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

People are extremely nervous. Corporations are frugal and being quite provident with whatever cash they have.

What is going on? Why is this happening.

Read: What's Holding Back The Hiring? Start With Obama's 10 Job Killers

Taxes should be considered almost as sacred and treated with respect by the government rather than as a right and commodity to do with as it pleases. Unfortunately, the Obama Administration’s ideology of a massive, intrusive, omnipotent and regulating central government runs counter to this and to what is best for the American taxpayer and citizen.

Pool Parties and Golf - Your Tax Dollars at Work
Questionable Spending at the Department of Justice is Poorly Monitored
Sharyl Attkisson

The nation may face a $1.47 trillion deficit, but Sharyl Attkisson reports that the cash-strapped Justice Department continues to pay for parties and excursions in the name of drug prevention.

With a $13 trillion debt, why is the Department of Justice spending money on parties and rollercoaster rides rather than investigating crime, drug cartels, prosecuting terrorists?

Untold millions of your tax dollars are paying for recreation in the name of crime prevention: pool parties, rollercoaster rides, and police donut-eating contests. The idea is that fun activities keep kids out of trouble, build self-esteem and prevent crime.

CBS News investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reports the problem is the money comes from the Department of Justice - which doesn't even have enough resources to keep up on analyzing foreign intelligence.

Now, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO)has found nobody is measuring just how much is spent on the recreation - or whether it even works.

Sen.Tom Coburn, R-Okla., estimates well over $100 million tax dollars over five years has been spent on recreation to fight crime. Coburn says poor tracking leads to questionable spending. At least $200,000 was spent for officials to attend conferences at golf resorts in Florida and Palm Springs, or a film festival featuring "Santa, The Fascist Years."

Many of the grants are earmarked by Congress without the normal public review. Justice Department officials told the GAO that it makes them harder to scrutinize. So they rely on recipients to follow the rules: not all of them do.

Former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens earmarked $1.7 million to a group run by a couple who were his friends. They were convicted of stealing $450,000 and spent some of it on a wedding reception for their son - who happened to work for Senator Stevens.

Just last month, an Oklahoma City program was found to have misspent hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal crime prevention funds on things like a giant flat screen TV, 40 pairs of binoculars and $200 Japanese-style swords. Police said most of the binoculars were never used and there was "no legitimate purpose" for the swords.

Twelve other federal agencies and 99 programs fund similar community programs to keep kids out of trouble. Critics want more accountability.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/07/23/eveningnews/main6707431.shtml

Sadly, this is not limited to a just a small group of federal employees. State and municipal employees are raping the American taxpayer public as well – sometimes for egregious amounts that most voters are oblivious of.

This situation must be reversed. It is yet another reason why California in particular has an untenable budget deficit, poor credit rating, high taxes and very angry citizens.

Bell's Hell
Investor’s Business Daily   07/22/2010

Government Greed: The city manager of a low-income Southern California suburb has been pulling down nearly $800,000 a year. And get this — he claims he could match that in the private sector.

Robert Rizzo was, at this writing, reported to be on the verge of resigning as city manager of Bell, a city of 37,000 about 10 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles. He clearly didn't want to leave. It took a week of protests and horrific publicity to pry him loose. And we can see why. He was making $787,637 a year.

To hear him tell it, he was worth every penny. When the Los Angeles Times broke the story about his salary, he had this to say:

"If that's a number people choke on, maybe I'm in the wrong business. I could go into private business and make that money. This council has compensated me for the job I've done."

Assistant City Manager Angela Spaccia, who at $376,288 earns more than the top administrator for all of Los Angeles County, chimed in:

"I would have to argue that you get what you pay for."

We can't count the times that we've heard that type of argument to justify excessive public pay. It rests on the idea that public wages, benefits and, above all, pensions have to be kept high to attract competent people to government from the private sector.

At one time this reasoning might have made some sense. No more. By any meaningful measure, public-sector rewards now are superior to those of private workers.

As of this March, the Bureau of Labor Statistics' National Compensation Survey pegged the average state and local government worker's pay and benefits at $39.81 per hour compared with $27.73 per hour in private industry. Bell has plenty of private-sector workers who could vouch for the reality behind those statistics. Its per-capita income is about half the U.S. average.

The income gap between Bell's residents and its public "servants" (including a police chief who makes $457,000) is unusually high.
But the government greed that has reached such an absurd level here is not confined to one city. It is a pervasive force wherever public employees gain dominance over legislatures, city councils and school boards.

In Bell, it was the greed of the bosses that got out of control.

In California as a whole, it is the power of unions representing prison guards and other well-paid, rank-and-file workers that's bankrupting the state.

And speaking of pensions: Under California's formulas, it appears that Rizzo is entitled to a pension of at least $600,000 a year.
Excuse us while we choke on that number, too.

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/541247/201007221919/Bells-Hell.aspx

Why should we be mandated to pay the costs of individuals who are not citizens here, have broken the law, increased the crime rate, have a deleterious effect on the education of our citizens and then have the audacity to call us racist and intolerant?

In many states, the cost of services for them exceeds the budget shortfall. That is, get rid of these costs and these states will be able close their budget deficits, be more fiscally sound and maybe even reduce the tax rate.

Obama and Congressional Democrats have abdicated their responsibility to resolve this problem in order to gain maximal political benefit (from voters of the Hispanic community). They need to be voted out of office this coming November.

Illegal Immigration Costs U.S. $113 Billion a Year, Study Finds
Ed Barnes   FoxNews.com    July 06, 2010

The cost of harboring illegal immigrants in the United States is a staggering $113 billion a year -- an average of $1,117 for every “native-headed” household in America -- according to a study conducted by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).

The study, a copy of which was provided to FoxNews.com, “is the first and most detailed look at the costs of illegal immigration ever done,” says Bob Dane, director of communications at FAIR, a conservative organization that seeks to end almost all immigration to the U.S.

FAIR's opponents in the bitter immigration debate describe the organization as "extremist," though it is regularly called upon to testify before Congress.

Groups that support immigration reform immediately attacked FAIR's report and pointed out that it is the polar opposite of the Perryman Report, a 2008 study that found illegal immigration was actually a boon to the American economy. It estimated that illegal immigrants add $245 billion in Gross Domestic Product to the economy and account for 2.8 million jobs.

The FAIR report comes as President Obama moves immigration reform to the top of his agenda, and it is likely to be a rallying point for those who oppose the president. At a speech Thursday at American University in Washington, D.C., Obama argued that the entire immigration system is broken and needs sweeping reforms. Among the changes he said are needed is "a path for [farm] workers to earn legal status," which the president's critics called an opening for a new amnesty program.

FAIR's report argues that there are two choices in the immigration debate: “One choice is pursuing a strategy that discourages future illegal migration and increasingly diminishes the current illegal alien population through denial of job opportunities and deportations. The other choice,” it says, “would repeat the unfortunate decision made in 1986 to adopt an amnesty that invited continued illegal migration.”

The report states that an amnesty program wouldn’t appreciably increase tax revenue and would cost massive amounts in Social Security and public assistance expenses. An amnesty “would therefore be an accentuation of the already enormous fiscal burden,” the report concludes.

The single largest cost to the government of illegal immigration, according to the report, is an estimated $52 billion spent on schooling the children of illegals. “Nearly all those costs are absorbed by state and local governments,’ the report states.

Moreover, the study’s breakdown of costs on a state-by-state basis shows that in states with the largest number of illegals, the costs of illegal immigration are often greater than current, crippling budget deficits. In Texas, for example, the additional cost of immigration, $16.4 billion, is equal to the state’s current budget deficit; in California the additional cost of illegal immigration, $21.8 billion, is $8 billion more than the state’s current budget deficit of $13.8 billion; and in New York, the $6.8 billion deficit is roughly two-thirds the $9.5 billion yearly cost of its illegal population, according to Jack Martin, the researcher who completed the study.

"The most important finding of the study is the enormous cost to state and local governments due to lack of enforcement of our immigration laws,” Martin wrote.

The report found that the federal government paid $28.6 billion in illegal related costs, and state and local governments paid $84.2 billion on an estimated 13 million undocumented residents. In his speech, Obama estimated that there are 11 million.

But FAIR's critics said the report wrongly included American-born children of undocumented workers in its study.

“The single biggest 'expense' it attributes to unauthorized immigrants is the education of their children, yet most of these children are native-born, U.S. citizens who will grow up to be taxpaying adults," said Walter Ewing, a senior researcher at the American Immigration Council. "It is disingenuous to count the cost of investing in the education of these children, so that they will earn higher incomes and pay more in taxes when they are adults, as if it were nothing more than a cost incurred by their parents."

He added that “the report fails to account for the purchasing power of unauthorized consumers, which supports U.S. businesses and U.S. jobs” and that it “ignores the value added to the U.S. economy by unauthorized workers, particularly in the service sector.”

Martin said FAIR expected that criticism, but that because the children are a direct result of illegal immigration, their inclusion was both fair and reasonable.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/07/02/immigration-costs-fair-amnesty-educations-costs-reform/

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

We are sure these hard working citizens can think of much better ways to spend their hard earned money than subsidizing the expenses of the law breaking illegal residents.

Cost of Illegal Immigration Rising Rapidly in Arizona, Study Finds
Ed Barnes   FOXNews.com  May 17, 2010

Arizona’s illegal immigrant population is costing the state’s taxpayers even more than once thought -- a whopping $2.7 billion in 2009, according to researchers at the public interest group that helped write the state's new immigration law.

Researchers at FAIR – The Federation for American Immigration Reform -- released data exclusively to FoxNews.com that show a steady cost climb in multiple areas, including incarceration, education and health, in the last five years.

FAIR’s cost estimates – compiled for a comprehensive national immigration report it plans to release next month – include several new cost areas, including welfare and the justice system, that weren’t in previous reports.

FAIR admits that the cost to implement the new law in some of those categories, such as incarceration, will add to the economic strain on the state. But overall, it says, the loss of immigrants either from the deterrent effect of the law, voluntary exodus or from mass deportations, will help the state financially.

Also, the savings to the state will far overwhelm any fallout from boycotts (estimated at between $7 million and $52 million) being threatened in the wake of the law's passage, according to FAIR spokesman Bob Dane.

FAIR's new breakdown shows that illegal immigrants take $1.6 billion from Arizona's education system, $694.8 million from health care services, $339.7 million in law enforcement and court costs, $85.5 million in welfare costs and $155.4 million in other general costs.

The organization concedes that enforcing Arizona SB1070, the new law that allows local police to ask for immigration documents and arrest those who don’t have them, will increase the state’s incarceration costs, police training budgets and prosecution expenses -- but it says those numbers can’t yet be estimated with certainty. Also, it says, some of those costs will be offset by revenues from fines levied against businesses charged with knowingly hiring illegal immigrants, as well as from immigrants themselves who might be charged with minor crimes and fined before being deported.

But the Immigration Policy Center, a major opponent of the new law, says FAIR's data do not accurately portray SB1070's potential outcome. “They count the costs and don’t look at the benefits. We tend to look at the benefits more closely,” said Council spokeswoman Wendy Sefsaf.

“It is like having a roommate and counting how much they cost in toilet paper and incidentals without looking at the benefits of having help with the rent,” she said.

“Overall, every comprehensive study has shown that immigrants are a net benefit to states. If you add their children, they are a very great benefit.”

The Center’s cost crunching found that "if all unauthorized immigrants were removed from Arizona, the state would lose $26.4 billion in economic activity, $11.7 billion in gross state product and approximately 140,324 jobs,” -- a disaster for the Grand Canyon State.

But FAIR’s numbers tell a far different story.

(Because of the polarizing nature of the debate and the lack of solid figures on everything from the number of illegal immigrants in the state to how to accurately figure their share of the costs, there are no numbers either side agrees on or has not challenged.)

Jack Martin, the chief researcher on the report, says his data, in fact, do include benefits like the estimated $142.8 million in taxes paid by an estimated 500,000 illegal immigrants, and he says the Council’s numbers are unrealistic.

“They assume every illegal alien will leave right away," Martin said. "That is not going to happen.”

He said FAIR'S new estimates far exceed the report he wrote in 2004, which helped gain support for the passage of the Arizona law. In 2004, he said, he estimated that illegal immigrants cost the state $1.3 billion -- less than half the new estimate.

He said the new numbers put a reliable cost estimate on the economic impact of illegal immigration -- not just in Arizona, because the debate there largely ended with the passage of the immigration law, but nationally, as the debate spreads across the country.

”The numbers just keep growing,” Dane said.

Both Dane and Martin said that among FAIR’s most important findings was an estimate that tax revenues to the state will actually increase if illegal immigrants leave.

“We discovered after looking at places where big raids were made that salaries went up after the raids because employers now had to pay competitive wages to Americans.” Martin said. “And that will mean more money for the state.”

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/05/17/immigration-costs-rising-rapidlty-new-study-says/

All of these are manifestations of years subjected to the unfettered and irresponsible actions of Progressives/Liberals. It now seems, California is at the edge of the abyss … and looking back at the rapidly approaching country as a whole.

We must not go there!

Sunset In Taxifornia?
Investors Business Daily 05/12/2010

Deficits: We've been hard on Arnold Schwarzenegger in recent months, but we're foursquare behind the California governor in his effort to balance the state's budget without raising taxes.

The Golden State's $18.6 billion budget deficit, the nation's largest, is the result of uncontrolled spending by the state's Democrat-controlled legislature — nothing else. Yet the very same Democratic legislators are pushing for tax increases in the middle of the state's worst downturn since World War II — and only a year after passing a $12.5 billion tax hike to boost revenue.

To call this foolish would be the understatement of the year. So we were glad to hear that Schwarzenegger will include steep spending cuts in the budget plan he'll release this week.

"We don't believe that raising taxes right now is the right thing to do," said the governator's spokesman Aaron McLear.
He's right. California's deficit is not only gargantuan, it's getting worse. In April, the state income tax month, revenue came in 26% below expectations at $3.6 billion — despite last year's tax hikes.

Democrats' answer to this isn't cutting back after years of profligacy. They want a new 10% severance tax on oil production, higher taxes on commercial property and a repeal of corporate tax breaks passed last year to help create jobs.

These are the kinds of policies that have driven California's economy into a ditch. Its jobless rate of 12.6% is among the nation's highest, and it has the lowest credit rating of any state.

Companies are fleeing a business-unfriendly environment created by years of leftist legislation that has taken the state from first to worst in terms of job creation. Recent studies call California's tax policies the worst in the nation. The Pacific Research Institute, a think tank, not-so-tongue-in-cheek calls the state "Taxi-fornia."

Job relocation specialist Joe Vranich counts 112 major companies since June 2009 that have either moved or opened new facilities in other states — costing California thousands of jobs. The most recent emigrant was none other than Northrop Grumman, which is moving its global headquarters to Northern Virginia.

"It's no mystery what causes companies to leave California," said Vranich. "High taxes, undue regulation, workers' comp costs, a legal environment stacked against businesses, and lengthy and costly construction-permitting requirements."

Each week, some 3,000 middle-class workers and entrepreneurs move elsewhere, recent estimates show. Some 1.4 million have left already.

If Schwarzenegger wins this fight, it could mark a defining shift toward fiscal sanity. If not, and taxes and regulations surge anew, California's darkest days will still lie ahead.

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=533862

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/