The Truth Regarding Health Care By Keith R. Jackson, M.D.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/06/the_truth_regarding_health_care.html

There are truths regarding health care in America that need broadcasting.  Some truths are intimidating and discouraging, with no need for us to be reminded, such as the crazy costs of hospitalization, testing, procedures, and pharmaceuticals.  Another such truth is that along with ridiculously expensive medical care has come incredible success in the battle against the morbidity and mortality of disease.  But the truth about how we got here is worth reviewing.  It is the result of a unique, accidental confluence of circumstance.  Unfortunately, it is unsustainable in its current form.

Many of the residents of our country act as if cost should not be a factor in the delivery of health care.  They feel as if medical care is a right and not having a socialized, government-sponsored system of delivery is akin to slavery.  On the other hand, corporations successfully weave among the patient, the doctor, the current government-sponsored health care systems, and their fellow capitalist insurance companies, managing to make a good profit while driving up cost. 

How did we get to the point where it was conceivable to produce pharmaceutical agents that cost six figures a dose?  When did we conclude that it is cost-appropriate to pay doctors and facilities to transplant a pair of lungs, a kidney, a liver, or a heart?  Most telling for the future, what would we be willing to sacrifice to make things sensible?

Our way-out-in-left-field costs have their origins in a simple-to-understand source.  After World War II, the federal government froze wages in its concern for runaway wage inflation, knowing that businesses desired to employ the best of the huge returning workforce and pay them accordingly.  With no means to attract new workers through better wages, companies created benefits packages along with employment that included costs shared in health care.  (A harbor company in San Diego with the now familiar name of “Kaiser” was among the first.)

Health care insurance companies created from this new market accumulated monies with each employee paycheck.  Health care at the time was rudimentary and did not have much to offer sick patients.  As a result, prospective patients did not have the same desire to go to the doctor that we have today.  As money built up in the system, doctors and hospitals began to realize better, more predictable finances, and the costs of treatment options were barely considered, because insurance companies were more than willing to pay.

Climate McCarthyism A White House official asks tech companies to settle normative questions surrounding climate change. Jordan McGillis

https://www.city-journal.org/climate-mccarth

President Biden has deputized White House climate-change advisor Gina McCarthy to snuff out reckless talk on global warming. McCarthy, speaking at a virtual event hosted June 9 by Axios, said it is time for social media companies to crack down on climate “disinformation” online.

But however wrong, damaging, and mendacious climate-change alarmists like New York magazine columnist David Wallace-Wells and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may be, they deserve, like anyone else, the freedom to say their piece. Though such figures have certainly misled Americans with their doomsday predictions, their right to expression ought not to be infringed. McCarthy has stepped beyond her mandate by overzealously seeking to keep climate debate within approved guardrails.

I jest, of course. It is not the exaggerations from Ocasio-Cortez or Wallace-Wells that find themselves in the crosshairs of the White House. Biden’s climate attack dog is hounding good-faith challenges to the administration’s policy recommendations and skeptical arguments about the viability of a renewables-only energy policy.

At the Axios event—dubbed “A Conversation on Battling Misinformation”—McCarthy called on tech companies to “really jump in” against allegedly inaccurate claims about the costs and benefits of different approaches to managing climate change. “Now it has moved from denial,” McCarthy said, “but the dark money is still there. The fossil fuel companies are still basically trying their best to make sure that people don’t understand the challenge of climate.” McCarthy then suggested that not only scientific dissent but also debate over what technologies are cost-effective is beyond the bounds of civil discourse. “What the industry is now doing is seeding doubt about the costs associated with [renewables] and whether they work or not,” she said. “We have to get tighter. We have to get better at communicating. And frankly, the tech companies have to stop allowing specific individuals over and over again to spread disinformation.”

Remembering the January 6 prisoners Some Republicans are calling attention to their squalid conditions

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/remembering-the-january-6-prisoners/

Cockburn has done his fair share of jail time, mostly on overblown bootlegging charges. Yet after paying his dues to society, he decided to venture to a recent press conference on the situation of those imprisoned after the January 6 riot.

The Patriot Freedom Project helps aid the families of the January 6 prisoners with legal costs and living expenses. Now, the organization is advocating for a review of the prison conditions of the inmates.

One inmate’s mother said, “The conditions at the DC jail are horrendous. His rations often smelled like cleaning fluid. There were pubic hairs included in the small portions of his food. The drinking water, visibly dirty. Mold was visible in cells, and roaches lived amongst [the prisoners].”

A note from a prisoner said, “I am limited to seeing the blue sky to a single hour once every seven days. Ants crawl all over my body when I attempt to sleep on my bunk. Cockroaches jumping out of my food is a common occurrence. Mouse poop is in the cereal and on dry food. At times there are yellow stains of yellow urine on dry food.”

The report, “Unusually Cruel,” written by the offices of Congressman Louie Gohmert and Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, compiles the testimonies of six eyewitnesses. It notes that the “walls of the rooms had residue of human feces, bodily fluids, blood, dirt and mold” (page 3), the inmates are allowed outside twice a week, and religious services and sacraments are withheld from the inmates unless they are vaccinated (page 17).

The report also speaks of a seventy-one-year-old inmate who was denied medical treatment, leading to his “lower forearm turn[ing] purple and his thumb, black” (page 18). Another inmate had a visibly broken finger. Another had celiac disease, causing him to go days without eating at risk of becoming violently ill from prison food.

BREAKING: U.S. SENATOR RAND PAUL KEEPS THE HEAT ON DR. ANTHONY FAUCI

Our investigation into the hidden stream of royalty payments to NIH scientists continues to make an impact on Capitol Hill!

Senator Rand Paul once again asked Dr. Fauci about the payments and once again, Fauci chose to evade and mislead rather than agree to just…
Open. The. Books! 

READ:
SINCLAIR: ‘It’s all redacted’: Rand Paul and Fauci clash over NIH royalty payments

FACT CHECKING DR. FAUCI’S STATEMENTS

Senator Paul asked whether Fauci had ever received royalties from an entity that he later went on to regulate or fund. Fauci said he didn’t know but “I doubt it.”

We rate that claim: FALSE. Here’s what the record shows:

In 2005, Fauci admitted receiving at least $45,000 in royalties for interleukin-2, an experimental AIDS treatment, and his division (NIAID) went on to spend $36 million testing it on humans.

Catch up on our latest Substack article covering the royalty payments. Here is a great example of why NIH must open the books on the $400 million during the last decade of third-party royalties paid to 1,805 scientists:

CASE STUDY: Who Is the #1 Recipient of Third-Party Royalty Payments at NIH?

Then forward this email to a friend to keep spreading the word. We are making a difference.

Transparency can change everything!

The Democrats’ Capricious Energy Policy Has Been a Disaster By David Harsanyi

https://pjmedia.com/columns/davidhasanyi/2022/06/17/the-democrats-capricious-energy-policy-has-been-a-disaster-n1606007

Democrats have spent decades warning that the United States must stop using the most efficient and affordable energy sources or it will be consumed by heat waves, fireballs and cataclysmic weather events. Every flood, every hurricane — every natural event, really — is now blamed on climate change. We have burdened our children with an irrational dread over their future. Then again, many in The Cult of Malthus won’t even have children.

So, why, if we’re on the precipice of this apocalypse, if saving the planet trumps every other concern, is President Joe Biden begging everyone to drill? On the days Democrats aren’t blaming Vladimir Putin for rising gas prices (a cost the president not long ago argued was worth paying for “freedom”), they’re blaming oil companies for profiteering. Wednesday, as the national average hit $5.014 (nearly $2 higher than last year), Biden sent letters to refining companies threatening to once again abuse his executive powers if they do not immediately alleviate high prices — a political appeal to the imaginary “greedflation.”

Biden, who promised a 100% “clean-energy economy” with “net-zero emissions” in a couple of decades, now demands energy companies, already at utilization rates above 90%, invest tens of billions more in new drilling infrastructure, when everyone knows that tomorrow, when prices recede, Democrats are going to go right back to passing laws and regulations that undercut their business. Today, Democrats demand CEOs spend more; tomorrow, they will promise to “hold oil executives accountable” and drag them in front of congressional committees where they will be scolded by economically illiterate windbags.

Biden tells AP he’s unpopular because Americans are mentally unwell By Monica Showalter

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/06/biden_tells_ap_the_reason_hes_unpopular_is_because_americans_are_mentally_unwell.html

Joe Biden, as his party propaganda and media enablers say, is a man of compassion.

And he’s now loaded with such compassion with remarks like this, addressing his own unpopularity with the American people.

See, it’s not that we’re bad people or anything.  It’s not that we’re depraved deplorables, or terrorists, as Democrats have said in the past.  We’re just sick in the head.

And for Biden, that makes sense, given that his unpopularity stretches across party lines and includes traditionally Democrat constituencies such as black, Hispanic, Asian-American, and young voters now.

Here’s what he actually told the Associated Press in his interview with them:

AP: What’s that paradox?

BIDEN: Well, I think the paradox is, part of it is, I think what, the failure of the last administration to act on COVID had a profound impact on the number of people who got COVID and the number of people who died. Now here’s what I’m, I think Vivek Murthy is right and most of the international and National Psychological Association, whatever it’s, people are really, really down. They’re really down. Their need for mental health in America has skyrocketed because people have seen everything upset. Everything they counted on upset. But most of it’s a consequence of, of, of what’s happening, what happened is a consequence of the, the COVID crisis.

Biden’s Oil Tantrum

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/06/bidens-oil-tantrum/

Joe Biden isn’t mad. He’s just disappointed.

You see, gas prices have risen during his presidency, and that’s making him unpopular with one of the most important voting blocs in America: people who purchase gasoline. Gasoline prices are largely out of Biden’s control, with prices determined on global markets and various industrial factors limiting supplies.

In past attempts to seem like he’s doing something about the problem, Biden has ordered releases of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, pushed electric vehicles, and invoked the Defense Production Act to produce more renewable-energy components. As anyone could have predicted, gas prices were unaffected by those actions.

So now he’s just firing off notes to energy CEOs on White House letterhead threatening them with government action if they don’t do what he wants.

“Your companies need to work with my Administration to bring forward concrete, near-term solutions that address the crisis and respect the critical equities of energy workers and fence-line communities,” Biden wrote.

First of all, no, they don’t. No company in the United States needs to work with any presidential administration on anything if it does not want to. This remains a free country, and loyalty to politicians is not a prerequisite to doing business.

Second, it’s almost sad that Biden can’t get through a threat without genuflecting to his woke, environmentalist base. Whatever “critical equities” are, we’re pretty sure they aren’t part of the refining process.

The 39.9% president by Byron York

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/the-39-9-president

THE 39.9% PRESIDENT. President Joe Biden’s job approval rating has slipped below 40% in the RealClearPolitics average of polls. As of this writing, it is 39.9%, versus a 54.4% disapproval rating.

Biden, of course, has been underwater in the polls for a long time. The last poll included in the RealClearPolitics average in which Biden had an approval rating higher than his disapproval rating was a Reuters-Ipsos survey from Dec. 17, 2021. In that poll, Biden had a job approval rating of 48%, versus a disapproval rating of 46%.

The last poll in which Biden’s job performance won the approval of a majority of voters was a Politico-Morning Consult survey from Aug. 16, 2021. Then, Biden had a job approval rating of 51%, versus a disapproval rating of 46%.

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Those days are gone. Yes, it’s entirely possible that the president’s rating will nose above 40% — it has done that before when he briefly dipped into the 30s — but Biden seems mired in a world in which about 40% or less of voters approve of the job he is doing and about 55% of voters disapprove.

How could it be otherwise? With prices rising 8.6% on an annualized basis in May — the price of groceries up 11.9%, gas up 48.7%, used cars up 16.1% — voters by far say that inflation is the most serious problem facing the nation today. And now the Federal Reserve, in a bid to bring inflation under control, has raised interest rates three-quarters of a percentage point, the biggest increase in almost 30 years, which greatly increases the risk of a recession

Jan. 6 Committee Ignores Clear Evidence Of Mass Illegal Voting, Systematically Broken Election Laws By: Margot Cleveland

https://thefederalist.com/2022/06/17/jan-6-committee-ignores-clear-evidence-of-mass-illegal-voting-systematically-broken-election-laws/

The Jan. 6 Committee completely sidestepped the verifiable evidence of systemic violations of election law, illegal voting, and more.

In its attempt to blame former President Donald Trump for the crimes committed on January 6, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol, House Democrats have spent the week focused on Trump’s unsupported claims of widespread election fraud. The Jan. 6 select committee and the legacy media outlets promoting the show trial completely ignore, however, the verifiable evidence of systemic violations of election law, illegal voting, and the constitutionally deficient execution of the November 2020 election—including issues Trump challenged following the election.

Georgia provides a peach of an example. President Biden won Georgia and the state’s 16 electoral votes by a margin of 11,779 individual votes, but before the state certified the results of the November 2020 election, Trump challenged the outcome, raising several issues both in and out of court. Trump hammered accusations of fraud in Fulton County, claiming counterfeit ballots secreted in suitcases and vote-flipping by Dominion Voting Systems gave Biden the victory. But Trump also contested the Georgia results based on evidence indicating that tens of thousands of illegal votes were improperly counted.

While Trump’s legal team argued illegal votes in some 30-plus categories were improperly included in the final election tally, violations of Section 21-2-218 of the Georgia election code alone closed the gap between the two presidential candidates. That section provides that state “residents must vote in the county in which they reside, unless they changed their residence within 30 days of the election” and “outside of the 30-day grace period, if people vote in a county in which they no longer reside, ‘their vote in that county would be illegal.’”

Biden’s ‘Equity’ Diplomat Pushed Global Reparations, Railed against Electoral College By Jimmy Quinn

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/06/bidens-equity-diplomat-pushed-global-reparations-railed-against-electoral-college/

Race-obsessed Twitter posts from the State Department’s first-ever special representative for racial equity raise questions about the direction of its diversity agenda.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s appointee to a newly created racial-equity post called for reparations on an international scale and decried the Electoral College as a vestige of slaveholding America that must be purged, in messages posted to her Twitter account before she joined the Biden administration. The stances articulated in those tweets are likely to raise questions about the aims of the administration’s fledgling agenda on diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility.

Earlier today, Blinken announced that he had selected Desirée Cormier Smith to serve as State’s first-ever special representative for racial equity and justice. Cormier Smith, he wrote in a statement, “will lead our efforts to protect and advance the human rights of people belonging to marginalized racial and ethnic communities and combat systemic racism, discrimination, and xenophobia around the world.”

Blinken announced the position’s creation in April, as part of the State Department’s effort to implement an executive order signed by President Biden on his first day in office. That order required every government department to come up with an “equity action plan.”

Although the role’s responsibilities are vaguely defined, the State Department did relay some information about its scope to Congress last week. Among other things, the special representative’s mandate spans work to counter disinformation, engage with foreign officials on racial justice, and promote diversity within the State Department bureaucracy, as National Review reported.