PRESS RELEASE

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Obama's Health-Care Blitz Stalled

July 30, 2009 (EIRNS)—On July 29, with the announced deal between the so-called Blue Dog House Democratic caucus, and Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), it became official: The giant health cost-cutting scheme being pushed by the Obama Administration will not be voted on in either House of Congress before the August recess. President Obama's timetable for ramming the bill through, has now been set back, and the official pronouncements are indicating that its sponsors are hoping for passage "by the end of the year."

At the same time, the reality of the Hitlerite nature of the Obama program has begun to spread like wildlife. Even at the President's tightly controlled town meetings, he is being bombarded with questions about the measures in the bill that would push senior citizens to sign end-of-life directives (i.e., living wills), as an explicit means of cost control. Senior citizens are beginning to understand that they are targetted, as a means of "saving money."

Within this climate, in a major development, Rep. Michael Rogers (R-Mich.), on July 30, offered an amendment to prohibit "comparative effectiveness research," as promoted by the Obama team's behavioral economists, from being used to deny or ration health care, during a meeting of the Energy and Commerce Committee. The Democrats tried to get him to remove the word "deny." He refused. In his argument for the amendment, he cited the example of the British NICE (National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence) system, and how it can kill people, by refusing to pay for necessary care. The amendment was then approved in a voice vote, thus defeating comparative effectiveness research, at least in this committee. Previous such amendments, offered in other committee markups, have all gone down to defeat.