RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Republicans have started fixing the Obamacare disaster. For Trump, doing something about this failed program is critical, since it was a central issue he campaigned on. As his consigliere Kellyanne Conway says, there is a “binary choice … you’re either making good on the promise to repeal and replace Obamacare or you’re not.” Failing to deliver on this promise will have serious repercussions for the 2018 midterm elections and Trump’s own reelection

But right now, the Congressional bomb-squad trying to defuse this political IED are squabbling among themselves. Some claim that the changes proposed so far are a good start, for a complex and flawed entitlement like Obamacare will take time to fix. Others say what Paul Ryan et al. have proposed is merely “Obamacare lite,” Republican lipstick on that budget-busting entitlement pig. Dems on the sidelines are piling on, desperate to preserve Obama’s “legacy,” which also happens to be a big step toward the Holy Grail of progressives–– government-run, single-payer health care on the European model.

But the real problem continues to be ignored––the success of the progressive movement in addicting Americans to getting something for nothing because that “something” is defined as a “right.” And voters don’t like their rights messed with.

That’s the political conundrum facing the Republicans. Those in the Paul Ryan camp defend their adjustments to Obamacare by pointing out the greater participation of the market in their reforms. Here’s Ryan making the case:

It’s something that we as conservatives have always said if you really want to get free market principles injected into the health care system, you need to have an individual market where people care about what things cost, where people have real freedom, where those providers of health care services, be they insurers, doctors, or hospitals and everybody in between, compete against each other for our business based on value, based on price, based on quality, based on outcome. You don’t get that if you don’t have a viable individual free market.

All true, except the one thing Ryan doesn’t mention, and that’s the individual’s responsibility for his free choice. Whenever we talk about freedom of choice in the free market, we have to be clear that making the wrong choice, or a bad choice, will have consequences. Freedom without responsibility and accountability for how we use our freedom is a recipe for disaster. We all know, for example, that a lot of health-care money is spent on ailments related to lifestyle choices. About 28 million Americans have type-two diabetes. Obesity, poor diet, and lack of exercise are mostly responsible for this rising epidemic. In 2013 we spent $250 billion treating this disease, including the cost of lost productivity. The government paid 62 percent of this tab, and one in three Medicaid dollars was spent on diabetes. These costs will increase significantly as an aging, longer-living population becomes more vulnerable to the disease. And everyone expects the government to foot the bill.

Alfred Hitchcock’s black comedy The Trouble with Harry bombed at the box office when it was first released in 1955; it has now achieved the status of a classic. Today, a bizarre melodrama playing in all the major political theaters, which might be called The Trouble with Barry, has become an overnight smash hit. Starring Barack Obama, a prodigy of the art of surveillance and Teflon-like resilience, it will eventually run its course. However the plot may develop, one thing is certain: it will not be regarded as a classic.

The trouble with Barry, like Hitchcock’s moribund Harry, is that he never seems to go away, constantly emerging at the most inopportune moments. Unlike every other president in American history, Obama has dedicated himself to the practice of what the Washington Examiner has described as “post-presidential meddling.”

He has thrown himself fully into Alinsky-style “community organizing,” stirring up resistance to the Trump administration in every way conceivable: installing, according to the New York Post, a “shadow government,” dubbed Organizing for Action, comprising more than 30,000 agitators and 250 chapters across the U.S., in order “to sabotage the incoming administration”; renting a dwelling and setting up command headquarters around the corner from the White House; cooking up the Russian hacking fable; and most recently, allegedly wiretapping Trump Tower, which seems disturbingly probable following the salient remarks of Ret. Army Intelligence Officer Tony Shaffer on Fox and the revelations from Breitbart News. Mark Levin’s accusation that Obama is orchestrating a “silent coup” against Trump rings true. As Daniel Greenfield points out:

There is now a President and an Anti-President. A government and a shadow government. The anti-President controls more of the government through his shadow government than the real President.

Obama and his Deep State have engaged in “a criminal conspiracy of unprecedented scope.”

And yet, even today, few media outlets are willing to investigate the innumerable instances of lying, lawbreaking, corruption, broken promises and cronyism for which Obama is clearly answerable. That he is likely involved in a wiretapping operation against a political opponent should not come as a surprise to anyone who has observed or researched the man. As Matthew Vadum comments in FrontPage Magazine, “It might be said that every day of his presidency he committed at least one impeachable offense” — whether abusing executive powers, bypassing Congress, leaking classified information, misrepresenting Obamacare, being ultimately responsible for the Fast and Furious and Benghazi infamies, and more.
Hugh Hewitt Presses Trump to Fire Obama Holdovers

The wiretapping affair is only the latest in a vast and ongoing sequence of misdemeanors, scandals and illegalities — a list compiled by Doug Ross runs into hundreds of such instances of impropriety and malpractice. No matter. The list will only grow. The editor of a prestigious conservative site wrote me calling this latest outrage a “game changer.” That remains to be seen. I would have thought, for example, that Obama’s first Executive Order (13489) on January 21, 2009, sealing his vital records would have been the game changer we were waiting for, but Barry sailed on unscathed.

There have been weak presidents, deluded presidents, and harmful presidents before him, but never has there been anyone as sinister or questionable as Obama, not excluding even the malefic Jimmy Carter or the sleazy Bill Clinton. What J. R. Dunn writing in American Thinker has said of Hillary, “the most repellent and corrupt American presidential candidate since Aaron Burr,” is equally true, in my estimation, of Barack Obama. Meanwhile, it is Trump who faces a barrage of threats, calls for impeachment and acts of disobedience that would have been more explicable if levied against Obama for his historic deceptions and malfeasances. Under the pestilential reign of Obama, and indeed years of Democratic incumbency, the shining city on the hill has become a murky city in the swamp.

Again, unless there is real tort reform the FDA will have a permanent problem, and so will the pharmaceutical companies…..rsk
The Food and Drug Administration is the nation’s most ubiquitous regulatory agency, overseeing everything from syringes and CT scanners to drugs, vaccines and most foods. These products account for more than $1 trillion annually, or about a quarter of U.S. consumer spending. This slow, dysfunctional agency needs drastic reform of its requirements, procedures and attitudes.

One reform Scott Gottlieb, President Trump’s nominee to lead the agency, will likely embrace is “right to try”—that is, giving terminally ill patients access to unapproved medicines. He could remove the FDA from judgments about “compassionate use” of unapproved drugs. There is already a trend in this direction: Thirty-three states have passed laws aimed at providing easier access to experimental treatments that are still in the earliest stages of human testing.

The right to try unapproved drugs has the potential to be compassionate and sound public policy—but there are dangers. The concept must be implemented in a way that takes into consideration the realities of drug testing.

According to the libertarian Goldwater Institute, right-to-try legislation would allow “terminally ill Americans to try medicines that have passed Phase I of the FDA approval process and remain in clinical trials but are not yet on pharmacy shelves.” It would also expand usage of “potentially life-saving treatments years before patients would normally be able to access them.”

But here’s the rub: About three-quarters of drugs that pass Phase I will never be accessible. They ultimately won’t be approved, because of either safety concerns or lack of efficacy. Most legislative proposals, including the one recently introduced by Sen. Ron Johnson (R., Wis.), would enable patients to request the drugs after only the most meager safety testing.

Phase I testing, often the first time a new drug has been administered to humans, provides extremely limited information. These trials are performed on between 20 and 100 patients and last only a short time. They’re usually administered to paid, healthy volunteers, who may not provide a good representation of how the drug will affect terminal patients. Such trials essentially exist to determine what doses of the drug are tolerated without causing gross safety problems such as seizures, organ failure or death.

The determination of efficacy starts in Phase II, when the drug is administered to volunteers who suffer from the disease or symptom for which the drug is intended. If the results of Phase II are promising, the drug moves into still larger Phase III trials—the most extensive and expensive part of drug development.

A physician at a large health insurer, who spoke to me on the condition of anonymity, recently raised concerns about right to try. He wonders “where liability will ultimately lie when and if something goes wrong.” Even trickier: “Who is the deep pocket if and when the treatment fails and the patient’s family is looking for someone to blame?” He warns that the right to try could become an “unfunded mandate” and raises questions about who will pay for the drugs and how their prices will be determined. Medical insurance as we know it was never designed or intended to cover unproven treatments of last resort. CONTINUE AT SITE