Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

The Democrats are celebrating the passage of the health care legislation. If this had been a super bowl game, it would be like they one by one point after being able to get being able to re-kick a just missed field goal. Allowed after the defense was called off sides; after a false start by the offense, which was missed by the game officials. Its not a great victory. We will see how many fans the democrats have when the 2010 elections take place.
With President Obama signature the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is now law
we can now look at the final language. Opponents of the health care bill need to point out the negatives within this bill, along with a reverence to where in the law the provision is located.
The Democrats need to come with two positive items for every negative item. They also need to start working on a piece of popular legislation. They need to pass a popular bill, which Republicans could not vote against. If they work on any issue as unpopular as health care, it will continue to push them toward losing the House or the Senate.
Much of the legislation takes effect on Jan 1st 2014, if the Democrats lose both the House and the Senate, and then the White House in 2012; They may find themselves having to fight to keep the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act from being repealed. It would be a mistake for them to eliminate the filibuster.
Now is the time to closely examine the new law. I know I will be spending a good amount of time researching the new law.

Do they ever get it right?

Its amazing how often someone will bring up some topic at work and how wrong they have the facts. When someone brings up an issue they are probably wrong about the topic 60 percent of the time. Certain parts of it may be right but mostly they have it wrong. It takes about five minutes of research to discover they are wrong. The latest of this concerns Rush Limbaugh. I am told about how Rush is back tracking on a statement he made. I am told he had said he would MOVE out of the country if the Obama health care reform bill passes. I was listening the day after and heard his comments concerning the news stories that came out. I would explained that Rush would leave the country to get his health care and not for the purpose of moving out. I am then assured that is not what he said originally and he is only saying that now but there is a recording of his original statement which you could listen to him talk about moving out of the country. This is just huge. They are salivating over this. There so happy that he said such a stupid thing. Mind you one person was a Conservative Republican Rush fan who at time seems to have lost all ability to reason. Seems like he needs some kind reassurance that his changing sides and going off the deep end for Obama. Well I come home from work and do a google search on this. On the Huffington post

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/09/limbaugh-ill-leave-us-if_n_491536.html

your read about it AND you hear a recording of it in complete context. Rush takes a call from Richard in Naples who asks a two-part question. 1) Where would [Rush Limbaugh] go for health care? And 2) what happens to the doctors? Would they be forced to go in to a federal program? He consider that doctors may be able to opt out and then have a small private practice where clients would pay a retainer, but he does not know if the senate bill outlawed it. So if everything was implemented, and doctors were forced to participate in the federal program he would leave the country and go to Costa Rica. For anyone to listen to this and believe Rush said he will move to Costa Rica, well, that might be just wishful thinking or they have lost the ability to think.

Obama wastes time

President Obama should have found someone on the opposing party and worked with the person to create legislation. Also find an issue that would have a high majority of support. He needed to learn some lessons from Clinton. Political views and the support for them are like the bell shaped curve. To each end the amount of support is low. Only in the middle do you find high support. Finding those middle issues will allow you to accomplish things, and not waste time was key to a successful first year. Take those issues to the left of the center, which have more popular support. It could allow some of the other issues further to the left to become more acceptable. Either that other views will be more acceptable, or some will be willing to give something that is less desirable a chance if first something they desire is given to them. You waste time when you do too much too soon. One should understand political reality. A senator who has not served much in Washington may not fully understand those realities. President Obama has done damage. He needed to have had such a spectacular year, that people would not want to see his agenda stopped. Instead people worry about President Obama being out of control and want to see some control brought in.

Bill Nye made me more skeptical

A few years ago I was listening to my XM radio as I was heading to a restaurant for some spaghetti in an attempt to gain weight. He continued to emphasis the term ‘climate change’. I wondered why ‘climate change’ and not global warming? He never explained why a change in terminology. So as I ate my spaghetti I thought about why one would chose the term climate change over global warming. If the evidence for global warming was weaker, one might need to change what you called the evidence presented before you. Maybe he never believed in global warming, and simply wanted to present an alternative. Would the continuing use of the term global warming force one to find evidence for warming? While using climate change, would allow one to be open up to other possibilities.

For the person wanting to use the term global warming, I submit this for your consideration. If all countries in the world began performing on 10 different actions which if each one started in the next 5 years, global warming would be eliminated. Would you, as a global warming believer, be happy if everyone agreed and did those 10 actions? The person who believes in global warming and only uses climate change because it’s a more accepted term may say “YES!”. I would want to know why? The person who believes in climate change would refrain for drawing a conclusion. The person would need to know how it would effect the various climates and not just the GLOBAL temperatures. You could have enough areas of cooling combined with areas of warming resulting in no GLOBAL warming. The result could be disastrous, but no more GLOBAL warming.

People continued to use the term ‘Global Warming’. I would wonder if they worked on making the evidence fit this preconceived conclusion. One could allow for different scenarios under climate change, and allow the evidence to lead wherever it leads too. One could and I will continue to be skeptical of the evidence. I want to know that others could have access to the raw data and able to look how the models are created to determine if they are made well.

To stop questioning things is to stop thinking and I will not stop thinking.