“Maybe the broken promises have turned people away,” Deane Waldman wrote in the Huffington Post Monday. “No doubt you know that the president’s ‘If you like your health plan, you can keep it,’ achieved the dubious distinction of becoming Politifact’s Lie of the Year for 2013. Similarly, he promised that you could keep your doctor. You know this to be another falsehood. With the government’s new reimbursement schedule, your doctor cannot keep you.”

Waldman appears eminently qualified to share her concern. Her bio on HuffPo reads:

“Deane Waldman MD MBA (“Dr. Deane”) is the author of newly released ‘The Cancer in Healthcare;’ Host of the free newsletter, The Hidden Enemy; a member of the Board of Directors of the New Mexico Health Insurance Exchange; Adjunct Scholar for the Rio Grande Foundation, a public policy think tank; and Emeritus Professor of Pediatrics, Pathology, and Decision Science at University of New Mexico.”

The New Mexico Health Insurance Exchange “has a well-functioning, user-friendly website, in contrast to healthcare.gov. Our call center gets you a human to talk to inside of two minutes,” Waldman wrote in American Thinker today. “Our carriers’ prices are accurate and easily comparable, again unlike the FFM (federally facilitated market). Our increase in insurance premium costs is generally less than 10 percent higher than pre-Obama, in marked contrast to our one-over neighbor Nevada, where insurance prices have skyrocketed 179 percent.”

New Mexico committed and spent $50 million on the health exchange and outreach so far, the BizJournal in Albuquerque reported.

Covered CA spin

“Washington can spin the facts into pretzels and sow its disinformation. It can outright lie about consequences, such as Obama’s Lie of the Year for 2013 (per Politifact),” Waldman said. “They can hail Covered California — the ObamaCare Health Exchange in the Golden State — as a great success, even though seventy percent of California doctors say they will not accept patients ‘covered’ by Covered California because its reimbursement schedule is below their cost of staying in business.”

New Mexico technically did everything right. The computer system works, and outreach has been comprehensive and extensive. But even with a smooth implementation, unlike the rest of the country, New Mexico residents just don’t want Obamacare.

“Mr. President, we won’t buy Obamacare because we don’t like what you are selling,” Waldman said. “And when you try to force us to buy; when you condescendingly assure us that ‘Father Knows Best,’ we do what Americans have always done since 1776. We resist central control of our lives and most particularly, of our freedom to choose.”

Waldman added that “Americans are culturally programmed to resist” authority. “The harder a central authority figure pushes us, the harder we push back.”

A review of medical records, police reports and a federal lawsuit show deputies with the Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Office, police officers with the City of Deming and medical professionals at the Gila Regional Medical Center made some questionable decisions.

The incident began January 2, 2013 after David Eckert finished shopping at the Wal-Mart in Deming.  According to a federal lawsuit, Eckert didn’t make a complete stop at a stop sign coming out of the parking lot and was immediately stopped by law enforcement.      

Eckert’s attorney, Shannon Kennedy, said in an interview with KOB that after law enforcement asked him to step out of the vehicle, he appeared to be clenching his buttocks.  Law enforcement thought that was probable cause to suspect that Eckert was hiding narcotics in his anal cavity.  While officers detained Eckert, they secured a search warrant from a judge that allowed for an anal cavity search.  

The lawsuit claims that Deming Police tried taking Eckert to an emergency room in Deming, but a doctor there refused to perform the anal cavity search citing it was “unethical.”

But physicians at the Gila Regional Medical Center in Silver City agreed to perform the procedure and a few hours later, Eckert was admitted.

What Happened

While there, Eckert was subjected to repeated and humiliating forced medical procedures.  A review of Eckert’s medical records, which he released to KOB, and details in the lawsuit show the following happened:

1. Eckert’s abdominal area was x-rayed; no narcotics were found.  

2. Doctors then performed an exam of Eckert’s anus with their fingers; no narcotics were found.

3. Doctors performed a second exam of Eckert’s anus with their fingers; no narcotics were found.

4. Doctors penetrated Eckert’s anus to insert an enema.  Eckert was forced to defecate in front of doctors and police officers.  Eckert watched as doctors searched his stool.  No narcotics were found.

5. Doctors penetrated Eckert’s anus to insert an enema a second time.  Eckert was forced to defecate in front of doctors and police officers.  Eckert watched as doctors searched his stool.  No narcotics were found.

6. Doctors penetrated Eckert’s anus to insert an enema a third time.  Eckert was forced to defecate in front of doctors and police officers.  Eckert watched as doctors searched his stool.  No narcotics were found.

7. Doctors then x-rayed Eckert again; no narcotics were found.  

8. Doctors prepared Eckert for surgery, sedated him, and then performed a colonoscopy where a scope with a camera was inserted into Eckert’s anus, rectum, colon, and large intestines.  No narcotics were found.  

Throughout this ordeal, Eckert protested and never gave doctors at the Gila Regional Medical Center consent to perform any of these medical procedures. 

And, get this: They sent him the bill for thousands of dollars for the gestapo-like medical assault!

Read the rest here.

(h/t to Reason mag.)

By John Seiler

Back in 1995, USA Today reported that broadcaster Sam Donaldson received $84,742 in federal subsidies from taxpayers for a horse farm in New Mexico. So it’s understandable why he defends the current regime of ripping off middle-class taxpayers to give the money to wealthy celebrities such as himself.

Last weekend, he attacked the Tea Party for “driving the Republican Party out of contention as a national party.” He said you can’t win nationally if you don’t know something about “how the country has changed.”

Actually, the Tea Party was behind the Republican Party’s takeover of the U.S. House of Representatives in 2010. Then it was sold out by the GOP leadership, which failed to cut the budget deficit and make the Bush tax cuts permanent. But the Tea Party’s influence kept the Republicans in charge in 2012, and likely will boost their numbers in the House in 2014.

But never mind: Sam has his eye on those tax subsidies that the Tea Party wants to cut.

“The Tea Party seems to think that the country can go back 25 or 30 years” — that is, before Sam ripped off taxpayers with his subsidies.

Sam said the slogan he hated the most was, “We ought to take back our country.” That’s understandable. Because if the Tea Party took back the country, he would have to give back the subsidies he ripped off from taxpayers.

“Guys, it’s not your country any more,” Sam huffed. True, Sam and his other left-subsidy beneficiaries grabbed our taxes and kept them for themselves.

He’s right that the Tea Party, despite some victories for the Republicans, mostly has failed. The subsides to Sam and other limousine liberals have helped bankrupt the federal government. And we’re all going to have to live with the consequences of that.

Well, almost all of us. Sam and his fellow champagne socialists will be living it up on our money.

Here’s the video:

One of the curious findings of the weekend’s L.A. Times/USC poll was that Latinos call themselves “conservative” by 40 percent, “moderate” percent 32 and “liberal” 23 percent. See Question 74.

That means Latinos are more conservative that whites, who identified that way by 36 percent, moderate 36 percent and liberal 23 percent.

The poll doesn’t include blacks and Asians. And it doesn’t get more specific by including “libertarian” among its political labels, presumably subsuming that into “conservative.” Moreover, political labels nowadays are much fuzzier than they were a decade or more ago.

Still, how do we explain that Latinos, at base, are “conservative,” yet vote for liberal Democrats in California?

I think the reason is the dismal candidates put up by the GOP. Latinos did like Arnold Schwarzenegger, but in the end his disastrous policies turned off everybody, severely tainting the GOP brand. Meg Whitman’s Nannygate disaster only made worse what was a disastrous, albeit expensive, candidacy.

By contrast, in other states the GOP has put up such winning candidates as Gov. Brian Sandoval in Nevada and Gov. Susana Martinez in New Mexico (pictured above). Both campaigned as small-government, reform Republicans. According to Martinez’ Web site, “She entered the race on July 17, 2009 pledging to cut wasteful spending, lower taxes to create more jobs, end “pay-to-play” practices and other corruption in government and fight to reform education.

Note that: lower taxes.

We’ll see how they actually do over their full terms of office. But the GOP in those states obviously is doing things right.

Maybe it’s a blessing for those states not to have Silicon Valley billionaires and steroid-bloated action stars — and Republican party officials that kiss up to them.

Californians of all ethnic groups want responsible, small-government candidates with the guts to implement reforms. When the GOP finally starts nominating such candidates, maybe Latinos will start voting for them.

April 26, 2011