Minnesota News, Weather

Free Live and Custom Radio

advertisement | your ad here

Sue Jeffers

Contact Info

On air: Saturdays, 4:00pm-7:00pm
Call: 651-989-5855

Email: suejeffers@twincitiesnewstalk.com
Facebook: Become a Fan
Twitter: Follow Me

Take This Obama

To hear Howard Stern conduct an informal poll in Harlem:
Click Here

Rich States and Poor States

See Where Minnesota Ranks

Why Conservatives Are So Mean?

Taxing and Spending by the Obama Administration

ON DEMAND

VIEW ALL

Photos

SOPA Strike

Websites blackout in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act and the PROTECT IP Act.
View Gallery
Cocktails and Conversations at the Chanhassen American ...

Bob Davis and Tom Emmer speak to fans at the American Legion in Chanhassen for Cocktails and Conversation.
View Gallery
The Obilgatory Righty Babe Gallery

Twenty-two of conservatism's best representations of the better half.
View Gallery

More Photos

Saturday, January 14, 2012

Your Voice Is Needed

OBAMACARE ACTION ITEM:

Find below a state government request for you to provide public comments on the Obamacare "essential health benefits" requirement for individual and small group insurance policies.

Note that this list of benefits (health care services), whether you agree or find them objectionable, will be imposed by the State....as allowed by the federal government.

The Feds are being gentle now, allowing "flexibility" for States to do as they wish, but that is likely temporary. Once the State has acquiesced to the presumption of federal control, expect the Feds to mandate the health care services they want included, and exclude the services they do not.

This provision of Obamacare again demonstrates the unconstitutional imposition of federal power on States beyond the enumerated powers allowed by the U.S. Constitution.

TAKE ACTION:

The deadline for comments is Sunday, Jan 15: HealthReform.MN@state.mn.us (write "Essential Health Benefits" in the subject line of the email)

WHAT TO SAY:

Let me suggest a simple statement of disagreement with the unconstitutional imposition of the federal health reform law through the "essential health benefits" provision, and also a suggestion that the State simply refuse to implement the law or allow it to be imposed on them by the Federal government.

ALSO: please cc or email me separately and tell me you sent a comment: twila@cchfreedom.org

Twila Brase RN, PHN

President

Citizens' Council for Health Freedom

161 St. Anthony Ave, Ste. 923

Saint Paul, MN 55103

www.cchfreedom.org
651-646-8935

Saturday, January 14, 2012

Healthcare Update

Five Key Health Care Issues in 2012

Dan Diamond, a contributing editor of California Healthline, offers five health care issues to watch in 2012. After describing President Obama's 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) as a "gift that keeps on giving" to health policy wonks and health care reporters, he presented his list:

"The Supreme Court battle over ACA" - Is the law constitutional? The hearing in March assures a ruling by June.

"The payment reforms contained in ACA" - Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs), bundled payments, cost-control pilots, and quality-improvement initiatives could reshape how health care is paid for.

"The health insurance exchanges mandated by ACA" - Facing the need for technical know-how and "considerable financial investment," most states are wrestling with whether to implement an exchange or default to the HHS-run exchange. Both are essentially federal exchanges controlled by a bevy of proposed and yet-to-be-proposed regulations.

"The health IT needed to bring ACA to life" - Sophisticated health information technologies (IT) will be used to monitor patients and "allow providers to start combing through large health information sets." In addition, a proposed rule for governance of the Nationwide Health Information Network (NwHIN), formerly the National Health Information Network (NHIN) is expected early this year.

"The election to decide ACA's future" - Who will be elected and what will that mean for Obamacare?

Source:

"Five Health Care Issues To Watch in 2012," Dan Diamond, California Healthline, December 21, 2011.

[Back to Contents]

Supreme Court Soon to Be Deluged with Briefs... Including Ours

Argument before the U.S. Supreme Court to determine the constitutionality of Obamacare is set for March 26-28 . A ruling can be expected by June. These unprecedented three days of argument on three cases, most notably U.S. Department of Health and Human Services v. State of Florida, et al., will proceed as follows:

Day 1: Argument on whether the Court can even rule on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) before it takes effect in 2014;

Day 2: Argument on the constitutionality of the ACA's individual mandate to buy government-approved health insurance;

Day 3: Argument on whether striking down the mandate means striking down the entire law and whether the Medicaid expansion is permissible.

The Court requires attorneys for the Obama administration and the state of Florida to deliver detailed legal briefs. It also expects to receive a substantial number of friend-of-the-court (amicus) briefs from the public on both sides of the issue. January 6 was the deadline for the first round of briefs from the legal teams. The first amicus brief was filed by AARP on December 22 in support of Obamacare.

In a sign of things to come, AARP spins a tale of untruths and half-truths in hopes of persuading the Court to rule in favor of the administration. AARP argues hypocritically that if the law is struck down, people with "pre-existing and chronic conditions" will not be protected from discriminatory health insurers. However, Chris Jacobs from the Republican Policy Committee notes in an email:

This assertion is particularly ironic, given that 1) AARP itself discriminates against people with pre-existing conditions, slapping waiting periods on sick individuals who apply for its lucrative Medigap policies, and 2) AARP admits in its brief that it did NOT act to end this discrimination against people with pre-existing conditions in Obamacare, as none of the organization's "six key priorities" for health "reform" involved accepting all Medigap applicants, regardless of health status. It's also noteworthy that AARP's "Statement of Interest" in the amicus brief didn't mention that the organization could receive over $1 billion in new profits thanks to Obamacare.

Many trees will be consumed by the surge of paper about to descend on the steps of the Supreme Court between now and the end of February. Citizens' Council for Health Freedom will be among many organizations filing amicus briefs to oppose the law's unconstitutional individual mandate, which even one HillaryCare guru, Paul Starr, now says "has been one of the most serious political and policy mistakes of recent decades."

That said, if the Court rules in favor of the Obama administration, the ruling will likely not be the end of the Obamacare story. Constitutionally minded Tea Party groups springing up nationwide have only begun their nascent campaign for less government, lower taxes, and more freedom.

The Supreme Court declares on its website, "The Court stands as the final arbiter of the law and guardian of constitutional liberties." However former House Speaker Newt Gingrich claims otherwise. In a dramatic speech at the Value Voters Summit last year, he said, "[T]he constitutional judgments of the president and Congress are entitled to as much respect as those of the Court," reports National Review Online.

Although liberal pundits claim that "nothing is unconstitutional until courts declares it to be so," others agree with Mr. Gingrich. This has been the case since early in American history. For example, Thomas Jefferson stated in his 1798 Kentucky Resolution,

The government created by this compact [the Constitution] was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself, since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers; but that, as in all other cases of compact among parties having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress.

In the Virginia Resolve of 1798, U.S. Senator John Taylor wrote that the powers of the federal government are "limited by the plain sense and intention" of the Constitution and are "no further valid than they are authorized by the grants enumerated in that compact." Other leaders who followed Jefferson's thinking urged citizens to use nullification and interposition to counter any federal law that violated the Constitution. In his book Tyranny Unmasked, Taylor further wrote,

If the State and Federal governments are political departments, considered theoretically, as important for the preservation of liberty, as the legislative, executive, and judicial departments of these same governments, it cannot be even imagined, that a limb of either was intended to be invested with a power of overturning the entire structure of the other. It would be like telling a stranger, that the chamber of the Supreme Court was the whole Capitol, because the architect had covertly invested that chamber, with a power of swallowing up all the rest....

Being an essential principle for preserving theoretical liberty, used by the Federal constitution, it never could have designed to destroy it, by investing five or six men, installed for life, with a power of regulating the constitutional rights of all political departments, or at least of the most important. [Emphasis added.]

President Abraham Lincoln, who committed a few unconstitutional acts of his own - declaring martial law and suspending habeas corpus during the War Between the States (Civil War) - nonetheless defied the U.S. Supreme Court by issuing passports to black citizens. He also stated in his first inaugural address,

[T]he candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions, the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.

This June could turn out to be the last chapter in the book called "Obamacare," or it could be the first chapter in the story of a much longer fight for American health freedom and the protection of constitutional liberties.

Sources:

"Obamacare's Mandates and Pre-Existing Conditions," (email), Chris Jacobs, Republican Study Committee, January 5, 2012.

"Brief of AARP as Amicus Curiae in Support of Petitioners (MINIMUM COVERAGE PROVISION)," U.S. Dept of HHS v. State of Florida, et al., Supreme Court of the United States, AARP, December 22, 2011.

"Five Health Care Issues To Watch in 2012," Dan Diamond, California Healthline, December 21, 2011.

"The Health Care Mandate Really Was a Mistake," Paul Starr, The New Republic, January 2, 2012, http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/99072/the-health-care-mandate-really-was-mistake; accessed January 6, 2012.

"Questioning the Supreme Court's Supremacy," Joel Alicea, National Review Online, October 25, 2011.

"Lincolnian Judicial Tyranny," Thomas J. DiLorenzo, June 26, 2003, http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo48.html; accessed January 6, 2012.

Tyranny Unmasked, U.S. Senator John Taylor, 1821.

"Habeas corpus in the United States," Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habeas_corpus_in_the_United_States; accessed January 6, 2012.

"First Inaugural Address," Abraham Lincoln, March 4, 1861, http://www.nationalcenter.org/LincolnFirstInaugural.html; accessed January 6, 2012.

"About Us," The Supreme Court of the United States, http://www.supremecourt.gov/about/about_us.aspx; accessed

January 6, 2012.

[Back to Contents]

Federal Advisory Committee Recommends Weakening Patient-Consent Rights for EHR Research Data

A federal advisory committee on health information technology (HIT) policy recommends weakening patient-consent rights for electronic health record (EHR) research data, according to Health Data Management.

"In particular," the October article notes, the HIT Policy Committee suggests that "use of EHR data for treatment purposes or to evaluate the safety, quality and effectiveness of prevention and treatment activities should not require patient consent, institutional review board approval or even minimal registration, according to the federal advisory body." [Emphasis added]

Health Data Management previously reported:

Twenty years have passed since the federal Common Rule governing the protection of human subjects was adopted....

"The current regulations governing human subjects research were developed years ago when research was predominately conducted at universities, colleges and medical institutions, and each study generally took place at only a single site," according to [a Health and Human Services] notice, which includes comment requests on dozens of questions. "Although the regulations have been amended over the years, they have not kept pace with the evolving human research enterprise, the proliferation of multi-site clinical trials and observational studies, the expansion of health services research, research in the social and behavioral sciences, and research involving databases, the Internet and biological specimen repositories, and the use of advanced technologies such as genomics." [Emphasis added]

Among the many possible changes, HHS is considering adopting the HIPAA privacy and security rules, in lieu of the Common Rule, for determining what constitutes "individually identifiable," a "limited data set" and "de-identified information." [Emphasis added]

Would eliminating patient consent for EHR data use violate the long-standing ethic of consent that evolved from the atrocities of Nazi Germany? The ethics of consent were embedded in the Nuremberg Code, which states up front: "The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential. This means that the person involved should have legal capacity to give consent...." [Emphasis added]

Wouldn't this also apply to an individuals' bodily fluids and DNA?

All government officials - from unelected HHS policymakers to Congress - should uphold the ethic of consent for all data, including genetic information. Any weakening of the ethic of consent weakens basic human rights.

Sources:

"Federal Advisors Seek Easier Secondary Use of EHR Data," by Joseph Goedert, Health Data Management, October 12, 2011: http://www.healthdatamanagement.com/news/ehr-secondary-data-hhs-research-43386-1.html

"HHS Signals Big Changes Coming for Handling Research Data," by Joseph Goedert, Health Data Management, July 22, 2011: http://www.healthdatamanagement.com/news/human-research-data-security-rule-42841-1.html

"Nuremberg Code," Federal Office of Human Subjects Research (OHSR), National Institutes of Health: http://ohsr.od.nih.gov/guidelines/nuremberg.html

[Back to Contents]

UK Survey Finds Patients Postpone Seeking Treatment Out of Confidentiality Concerns

Patients in the United Kingdom are withholding information from their health care providers over fear of privacy breaches, according to a recent nationwide poll of over 1,000 patients.

ComputerWeekly.com reports, "A total of 40% of those polled said they would put off seeking treatment if a medical [organization] had a poor record on security. Over half said they would withhold information from clinicians for the same reason."

Quoting the survey's main findings:

38.3% said they have, or would, put off seeking treatment for a sensitive health condition due to privacy concerns.

53.6% reported they have, or would, withhold information about a sensitive personal medical matter from a healthcare provider with a poor record of maintaining patient privacy.

Over 61% reported they were very or somewhat worried that their identity could be used to commit fraud or used by criminals to target them, their family or home.

62.1% approved of having national league tables to show the best and worst hospitals for data security - only 9.7% disapproved.

73.3% said that better enforcement of rules and regulations would cut security breaches.

86.5% think that a serious breach of personal data would do severe or considerable damage to a hospital's reputation.

87.1% agreed that chief executives and senior management should be sacked or fined if they were aware of risks but failed to act and there is a serious breach. Only 1.3% disagreed.

87.2% strongly or somewhat agreed that the NHS [National Health Service] should monitor who looks at their files.

Sources:

"Fears Over Medical Record Privacy Could Deter Patients Seeking Treatment, Finds Survey," by Karl Flinders, ComputerWeekly, October 13, 2011: http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2011/10/13/248146/Fears-over-medical-record-privacy-could-deter-patients-seeking-treatment-finds.htm

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

MN GOP Chair Candidate Forum

December 27, 2011
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

HD39B Republicans of Inver Grove Heights, South St. Paul and Sunfish Lake are proud
to host the only MNGOP Chair Candidate Forum on December 29, 2011.

Candidates participating in the event are CD2 Republican Chairman Terry McCall, political
consultant Pat Shortridge and entrepreneur Todd McIntyre. Candidates seeking endorsement
for the United States Senate will also be in attendance but not participating in the forum.
(Anthony Hernandez and Joe Arwood confirmed.) U.S. Fourth Congressional candidate
Dan Flood will lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

The event will be moderated by Mark J. Westpfahl, Chair of HD39B and Deputy Lead of the
Minnesota Republican BPOU Chairs Caucus, along with Jack Tomczak, host of Late Debate.

Delegates will elect a new chair in St. Cloud on December 31st.

EVENT DETAILS:
WHAT: MNGOP Chair Candidate Forum presented by HD39B
WHEN: 6:00-8:00pm (doors open at 5:30), December 29, 2011
WHERE: Wentworth Library, 199 East Wentworth Ave West St. Paul, MN 55118
COST: Free

To Submit Questions for the Candidates:
Email: chair@hd39b
Phone: 651-246-8574
Website: www.hd39b.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/events/200031453415909/
Twitter: @hd39b or @MarkJWestpfahl