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By the time Djigui Keita left the hospital for home, his follow-up appointment had been scheduled. Emergency health insurance was arranged until he could apply for public assistance. He knew about changes in his medication — his doctor had found less expensive brands at local pharmacy chains. And Mr. Keita, 35, who had passed out [...]

In a move hailed as a step toward fairness for same-sex couples, President Barack Obama is ordering that nearly all hospitals allow patients to say who has visitation rights and who can help make medical decisions, including gay and lesbian partners. “Every day, all across America, patients are denied the kindness and caring of a [...]

The Washington Post just can’t believe a black Democrat congressman would vote against Obamacare:

Rep. Artur Davis, long regarded as one of the most promising of a younger generation of black politicians that has emerged over the past decade, took a bold stance this week as he seeks to become the first African American governor of Alabama: distancing himself from the biggest legislative achievement of the first black president.

The four-term lawmaker joined 33 other Democrats, most of whom hail from the South, in opposing the health-care legislation that President Obama signed into law Tuesday. Davis originally voted against the House version of the legislation in November, and Democratic leaders did not spend much time trying to get him to change his vote, perhaps in a nod to the political dynamics of his state, where Obama won only 38 percent of the vote in 2008.

But in opposing the health-care bill, Davis, a longtime Obama ally who was one of the first lawmakers to back his White House run, split from the other 41 members of the Congressional Black Caucus. They not only all voted for the legislation, but cast it in historic terms as an extension of the policies of the civil rights era.

This is typical lefty think in which people are part of little sub-groups and all members of that group are required to think and act identically. Being black, therefore, required this congressman to support Obama’s agenda because, after all, he’s black too.

Democrats are feeling threatened these days:

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer is warning that some of his Democratic colleagues are being threatened with violence when they go back to their districts — and he wants Republicans to stand up and condemn the threats.

The Maryland Democrat said more than 10 House Democrats have reported incidents of threats or other forms of harassment about their support of the highly divisive health insurance overhaul vote. Hoyer emphasized that he didn’t have a specific number of threats and that was just an estimate.

His information is probably as good as the information about the “n” word name calling that was reported on Sunday and never happened.

Of course, this is only news when it happens to Democrats. Republicans have had to deal with this stuff for years:

A Republican aide also pointed out that over the years Republican members of Congress received their fair share of death threats during volatile times. Newt Gingrich after the 1994 Republican revolution and the late Henry Hyde during the Clinton impeachment in 1998 both received numerous death threats. And just last month, Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) received death threats after his filibuster of unemployment benefits, according to a report in Roll Call.

And why don’t you go ask guys like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity how many death threats they get…daily.

Hoyer claims he wants a civil society…at least when Democrats are speaking, but I don’t remember him speaking out against Code Pink when they interrupted congressional hearings or tried to disrupt Sarah Palin’s 2008 GOP convention speech.

While I don’t condone violent responses, I’m not surprised by them at all and I expect the tempo will pick up a bit as House Dems return to their districts for the Spring break. As I’ve said before you can’t betray a significant majority of your constituents and expect civility in return.

If you thought Obamacare was going to allow people with pre-existing conditions to immediately buy health insurance, think again:

ObamaCare will not protect children with pre-existing health conditions from being denied health coverage — not until 2014. This despite endless talking points and promises to the contrary, the Associated Press reports:

Under the new law, insurance companies still would be able to refuse new coverage to children because of a pre-existing medical problem, said Karen Lightfoot, spokeswoman for the House Energy and Commerce Committee, one of the main congressional panels that wrote the bill Obama signed into law Tuesday…

Full protection for children would not come until 2014, said Kate Cyrul, a spokeswoman for the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, another panel that authored the legislation. That’s the same year when insurance companies could no longer deny coverage to any person on account of health problems.

Obama’s public statements have conveyed the impression that the new protections for kids were more sweeping and straightforward.

He hasn’t just “conveyed the impression.” He’s said it outright, repeatedly. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., was saying it on television as recently as three hours ago. MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, while criticizing ObamaCare, was saying this morning that he’s still glad it would allow his diabetic son to get insurance if he lost his job.

Sorry, but not so fast.

This, as Vice President Biden might say, is a big f***ing deal. It means that in their rush to pass the Senate version of ObamaCare on Christmas Eve, Democrats disarmed one of their main talking points in defense of the legislation for the rest of this year.

They have other priorities. Obama has to destroy the private insurance industry first, then they can cover you under the new single-payer government plan.

Looks like Bart Stupak will get his meaningless executive order signed today:

President Obama plans to sign an executive order Wednesday reaffirming long-standing restrictions on federal funding of the procedure, but won’t hold an event like the signing ceremony a day earlier.

It will be signed in secret because the pro-abortion crowd won’t allow life to be celebrated in any form. Socialism, such as we saw yesterday, can be celebrated with great fanfare, TV cameras and lots of cheering from empty-headed liberals.

Stupak’s executive order:

President Obama signed the Senate health care bill into law Tuesday. He did not sign the executive order on abortion negotiated with Michigan Democratic Congressman Bart Stupak in an 11th-hour arrangement that may well have saved the entire health care reform effort.

A White House official told Fox, Obama will not sign the Executive Order Tuesday and has set no specific date to do so. Stupak predicted Obama would sign the order later this week. The White House said only that Obama would sign the order “soon.”

In two celebratory speeches Tuesday – one at the bill’s signing, the other at the Interior Department with health care advocates – Obama said nothing about the abortion issue or the executive order.

Bart Stupak is a fool. He traded his morals for a meaningless order and a few bucks for some airports.

The question now is whether Obama will ever sign the order.

A sad day for our country’s future:

President Barack Obama is ready to sign landmark health care legislation into law today, but the work is far from over.

He also plans to make trips around the country, starting with Iowa Thursday, to persuade skeptics that the medical system remake will make their lives better.

But first Obama will surround himself at the White House with aides, Cabinet members and Democratic leaders who helped pushed the bill through.

Republicans say they’ll continue to fight it in whatever forum is appropriate, including the courts.

Top of the Ticket adds this:

Other than that and whatever else the White House publicity team can wring out of The Smoker’s healthy victory lap, we’re surely done with healthcare talk.

Not!

There are, as you read this, at least thirty-seven (37) states considering lawsuits over this gazillion-dollar healthcare bill, mainly over its constitutionality in requiring citizens to buy health insurance. There will be efforts to repeal the measure.

But House Speaker Nancy “Where’s My Airplane?” Pelosi is obviously (see photo) enjoying the media attention as possibly one of the most powerful women in the nation or maybe even the planet. Despite her pathetic poll numbers.

And as our wise and wily veteran political colleague Mark Z. Barabak wrote elsewhere on this site, the subject of the divisive and expensive government healthcare bill might come up — who knows? — in just about every single congressional campaign across the country leading up to November’s midterm elections, when, historic patterns suggest, the White House party was already set to lose some seats on the Hill.

The anger among the regular folks in flyover country is palpable. Democrats will regret this day even more than the rest of us will.

That’s what passes for health care “reform” these days:

The people at Zoll Medical Corporation saw a ray of hope in January when Scott Brown was elected senator from Massachusetts. Located in Chelmsford, 30 miles outside Boston, Zoll is the nation’s leading manufacturer of heart defibrillators, which save thousands of heart attack victims each year. Back in January, as the Senate race was raging, both House and Senate Democrats wanted to impose a crippling new tax on the makers of medical devices, Zoll included, to help pay for Obamacare.

The total tax on the industry would be about $2 billion a year, or $20 billion over the next decade. Companies watched nervously as lawmakers pushed ahead, first the House and then the Senate. But then Brown was elected on the promise to be the crucial Republican vote to stop health care reform. For Zoll, things were looking up.

Not anymore. The bill passed by the House Sunday night contains a particularly damaging version of the $20 billion hit for the medical device industry, meaning Zoll and other medical device makers could well be headed for hard times.

“We believe that the tax will cost us somewhere between $5 million and $10 million a year,” says Richard Packer, Zoll’s chairman and chief executive officer. “Our profit in 2009 was $9.5 million.”

That would be a devastating blow. Zoll employs about 1,800 people. Roughly 1,600 of them are in the United States, and about 650 of those are in Massachusetts. Once the new tax kicks in, that could all change. “We can’t run this company at a break-even or a negative rate,” says Packer, “so we will be forced to look at alternatives.”

The company’s first option is to pass the increase on to customers like hospitals and ambulance companies. That might or might not work, given that they are coming under increasing pressure to cut their own costs.

The next option is to cut research and development — a short-term, money-saving move that will surely cost Zoll down the road. And a third option, says Packer, is to “look at trying to shift jobs to lower-cost places around the world.” That would be bad news for Massachusetts and the USA.

It’s still not clear precisely how the new system will work. The Senate bill, which becomes law as soon the the president signs it, imposes the $2 billion annual tax on the industry starting almost immediately. The government would calculate the size of the entire medical device industry and charge each company a fee based on its share of the market. That’s how Zoll estimates its part will be $5 million to $10 million.

For Zoll, that’s the worst-case scenario. Things will be a bit better if the Senate approves the reconciliation bill passed on Sunday by the House. One of the “fixes” in the reconciliation bill would impose a 2.3 percent excise tax on medical devices, going into effect in 2013. Even though it would cost the company about the same amount of money, Zoll executives prefer that scenario, if only because the delayed onset would give them time to prepare.

No matter what happens, the makers of the devices that save our lives are going to take a major hit.

American jobs will be lost, new devices will never be developed because of cuts in R&D, and people will die because a group of Democrats couldn’t control themselves.

H/t RedState - the anti-Obamacare/Pelosi ads begin to drop: