Crime on the Health Care Front

Crooks flock to where the money is. So no one should be surprised that as the amount of money being spent on health care in this country rises, so have the number of fraud cases connected to that industry.

There was the scam in which Medicaid and Medicare patients were billed, monthly for wheelchairs they never got or didn't need. There was the phony program to provide liquid food, like Ensure, to undernourished elderly — except it turns out most people didn't get the delivery and many of them were dead.

Last summer, there was a fraud plot afoot that provided Medicare patients with "arthritis kits." In reality, the kits were nothing more than a heating pad and joint braces, and many patients reported they never even received them. No matter, the criminals billed the government up to $4,000 for each kit.

As a candidate for president, Sen. Barack Obama rejected "the politics of fear." Well, he won. So now he's playing the fear card to the hilt.

Monday, President Obama went to Strongsville, Ohio, to warn that unless his ObamaCare passes, middle Americans should be very afraid of the day when they (Fear No. 1) lose their job or income, then (Fear No. 2) fall seriously ill and then (Fear No. 3) receive the health care they need, but lose valued assets.

Obama's intended prop was Natoma Canfield, a 50-year-old cleaning woman and cancer survivor who dropped her private health care policy after Anthem Blue Cross raised her premiums some 40 percent to $708 per month. In December, Canfield wrote to Obama telling him that she was going to drop her insurance rather than lose the home her parents built in 1958. Alas, Canfield could not attend, as she since was diagnosed with leukemia and was in the hospital Monday.

The ObamaCare fear is not of being poor and not having health care.

Fifty percent (50%) of U.S. voters say they are less likely to vote for their representative in Congress this November if he or she votes for the health care plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey taken Wednesday night finds that 34% are more likely to vote for their Congress member’s reelection if he or she supports the president’s health care plan. Eight percent (8%) say the health care vote will have no impact on how they vote this November, and another seven percent (7%) are not sure.

For the first time that I can remember, there were no politically charged comments at the Academy Awards ceremony last Sunday. And I was ready. We had left-wing bomb throwers like George Clooney, Sean Penn, Barbra Streisand and co-host Alec Baldwin all lined up in the "let it fly" zone. But the show turned out to be the silence of the lambs.

What's going on?

The answer to that question is money, pure and simple.

The rise of the machines has dislocated entertainment all over the country. Now you can program your life on your computer and endlessly amuse yourself with iPods, DS games and BlackBerry phones. No longer do you have to drive to a movie theater to see something interesting.

Theref ore, the pool of movies, recordings, books and other forms of entertainment is becoming shallow. For the most part, companies are not throwing around big dollars to actors and singers anymore.

By now, you most likely know that Texas has become ground zero for the latest battles in the textbook wars. While conservatives and progressives take their stands on the issue, I wonder: What would America's Founders think about this feud?

For those who somehow have dodged the news, the 15-member Texas State Board of Education, which is composed of 10 Republicans and five Democrats, has been hearing and debating variances of opinion regarding what to include and exclude in its social studies curriculum and subsequent textbooks.

Last Friday, the SBOE members began to wrap up the process by endorsing a draft proposal of the state's social studies curriculum, with an 11-4 vote.

Not surprising is the full range of progressive issues that liberals want the SBOE to include, from emphasizing equity and tolerance for all minorities to erasing key conservative figures and events from history and whitewashing the Judeo-Christian convictions of our Founders.