Judicial Watch Sues to Obtain Documents Regarding Cost-Based Rationing of Medicare/Medicaid

Judicial Watch, who just recently filed another suit against the Dept. of Health & Human Services (HHS) to obtain documents about the granting of 'exemptions' from Obama Care for some companies and Unions, has again filed suit against HHS requesting information about the rationing of Medicare/Medicaid services based on cost.

From Judicial Watch --

Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that it filed a lawsuit on January 3, 2011, against the Obama Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) regarding a controversial decision by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to undertake a one-year review of the prostate cancer treatment Provenge to determine if the treatment is “reasonable and necessary” and should therefore be reimbursed.

Provenge, the first ever therapeutic vaccine cancer treatment approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), was shown to have extended life spans by an average of four months in clinical trials with few side effects. It costs $93,000 to administer the three necessary treatments. Medicare and the FDA are legally prohibited from denying approval of a medical treatment based solely on cost. Yet multiple press reports suggest that cost is the major factor in the unusual decision by CMS to undertake a review of the treatment which could signal a move by the Obama administration to begin implementing healthcare rationing based on the cost of treatments.

Judicial Watch’s original FOIA request, filed on November 9, 2010, seeks the following information: “All records concerning CMS’s national coverage analysis of the vaccine Provenge, including but not limited to the criteria being used to analyze Provenge.”

Health and Human Services was required by law to respond to Judicial Watch’s request by December 15, 2010. However, to date, the agency has failed to provide any documents or indicate why documents should be withheld. Nor has it indicated when a response is forthcoming.

CMS Administrator Donald Berwick is on record supporting the idea of rationing healthcare based on cost. Berwick said the following in a June 2009 interview with Biotechnology Healthcare: “The social budget is limited — we have a limited resource pool. It makes terribly good sense to at least know the price of an added benefit, and at some point we might say nationally, regionally, or locally that we wish we could afford it, but we can’t… The decision is not whether or not we will ration care, the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open.”

Owing to the controversy surrounding Berwick’s statements, President Obama bypassed Senate confirmation and made Berwick a “recess appointment,” a decision criticized by both Democrats and Republicans in Congress.

“The Obama administration claims there is no merit to the charge that the Provenge decision is the first step in implementing healthcare rationing so why not release these records? What does the Obama administration have to hide? Provenge is an FDA approved drug that has a proven track record and the Obama administration has no legal right to deny this treatment based on its cost. But the American people are right to be concerned about this Provenge review, given the fact that a man dubbed ‘Death Panel Donald’ Berwick is in charge of Medicare and Medicaid,” stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

2011 Statistical Abstract of the United States

The Census Bureau released on online version of the 2011 edition of the Statistical Abstract of the United States, a vast compilation of data and statistics. The 1,407 tables describe the state of the nation's social, political and economic condition.

Constitutionalism

Below is a great column by Charles Krauthammer....

For decades, Democrats and Republicans fought over who owns the American flag. Now they're fighting over who owns the Constitution.

The flag debates began during the Vietnam era when leftist radicals made the fatal error of burning it. For decades since, non-suicidal liberals have tried to undo the damage. Demeaningly, and somewhat unfairly, they are forever having to prove their fealty to the flag.

Amazingly, though, some still couldn't get it quite right. During the last presidential campaign, candidate Barack Obama, asked why he was not wearing a flag pin, answered that it represented "a substitute" for "true patriotism." Bad move. Months later, Obama quietly beat a retreat and began wearing the flag on his lapel. He does so still.

Today, the issue is the Constitution. It's a healthier debate because flags are pure symbolism and therefore more likely to evoke pure emotion and ad hominem argument. The Constitution, on the other hand, is a document that speaks. It defines concretely the nature of our social contract. Nothing in our public life is more substantive.

Americans are in the midst of a great national debate over the power, scope and reach of the government established by that document. The debate was sparked by the current administration's bold push for government expansion - a massive fiscal stimulus, Obamacare, financial regulation and various attempts at controlling the energy economy. This engendered a popular reaction, identified with the Tea Party but in reality far more widespread, calling for a more restrictive vision of government more consistent with the Founders' intent.

Call it constitutionalism. In essence, constitutionalism is the intellectual counterpart and spiritual progeny of the "originalism" movement in jurisprudence. Judicial "originalists" (led by Antonin Scalia and other notable conservative jurists) insist that legal interpretation be bound by the text of the Constitution as understood by those who wrote it and their contemporaries. Originalism has grown to become the major challenger to the liberal "living Constitution" school, under which high courts are channelers of the spirit of the age, free to create new constitutional principles accordingly.

What originalism is to jurisprudence, constitutionalism is to governance: a call for restraint rooted in constitutional text. Constitutionalism as a political philosophy represents a reformed, self-regulating conservatism that bases its call for minimalist government - for reining in the willfulness of presidents and legislatures - in the words and meaning of the Constitution.

Hence that highly symbolic moment on Thursday when the 112th House of Representatives opened with a reading of the Constitution. Remarkably, this had never been done before - perhaps because it had never been so needed. The reading reflected the feeling, expressed powerfully in the last election, that we had moved far, especially the past two years, from a government constitutionally limited by its enumerated powers to a government constrained only by its perception of social need.

The most galvanizing example of this expansive shift was, of course, the Democrats' health-care reform, which will revolutionize one-sixth of the economy and impose an individual mandate that levies a fine on anyone who does not enter into a private contract with a health insurance company. Whatever its merits as policy, there is no doubting its seriousness as constitutional precedent: If Congress can impose such a mandate, is there anything that Congress may not impose upon the individual?

The new Republican House will henceforth require, in writing, constitutional grounding for every bill submitted. A fine idea, although I suspect 90 percent of them will simply make a ritual appeal to the "general welfare" clause. Nonetheless, anything that reminds members of Congress that they are not untethered free agents is salutary.

But still mostly symbolic. The real test of the Republicans' newfound constitutionalism will come in legislating. Will they really cut government spending? Will they really roll back regulations? Earmarks are nothing. Do the Republicans have the courage to go after entitlements as well?

In the interim, the cynics had best tread carefully. Some liberals are already disdaining the new constitutionalism, denigrating the document's relevance and sneering at its public recitation. They sneer at their political peril. In choosing to focus on a majestic document that bears both study and recitation, the reformed conservatism of the Obama era has found itself not just a symbol but an anchor.

Constitutionalism as a guiding political tendency will require careful and thoughtful development, as did jurisprudential originalism. But its wide appeal and philosophical depth make it a promising first step to a conservative future.

Judicial Watch Files Suit Against HHS to Obtain Documents Regarding Obamacare Waivers

From Judicial Watch --

Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that it filed a lawsuit on December 30, 2010, against the Obama Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to obtain records regarding the agency’s decision to grant “waivers” to companies and unions seeking to be exempt from requirements of Public Health Services Act Section 2711, President Obama’s healthcare reform law. According to HHS’s own estimate, at least 222 companies and unions have received waivers from the law, commonly known as Obamacare.

With its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, Judicial Watch seeks the following information:

A. All records concerning the decision to grant waivers of the Annual Limits Requirements of PHS Act Section 2711; and
B. All communications between McDonald’s Corp. and HHS concerning Annual Limits Requirements.
The time frame for this request is from March 2010 to the present.

Judicial Watch filed its original FOIA request on October 7, 2010. HHS was required by law to respond by November 8, 2010. However, to date, HHS has failed to produce any records or to provide a justification for withholding responsive records. Nor has the agency indicated when a response is forthcoming.

In September 2010, McDonald’s corporation announced it would have to eliminate a health insurance program for nearly 30,000 low wage employees due to an Obamacare requirement that 80 to 85% of all insurance premium revenue be spent on patient care. Due to the high administrative costs associated with this type of health coverage program (known as a mini-med plan), McDonald’s insurer indicated it could not possibly meet the Obamacare requirement. HHS provided McDonald’s a one-year waiver concerning the Obamacare mandate and has been deluged with waiver requests from hundreds of other companies and unions since.

The Wall Street Journal deemed the McDonald’s waiver request, “one of the clearest indications that new [Obamacare] rules may disrupt workers' health plans as the law ripples through the real world.”

President Obama’s healthcare reform law does not specify which companies or unions should receive waivers for its requirements and under what circumstances. Critics of how HHS has chosen to handle these waiver requests highlight the haphazard nature of the approval process and the fact that companies able to secure these coveted Obamacare exemptions are given an unfair competitive advantage over their rivals.

“The Obama administration is the most secretive in modern times. The Obamacare waiver fiasco is exactly the type of chaos that ensues when the federal government attempts to seize control of a large sector of the private economy. And Kathleen Sebelius’s HHS is willing to violate the Freedom of Information Act to keep Americans in the dark about this Obamacare failure. Secretary Sebelius might want to begin her implementation of Obamacare by obeying federal law regarding public records. The Obama administration’s slapdash handling of these waiver requests has created an enormous potential for political favoritism and influence peddling. The Obama administration must make this waivers completely transparent to the American people so they can be assured, in the least, that the process is not infected by corruption,” stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

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Who Regulates Whom? An Overview of U.S. Financial Supervision

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) has released a report giving an overview on -- "the current U.S. financial regulations

Click here to read the full report in pdf format.

and which agencies are responsible for which institutions, activities, and markets, and what kinds of authority they have." 

Repealing Obama Care; Tea Party Patriot Style

Acting on a promise many of them made during their election campaigns, the House Republicans are vowing to repeal the new healthcare bill. According to Reuters, a vote to repeal the bill is scheduled for January 12^th.

While the measure will pass the House, it will face an uphill battle in the Senate since Democrats still hold the majority. Even if the “repeal vote” does not pass the Senate, there is still a chance to “kill the bill” by defunding it, which Republicans in the House plan to do. (To view the proposed repeal bill, visit: http://rules-republicans.house.gov/Media/PDF/HR__-Repeal.pdf.) 

The repeal vote is only the first step in a multi-pronged approach to reverse the government takeover of our healthcare system. Many groups within Tea Party Patriots (TPP) (www.teapartypatriots.org) organization have been diligently working on various efforts to attack this bureaucratic beast – one of those efforts is the Health Care Compact.

Since November, TPP coordinators have been working with Eric O’Keefe of the Sam Adams Alliance to make these compacts become a reality. Once the language is finalized, we will be calling on you to help us urge our state legislature to join the compact. (See the Weekly Standard article for more information on the Compacts: http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/nullifying-obamacare_524862.html.)

TPP Coordinators from across the U.S. will be meeting in TX next week for a detailed training seminar on the Compacts.  We will then have local conference calls and training sessions here sp we can get started on passing the Health Care Compact in OH. The CTPP Compact Committee will be chaired by member Dan Brass.  Please keep an eye out for email updates and more info on the Health Care Compacts.

States have $1 Trillion Debt

The Census Bureau said state government revenues declined 30.8% in 2009, from $1.9 trillion to $1.1 trillion. Although they took in less money, the states spent a total of $1.8 trillion and, at year's end, were collectively holding a $1.0 trillion debt.

The 2009 Annual Survey of State Government Finances provides key financial statistics for each of the 50 states.  Click here for Ohio.

The Federal Government is broke and the State's are in hock -- isn't it just grand our country wants to spend money we don't have on helping other countries?