Apr 14
With the 2011 and 2012 budgets occupying much of the news these days, coverage of attempts to defund and dismantle Obamacare by the Republicans have been relegated to low priority and interest by the liberal “mainstream” media. We must make sure that the anathema of Obamacare be relentlessly publicized.
This dangerous, disastrous and extraordinarily expensive government take-over of healthcare and usurpation of our rights must be abrogated. The American people have unequivocally voiced their antipathy of this government confiscation. They know what this will lead to and on virtually all accounts, it is extremely bad.
Socialized medicine has been an abysmal failure worldwide and there were and are so many models that exemplify this. Canada and Great Britain are quintessential examples of this. Both countries are have been seeking radical changes in order to improve their abject care and bankrupting costs.
We must continue to keep the pressure on our politicians for the repeal of Obamacare. This corruptly passed (and probably unconstitutional) legislation was all about power and control by the Democrats – and not about costs or access.
Pain And Suffering
Investor’s Business Daily 04/06/2011
Health Care: Recall the complaints that the U.S. is the only developed nation in the world that doesn't provide universal medicine? So how's that arrangement working elsewhere? Rather poorly, particularly in Britain.
Agitators for government health care can no longer, as they did at one time, hold up the British system as the model the U.S. should follow. They've learned to stay away — and for good reason. The system has followed the path that all socialist systems must follow: It is breaking under its own weight.
The nation with the reputation for rotten dental care is quickly developing a reputation for delays in medical treatment. "Devastating and cruel" is how British surgeons are now describing the long waits for operations.
It's the National Health Service's way, reports the BBC, of finding nearly $33 billion in efficiency savings by 2015. To achieve those savings, knee and hip replacements apparently have been limited by the bureaucratic rationing teams.
"We've started to get reports over the last nine months that access to these services is being restricted," Peter Kay, president of the British Orthopaedic Association, told the BBC. Of the 692 surgeons contacted by the broadcaster, 106 said "routine operations had been put on hold in their area. Others described new limits on when patients qualify for hip or knee replacements."
Meanwhile, "152 specialists said patients now have to be more disabled or in greater pain, and 118 told us hip and knee surgery had been regarded as a procedure of low priority."
The consequences of trying to treat everyone through the government go far beyond the pain and suffering of missed joint-replacement surgery. Sometimes, the wages are death.
That's how it ended for Margaret Hutchon, who happened to be a former NHS director. She died last month, the Daily Mail reported, "after waiting for nine months for an operation — at her own hospital" (emphasis ours).
She "had been waiting since last June for a followup stomach operation," but "her appointments to go under the knife were cancelled four times and she barely regained consciousness after finally having surgery."
Not only are treatments being delayed, so is NHS legislation that would, among other provisions, make the system less bureaucratic and increase private-sector involvement.
The political left, which clings tenaciously to government programs that permit the exercise of power over others, has demagogued the legislation, sounded the dreaded "privatization" alarm and won a delay.
Britons should be outraged. If the government taxes them to fund universal care, they should get the care. If the government can't do the job — which clearly it can't — it should get out of the business of meddling in people's lives and let everyone take care of his or her own health care.
Americans should be outraged as well, because a Democratic Congress and White House have forced on them a program that will be no more successful than the British health care wreck.
Yes, ObamaCare is an unpopular law with low approval ratings. But the antipathy toward it and those who engineered its passage over constitutional limitations and public opposition is not as intense as it should be.
Pressure for ObamaCare's repeal should be so sharp that official Washington will be left with no other option. If not, the British health care problems of today will be America's health care problems tomorrow.
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/568383/201104061838/Pain-And-Suffering.htm
Posted in Constitution Constitutionality Democrat Democrat Government control ObamaCare Rationing with No Comments
More:
Print This Post
Nov 19
Obama claimed that the strong opposition to Obamacare was only due to the fact that the legislation wasn't explained well enough and thus the public didn't understand it.
In reality, the facts are that the public does understand the concepts of Obamacare and absolutely abhor it, what it represents and how it will destroy the best health care system in the world. They know that it won't reduce costs which Obama and the Democrats tried to disingenuously pass off on the public.
It is a disastrous and pernicious plan that will give the federal government ultimate control of our health care and involvement in some of the most intimate details of our lives and health.
Posted in Comic Government control Obama ObamaCare with No Comments
More:
Print This Post
19
The arrogance, disdain for the average American, limitless deception, elitism and egregious naked power grab of Obama, Pelosi and the Congressional Democrats in the formulation and corrupt passage of government controlled health care exceeded a level of reprehensibility unparalleled in Washington politics. It irrefutably demonstrates an intention and method for stealing our personal rights and liberties away and providing an irreversible way for the federal government to rule us – not represent us.
This is government by fiat as in many Third World countries – not by legal, Constitutional means. As enumerated below, the Democrats sought to shield this legislation from attempts to change or nullify it and did so in ways that were blatantly unconstitutional and depraved.
The Goldwater Institute is attempting to block a crucial provision of Obamacare: the creation of the Independent Payment Advisory Board which is charged with creating Medicare policies and health care payments. It is an autonomous commission with members appointed by the President that is designed to have no Congressional oversight or be subject to judicial review.
This arrangement wreaks tyranny – and was just what Obama and Pelosi wanted.
The election was one payback for the public’s rebuking of this pernicious legislation. We strongly recommend that the soon to be Republican dominated House impose condign retribution for the depraved actions of these two despicable politicians. It can start, for example, by severely curtailing Obama and Michelle’s White House budgets including for parties, trips, etc.
Keep them on a short leash and punish them financially when possible!
Goldwater Institute Asks Court To Block Key Provision of Federal Health Care Law
Health care bill created ‘untouchable’ Independent Payment Advisory Board
Goldwater Institute News Release
November 16, 2010
PHOENIX – The Goldwater Institute has requested an injunction [1] to block a provision of the federal health care law that prevents Congress from repealing a new agency that would control health care payments. A preliminary injunction is needed so Congress can consider revoking the Independent Payment Advisory Board before the agency has been established.
Among other measures, the federal health care law orders the creation by 2012 of the Independent Payment Advisory Board, an unelected commission that will be free to set Medicare policy and health care payment rates with no meaningful congressional oversight and without the possibility of judicial review. The law also prohibits Congress from acting to repeal the agency in perpetuity, except for a narrow window in 2017.
“Protecting any new federal agency from being repealed by Congress appears to be unprecedented in the history of the United States,” said Diane Cohen, the Goldwater Institute’s lead attorney in this case.
The motion for preliminary injunction has been filed as part of Coons v. Geithner [2], one of nearly two dozen lawsuits around the country challenging the health care law. If granted by U.S. District Judge Murray Snow, the injunction will be the first time that any part of the law has been blocked, said Clint Bolick, litigation director at the Goldwater Institute.
“This injunction would restore power to our elected representatives to repeal an agency with new sweeping powers that are removed from any semblance of legislative, executive, or judicial review,” Mr. Bolick said.
The Goldwater Institute Scharf-Norton Center for Constitutional Litigation represents a number of clients in this lawsuit including U.S. Representatives Jeff Flake, Trent Franks, and John Shadegg of Arizona. The congressmen have supported repeal of the Independent Payment Advisory Board, a 15-member commission appointed by the president that will have far-reaching and uncontrollable powers, Ms Cohen said.
Unlike any other federal commission, the Independent Payment Advisory Board won’t have to follow the basic steps for adopting and enforcing administrative rules. The board’s annual payment schedules and policy proposals can’t be examined by the courts and automatically will become law unless amended by Congress through a difficult and complex procedure.
Finally, even if Congress were to approve a repeal of the board in 2017, following the complex process allowed in the health care law, that repeal automatically would be delayed until 2020.
“No possible reading of the Constitution supports the idea of an unelected, standalone federal board that’s untouchable by both Congress and the courts,” Mr. Bolick said.
http://goldwaterinstitute.org/article/5427
Posted in Constitutionality Democrat Democrat Government Control Government control Nancy Pelosi Obama Obama ObamaCare with No Comments
More:
Print This Post
Nov 9
Bit by bit more details are coming out regarding the pernicious nature of Obamacare which add even more reasons why it MUST be repealed.
COMPLETELY!
There are no minor changes which can miraculously transform this unconstitutional government controlled Leviathan into an acceptable system. It is so massive, invasive, controlling, punitive, costly and destructive that only its complete eradication and starting with a clean slate would be acceptable and prudent.
The new Republican controlled House must address this as their first priority along with making the Bush tax cuts permanent.
Repeal—Now More than Ever
Yuval Levin November 8, 2010
When the Democrats passed their health care reform legislation in March, they assured one another that the law would grow increasingly popular as its contents became better known and its early provisions began to take effect. Seven months later—as those contents have become better known and those provisions have begun to take effect—the law only looks worse, in both substantive and political terms. Its disastrous consequences are already being felt. Voters clearly know it. The case for repealing Obamacare and starting over has never been stronger.
The fundamentals of that case remain what they were back in March. The law will spend a trillion dollars over the next decade and increase taxes by half a trillion; create a massive new entitlement on top of those that are already threatening to bankrupt the government; impose a vast array of new rules and mandates on providers, insurers, employers, and consumers; insert the government in countless new ways between doctors and patients; increase the burden of Medicaid costs for the states; and cause millions of middle class families to lose the employer-based insurance they have today and pay even higher premiums.
Rather than reducing costs, Obamacare will increase national health expenditures by more than $200 billion—according to the Obama administration’s own actuary. Rather than pave the way for entitlement reform, it will take the resources that future policymakers might have used to improve the structure of Medicare and use them instead to construct a new entitlement that will grow more expensive more quickly than Medicare itself. And all of this to increase the portion of Americans who have health insurance from just under 85 percent today to about 95 percent in 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. There are far better ways to contain costs and so increase access to coverage—above all, by increasing the control consumers have over how their health care dollars are spent. Opponents of Obamacare proposed a variety of such approaches this year.
All this we knew, and said, last spring. But today, we know even more about why the law must be repealed. We know with far greater certainty, for instance, that Obamacare will make it very attractive for both large and small employers to stop providing insurance coverage, thereby sending millions more into the subsidized exchanges than the CBO accounted for, and thus sharply increasing the cost of the law and with it the deficit. We know that Obamacare will make it more difficult for many providers of nonstandard insurance (like colleges insuring young students, or employers providing bare-bones plans to part-time workers) to offer coverage. We know that it will drive up premiums—since it has already begun to do so. We know that it will create massive administrative headaches for businesses and consumers—for instance, requiring companies to file 1099 forms with the IRS for any vendor whom they pay more than $600 in a given year, and requiring a prescription to buy over-the-counter drugs with money from flex spending or health savings accounts.
We know that the people who designed the bill and the people charged with implementing it were not aware of a lot of this. Unanticipated consequences usually take a while to present themselves. But in the case of this law, some nasty ones have already become apparent, and it seems that more appear with every passing week. Just imagine the unanticipated complications that would ensue if the legislation’s enormous and unwieldy new entitlement, Medicaid expansion, exchanges, subsidies, rules, and restrictions were to come on line in full.
We also know how the law’s champions would respond to such problems—with a mix of strident bullying and daft denial. When some companies began to report the added costs Obamacare would impose on them—reports which are required by law—some congressional Democrats threatened to launch hearings to harangue them. When insurance companies explained that the new law was forcing them to increase some premiums, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius sent them a letter warning that the government will not look kindly upon such honesty in the future.
All of these ominous signs point in one clear direction. To avert a monumental disaster and enact real health care reform, Obamacare must be repealed. The law’s design—which points away from consumer-directed health care and toward an entitlement model in essentially every detail—makes tinkering at the edges impossible. Real reform first requires wholesale repeal. And it cannot come too soon.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/repeal-now-more-ever_513328.html
Posted in Democrat Government control ObamaCare Rationing Tax with No Comments
More:
Print This Post
Oct 31
Obamacare was rammed through Congress by the Democrats and signed by “president” Obama against the vociferous opposition of the majority of Americans. They knew what its passage and implementation meant such as extremely high costs, oppressive increases in fees and taxes, rationing, loss of decision making in their own care and even withholding of care and options. In fact, we are already experiencing this even as Obamacare is just beginning.
We must remember this when voting on Tuesday November 2nd. Throw all the Democrats out of office. Then, the country can move on. As for Obamacare, it MUST be repealed in its entirety. Anything less than that is a failure.
We can then examine other options for further improvements of our present healthcare system.
A government takeover is not one of them.
50 Laboratories For Health Reform
Investor’s Business Daily 10/27/2010
Mandates: The constant complaint is that health care costs too much. But a federal takeover of the system wasn't needed to trim expenses. Reasonable policy changes at the state level would cut costs significantly.
Americans will spend $2.65 trillion on health care this year, or about 17% of the entire economy and roughly $8,000 per person. Health care is also growing as a share of GDP, crowding out other sectors of the economy in a trend that many would say isn't, well, healthy.
The reasons for this are varied. Government has established and nurtured a system in which most patients are distantly connected to payment for services. This encourages them to spend without regard to expense. A lack of self-rationing increases demand, which drives up costs.
Changes in this arrangement would help cut costs, but Americans tend to like this setup, so don't expect lawmakers to do much here.
The aging of our population is another factor, as is chronic illness in a country where life spans are lengthening. Costs are also pushed up by advanced treatments, the best doctors in the world and innovative diagnostic equipment.
Few would suggest cutting expenses by pulling back in these areas. Real progress, however, can be made in states where lawmakers have heaped costly mandates on health insurance policies.
In three states, mandates require such policies to include benefits for Oriental medicine. Another 10 require plans to cover hair prostheses. All but four mandate that insurance cover alcoholism treatment while 34 require the same for drug abuse. A benefit for smoking cessation is mandated in six states while port-wine stain elimination is required in two.
In 12 states, insurance policies must include access to acupuncturists. Three states say plans must provide for athletic trainers, and dozens make insurance pay for a variety of marriage, occupational and massage therapists, pastoral counselors and social workers. Four states even require that insurers provide for naturopaths.
In all, there are 2,156 mandates at the state level, according to the Council for Affordable Health Insurance (CAHI), 23 more than last year. Most of the mandates cover common benefits or providers, but as the foregoing list shows, some are highly suspect.
Few of these are costly by themselves; most increase the price of premiums by less than 1%. But when added together in a plan, insurance coverage becomes considerably higher. CAHI believes the mandates increase the cost of basic health coverage nearly 20%.
That's actually a starting point. CAHI says it could "be much higher, depending on the number of mandates, the benefit design and the cost of the initial premium." In some states, mandates increase the cost of health care plans by more than 50%.
With the average premium for a family insurance policy purchased through an employer costing about $13,000 a year — which is much higher than the $8,000-per-person cost of health care — a cut of 20% or more would not be trivial.
It's obviously a better way to hold down costs than ObamaCare, which we learn at every turn is going to cost far more than its backers projected and has its own expensive mandate requiring coverage for every American.
The mandates are an insult to common sense. A single man does not need an insurance package that covers in vitro fertilization, maternity leave, a midwife, breast reduction or mammograms. Neither is it necessary for a childless, unmarried woman to have a plan that includes care for a newborn and screening for prostate cancer.
And a teetotaler should have the option of choosing a plan that doesn't have benefits for alcohol and substance abuse.
In many cases, however, they have to pay for such coverage, either through individual policies or employer-provided plans. State legislators could restore good sense to the law and provide a genuine measure of reform by backing off the mandates and letting people buy from an a la carte menu of benefits and providers.
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/551888/201010271922/50-Laboratories-For-Health-Reform.htm
Posted in Democrat Government control Healthcare Reform Obama Obama ObamaCare Tax with No Comments
More:
Print This Post
Oct 27
The ravaging effects of Obamacare are already being felt even though its implementation is just in its earliest of stages. We doubt most people, even some of those vehemently opposed to the legislation, could have imagined its massive impact and costs to Americans so early in the transition. Millions of people have either lost their health insurance, can’t obtain it because insurance companies can no longer offer them or the rates have skyrocketed up to 40% or more.
In order to minimize the deleterious impact of this forced government mandate, exemptions are being granted to certain companies or groups including the teacher’s union. So much for equality and fairness. It is also a blatant grab for votes.
Obamacare should have never happened and it was rammed down the throats or essentially up our figurative rectums – ENTIRELY AGAINST OUR WILL AND BY CORRUPT AND DESPICABLE MEANS INCLUDING OVERT BRIBES, EXEMPTIONS AND THREATS.
OBAMACARE MUST BE REPEALED IN ITS ENTIRETY ASAP!
Bleak Prognosis
Investor’s Business Daily 10/22/2010
Health Care: The more we know about ObamaCare, the more we find out it wasn't designed to cut costs but to eventually eliminate private insurance coverage and create a government-run system.
Provisions of the Democrats' health care overhaul started to become law only a month ago, yet the list of companies dropping medical benefits for their employers is piling up.
Mega-firms such as AT&T, Caterpillar, John Deere and Verizon are among those that are either considering ending coverage for their employees or have already chosen to do so.
It's not just the big companies eliminating benefits, either. Smaller employers are doing the same. Larry M. Elkin, president of Palisades Hudson Financial Group, wrote Thursday in the Business Insider: "For 15 years, I have taken pride in paying the full cost of health insurance for every full-time Palisades Hudson employee who wanted it. This month marks the last time I will do that."
Elkin said that every one of his employees has the option of staying on the company plan. But those who choose that route "will have to pay the entire cost — ranging from $574 to $683 per month — themselves, through payroll deductions."
And where will those who don't opt for staying on the company plan go? Maybe they end up leaning on the government along with the 46 million or so other uninsured Americans the Democrats are trying to cover.
Elkin is not acting out of spite because he doesn't like the Democrats. He's acting rationally, as any good businessman should.
He knew in March, before the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was passed, that it "is likely to make health coverage anything but affordable for those who actually pay the bills" and that he would have to make changes for his 20 employees.
While Elkin is one of a few willing to publicly discuss how Obama-Care is affecting his business, others are following a bitter path similar to the one he feels he is forced to take. He cites a survey by the National Business Group on Health that found that roughly 63% of businesses plan to make their workers pay a higher portion of their health care insurance costs next year.
Again, how many of these currently insured workers will, rather than pay the premiums out of their pockets, find themselves relying on government for their coverage?
As the debate over ObamaCare raged, Americans were assured by the president himself that those of us who like our insurance plans would be able to keep them. But workers will not only lose their employers' plans due to their employers' increasing costs under the law, they will also be losing coverage because carriers are dropping some of the policy options they offer.
WellPoint, Cigna, CoventryOne, Humana, Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Aetna and Golden Rule have, for instance, announced that they will no longer sell child-only policies under the Democrats' health care regime.
In some cases — the Principal Group and its 840,000 customers is one example — carriers are dropping out of the health insurance market entirely.
Meanwhile, McDonald's and 29 other companies told Washington that ObamaCare was going to force them to drop insurance coverage for some workers. Had those companies not been granted federal waivers from the requirement that they raise the minimum annual benefits of their low-cost health plans, roughly 1 million Americans would have been added to the rolls of the uninsured.
Don't think it can't get worse, because under the Democrats' ill-thought-out plan, it will. Large pieces of ObamaCare that will make the system painfully expensive and increase federal intrusion still haven't become law.
The next Congress needs to get focused fast on stopping the march toward costly, substandard care.
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/551437/201010221913/Bleak-Prognosis.htm
Posted in Government Control Government control Insurance Obama ObamaCare with No Comments
More:
Print This Post
Sep 5
Many of the Democrats who are either up for re-election or are seeking political office for the first time are claiming that they oppose much of Obamacare and plan to fix it if elected/re-elected.
Don’t believe any of this rhetoric. There is an ulterior motive to these specious statements: to win election by whatever it takes. After that, expect most of these Democrats to toe the party line, either by coercion or personal convictions, and therefore not repeal Obamacare.
Only the Republicans can be trusted to attempt to repeal or defund Obamacare.
Vote Republican in November if you want to fight Obamacare … and to take back our country from the arrogant, elitist and radical Democratic politicians.
Dear Patients: Vote to Repeal ObamaCare
Don't believe Democrats who promise to fix the bill once they're re-elected.
By Hal Scherz
Facing a nationwide backlash, Democratic congressional candidates have a new message for voters: We know you don't like ObamaCare, so we'll fix it.
This was the line offered by Democrat Mark Critz, who won a special election in Pennsylvania's 12th congressional district after expressing opposition to the law and promising to mend it—but not to repeal it. As a doctor I know something about unexpected recoveries, and this latest attempt to rescue ObamaCare from repeal needs to be taken seriously.
For Democrats who voted for ObamaCare, this tactic is an escape route, a chance to distance themselves from the president with a vague promise to fix health-care reform in the next Congress.
To counter this election-year ruse, my colleagues and I at Docs4PatientCare are enlisting thousands of doctors in an unorthodox and unprecedented action. Our patients have always expected a certain standard of care from their doctors, which includes providing them with pertinent information that may affect their quality of life. Because the issue this election is so stark—literally life and death for millions of Americans in the years ahead—we are this week posting a "Dear Patient" letter in our waiting rooms.
The letter states in unambiguous language what the new law means:
"Dear Patient: Section 1311 of the new health care legislation gives the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services and her appointees the power to establish care guidelines that your doctor must abide by or face penalties and fines. In making doctors answerable in the federal bureaucracy this bill effectively makes them government employees and means that you and your doctor are no longer in charge of your health care decisions. This new law politicizes medicine and in my opinion destroys the sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship that makes the American health care system the best in the world."
Our doctor's letter points out that, in addition to "badly exacerbating the current doctor shortage," ObamaCare will bring "major cost increases, rising insurance premiums, higher taxes, a decline in new medical techniques, a fall-off in the development of miracle drugs as well as rationing by government panels and by bureaucrats like passionate rationing advocate Donald Berwick that will force delays of months or sometimes years for hospitalization or surgery."
We cite the brute facts of ObamaCare's passage:
"Despite countless protests by doctors and overwhelming public opposition—up to 60% of Americans opposed this bill—the current party in control of Congress pushed this bill through with legal bribes and Chicago style threats and is determined now to resist any 'repeal and replace' efforts. This doctor's office is non-partisan—always has been, always will be. But the fact is that every Republican voted against this bad bill while the Democratic Party leadership and the White House completely dismissed the will of the people in ruthlessly pushing through this legislation."
Then we address the Democrats' evasive campaign maneuver:
"In the face of voter anger some Democratic candidates are now trying to make a cosmetic retreat, calling for minor modifications or pretending they are opposed to government-run medicine. Once the election is over, however, they will vote with their party bosses against repealing this bill."
The letter's final lines are the most important:
"Please remember when you vote this November that unless the Democratic Party receives a strong negative message about this power grab our health care system will never be fixed and the doctor patient relationship will be ruined forever."
This message is going out to an electorate that is already frustrated over what they see happening to health care. Missouri voters rejected ObamaCare overwhelmingly in August, voting by a margin of 71%-29% to reject the federal requirement that all individuals purchase health insurance. Democratic pollster Douglas Schoen has assessed that ObamaCare is "a disaster" for Democrats. And around the country many little-noticed primaries have reflected voter rage—including the Republican primary victory of surgeon, political newcomer, and advocate of repeal Daniel Benishek in Michigan's first district.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration's damage-control efforts have fallen flat. The latest round of pro-ObamaCare television spots targeting the elderly and starring veteran actor Andy Griffith have not only failed to move the polling numbers. They have caused five U.S. Senators to ask for an investigation of the ads as a violation of federal laws barring the use of tax dollars ($750,000) for campaign purposes.
America's doctors have millions of personal interactions each week with patients. We have political power. And we intend to use it by working to defeat those who have disrupted and gravely endangered the best health-care system in the world.
Dr. Scherz, a pediatric urological surgeon at Georgia Urology and Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, serves on the faculty of Emory University Medical School and is president and cofounder of Docs4PatientCare.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703369704575461840575037482.html
Posted in Arrogance Democrat Democrat Doctors Doctors Government control Insurance Medicare ObamaCare Physicians Rationing Tax with No Comments
More:
Print This Post
Aug 29
In just one more of the innumerable examples of the unalloyed arrogance and irresponsibility of the Congressional Democrats, one of the primary authors of the Obamacare legislation, Max Baucus (D-Mont.), indicated that he has never read the entire legislation.
He states: “I don’t think you want me to waste my time to read every page of the healthcare bill… We hire experts.”
Are you kidding, Max?
You want Americans to be forced to pay trillions of more dollars for your health care system that severely restricts their rights and choices and will result in rationing of care. Many will be refused medical care that would have received it before and for significantly less. It is arcane and burdened by multilevel bureaucracies.
And, best of all, you and all your Democratic buddies in Congress won’t have to use it as you have your own, expensive, gold-plated plan with countless choices and ease of access.
That’s why the Democrats in the House and Senate who are up for reelection in November, must be voted out of office.
Vote Republican in November!
Key Senate Democrat suggests that he didn't read entire healthcare reform bill
Jordan Fabian 08/25/10
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.), one of the chief authors of the healthcare law, suggested Tuesday he did not read the entire piece of legislation.
Speaking at a forum in his home state, Baucus and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius were asked by an audience member if they had read the whole bill and “if not, that is the most despicable, irresponsible thing.”
“I don’t think you want me to waste my time to read every page of the healthcare bill,” Baucus said, according to the Flathead Beacon. “You know why? It’s statutory language. ... We hire experts.”
Republicans, who opposed the law in lockstep, frequently criticized Democrats for the length of the bill and often pressed members if they had read the legislation or not. In March, Congress passed the legislation and President Obama signed the 961-page final bill into law.
At least one Democratic lawmaker, Sen. Claire McCaskill (Mo.) made a public showing of reading the bill.
Democrats dismissed the criticism, saying it did not have anything do to with the contents of the legislation.
Baucus's office said that his comments did not mean that he does not know what it is in the law.
"Senator Baucus wrote the bill that passed the Finance Committee and then worked with his colleagues to write the health care bill that is law today. He has spent years crafting this policy and hundreds of hours reading and perfecting it," spokeswoman Erin Shields said. "There is simply no question that he understands the provisions in the health care law and knows it is a historic improvement that will make our health care system more affordable and accessible for families in Montana and across America."
Baucus held frequent hearings and published multiple reports about the legislation during the process of its passage.
At the town-hall event, Baucus defended the sweeping law.
“It’s not perfect, nothing’s perfect, but I’m telling you, ma’am, it’s a good start,” Baucus said. “Mark my words, several years from now you’re going to look back and say, ‘Eh, maybe it isn’t so bad.’ ”
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/115749-sen-baucus-suggests-he-did-not-read-entire-health-bill
Posted in Arrogance Democrat Democrat Government Control Government control Max Baucus ObamaCare with No Comments
More:
Print This Post
Aug 25
Even before the true implementation of Obamacare, we are witnessing insidious changes, rules and regulations that comport with it agenda and will ruinous to the American health care system. Few people are aware of these issues which are largely under the radar.
Fast Track To Government Health Care
Grace-Marie Turner 08/20/2010
While there is broad agreement there are problems in our health sector that must be solved, the American people consistently have said they oppose government control. Yet many of the decisions now being made in the bowels of the bureaucracy could lead to a government system that people fear.
The consequences of government involvement in health care have become more and more apparent as people have become informed about what the health overhaul law would do. No longer does the government seem to be a fairy godmother but rather a tough enforcer of an avalanche of new mandates, taxes and regulatory requirements.
The assurance that government would make sure all Americans have health care coverage has turned into a mandate that we all must have insurance defined by the government and with the government determining what our "choice" of health policies will be.
The latest example of our loss of individual control over health care decisions is playing out deep in the weeds of definitions over what must be counted as medical care and what counts as administrative expense in health insurance — the so-called "medical loss ratio," or MLR. According to the new law, at least 85% of premium dollars must be spent on medical care for large firms and 80% for smaller ones.
It sounds like a simple and straightforward issue, but a world of challenges and complexity lies beneath the surface. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) has been charged with making recommendations to the federal government about what should and should not be counted in the equation.
To show how consequential the decision is, President Obama briefly scheduled, then canceled, a trip to speak to the NAIC meeting in Seattle in mid-August where the MLR issue was being debated.
Many of the decisions being made by regulators could make it almost impossible for private insurance companies to comply, leading inevitably to a government-run health system.
Connecticut state insurance commissioner Thomas Sullivan warned, "What we've learned since March, is that if you like your health insurance you may not be able to keep it," he told the Seattle meeting, "and state regulators will have a role in implementing health care as long as that role supports the goals of HHS (the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services), which may not necessarily be what's in the best interest of consumers."
He later told reporters: "I'm concerned there's still a lot left to be done in interpretation ... I fear that some have an agenda to interpret ... with the express purpose of getting to a single-payer option."
Many other health actuaries and experts at the Seattle meeting said they believed the MLR was meant to be so disruptive to private insurance that it would eventually push us into a single-payer system.
HHS is not obligated to take the recommendations of the NAIC. Ultimately, the bureaucracy will decide. And their decision will be hugely consequential.
An issue that is being most hotly debated right now is whether the federal, state and payroll taxes that insurance companies are required to pay must be counted today as administrative expenses or whether they can be subtracted from premium collections before the calculations are made.
Health insurers say the decision could determine whether they have the money to invest in fighting fraud, setting up networks of qualified physicians and updating information technologies. For other companies, the decision very well could determine whether they survive.
Six senior members of Congress also weighed in on the issue with a letter to the president of the NAIC, saying they meant for taxes to be counted as an administrative expense.
America's Health Insurance Plans, which represents insurance companies, countered that the legislation specifically says taxes shouldn't be counted. Other independent analysts have validated the AHIP position.
So the politicization of health care begins, with even the president set to weigh in on a decision that would make most people's eyes glaze over in the minutia. The president will meet with the NAIC at the White House in September or so to discuss the issue.
It now is clear that decisions about what kind of health insurance we have, how much we must pay, what it covers or doesn't cover, will be made by politicians and bureaucrats.
This evokes a statement by health economist Paul Starr in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, "The Social Transformation of American Medicine": "Political leaders since Bismarck seeking to strengthen the state or to advance their own or their party's interests have used insurance against the costs of sickness as a means of turning benevolence to power."
The process has begun. Unless ObamaCare can be rolled back, the politicization of American medicine will reach into the smallest decisions affecting our medical care for decades to come.
And, just five months after the health overhaul law was enacted, we see how the regulatory bureaucracy may well push us into the single-payer, government-run health care system that even the very liberal 111th Congress couldn't enact.
Turner is president of the Galen Institute, a nonprofit research organization based in Alexandria, Va., that specializes in patient-centered ideas for health reform.
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/544589/201008201902/Fast-Track-To-Government-Health-Care.aspx
Posted in Government control Insurance ObamaCare with No Comments
More:
Print This Post
Subscribe to Our RSS Feed
Follow Us on Twitter
Comments