another office, the Federal Coordinating Council of
Comparative Effectiveness Research, will

slow down the use of new
medications and technologies because new treatments drive up costs.

It sounds

complicated, but don’t be confused. Europe already has
those offices and former South Dakota Senator Tom Daschle

wrote about
them in a book last year. It was this "expertise" that led President
Obama to nominate Daschle as

Secretary of Health and Human Services, so
he could serve as the architect of the planned nationalized health

care
scheme. But here’s the bottom line of how it works in Europe and what
Daschle and others want to implement

here: The federal government will
decide your medical treatment with COST being the main consideration.
Daschle

argues in his book that instead of treating seniors, they will
have to become more accepting of the conditions that

come with age!

Betsy McCaughey, former Lieutenant Governor of New York and a
health care analyst, points out

that this socialized medicine approach
would be disastrous. In 2006, in England, the health care board ruled
that

elderly citizens with macular degeneration could not receive
treatment with a new drug until they were blind in one

eye! It took
three years of public protests to reverse the policy. But that was just
the tip of the iceberg.



Last year, one thousand British doctors were fighting hard to
reform Britain’s health care system because that

"progressive" nation
also has one of the highest cancer mortality rates in Europe. Why?
Because some bean counting

bureaucrats in the basement of the British
Health Department decided it isn’t "cost effective" to treat

cancer
patients. Like Nancy Pelosi trying to justify birth control in the
stimulus bill, the Left sees people as a

burden to Big Government’s
bottom line.

Consider this irony. A powerful politician who has long
championed

government health care had a seizure last year. In Canada or
Great Britain, "average Joes" might have to wait

months for an MRI. Not
this politician. Twenty-four hours later, he was diagnosed with a rare
form of malignant

brain cancer. Unlike "average Joes" in Canada and
Great Britain, this politician didn’t have to wait months to see

a
specialist. Within two weeks he was treated by some of the world’s
foremost experts on brain cancer.

Ted

Kennedy is alive today probably because we don’t have
socialized medicine. The free market, while flawed, is still

the best
system man has devised. I’m sure there is room for improvement, but I’m
equally sure that government

isn’t the solution. The Europeans and
Canadians flocking here to get health care denied them by their
socialist

governments obviously agree. But where will Americans flee
under the new socialist order?

Here’s the danger

inherent in government-run health care. Just
like a child living in a parent’s house has to abide by the

parent’s
rules, you will be treated like a child. If you expect Uncle Sam to pay
for your health care, then

Washington bureaucrats will dictate whether
saving your health is too costly. The elderly always suffer under such

a
system. By the way, what the heck is this doing in a "stimulus bill"?
And does it help explain why our new

president is so intent on spending
a trillion dollars after only one week of congressional debate?



* * * *

*
American Values
2800 Shirlington Road
Suite 950
Arlington, VA 22206

Phone: 703-671-9700
Fax:

703-671-1680

EMAIL GARY BAUER

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