Apr 10
Through previously secret clauses in Obamacare, Obama and the Democrats are corruptly buying votes with billions of our taxpayer dollars. It’s an outrage that should not be tolerated by the American public.
The Early Retiree Reinsurance Program (ERRP), buried deep within the leviathan legislation, provides $5 billion to private companies, states and labor unions that is to be used for the payment of health insurance for those who are retiring and are under age 65. Not surprisingly, a significantly disproportionate amount of the money is going to unions, and companies and states that are strong supporters of the Democrats. Some is even going to the "mainstream" media (the Left) which, of course, doesn't hurt with regard to even more positive, gushing press coverage of Obama and the Democrats.
Such a slush fund is corrupt, intolerable and a massive waste of taxpayer dollars. Furthermore, this has nothing to do with the need for healthcare reform and everything to do with influence peddling.
This is yet more evidence of the depravity and duplicity of too many of our politicians (largely Democrats), the inherent problems of a large government and why it needs to be radically downsized, and the wasteful spending of the government. It adds another reason why Obamacare must be vaporized.
Washington Post and CBS receiving money from Obamacare slush fund
Matthew Boyle The Daily Caller 04/06/2011
Two mainstream news organizations are receiving hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars from Obamacare’s Early Retiree Reinsurance Program (ERRP) — a $5 billion grant program that’s doling out cash to companies, states and labor unions in what the Obama administration considers an effort to pay for health insurance for early retirees. The Washington Post Company raked in $573,217 in taxpayer subsidies and CBS Corporation secured $722,388 worth of Americans’ money.
“It is fine with me if they continue covering the ObamaCare debate,” said Rep. Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, in an e-mail to The Daily Caller. “When NBC used to cover energy issues, they identified themselves as a subsidiary of General Electric. CBS and Washington Post just have to disclose that they are subsidiaries of the Obama Administration.”
The ERRP, which Republicans call a slush fund, provides taxpayer money to Obama administration-selected states, companies and labor unions with already-in-place early retiree health insurance programs, and aims to make certain that their employees who retire early still have health insurance coverage before they reach Medicare eligibility age. Almost $2 billion of the $5 billion fund, which was supposed to last until 2014, has already been distributed to corporations. New projections expect the funding to run out before the end of 2012, if not sooner.
At a Friday morning hearing, the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, chaired by Rep. Cliff Stearns, Florida Republican, asked Center for Consumer Information & Insurance Oversight (CCIO) official Steven Larsen for how the administration decides who gets a slice of the $5 billion pie – and how the application process works. In his response, Stearns referred to the fact that corporations like General Electric, Verizon and AT&T in addition to several labor unions were getting taxpayer funding.
Stearns was not impressed. “This program is providing ‘free’ money to corporations, states, unions, and pension plans,” the Congressman said in an e-mail to TheDC. “In addition, the Washington Post and CBS received funding under this program. How can the Washington Post and CBS be impartial on the issue of health care when they received funding under the health care law?”
CBS Corporation spokesman Gil Schwartz told TheDC that newsroom employees, like any other CBS employees, are indeed allowed to take the taxpayer subsidies.
“Yes they are,” Schwartz said. “Why wouldn’t newsroom employees be allowed access to that money like all other CBS employees?”
CBS gets the money from the government, then provides early retirees with health insurance.
Though no current newsroom employees can benefit from the ERRP funds, they could retire early and still benefit from the money – or any newsroom employee who has retired since Obamacare became law could benefit from it too.
The Washington Post declined to comment. “We have no additional information to provide you other than what you have,” Post spokeswoman Rima Calderon told TheDC.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) told TheDC she couldn’t disclose information about applications or disbursements for specific companies.
In addition to CBS Corporation and the Washington Post Company, recipients of ERRP funding include the United Auto Workers union, which secured $206,798,086 in taxpayer money, AT&T, which took in $140,022,949, and General Electric (GE), which raked in $36,607,818. GE has made headlines recently for not paying any U.S. taxes last year. IBM got $12,989,690 in taxpayer money.
Verizon pulled $91,702,538 in taxpayer cash, too, and General Motors received $19,002,669. More than $6 million went to different Teamsters groups nationwide, and millions more went to the United Mine Workers, United Food and Commercial Workers, the AFL-CIO and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME).
http://dailycaller.com/2011/04/06/washington-post-and-cbs-receiving-money-from-obamacare-slush-fund/
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Jan 21
The Massachusetts health care model, which was touted by politicians and other “experts” to be the panacea for health care coverage, costs and care, has been an abysmal and exorbitantly costly failure. Used and cited ad nauseum as a paradigm for health care reform by Obama and Congressional Democrats, it is now placing that state in significant financial straits. Costs are skyrocketing, the number of Medicaid patients has expanded by 25% since 2006 and insurance premiums have risen significantly.
The glowing promises and predictions by the state’s politicians about their health care overhaul plan have been proven to be wild fantasies. Opponents of this government fiasco knew these would be the consequences and the program was doomed to fail long before it was implemented.
So as expected even with this knowledge, in the infinite wisdom of government, Obama and many Congressional Democrats continue to staunchly support and defend their massively larger bankrupting fiasco in the making – Obamacare.
Has Massachusetts Experience Put ObamaCare On A Path To Repeal?
Sally C. Pipes 1/12/2011
The new GOP majority plans to introduce a bill to repeal ObamaCare soon. What the Republicans are trying to prevent is what is already happening in Massachusetts, where a similar health care bill was enacted in April 2006. It is already imploding.
Unless ObamaCare is repealed, we're on a path to Massachusetts' future.
Eager politicians from former Gov. Mitt Romney to current Gov. Deval Patrick marketed Massachusetts' health care plan, like Obama's, with a series of distortions:
• The uninsured — especially young invincibles — were costing hospitals money that could be redirected to insurance premiums.
• They promised government efficiency.
• They focused on the assertion that primary care would replace emergency room use.
• They claimed both in Massachusetts and Washington, D.C., that we could build all this government health care bureaucracy and hand out these new benefits without new taxes while actually reducing long-term costs.
"Every uninsured citizen in Massachusetts will soon have affordable health insurance, and the cost of health care will be reduced," then-Republican Gov. Romney wrote in the Wall Street Journal in 2006. "And we need no new taxes, no employer mandate and no government takeover to make this happen."
Proponents of the Massachusetts plan now pretend that it never sought cost control. "The goal of the law was covering people," says MIT economist and Massachusetts plan architect Jonathan Gruber, who also consulted on ObamaCare.
"It couldn't have gone better," he told the Washington Post. And the Post's lead health-reform cheerleader, Ezra Klein, wrote, as if it's fact, that the Massachusetts law "was not designed to control costs."
The only measure by which Massachusetts can be judged a success is the number of people enrolled in Medicaid and other government-subsidized insurance plans. Of the 410,000 newly insured in Massachusetts, three in four are either paying nothing or very little for their insurance. They've also been successful in continuing to pull down massive subsidies from Washington to support the overhaul.
Spending has exploded. Medicaid, a problem in every state, is destroying Massachusetts. The health overhaul was really Medicaid expansion, and with the rolls up nearly 25% since 2006, Massachusetts is struggling to pay the bills.
The other promises turned out to be bogus as well. Despite the near-universal insurance, the state still spends $414 million on uncompensated care, an expense that Romney and his architects promised would disappear. Emergency-room use has not dropped as predicted. From 2006 to 2008, emergency room use under Mass Care increased by 9%. And private employer insurance costs, far from dropping, have continued to increase.
A 2010 study published in the Forum for Health Economics & Policy found that health insurance premiums in Massachusetts, prior to its overhaul, increased at a rate 3.7% slower than the national average. Post-overhaul, they are increasing 5.8% faster.
The individual mandate, as onerous as it is, is set at a level to encourage gaming the system. A family with an income of $55,000 in 2014 will face the choice of paying $4,428 a year for health insurance or a $550 fine. Given that insurance will be available on demand, it's rational to pay the fine until a serious illness strikes.
Indeed, there is no strong demand for insurance among the uninsured. The individual market has existed for years and is lightly subscribed. The new high-risk pools created by ObamaCare are very undersubscribed. Bureaucrats projected that 375,000 would sign up by now. The actual number is 8,000.
The lie that Massachusetts never promised to control costs is amplified by the belief that Obama's plan would do so. Other than price controls, commissions recommending best practices and a stealth HMO program for Medicare renamed Accountable Care Organizations, there's little to control costs in the near term.
This brings us back to the Bay State, where politicians, bureaucrats and health policy sages have embarked on what they bill as phase two of the health care overhaul. Now that nearly everyone is insured, the effort is to replace the decentralized reimbursement system with a global budget.
In other words, give hospitals and doctors a pool of money and tell them to make do. Change the incentive from providing the best possible care to the best care the bureaucrats can possibly afford.
"Clearly we are going to have less resources," Gary Gottlieb, CEO of Partners Health Care in Massachusetts, recently told a medical conference. "The most extraordinary ICU and the most extraordinary technology, without necessarily the evidence that it extends life ... is not going to be accessible to us."
A government-run HMO. Welcome to your future.
• Pipes is president, CEO and Taube fellow in health care studies at the Pacific Research Institute. Her latest book is "The Truth About
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/559597/201101121838/Has-Massachusetts-Experience-Put-ObamaCare-On-A-Path-To-Repeal-.aspx
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Jan 15
The group Americans for Tax Reform compiled a list of the two dozen new taxes and tax increases that were imposed to obtain further funding for Obamacare. This amounts to the largest tax increase in our country’s history, an outrageous statistic that gets lost in the general discussion and opposition to the government’s destruction of the best healthcare system in the world.
We need to continue writing our Representatives, expressing our strong and resolute opposition to Obamacare and the need to have it fully repealed.
Read: Comprehensive List of Tax Hikes in Obamacare
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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
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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
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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
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Jul 28
Philosophically, the government already claims an excessive and an ever increasing amount of our hard earned money through multifarious taxes that are not limited to income taxes. Their profligate spending is partially fueled by our representatives’ knowledge that there can and will be more money collected and more ways to obtain it from us.
This must be stopped! Enough of our spendthrift, profligate government. Much more of this money should remain with us rather than be wasted on pork or pet projects that allow these government officials to have their name plastered on some building or institution, or to be transferred to those who are irresponsible and lazy but feel that it is their right to share in the American dream. (You know these individuals: they use food stamps to buy liquor and cigarettes and their money to buy iPods, iPhones, $200 sneakers, cell phones, tattoos and gold onlays for their teeth while having numerous children by countless and nameless partners.)
We must use all means possible to let our representatives know that we want the Bush tax “cuts” to remain in effect. If they are allowed to expire, the government will be taking billions of additional dollars more from us each year – which is on top of Obama’s new taxes for healthcare.
Remember Nov. 2nd.
The Tax Tsunami On The Horizon
Investors Business Daily 07/21/2010
Fiscal Policy: Many voters are looking forward to 2011, hoping a new Congress will put the country back on the right track. But unless something's done soon, the new year will also come with a raft of tax hikes — including a return of the death tax — that will be real killers.
Through the end of this year, the federal estate tax rate is zero — thanks to the package of broad-based tax cuts that President Bush pushed through to get the economy going earlier in the decade.
But as of midnight Dec. 31, the death tax returns — at a rate of 55% on estates of $1 million or more. The effect this will have on hospital life-support systems is already a matter of conjecture.
Resurrection of the death tax, however, isn't the only tax problem that will be ushered in Jan. 1. Many other cuts from the Bush administration are set to disappear and a new set of taxes will materialize. And it's not just the rich who will pay.
The lowest bracket for the personal income tax, for instance, moves up 50% — to 15% from 10%. The next lowest bracket — 25% — will rise to 28%, and the old 28% bracket will be 31%. At the higher end, the 33% bracket is pushed to 36% and the 35% bracket becomes 39.6%.
But the damage doesn't stop there.
The marriage penalty also makes a comeback, and the capital gains tax will jump 33% — to 20% from 15%. The tax on dividends will go all the way from 15% to 39.6% — a 164% increase.
Both the cap-gains and dividend taxes will go up further in 2013 as the health care reform adds a 3.8% Medicare levy for individuals making more than $200,000 a year and joint filers making more than $250,000.
Other tax hikes include: halving the child tax credit to $500 from $1,000 and fixing the standard deduction for couples at the same level as it is for single filers.
Letting the Bush cuts expire will cost taxpayers $115 billion next year alone, according to the Congressional Budget Office, and $2.6 trillion through 2020.
But even more tax headaches lie ahead. This "second wave" of hikes, as Americans for Tax Reform puts it, are designed to pay for ObamaCare and include:
The Medicine Cabinet Tax. Americans, says ATR, "will no longer be able to use health savings account, flexible spending account, or health reimbursement pretax dollars to purchase nonprescription, over-the-counter medicines (except insulin)."
The HSA Withdrawal Tax Hike. "This provision of ObamaCare," according to ATR, "increases the additional tax on nonmedical early withdrawals from an HSA from 10% to 20%, disadvantaging them relative to IRAs and other tax-advantaged accounts, which remain at 10%."
Brand Name Drug Tax. Makers and importers of brand-name drugs will be liable for a tax of $2.5 billion in 2011. The tax goes to $3 billion a year from 2012 to 2016, then $3.5 billion in 2017 and $4.2 billion in 2018.
Beginning in 2019 it falls to $2.8 billion and stays there. And who pays the new drug tax? Patients, in the form of higher prices.
Economic Substance Doctrine. ATR reports that "The IRS is now empowered to disallow perfectly legal tax deductions and maneuvers merely because it judges that the deduction or action lacks 'economic substance.'"
A third and final (for now) wave, says ATR, consists of the alternative minimum tax's widening net, tax hikes on employers and the loss of deductions for tuition:
• The Tax Policy Center, no right-wing group, says that the failure to index the AMT will subject 28.5 million families to the tax when they file next year, up from 4 million this year.
• "Small businesses can normally expense (rather than slowly deduct, or 'depreciate') equipment purchases up to $250,000," says ATR. "This will be cut all the way down to $25,000. Larger businesses can expense half of their purchases of equipment. In January of 2011, all of it will have to be 'depreciated.'"
• According to ATR, there are "literally scores of tax hikes on business that will take place," plus the loss of some tax credits. The research and experimentation tax credit will be the biggest loss, "but there are many, many others. Combining high marginal tax rates with the loss of this tax relief will cost jobs."
• The deduction for tuition and fees will no longer be available and there will be limits placed on education tax credits. Teachers won't be able to deduct their classroom expenses and employer-provided educational aid will be restricted. Thousands of families will no longer be allowed to deduct student loan interest.
Then there's the tax on Americans who decline to buy health care insurance (the tax the administration initially said wasn't a tax but now argues in court that it is) plus a 3.8% Medicare tax beginning in 2013 on profits made in real estate transactions by wealthier Americans.
Not all Americans may fully realize what's in store come Jan. 1. But they should have a pretty good idea by the mid-term elections, and members of Congress might take note of our latest IBD/TIPP Poll (summarized above).
Fifty-one percent of respondents favored making the Bush cuts permanent vs. 28% who didn't. Republicans were more than 4 to 1 and Independents more than 2 to 1 in favor. Only Democrats were opposed, but only by 40%-38%.
The cuts also proved popular among all income groups — despite the Democrats' oft-heard assertion that Bush merely provided "tax breaks for the wealthy." Fact is, Bush cut taxes for everyone who paid them, and the cuts helped the nation recover from a recession and the worst stock-market crash since 1929.
Maybe, just maybe, Americans remember that — and will not forget come Nov. 2.
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/541131/201007211841/The-Tax-Tsunami-On-The-Horizon.aspx
Posted in George W. Bush Government spending Obama ObamaCare Tax Taxes Wealth redistribution with No Comments
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Jun 6
To no one’s surprise, the total theorized costs of Obamacare are continuing to increase years before the first patient is planned to be seen under the system. That is, if the nationalized healthcare fraud doesn’t die a quick death beforehand from strangulation by defunding or repealing. The whole process was interminably corrupt and opaque in order to be able to pass it against the vociferous opposition of a large majority of Americans.
Just to implement one of their ideological linchpins.
Fiscal Fraud of Obamacare Snowballing Already
Terence P. Jeffrey 6/02/2010
Remember the health care issue? Well, the fiscal consequences of the socialized medicine scheme enacted by President Barack Obama and Congress just two months ago are already beginning to snowball.
Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman of California, the chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, was one of the key architects and advocates of Obamacare. He was back on the House floor on Friday delivering an urgent plea to fellow Democrats that inadvertently -- or, perhaps, unavoidably -- revealed the fraudulent nature of our new national health care regime.
It was supposed to save the taxpayers money, remember?
"This legislation will lower costs for families and for businesses and for the federal government, reducing our deficit by over $1 trillion in the next two decades," Obama said when he signed the bill.
On Friday, Waxman declared that the sky is about to fall on the Medicare system. He went to the House floor to "urge" his colleagues to vote for a bill that includes $102 billion in new federal spending and would add $54 billion to the national debt over the next 10 years -- $25 billion of it in the few months remaining in this fiscal year.
Why did Waxman believe this new borrowing-and-spending was necessary?
"It's absolutely critical to do this if we are going to keep doctors in Medicare and keep the promise to Medicare beneficiaries that they will have access to physicians' services," said Waxman. "This provision will provide a moderate increase in physicians' fees, 2.2 percent for the rest of the year. If we don't act, doctors' fees will be cut by 21 percent from where they are today. This would be unconscionable."
It would not merely be unconscionable. If the 21-percent cut in Medicare fees for doctors -- that, in fact, legally took effect on June 1 -- is allowed to stand, many doctors in this country will simply stop seeing Medicare patients. They will not be able to afford it. The cost to them of serving their patients will exceed what they are paid. Their profit margin will be swept away.
To make precisely this point, 12 national surgeons' associations -- including the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, the American Association of Orthopedic Surgeons and the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery -- sent House Speaker Nancy Pelosi a letter last Wednesday warning her what would happen if Medicare doctors' fees are slashed as they are scheduled to be under current law.
"These continued payment cuts, rising practice costs and a lack of certainty going forward, make it difficult, if not impossible, for already financially challenged surgical practices to continue to treat Medicare patients," the surgeons' associations told Pelosi.
The letter pointed the speaker toward the results of a survey of more than 13,000 physicians done in February by the Surgical Coalition, a group of more than 20 medical associations. The survey asked these doctors what they would do if Medicare fees were slashed by the scheduled 21.2 percent.
Twenty-nine percent said they would opt out of the Medicare system entirely. Almost 69 percent said they would limit the number of appointments they would take from Medicare patients, 45.8 percent said they would start referring complex Medicare patients to other physicians, 45.3 percent said they would stop providing certain services, 43.8 percent said they would defer purchasing new medical equipment and 42.7 percent said they would cut their staff.
Almost 4 percent of the doctors said they would close or sell their practices.
Why did Congress plan to slash the doctors' Medicare fees in the first place? It didn't. In the past, the majority in Congress has routinely enacted budget bills that fraudulently assumed that on some future date the federal government would dramatically slash the Medicare fees paid to doctors, knowing that before that date arrived the majority would pass "emergency" legislation postponing the cuts to some still-future date. The majority in Congress does this so the long-term deficits caused by their spending bills appear to be smaller than they actually are.
As originally proposed, Obamacare would have ended this practice, permanently setting Medicare reimbursement rates for doctors at the true anticipated level. But the Congressional Budget Office determined that doing so would have added $208 billion to the cost of Obamacare over 10 years, forcing the CBO to declare that Obamacare added to the deficit rather than reduced it. That would have cost Obamacare votes on the House floor and quite possibly defeated the legislation.
So the congressional leadership stripped the "doc fix" out of Obamacare and left it to another day.
Waxman went down to the floor last Friday to declare that day had come. Unfortunately, for him, the Senate had already left town for its Memorial Day vacation. So, the current fix will have to wait until it returns.
Even then, the fix only accounts for $22.9 billion of the $102 billion cost of the bill the House did pass on Friday. Most of the rest of the money is for extending unemployment benefits and special targeted tax breaks.
The $22.9 billion fix for the doctors' fees -- if passed by the Senate -- would only last through September 2011. Then Congress will presumably do it all again -- or let the Medicare system collapse.
In the meantime, Obamacare is supposed to cut half a trillion in spending from elsewhere in Medicare, while Obama's budget -- not counting the $54 billion in new debt included in this bill -- is expected to add $9.8 trillion to the national debt over the next 10 years.
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?print=yes&id=37301
Posted in Democrat Government spending Healthcare Henry Waxman Medicare Medicare Obama Obama ObamaCare Physicians Tax Taxes with No Comments
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May 5
We have relentlessly been stating that Obamacare was not truly about improving the quality, cost or availability of health care but instead about government control and power. The following discovery exposes yet another example of this and adds to the litany of egregious mandates contained within this corrupt, dishonest, destructive and freedom and rights abrogating legislation.
A New ObamaCare Horror Story
Rick Manning 4/29/2010
America is discovering in horror just what Nancy Pelosi meant when she famously stated during the health care debate that, “we have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy.”
The past couple of days the news has been filled by reports that the Obama Administration’s own actuary for the Center for Medicare Services estimates that costs of the law are anything but revenue neutral and that they far exceed the ‘estimate’ provided to the public by the Administration. While many are chasing the question of if Obama knew about the higher estimates, when he knew, and if he suppressed them until the vote occurred, there is another massive problem discovered within the law.
Businesses will have to file 1099 forms with both the IRS and send them to the company that provided the services or sold the product for every expenditure that exceeds $600. If you react to this sentence the way my wife, who has run a small business did, you are saying, “that can’t be right, 1099s are only for contract employees.”
Well forget everything you thought you knew about 1099 forms, because Obama’s health care law has changed it.
In practical terms, here is what the new law means. Joe’s Plumbing prints up 100 color presentations at FedEx Kinko’s for a trade show in New Orleans, where they are staying at a Holiday Inn for six days.
At a minimum, Joe’s Plumbing will have to contact FedEx Kinko’s, the airline, Holiday Inn, the rental car company, and the organization sponsoring the trade show and get taxpayer identification numbers from them so they can comply with this tax law. The company will then have to send out 1099 forms to each of these vendors and dozens, hundreds or thousands more vendors, depending upon the size of the company, thus adding significant compliance costs to every business in America. Everyone from a company’s accountant, to building supplier, to carpet cleaner to janitorial service will be trading 1099 forms.
Yes, that’s right, trading 1099 forms, because at the same time, Joe’s Plumbing will also be receiving 1099 forms from every one of their business customers who spent more than $600 with them over the course of the year, which they will be required to keep and reconcile against their books.
Do you have any wonder why Joe’s Plumbing might be more than a tad bit irritated? The new Obama health care takeover just took a guy with a pipe wrench, pvc pipe and a plunger and forced him into Dante’s eighth circle of hell – tracking and filing IRS paperwork.
So, what kind of IRS rules will be put into place to set the framework for how all these tax forms must be filed and stored?
Actually, bombshell number two is that the IRS will not be setting these rules. Instead, those noted tax experts at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will be writing and overseeing these tax regulations. Why? Who knows? It is the Alice in Wonderland world of the Obama health care bill.
U.S. Representative Dan Lungren (R-CA) has taken the first steps in alleviating this paperwork chokehold on America’s small business by introducing legislation to repeal this new burden.
Let’s hope that America’s businesses tell their Members of Congress to repeal what Lungren calls the “rat” tax, but what many observers believe should rightfully be called the preparation for the liberal Shangri-la of the VAT tax.
After all, once businesses are tracking every transaction over $600 and filing IRS paperwork on it, how much harder will it be for Congress to just say, add 10% to each bill and send it our way, extending taxation to every level of business unseen to unwary consumers who suddenly just see retail prices rise without knowing the increase is a new, hidden tax.
The requirement goes into effect January 2012. Better get a CPA on retainer. And stock up on toner and paper.
Rick Manning is the Director of Communications for Americans for Limited Government, and the former Public Affairs Chief of Staff for the U.S. Department of Labor.
http://www.netrightnation.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1252650:a-new-obamacare-horror-story-&catid=1:nrn-blog&Itemid=7
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Posted in Government Control Healthcare Healthcare Reform IRS IRS ObamaCare Tax Taxes with 16 Comments
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May 1
With every week that passes, we learn more about ObamaCare and it just gets worse. The recent report on the practical effects of ObamaCare from the Chief Actuary of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) is devastating.
Here are the salient findings of this report:
• Health care costs will go up, not down. National health expenditures will increase from 17 percent of GDP now to 21 percent under the new law and will be higher than without the legislation. Net federal spending on health care will also increase.
• Health care shortages are "plausible and even probable." Because of the increased demand for health care, "supply constraints might initially interfere with providing the services desired by the additional 34 million insured persons."
• 14 million employees will lose their employer coverage. Employees of small firms are especially at risk (despite small employer tax credit subsidies).
• 2 million employees who lose coverage will have to enroll in Medicaid.
• A Medicaid insurance card is not a guarantee of care. An estimated 18 million people will be added to Medicaid. However, because there is no corresponding increase in the supply of caregivers, "it is reasonable to expect that a significant portion of the increased demand for Medicaid would be difficult to meet, particularly over the first few years."
• One in ten insured workers will see their health benefits taxed. By 2019, more than 10% of insured workers will "be in employer plans with benefit values in excess of the thresholds (before changes to reduce benefits) and this percentage would increase rapidly thereafter."
• Higher taxes will lead to higher premiums. The new taxes on medical devices, prescription drugs, and insurance plans "would generally be passed on through to health consumers in the form of higher drug and device prices and higher insurance premiums."
• There are more than one-half trillion in Medicare cuts. The new health law cuts "$575 billion" from Medicare.
• Medicare cuts would threaten almost one in every seven hospitals. About "15 percent of Part A providers would become unprofitable within the 10-year projection period."
• Overall access to care for seniors would go down. Because of the law's payment reductions, "providers for whom Medicare constitutes a substantive portion of their business could find it difficult to remain profitable and, absent legislative intervention, might end their participation in the program.
• 7.4 million people will lose access to Medicare Advantage plans. Enrollment in MA plans will be cut in half (from its projected level of 14.8 million under the current law to 7.4 million under the new law).
• False advertising: The new "Medicare Tax" doesn't go to Medicare. "Despite the title of this tax, this provision is unrelated to Medicare; in particular, the revenues generated by the tax on unearned income are not allocated to the Medicare trust funds."
• False advertising: Budgetary double-counting does not improve Medicare's solvency. Medicare cuts "cannot be simultaneously used to finance other federal outlays (such as the coverage expansions) and to extend the [life of the Medicare] trust fund, despite the appearance of this result from the respective accounting conventions."
• The new long-term care insurance plan (CLASS Act) is unsound. The program faces "a significant risk of failure" because the high costs will attract sicker people and lead to low participation.
• The promise to those with pre-existing conditions is unfunded. "By 2011 and 2012 the initial $5 billion in Federal funding for [high risk pools] would be exhausted, resulting in substantial premium increases to sustain the program."
• The law does almost nothing to limit actual fraud and abuse. The fraud provisions in the law will save only about two percent of $47 billion in suspect claims.
http://stickerpatch.blogspot.com/
Posted in Healthcare Reform ObamaCare Tax with No Comments
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