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Welcome to the World of Pulitzer Prize Winning Political Cartoonist Michael P. Ramirez

Do Not Resuscitate  07-11-1        See Michael's latest cartoons HERE

PictureImage description: Michael P. Ramirez cartoon shows coffin labeled "Obamamcare" surrounded by medical resuscitation equipment.
If ever there was a reason to institute a DNR order, Obamacare's "atrocious socialist law" is it. 
Charlie Gard makes Trump case for speedy Obamacare repeal
By Cheryl K. Chumley - The Washington Times - Monday, July 3, 

President Donald Trump has just scored some massive political capital by tweeting of America’s willingness to help save little Charlie Gard from the evils of socialized health care — in other words, from government-imposed decision that he must die.

Congress, on the other hand, ought to hang a photo of little Charlie right in the House and Senate, as a reminder — amid all the Obamacare fate debates — why government has no business in health care.

But first, the warm and fuzzy.

“If we can help little #CharlieGard, as per our friends in the U.K. and the Pope, we would be delighted to do so,” TrumpCharlie Gard makes Trump case for speedy Obamacare repeal” target=”_blank”>tweeted.

And with those few words, all that’s best about America has gone blaring forth to the world stage.

What’s the message? We’re compassionate.

We’re led by a compassionate leader.

And we’re outraged at the idea of a government being able to decide the life or death decision of a baby — and moreover, refuse the parents the ability to counter that decree.

The basic story is this: Charlie and his European caretakers — the European Court of Human Rights — just ruled he’s too sick to live and as such, his parents need to just let him “die with dignity,” as the bureaucrats put it.

Only little Charlie’s parents disagree and want instead to take him to America to try out some new meds.

As his mother, Connie Yates, argued — albeit unsuccessfully — “He literally has nothing to lose but potentially a healthier, happier life to gain.”

The pope’s weighed in, siding ultimately with the parents.

But Yates and the baby’s father, Chris Gard, said the doctors at the Great Ormond Street Hospital, where their son has been receiving treatment, refused to let them take him home after the ECHR ruling. The ECHR also deemed the United States unable to help Charlie — that the medical treatment offered in America would not work.

So what’s wrong with Charlie?

He suffers from a rare genetic condition, mitochondrial depletion syndrome, and has serious brain damage. But even worse, he suffers from British Bureaucracy, born by socialized medicine — the same type Barack Obama installed in the United States.

So take note America: Today’s British Charlie Gard is tomorrow’s American Jack or Jill Johnson. Repeal Obamacare might be a good sign to wave about now.

In the meantime, though, Trump has made a tremendous goodwill outreach — via Twitter, no less, the media medium the left loves to excoriate him for using. And it’s one that helps shed the bitter taste left by a very similar Government v. Family battle that played out in America, under then-Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. Remember Terry Schiavo?

She was the woman who collapsed from cardiac arrest in early 1990 and suffered brain damage that left her in a vegetative state. Her husband, years later, filed a Do Not Resuscitate order, kicking off a major political battle over the fate of Schiavo and the question of her feeding tube. Bluntly, to pull the plug or not to pull the plug, that was the underlying question. Politicians all the way up to the White House weighed in; so, too, judges, all the way up to the Supreme Court.

Schiavo’s parents wanted the feeding tube to stay; Schiavo’s husband wanted it pulled.

In October of 2003, Schiavo’s feeding tube was removed — but then Terri’s Law passed, allowing for the state to intervene, and the tube was reinserted. That law was later found by a couple courts to be unconstitutional. Schiavo died in March of 2005, after a long medical battle that led the country into an equally long legislative and judicial fight and, more importantly, accompanying search for moral truths.

Americans still remember the pain of this case, which played very simply in the minds of most as this: Who has the right to decide a disabled person’s life — the government or the family?

Now, across the sea, comes Charlie Gard, at a time when all the Obamacare talk has hit a new crescendo and Republicans are trying, once more, to do the will of the people and make sure government doesn’t decide individual health matters.  read more
Reeling Republicans take one last shot at Obamacare     POLITICO
By BURGESS EVERETT and JENNIFER HABERKORN  Updated 07/11/2017 10:30 PM EDT

Twenty-three years ago, President Bill Clinton and Senate Democrats canceled two weeks of the August recess to pass a major health care bill. They got nowhere.

Now Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is trying the same thing with the GOP for the August break, and it may lead to the same result.

“I’m hoping for better this time,” said Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) on Tuesday afternoon after saying earlier he was “very pessimistic” the GOP would succeed. In 1994, Democrats “kept us in and we didn’t accomplish anything.”

In fact, McConnell would like to finish health care well before August. Though he pulled a vote in June, Republicans say they are serious about completing their work in the coming days.

There will be a vote to advance the bill next week, McConnell said Tuesday. And even if it fails, he made clear to his members at a party lunch that there will be no more false starts despite an increasingly downbeat feeling in the caucus.

New text of the proposal will be made public Thursday, and a Congressional Budget Office analysis is expected on Monday.

“We’re in gridlock,” said Sen. John McCain of Arizona. He added sarcastically: “Now we’re going to look at a new approach. And we’re going to get a CBO estimate on Monday. Yay!”

Sen. Ron Johnson, a conservative holdout, called it a "political blunder" that McConnell started the health care debate as a partisan, all-Republican effort.

"It’s just not smart politically," the Wisconsin senator said.

McConnell spoke to President Donald Trump over the weekend about health care, a source familiar with the conversation said. The White House is distracted by Donald Trump's Jr.’s deepening Russia scandal but Trump "definitely wants [health care] done," the source said.

McConnell's new timetable comes as his party is mired in a tug of war among its ideological factions and clearly lacking the 50 required votes to even advance the bill.
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An amendment written by Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah is fracturing the conference, with the measure taking center stage at the party’s first caucus lunch in nearly two weeks on Tuesday. Though the proposal to allow the sale of cheap,

deregulated insurance plans is championed by the right, other Republicans say it would undermine their promise to keep Obamacare’s protections for people with pre-existing conditions.

There will be two drafts of the new bill text and two scores, senators said: One with the amendment, the other without. McConnell and his team have not decided whether the divisive measure will be included in the base bill. That decision will determine whether Cruz, Lee and other reluctant Republicans even vote to open debate on the bill.

McConnell is urging senators to use the bill’s open amendment process to alter the measure to suit their concerns, according to senators and aides.

"I just can't imagine not voting to proceed to the bill when you've got an open amendment process," said Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee. "If you don't like what ends up happening, you can vote no, can you not?"
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But many senators suspect McConnell will introduce a substitute measure at the end of the amendment blitz next week that would overwrite any alterations during the bill's "vote-a-rama." And GOP leaders believe if the debate begins, the vote would pass.

If they start the debate “that will mean I’m confident that we will get there before it’s over,” said Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn of Texas.

Republicans were told on Tuesday the latest draft is likely to keep some of Obamacare’s taxes on the wealthy and Medicare to help lower premiums for people with low incomes, provide $45 billion to fight opioid addiction and allow people to pay premiums with pre-tax money. It does not appear there is yet a solution for moderates and people from Medicaid expansion states, many of whom gathered on Tuesday to strategize.

“I'm not optimistic that it’s going to be a bill that I can support. But obviously I’ll withhold judgment until I see it. It sounds to me like it does not make a lot of major changes," said Sen. Susan Collins of Maine. The moderate senator is concerned that future spending reductions to Medicaid would cripple rural hospitals in her state.

Sen. Rand Paul, one of the GOP’s most vocal opponents from the right, said he hasn’t heard anything that would change his position, even if the amendment by Cruz and Lee is attached.

“I promised to repeal it,” the Kentucky lawmaker said of Obamacare. “I didn’t promise to permanently codify that the federal government will buy peoples’ insurance, subsidize their insurance and then throw a big pool of money at the insurance companies.”

The GOP strategy to pass the bill, he said, is “the kitchen sink right now — they’re just throwing more money at everything.”

Indeed, deal-seeking Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said he was convening a group of senators to write a new bill to replace Obamacare. It's not clear how Graham's plan would align with McConnell's work, though he said he believed he could get the support of some Democrats.

That could be helpful, considering how divided the Republican conference is over the issue.

The Cruz and Lee amendment lacks support, and its future has been complicated by a game of telephone between GOP leaders and the two conservative senators. After much back and forth among McConnell, the two conservative senators and CBO, the amendment was rewritten again Monday, two sources said.   read more