ObamaCare's effects upon Physician's practices

“Due to years of mounting regulations, the solo practice in which patients stayed with the same physician for 20 to 30 years is most likely a thing of the past. That, in and of itself, is interference with the practice of medicine.

The Galen Institute: PRIVATE PHYSICIAN PRACTICE TAKES ANOTHER BLOW FROM A NEW 2,400-PAGE GOVERNMENT RULE   "Just before former House Speaker John Boehner handed the gavel to Paul Ryan, he shepherded legislation that eliminated a despised Medicare payment formula under which physicians faced a 21.2% pay reduction.

"Congress could not allow the pay cut to take place and take the risk that physicians would turn away their Medicare patients. But the “Sustainable Growth Rate” payment policy for Medicare was law—passed as part of the Balanced Budget Act in 1997 to restrain government spending.

"Physician groups swarmed Capitol Hill every year for more than a decade to oppose significant cuts, and the physician payment reductions had been averted 17 times by congressional patchwork.

"Finally, last year, the SGR was eliminated with MACRA—the Medicare Access & CHIP Reauthorization Act that passed Congress with bipartisan support and was signed into law by President Obama.  It called for physicians to receive a 0.5% payment update (instead of a 21.2% pay cut), but the price was creation of a new payment program to reward quality performance.

"The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) was tasked with writing the implementing rules for how MACRA would work.  Its proposed rule spelled out the details of how Washington would pay for “value” not “volume” under the fee-for-service payment system.  Physicians and other clinicians would now be financially rewarded or penalized based upon how well they satisfy a complex new system of government rules meant to improve quality of patient care and control costs." . . .

Grace-Marie Turner is president of the Galen Institute, a public policy research organization that she founded in 1995 to promote an informed debate over free-market ideas for health reform. 

Apathy in the Executive. Opportunity or problem?

Weekly Standard    . . . "Six years later, many conservatives again hope that an incoming Congress will set the agenda, but this time with an important twist. In 2010, conservatives wanted a Republican House to undo some of the worst policies pushed by a committed and ambitious progressive president. Now, conservatives are thinking not of defense but offense. They see a peculiar opportunity created by an incoming president who appears unusually uninterested in policy details and is notorious for a short attention span. 

"Indeed, for many on the right, Donald Trump's inattentiveness presents not just a possible silver lining to his tenure but a best-case scenario. An unengaged president who is vaguely amenable to conservatism on the policy front could make it possible for congressional leaders, working with administration appointees and mobilized activist groups, to achieve many of the goals conservatives have been pursuing for years (far longer than Trump has been a Republican)." . . .

Trump and U.S. foreign policy vis-à-vis Iran

Over 100.000 supporters of the Iranian resistance, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) and the People's Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI) gathered in Villepinte, north of Paris to call for a Democratic change in their Country in the largest ever known gathering organised by an opposition outside of the territory of its own country.  The Clarion Project

Shahriar Kia  "The election of Donald Trump as President of the United States has wreaked havoc among the regime in Iran. Iran’s lobbying groups in Washington are going the distance to influence Trump’s foreign policy vis-à-vis the mullahs in Tehran.

"This is an effort to have the appeasement policy of current U.S. president Barack Obama continue under a new administration. This campaign is bent on convincing Trump and his cabinet that an Iran regime-change policy will strengthen the “hardliners” and weaken the “moderates.”

" 'If Trump adopts a hostile policy towards Iran or scraps the deal, hard-liners and particularly the IRGC will benefit from it," Reuters posted,citing a former Iranian “reformist” official.

"This is the core argument put forward by the Tehran lobby to deceive Washington and fashion U.S. foreign policy based on rapprochement with Iran. Eight years of engagement by the Obama administration not only rendered no change in Iran and its meddling policies, in fact, the mullahs were encouraged to further continue inflaming the region and increase domestic crackdown." . . .

Shahriar Kia is a press spokesman for an Iranian oppositionShahriar Kia group housed at Camp Liberty in Iraq. Kia says the group, the People’s Mujahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI, also known as MEK), advocates for a democratic, secular Iran with separation of church and state and gender quality that is nuclear-free. He graduated from North Texas University and currently resides in Iraq. 

Sharyl Attkison on The new age of propaganda

Clarice Feldman  "The video embedded below of a TED talk by Sharyl Attkisson deserves to be viewed by American Thinker readers. In it she discusses astroturf groups, the fake grass roots movements funded from above in order to influence media coverage of a political issue. It is a bit over 10 minutes, not an outrageous investment of your time compared to the valuable information it provides." 

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed shows anti-war leftists were playing into Al Qaeda’s hands.

"Al Qaeda didn’t have a masterful plan to lure us into Afghanistan, as the left liked to insist, instead it expected President Bush to follow in Clinton’s footsteps by delivering an empty speech and then writing it off as a law enforcement problem. Much as Obama had done with Benghazi. It wasn’t expecting the roar of jets over Kandahar."

Daniel Greenfield  "The left aided Islamic terrorists most not with street protests, but by embedding counterintuitive narratives into the framework of counterterrorism. These narratives turned reality on its head.

"In counterterrorism, counterintuitive narratives transformed inaction into a virtue.

"One of the most pervasive myths was that Islamic terrorists actually wanted us to fight them and that we could only defeat them by ignoring them. The irrationality of the myth that terrorists wanted us to bomb and kill them was exceeded only by its persistence among experts and political officials.

"Popularly known as “Playing into their hands”, the goal of this counterintuitive narrative was to make the ostrich approach appear prudent and masterful while flipping around patriotism by accusing national security hawks of playing into the hands of the terrorists by killing them.

"Only the appeasers had the secret to defeating Islamic terrorism while the patriots were truly traitors.

"Trump faced repeated accusation from Hillary and her proxies that he was playing into the hands of ISIS with calls to get tough on Islamic terrorism. And you can expect the smear that he’s playing into the hands of the terrorists by bombing and killing them to recur throughout his administration." . . .

The real reason for New York City's traffic nightmare

NY Post  . . . "City officials have intentionally ground Midtown to a halt with the hidden purpose of making drivers so miserable that they leave their cars at home and turn to mass transit or bicycles, high-level sources told The Post.

"Today’s gridlock is the result of an effort by the Bloomberg and de Blasio administrations over more than a decade of redesigning streets and ramping up police efforts, the sources said."

. . . “ 'They’re not coming out and saying it, but they’re doing other things to cut down on traffic coming into city, things such as taking streets that had four lanes and making them three by creating bike lanes, or putting a plaza in, creating pedestrian islands,” the source said.

“ 'They’re purposefully cutting down on the number of vehicles coming into the city by cutting down the space for vehicles.”

"The source said de Blasio “doesn’t care about traffic” and noted that the mayor could now blame congestion on President-elect Donald Trump, whose Trump Tower in Midtown is now ringed with security.

“ 'He really doesn’t care,” the source said. “Instead of working around it and helping it out, he’ll just blame everything on Trump.' ” . . .

     It's a Democrat thing; just as Obama wanting people to blame the Republicans for the government shutdown. Obama spent large sums of money to block off open-air memorials including even roadside pullouts where they could be seen from a distance. 
     One Obama administration employee put it this way “It’s a cheap way to deal with the situation,” an angry Park Service ranger in Washington says of the harassment. “We’ve been told to make life as difficult for people as we can. It’s disgusting.”
     Another Ranger said, "Apparently, they want the public to feel the pain"
     Petulant and vindictive, was it not? The Tunnel Dweller

After Two Days Of Wisconsin Recount…Trump Gains 2 More Votes On Clinton

Weasel Zippers

"So far it’s just showing how accurate the count truly was.

"Via Hot Air:

[Jill Stein’s] team argued for a statewide hand recount in order to bypass the machines that they claim were manipulated. They have provided no evidence at all of such tampering, and a state judge rejected the request because of that lack of evidence. If the federal court winds up rejecting the recount because of the differing methods of counting ballots in each county, that will be quite the Catch-22, and it may force Wisconsin to create a uniform statewide process for recounts in the future.

It won’t make much difference either way. As predicted, the recounts show almost no changes to the outcome, and in fact demonstrate a remarkable degree of Election Night precision:

Numbers released by the Wisconsin Elections Commission on Friday showed little change to the vote totals here so far.

That’s true in the state’s largest city, said Neil Albrecht, the head of the Milwaukee Election Commission. He estimated that one-quarter of the city’s ballots have already been processed.
After two days, more than 500 precincts around the state have completed their recounts, about one-seventh of the total. Excluding those in the city of Milwaukee*, where absentee ballot recounts have not yet been completed (and are conducted centrally rather than in the precincts), the overall change thus far has been to add five votes to Trump’s totals and three to Hillary Clinton’s. Stein has picked up 24 votes, mostly from one county that had left off her vote total in error on its tally sheet. At this rate, we’re looking at an overall shift of less than 100 votes in Trump’s lead of 22,000 — and in his favor, not Hillary’s, and certainly not Stein’s.

Keep reading…

A WWII Russian prisoner of war remembers the Americans who helped him survive

Youtube  "A Russian World War 2 vet wishes the world to know how a group of American prisoners of war risked their lives to help him and his comrades."

A ‘cold anomaly’ is coming

Jack Hellner  "The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has published a map of predicted temperatures the next few days that has one meteorologist saying he “cannot remember last time they have seen such a cold anomaly forecast across almost entire USA.”

"As the great Anthony Watts notes:

The only state not showing a cold anomaly is Hawaii, the southernmost parts of Florida and Texas are also spared.

 

"You see, when cows are responsible for constant warming, they obviously also cause cold anomalies and polar vortexes.  Sometimes the CO2 and methane just bury themselves in the bottom of the ocean for a while, such as from 1945 to 1976.  When it is colder, not warmer than normal despite rising CO2, industrialization, population growth and fossil fuel use must be hiding.

"We can also see that hurricanes are more frequent and stronger than ever, except that no Category 3 hurricanes have hit the U.S. for eleven years.

"I believe we all can understand how politicians around the world can manipulate the temperatures, sea levels, and storms from now until forever if we the people will just give them trillions each year.  We can trust them.  They can't get their economies to grow despite zero interest rates and massive government spending, but they can control temperatures within one degree one hundred years out.

"Now everyone should just stop breathing, and we will stop that darn increase in the clear, innocuous CO2.  Oh, and we'd better spend more money than $6 billion a year on atmospheric computer models so we can find one that matches the real weather."

Trump’s Charm of Not Being Obama

The new White House won’t fail to embrace the jobs that fracking and pipelines can bring.

 

WSJ  "Barack Obama will retire a president personally popular with the American people yet who served them (and himself, and his party) badly.

He fretted in 2012 that he would lose the election just in time for Mitt Romney to get credit for an Obama recovery. That long-delayed recovery is finally coming in the last months of his administration—the economy finally broke 3% growth in the third quarter—and now Mr. Trump will get the credit.

"He may even deserve a bit, witness the outbreak of Trumpian optimism in the stock market and small-business hiring plans.

"Mr. Obama came in saying fossil fuels were running out and prices were destined to rise, and instead got the fracking revolution, whose related employment boost was arguably a factor in his re-election victories in Pennsylvania and Ohio. Yet he couldn’t stop looking this gift horse in the mouth.

"Unshrewdly, in the name of satisfying his climate-change constituents, he needlessly launched a regulatory war against coal as cheap natural gas was already doing the job for him. " . . .

BQI: Making America Great Again

The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the otherChristianity is the companion of liberty in all its conflicts — the cradle of its infancy, and the divine source of its claims.  Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859)

Black Quill and Ink    "For years Trump and non-Trump conservatives have witnessed a precipitous downturn in America. Things that were virtually unheard of and certainly seen as out of the mainstream if not completely unacceptable just 10 years ago are now literally main stream in America. Today Democrats, with power and influence from the White House, have managed to push an extreme agenda onto American life; including things like the legalization of gay marriage to now concerted efforts to institutionalize all bathrooms as transgender or gender neutral. Unfettered abortion, including partial birth abortion and infanticide, are being accepted by many Americans including some so called Christians. Many Americans, including Christians, who may not agree with these new lifestyles will generally remain silent for fear of physical and/or verbal retaliation, mocking and intimidation; all efforts to silence people into inaction. Christians who do stand on their faith are targeted, fined; threaten with physical harm and often times run out of business, all for exercising their Constitutional right of freedom of religion and standing up for their Judeo/Christian values. 

We have members of violent black radical groups like Black Lives Matter being given legitimacy by accepting invitations to and visiting the White House to meet with the president. You have Christians around the world being targeted by Islamic terrorist; who are hung and crucified and yet our president does nothing to help but instead dictates that Muslims in war torn nations be allowed to immigrate to America and given preferential treatment. 

"So with the nation virtually imploding you have a new political star in Donald Trump offering to fix these issues and in doing so “make America great again”. So what or how does Trump plan to make America great again?" . . .
. . . 
So what did de Tocqueville see as good in America[?] In his writings he stated:

I sought for the key to the greatness and genius of America in her harbors…; in her fertile fields and boundless forests; in her rich mines and vast world commerce; in her public school system and institutions of learning. I sought for it in her democratic Congress and in her matchless Constitution.

Chip & Joanna Gaines’ Pastor Responds to Buzzfeed’s Public Shaming

Todd Starnes via Modern Reformation

"It’s not exactly clear why Buzzfeed chose to publicly shame Fixer Upper hosts Chip and Joanna Gaines. Nor do we know why the online publication attacked the Christian couple’s church.

"Maybe author Kate Aurthur got a speeding ticket while driving through Waco, Texas? Or maybe she dislikes shiplap? Or perhaps Buzzfeed simply employs virulent, anti-Christian bigots?

"We may never know. Regardless, their ugly attack on the Gaines family and Antioch Community Church in Waco cannot be undone.

“ 'The real shame is not on the Gaines family, but on this media inquisition of Christianity,” National Religious Broadcasters president Jerry A. Johnsontold me.

Earlier this week, Buzzfeed raised  questions about the Gaines family church and its position on same sex marriage.

“ 'And their pastor, Jimmy Seibert, who described the Gaineses as ‘dear friends’ in a recent video, takes a hard line against same-sex marriage and promotes converting LGBT people into being straight,” Buzzfeed breathlessly reported.

“ 'So are the Gaineses against same-sex marriage?” the writer demanded to know. “And would they ever feature a same-sex couple on the show, as have HGTV’s House Hunters and Property Brothers?”

"Why is that the business of Buzzfeed? Do they expect Chip and Joanna to inquire about the sexual proclivities of potential clients?" . . .