Scary health plan stuff in current Obama stimulus plan

Very interesting and scary information I just read about the current proposed stimulus plan. This column in Bloomberg.com by Betsy McCaughey details how this stimulus would create a new Health Information Technology organization.

In his stump speeches pushing the plan, Obama is only mentioning the parts about digitizing health care records to ensure easier access / flow of information / health records. I don't have a problem with this part. It's the parts about government taking over health care and dictating what treatments our doctors can prescribe that scares me. As McCaughey writes:

But the bill goes further. One new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective. The goal is to reduce costs and “guide” your doctor’s decisions (442, 446). These provisions in the stimulus bill are virtually identical to what Daschle prescribed in his 2008 book, “Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis.” According to Daschle, doctors have to give up autonomy and “learn to operate less like solo practitioners.”

There are many things like this contained in the stimulus package that make me strongly oppose passage. See previous post for a plan I do support.

I support THIS stimulus plan

Click here for a link to a conservative plan on how to stimulate / improve our economy and jobs. This plan, by a conservative group called American Solutions, stands in stark contrast to the pork-laden bill proposed by Obama and the Democrat Congress that serves more to stimulate the growth of liberal government than our economy. I especially like the parts in the American Solutions plan about increasing our own supply of energy, lowering capital gains and business taxes, creating a more flat income tax, and eliminating the death/estate tax.

If implementing a plan like this means that the government needs to have layoffs, cuts in spending, and right-sizing, then so be it. Welcome to what the rest of us are going through!

More bumper sticker ideas

I live in the Austin, TX area, a very liberal town. Needless to say, I see a lot of anti-Bush bumper stickers around, such as "I don't have to like Bush to love my country,", or "Yee-Ha is not a foreign policy". So now that Obama is president, I want a few of my own, such as:

-- I don't have to like Obama to love my country
-- Question Obama
-- Kumbaya is not a foreign policy
-- 01.21.2012

Red Raiders are who we thought they were!

OK, so I didn't vote for the Big O, but I do appreciate his position on a college football playoff. On a recent Monday Night Football interview with Chris Berman on ESPN, he said we need to get rid of the BCS and do an 8-team college playoff. OK, that is some change I can believe in. Call it The Audacity of a National Championship Decided on the Field. I think I can reach across the aisle for this issue. I think I even got a little tingle in my leg. That position, stated to a national audience the night before the election, might have even helped him carry Ohio ...

In football news, Texas Tech played Oklahoma State this weekend, and Tech looks like the real deal this year, with both an explosive offense and an actual defense. Beating Texas was not a fluke! Also gotta love the interviews with Mike Leach -- is he on some sort of combo of Vicodin and weed? Last year when Tech played OSU, we got one of the all time great coach rants after the game, the Mike Gundy (OSU's head coach) "I'm a MAN, I'm 40!" rant. Mike Gundy original rant here, version edited into very funny unofficial Coors Light commercial here.

So OSU and Mike Gundy (now 41), found out that the Red Raiders "are who they thought they were", and "let 'em off the hook". OK, that's another classic coaching rant joke (Dennis Green, Arizona Cardinals coach, after loss to Chicago Bears), see that original rant here, and official Coors Light commercial here, or see below.



So this sets up a big showdown in 2 weeks where Texas finds itself in the position of rooting FOR the Oklahoma Sooners (which just feels somehow wrong and icky) to beat Texas Tech. It will be interesting to see how Tech plays in a big road game without their great home crowd. Hopefully Texas doesn't take out all of the drama by choking and losing to Kansas or the Aggies.

We got DirecTV installed Friday. I get my first chance to see how the picture does in rain tonight -- weatherman said we might have hail and even possibly tornadoes. I will be very upset if I lose picture on Monday Night Football during a tornado ... will have to call DirecTV and complain about that one... (e.g. "I never lost picture when a tornado was hitting my house with Time Warner!")

Dear Mr. Obama

Nice work on this ad featuring a disabled war vet speaking out about the Iraq war being a "mistake".