Health and safety snoops to enter family homes

Health and safety inspectors are to be given unprecedented access to family homes to ensure that parents are protecting their children from household accidents.

New guidance drawn up at the request of the Department of Health urges councils and other public sector bodies to “collect data” on properties where children are thought to be at “greatest risk of unintentional injury”.

Council staff will then be tasked with overseeing the installation of safety devices in homes, including smoke alarms, stair gates, hot water temperature restrictors, oven guards and window and door locks.

The draft guidance by a committee at the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) has been criticised as intrusive and further evidence of the “creeping nanny state”.

Until now, councils have made only a limited number of home inspections to check on building work and in extreme cases where the state of a house is thought to pose a serious risk to public health.

Nice also recommends the creation of a new government database to allow GPs, midwives and other officials who visit homes to log health and safety concerns they spot.

The guidance aims to “encourage all practitioners who visit families and carers with children and young people aged under 15 to provide home safety advice and, where necessary, conduct a home risk assessment”. It continues: “If possible, they should supply and install home safety equipment.”

For the rest of this article please go here:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6917328.ece

Face Forward Comments:

Just a hint of what we can expect.

By JOHN FUND

“It’s one thing to be serene under fire, it’s another to be delusional.”

More than a few Democrats in Congress are perplexed and worried that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is insisting on ramming through a 1,900-page health care bill on Saturday, just days after her party took heavy losses in Tuesday’s elections. “It reminds me of Major Nicholson, the obsessed British major in the film ‘Bridge on the River Kwai,’” one Democrat told me. “She is fixated on finishing her health care bridge even as she’s lost sight of where it’s going and what damage it could cause to her own troops.”

Indeed, the Speaker’s take on Tuesday’s off-year elections struck some of her own members as delusive “happy talk.” “From our perspective, we won last night,” a cheerful Ms. Pelosi told reporters, citing her party’s pick-up of a single House seat in a New York special election and retention of another strongly Democratic seat in California.

That’s not how many of her own troops see it. Democratic Rep. Parker Griffith of Alabama told Politico.com that members are “very, very sensitive” to the fact that the agenda being pushed by party leaders has “the potential to cost some of our front-line members their seats”

On health care, added New Jersey Democrat Bill Pascrell: “People who had weak knees before are going to have weaker knees now.”

Ms. Pelosi, however, apparently thinks the moment is ripe to use sheer political muscle to pass legislation reordering one sixth of the economy, with zero Republican support. The right mixture of “incentives” and Rahm Emanuel-style pressure, she believes, will bring enough Democrats to heel to vote for the bill.

The obsession Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have with passing health care strikes some Democratic moderates as a completely misplaced priority. Polls show that fewer than a fifth of Americans rank health care reform as the most important issue. Their biggest concern right now is jobs. Only 29% of voters in the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll believe the economy “has hit the bottom.”

That the bill would be a job killer isn’t the only concern. Democrats worry about a backlash from the one-fourth of seniors enrolled in Medicare Advantage — a program that faces steep cuts in both the likely Senate and House bills.

For the rest of this story please go to:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704013004574517603592213342.html

WASHINGTON – The health care bill headed for a vote in the House this week costs $1.2 trillion or more over a decade, according to numerous Democratic officials and figures contained in an analysis by congressional budget experts, far higher than the $900 billion cited by President Barack Obama as a price tag for his reform plan.

While the Congressional Budget Office has put the cost of expanding coverage in the legislation at roughly $1 trillion, Democrats added billions more on higher spending for public health, a reinsurance program to hold down retiree health costs, payments for preventive services and more.

Many of the additions are designed to improve benefits or ease access to coverage in government programs. The officials who provided overall cost estimates did so on condition of anonymity, saying they were not authorized to discuss them.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has referred repeatedly to the bill’s net cost of $894 billion over a decade for coverage.

Asked about the higher estimate, Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly said the measure not only insures 36 million more Americans, it provides critical health insurance reform in a way that is fiscally sound.

“It will not add one dime to the deficit. In fact, the CBO said last week that it will reduce the deficit both in the first 10 years and in the second 10 years,” Daly said.

Democrats have been intent on passing legislation this year to implement Obama’s call for expanded coverage for millions, curbs on industry abuses and provisions to slow the rate of growth of health care costs nationally.

“Now, add it all up, and the plan I’m proposing will cost around $900 billion over 10 years,” the president said in a nationally televised speech in early September.

Whatever the final cost of legislation, the calendar is working increasingly against the White House and Democrats. While a House vote is possible late this week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., may not be able to begin debate on the issue until the week before Thanksgiving. Additionally, the Republican leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, has hinted at efforts to extend the debate for weeks if not months, a timetable that could extend into 2010.

For the rest of the article:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091102/ap_on_bi_ge/us_health_care_overhaul

Face Forward Comments:

Like we didn’t all see that coming.  Of course it’s going to cost more than was projected by the Democrats.  If they can figure out how to provide all of this while elimintating our debt, then go for it.  I have no problem with helping the “needy” it’s defining who the needy are and finding the money to pay for it is the problem.

Eliminate the Debt, Eliminate senselessTaxes, and return to the constitution.  I realize that’s  quite a bit to ask for from a socalistic/communist administration but If they can make outrages demands…..so can I.

WASHINGTON The Congressional Budget Office said Thursday a U.S. House health-care system re-write would extend health insurance to 96% of the nonelderly U.S. population by 2019, and spend $1.055 trillion to do so. Penalties imposed on individuals who did not purchase insurance, and employers who did not offer coverage to their workers, would raise $161 billion over that time-frame. That brings the net cost of the bill to $894 billion through 2019, CBO said.

House Democrats have seized on that net cost figure to claim that their bill is below President Barack Obama’s upper limit which he set for health-care legislation of $900 billion.

The $1.055 trillion estimate also does not include $245 billion needed to stop Medicare payments to doctors from decreasing, which the House plans to address through separate legislation introduced Thursday.

The costs of the bill are fully offset by cuts to existing spending programs– including the Medicare?Advantage and other programs–saving $426 billion through 2019, and by tax increases raising $572 billion over that time, CBO said. In fact, the combined impact of provisions in the bill would be a net deficit reduction of $104 billion in the next decade, according to CBO.

CBO also said the House bill would not add to the deficit in the first decade beyond 2019–a key condition for support from fiscally conservative House Democrats. CBO Director Doug Elmendorf, in a Thursday letter to House Democratic Chairmen, cautioned that his estimates are preliminary and “subject to substantial uncertainty.”

For the rest of the Story Please go here:

http://www.nasdaq.com/aspx/stock-market-news-story.aspx?storyid=200910291728dowjonesdjonline000980&title=cbo-puts-house-health-bill-total-cost-at-1055-trillion

Face Forward Comments:

Dear Lord, this Democratic controlled congress loves to spend your money.  As I have said so many times, I hope everybody has good health care. I really don’t want anyone to suffer.  On the other hand, I have worked hard to provide for my family to get them the health care they have needed.  My problem with this whole thing is; I am not sure with increased taxes that I will be able to afford the level I think they need any longer.  That will especially be true after we get through paying for all of the people who do not want to work, have blown off getting their own health care or worse are not even citizens of this country.

I don’t want to see the “needy” (which seems to be a much larger number when the Democrats give it) to go without.  Having said that, at what point do any of us take away from our own family to give to others?  No sane parent would ever give food to another child and let their own children starve.  Seems like a strong analogy, but in essence that is what we are being asked to do. 

Our government will argue that is not the case.  In their eyes they are just leveling the playing field by taking from us, the tax payers, and redistributing to everyone, including you and me.  So, while we may be paying for others that are not paying, we are also getting to use it (even if it is sub-par), which in their eyes makes it alright.  If this system of government sounds familiar, it is one of the founding principals of socialism.

“socialists advocate the creation of a society in which wealth and power are distributed more evenly based on the amount of work expended in production, although there is considerable disagreement among socialists over how, and to what extent this could be achieved.”

One might argue that what is being proposed is several steps beyond even socialism.  A classic definition of Communism is:

A system of government in which the state plans and controls the economy and a single, often authoritarian party holds power, claiming to make progress toward a higher social order in which all goods are equally shared by the people.

You can find full definitions of both Communism and Socialism in the Face Forward education section.

Yikes, it looks like we have all just joined the communist movement, comrade  That movement flies in the face of the principals that made this country great.  Everyone has to be  accountable for themselves for if they are not we waste resources on them rather than increasing our innovation and growth.

On another note, at least they put the bill online just like Obama promised.  I am sure that fact will only be mentioned several hundred times.  So go ahead America and read it.  I am sure you will understand the words that are being used (at least they are not yet in Russian), however I bet you have no idea as to the context or the sentence structure.  Here is one of my favorite passages on Outpatient Hospitals:

Many people fear that the Health Care system will become politicized

(a) OUTPATIENT HOSPITALS.—

(1) IN GENERAL.—The first sentence of section1833(t)(3)(C)(iv) of the Social Security Act (42U.S.C. 1395l(t)(3)(C)(iv)) is amended—(A) by inserting ‘‘(which is subject to the productivity adjustment described in subclause (II) of such section)’’ after ‘‘1886(b)(3)(B)(iii)’’; and (B) by inserting ‘‘(but not below 0)’’ after ‘‘reduced’’.  (2) EFFECTIVE DATE.—The amendments made by paragraph (1) shall apply to increase factors for services furnished in years beginning with 2010.

Did you get all of that?  Well of course not….just as George Soros and the Tides group planned it (George and his group are rumored to be the actual authors of the bill).  I read somewhere that by dividing every word on the 1900+ pages by the actual amount the bill will cost, you come out with an amount of just under $3,000,000 per word.  After reading a large portion of the bill, most of the words are not any I would ever pay for if given the choice, anyway.

What to do?  I am sorry to say, that I don’t know if anything can be done. If we have any chance at all we must get on the phone/fax/email to every Blue Dog Democrat and appeal to their financial senses.  We know how the majority of the Republicans are going to vote and we know how the liberal lawmakers are going to vote.  The only chance we have is to influence the Blue Dogs, and help them see this as an obstacle ito balancing the budget, which cannot be overcome. Go here to see if there is a Blue Dog Democrat in your state: http://www.house.gov/melancon/BlueDogs/Member%20Page.html

Other than that, I know of nothing else we can do.  I have letters on my desk from my Senator and  Congressman telling me that will not support the bill. I am willing to take a stand….will you stand with me?