GET SET FOR BIG PREMIUM HIKES

As Speaker Nancy Pelosi lectured to her flock of minions, "We have to pass the bill, so that you can find out what is in it", truer words were never spoken.  It is well known that this bill was not read by the majority of congress; members of congress had to be bribed [with our tax dollars] in order to vote for the bill; there were backroom deals we will never hear about [unless a "Deap Throat" eventually comes forward]; the public, at a joint session of congress, were, in fact, lied to by a president of the United States.

There are countless measures in this bill that are unconstitutional, the biggest being a mandate to buy health insurance, now being challenged in our courts across the country.

Now that it has been passed - against the will of the people - Americans must hold Republican's feet to the fire about the repeal of this specious bill.  Lately there has been some hemming and hawing about a repeal, and those who appear reluctant need to be singled out.

These are the type of moderates that we are trying to clean out of the Republican party, such as Mike Castle in Delaware, who voted for Cap & Trade as part of the Gang of Eight (great piece by Michelle Malkin.  Castle's primary is tomorrow, Tues Sept 14th, along with 7 other critical states, who is running against Christine O'Donnell (neck and neck). Remember to get out and vote.

Over the years we have seen our freedoms in peril, as they chip away at the edges. "It's not too late to reclaim the American Idea", Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) said recently. This election we have a chance to elect true conservatives, even though the liberals and the liberal media attempts to paint them as radicals. Look who's talking! Methinks they doth protest too much.

We also have the Republican elitists working against constitutional conservatives, which makes it more difficult, but can be done. It's the old "Ruling Class" vs the "Country Class", as the American Spectator writes about, making term limits more necessary now that we have seen how public office has been so abused. These people have been in public office way too long, and have developed an "I'm royalty" attitude, rather than the privilege of serving the people, the dangers written at length by Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.

The brilliant Betsy McCaughey, PhD writes an excellent piece from the New York Post on why our health insurance premiums are going up [another lie by the current president], and what to look for if this bill is not repealed:

Get Set for Big Premium Hikes
by Betsy McCaughey - September 13, 2010

President Obama is boasting that his new health law provides "free" preventive care, such as mammograms and colonoscopies. But when you open your mail, you'll find out that's untrue; all he's doing is making you pay for it in advance.

The government isn't going to force you to get a colonoscopy, but being forced to pay for one feels almost the same.

Millions of Americans are getting notices that their premiums are going up to pay for changes required under the ObamaCare law. Section 2713 of the law requires that those premiums include the full cost for such preventive services as Pap smears, mammograms and smoking-cessation programs. Obama's "free" really just means you won't have a co-pay if you decide to get that service. But it's not free -- merely prepaid. When a restaurant charges you $25 for the all-you-can-eat buffet, it can't claim dessert is "free."

Another reason premiums are soaring this fall is the rapid rise in Medicaid enrollment, now up to a record 50 million people nationwide. When Medicaid rolls expand, it's a double whammy for the rest of us; our taxes go up and so do our premiums.

Medicaid pays, on average, 86 cents for every dollar of care provided. Doctors and hospitals are shortchanged. They try to make up the difference by charging privately insured patients more. The average household paid almost $1,800 a year in added premiums to offset Medicaid costs before the recession began. Now, with Medicaid rolls up, that hidden tax increases your premium even more.

Get set for larger premium hikes in 2014. That's when most ObamaCare provisions go into effect.

Before Congress passed the health law, the Congressional Budget Office warned that individual and small-group health premiums would be 10 percent to 13 percent higher under ObamaCare. In other words, Congress members who voted for this law knew it would raise your insurance costs.

A major reason is the one-size-fits-all benefit package, which you'll have to have whether you want it and can afford it or not. It will include things many consumers haven't had to buy in the past, such as addiction treatment for heroin addicts (Sec. 1302).

Another reason is the expansion of Medicaid. Obama said he'd solve the problem of the uninsured by making insurance more affordable, but 60 percent of all those who will gain coverage in 2014 are being put on Medicaid -- which, again, will increase the hidden tax in your premium.

By 2019, 82 million people will be on Medicaid or S-CHIP, the public children's program -- that's more than 28 percent of all Americans under 65.

Obama pledged to "bend the cost curve" on health insurance. But he's bending the truth instead. When you open your mail, you can thank ObamaCare for the premium hike.


Betsy McCaughey, a former New York lieu tenant governor, is author of "The Obama Health Law: What It Says and How to Overturn It." betsy@defendyourhealthcare.us

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Betsy McCaughey
Defend Your Healthcare
www.DefendYourHealthcare.us

DOC FIX DIGS DEBT DEEPER

Did we Obama really spend over one TRILLION dollars in eight months? In eight short months! Whatever the numbers turn out to be on this government-run health care bill, they will be far too low, as proven in every government run legislation in our history.

This congress has pulled every dirty trick in the book, from backroom, closed door meetings, to last minute amendments, to splitting off costs in order to deceive the voters. America should be outraged. These people work for us. Remind them here.

The Heritage Foundation writes more about deception:


Doc Fix Digs Debt Deeper
November 18, 2009

Yesterday at 3:00 p.m. ET, the Treasury Department updated its calculation of the U.S. National Debt to: $12,031,299,186,290.07. That $12 trillion record high comes just eight months after it hit $11 trillion and is only expected to rise faster considering the federal deficit for 2009 was over $1.4 trillion. And what is the leftist majority of Congress going to do tomorrow about these skyrocketing deficits? They are going to pile on the spending faster.

The issue at hand is the congressionally created formula for annually updating the payments doctors receive for treating Medicare patients. The centrally planned price fixing formula was designed to control health care costs by tying doctor payments to the overall growth rate of the economy. Problem is the realities of supply and demand in the health care sector have pushed doctor’s fees higher than the formula allows for. So instead of going back and fixing the formula (or heaven forbid introducing some market based reforms into Medicare), every year Congress passes short-term fixes rescinding the scheduled rate cuts.

Fixing the problem permanently has long been the top legislative priority for the American Medical Association, and in exchange for their endorsement of Obamacare, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) promised them she would do so. Problem is Pelosi and co. could not figure out how to game the Congressional Budget Office's numbers to show that Obamacare was deficit neutral and pay for the so called “doc fix” at the same time. So they solved the problem by pretending the “doc fix” was not health care reform. But to keep the AMA happy they took the unusual step of combining the debate rules for Obamacare and the doc fix.

As a result, Congress is set to debate the bill tomorrow for just one hour, and no amendments will be allowed. In other words, even if conservative Democrats or Republicans wanted to propose an amendment that would pay for the doctor’s higher payments, they are prevented from doing so. According to the CBO, just the ten year cost of the legislation will be $210 billion, but the damage does not end there. Medicare is a never ending entitlement program, so the real pain caused by the left’s free spending will be felt for decades to come. According to the latest report from the Medicare Trustees, the 75-year cost of allowing doctor payments to match the percentage change in the medical economic index is $1.9 trillion in more debt.

Americans who are concerned about our nation’s exploding deficits under President Obama and the leftist majorities in Congress should keep the doc fix debacle in mind when considering Obamacare. The deficit neutrality of the House-passed Obamacare bill entirely depends on Congress’ ability to cut $500 billion from hospital Medicare payments over the next ten years. Does anyone believe those cuts will ever happen?

CHANGE IS NOT REFORM

During the presidential campaign, Americans were pumped up with the 'Hope and Change' mantra, believing this was a new and exciting plan to get us out of all our troubles. Truth be told, the Hope and Change catch-all term has been around for centuries in one form or another.

By now, millions of Americans are feeling they have been duped. Hence a new mantra "How's that Hope and Change working for you?" Well, I know how it's working for me, and am learning more about Truth and Lies every day.

A interesting bit of history on this and its application today in PajamasMedia:


Change Is Not Reform
It's a sentiment that conservatives from every era have shared, and it holds true today
by AWR Hawkins, November 16, 2009

When John Randolph (1773-1833) was persuaded that certain politicians in the early 19th century were pushing America away from her roots as a Republic and toward a democracy, he cried foul. He opposed what he viewed as attempts to remove distinctions of class and rank, and thereby to level society.

Randolph clung to tradition, states’ rights, and the conservatism that Russell Kirk would praise him for defending over a century later, while simultaneously attacking America’s levelers head on. And when the proponents of democracy, and then broadened democracy, pushed for “change” in the name of reform, he fought as a man whose very life was at stake.

“Change is not reform,” retorted Randolph, and so expressed a sentiment that conservatives from every era have shared.

During the century prior to Randolph, the renowned Edmund Burke fought similar strivings for “change” in England. It was 1770 when Burke gave Englanders his version of “change is not reform” by blaming the push for such change on the base passions of a people excited to class warfare and insatiability. He argued that complaints against a structured society, “[murmuring] at the present possessors of power …[and lamenting] the past,” were but “the necessary effects of the ignorance and [instability] of the [people].”

Both Randolph and Burke understood that the “change” their contemporaries pursued would not result in reforms from bad policies to good ones, but in a loss of liberty. More than anything, both men knew that “change” was just a catch-all term opening the way for governments to interfere with private matters in the name of leveling the playing field or shrinking the financial gap between rich and poor. And the only real benefactor in such a scenario would always be the government.

In the 20th century, Presidents Calvin Coolidge (1923-1929) and Ronald Reagan (1981-1989) exemplified the conviction of Randolph and Burke.

Coolidge understood that “change” from a benign, small government to a more active and intrusive one would be damning to freedom. Thus he said: “There is no justification for public interference with purely private concerns.” He also understood that democracy tended toward collectivism, which in turn tended toward liberty’s demise: “Liberty is not collective, it is personal. All liberty is individual liberty.”

Two decades before being elected to his first term, Reagan fired preemptive strikes against this same deadly “change” by fighting to keep government in its place when Medicare was being established in this country.

As the program was being pushed through Congress in 1961, Reagan feared that the citizens who embraced it were unknowingly embracing socialism cloaked in liberal, egalitarian promises. He demonstrated this by highlighting the fact that proponents of Medicare were “[disguising the] medical program as a humanitarian project.”

If it were compatible with freedom, why did it have to be disguised?

In a recorded message aimed at turning the tide against what he had labeled “socialized medicine,” Reagan warned: “One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine.” In other words, Reagan recognized that subsidized health coverage for the elderly was not “change” for the better, because the taxation to fund it would both grow government and limit freedom.

Reagan’s efforts notwithstanding, Medicare was launched in 1965. And although many people now dependent on it may reject Reagan’s warnings as a bit extreme, they cannot question the fact that Medicare was at least a baby step toward the socialism he loathed. This was made clear when Medicare Part D was signed into law on December 8, 2003, under President George W. Bush. This newest medical entitlement, which was “the largest expansion of Medicare since [it] was created,” broadened the program so that it covers prescription drugs in addition to the hospital stays and doctor visits already covered under Medicare Parts A & B.

While Bush didn’t label Medicare Part D a “humanitarian project,” he certainly did describe subsidizing prescription drugs for seniors as “compassionate.”

Now, President Obama wants to spread the compassion around even further with health care reform that flows from his campaign for “change.” But this begs a question. If “change [was] not reform” when it meant growing government at the expense of freedom in prior decades and centuries, why should we believe such “change” is suddenly going to lead to reform in 2009?

AWR Hawkins is a conservative writer who holds a Ph.D. in military history from Texas Tech University.

OBAMA TAXES PACEMAKERS, HEART VALVES

After a lifetime of education, raising a family, working long hours, and playing by the rules, Americans prepare and look forward to their golden years -- or at least that was the plan. This administration is doing their darndest to destroy these plans.

The first attack was destroy the economy, and the progression is dependency on government for health care, energy, income, and the simple task of keeping a roof over their heads. The hope is that it will happen so fast, you don't see it, after all "you never want a serious crisis to go to waste. What I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before." Thank you Rahn 'Dead Fish' Emanuel.

Seniors, more than anyone else, are under attack with the threat of government run health care - those who had already paid into the system. Dick Morris writes further:


OBAMA TAXES PACEMAKERS, HEART VALVES
by Dick Morris & Eileen McGann, October 26, 2009

The more fiscal details of the health care bills emerge, the more appalling they seem. The Senate Finance Committee bill includes a broad provision taxing all manner of medical devices. This tax includes such frivolous luxuries as pacemakers, stents, artificial heart valves, defibrillators, automated wheelchairs, mechanized artificial limbs, replacement hips and knees, surgical gurneys, laparoscopic equipment, and the like.

President Obama is planning to reduce the cost of medical care by taxing it!

The most recent Gallup Poll reflected that 49% of respondents said they believed that the Obamacare plan will increase their health care costs. Only about 20% said it would lower them. It is taxes like these that substantiate this kind of concern.

The origins of this new medical device tax are troubling as well.

The medical device industry had its day at the White House as did the insurance industry, the drug makers, the nurses, and the doctors. In turn, each group heard the White House request that they come up with voluntary cuts in their health care costs and support Obama's proposed changes in return for assurances that Congress would not impose deeper cuts (or, in the case of the doctors, that it would actually rescind cuts already scheduled under current statutes).

But, unlike all these other groups, the medical device industry refused the deal. This posture enraged the tyrants in the White House who vowed to punish the industry with cuts imposed by Congress. The result was a decision by the revenue-hungry Senate Finance Committee to extract billions in funds from the industry.

The legislation does not work like a sales or excise tax. Rather it follows the model of the punitive tobacco settlement imposed on cigarette companies in the 90s. It assesses an industry-wide payment which firms must make in proportion to their market share. It bars the them from passing along the cost of the assessment by charging more for certain basic products, but allows them to raise the price of others to raise the funds for the fee.

So, the result will be that virtually every piece of advanced surgical equipment will be subject to a price increase to meet the levy from Washington. No matter that these devices often make the difference between life and death and that, in effect, taxing them raises the cost of vital treatments. The vengeful White House will have its pound of flesh from the medical device industry for daring to be independent and to refuse to knuckle down to Administration pressure!

This tax, imposed in a spirit of haughty arrogance, falls on totally inappropriate objects. Valves, prosthetic limbs, pacemakers, hearing aids, and such are essential therapies that make life longer, better, and less painful. To tax them makes no sense. Except in the world of sharp elbows and interest group politics that grips this take-no-prisoners and show-no-mercy White House.

Ronald Reagan And The Fall Of The Berlin Wall: Reflections From Yesterday, Lessons For Today - Click Here

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BAUCUS'S ACCOUNTING TRICK

In his continuing research of government run healthcare, if you want to see something that will blow your mind, this graph by Philip Klein of American Spectator will do. A picture speaks a thousand words, and this one speaks volumes. This administration is so deceptive, and the ramifications they will leave behind are outrageous.

History has taught us how under estimated the government has been in pushing through entitlements, and the ticker keeps growing. We are spending America into oblivion, and the pressure is on to stop this madness. Phone/fax list here. Don't let up!

Philip Klein of American Spectator continues his research on health care reform:


Baucus's Accounting Trick
by Philip Klein, October 19, 2009

I've been documenting the various tricks Democrats have been employing to argue that their health care legislation would cost less than $900 billion over 10 years and not add to deficits. Their tactics include promising cuts to government programs that future lawmakers are unlikely to actually enact and moving $247 billion of spending on Medicare doctors' payments to a separate bill while claiming that it has nothing to do with health care (even the Washington Post editorialized that this was "nonsensical"). But another way that Chairman Max Baucus was able to keep the cost of the Senate Finance Committee legislation down (as measured by the Congressional Budget Office) was just a simple gimmick.

Given that the CBO only puts a price tag on the first 10 years of a piece of legislation, Democrats realized that they could simply delay the enactment of the major spending provisions of the bill by four years, thus creating the illusion of a bill that costs $829 billion over 10 years. But in actuality, the bill is projected to cost just $14 billion in the first four years, and $70 billion through its fifth year. You can see this in the below table breaking down the CBO spending projections:

I demonstrate this graphically below. The red shaded area to the left of the line represents all of the spending in the first half of the 10 year period the CBO evaluated, and everything to the right of the line represents spending in the second half of that 10 year period. About 98 percent of the spending comes in the last six years, and 92 percent comes in final five year period. Thus, the true 10-year cost of the Baucus bill is well above $1 trillion, and according to estimates cited by Republicans, it's actually $1.8 trillion.

Philip Klein is The American Spectator's Washington correspondent.

BUY ONE, TAKE TEN - Entitlement Programs

It's easy enough to describe socialism to your children with the Halloween candy story, but put it into prospective, in real life terms, makes hard working Americans see red -- no pun intended. Americans who have played by the rules, are paying for those who did not.

Paying for someone's gas in their car, or your neighbor's mortgage, or the person's food in front of you at the market doesn't set right, and yet the government takeover is expanding these programs -- again. Re-starting the housing mortgage lending policies, after it was the main reason for the economic melt down, should infuriate every hard working citizen.

PajamasMedia writes:


Buy One, Take Ten
Entitlement programs have convinced citizens that the government never runs out of free money, a view that is psychologically crippling.
by Richard Fernandez, October 16, 2009

When a society has been told for years it can have something for nothing the damage is not just physical, but psychological; an entire mentality is crippled. A former British official who is now a director at the London School of Economics says that Britain is in deep trouble. Years of entitlement have convinced people that government is an endless source of wealth. With the economic crisis in full swing, the government has to cut back for national survival. The problem is that no one wants the music to stop. Even the intellectual class, according to Sir Howard Davies, has come to believe that any crisis can be met by simply borrowing and printing more money.

Sir Howard Davies, now Director of the London School of Economics, said Britain faces a dangerous rise in the levels of public debt – even taking into account tax increases planned for coming years.

“The next six months are going to be extremely delicate in the UK”, he told a gathering of HSBC clients in London. “It is very clear that something dramatic has to happen to control spending: but is the economy robust enough to survive fiscal tightening?” …

What is disturbing is that the British people seem unwilling to face minimal belt-tightening. Even professors in higher education are balloting to strike, demanding a continuation of boom-time pay raises. “You have the best minds in the country planning to go on strike for 8pc. People are miles away from understanding what is needed.”

Polling data shows that 48pc of the public are against any spending cuts and only 20pc see the need for retrenchment. Britons appear to assume that the “fantastic growth in public spending” over the last decade has become an entitlement.

It’s laughable, right? But how sane is everyone else? A riot which broke out at a Burlington Coat Factory outlet when a mentally disturbed woman, posing as the newly rich winner of a lottery, hoaxed customers into believing she would pay for everything that they bought illustrates how credulous people can be. She drove up to the store in a rented limo and announced that she was going to pay for everything the customers bought. Before long the store resembled the scene of a civil disturbance.

A woman arrived at the store in a Hummer limo, announcing that she’d won the lottery and offering to cover tabs totaling up to $500. … Before the hoax was even revealed, two dozen police officers were called in to quell the unrest sparked by the woman …

As cashiers rang sale after sale, Brown left in her limo to withdraw funds to cover the large scale shopping spree- but returned empty handed. The situation predictably worsened, with the large crowds expecting free things and not willing to leave empty handed. Shoppers began throwing merchandise on the floor and looting.

But it isn’t just the people at the Burlington Coat Factory or Britain who can be tricked into buying things on fake credit. Forbes recently described how health care “reform” is going to be paid for with a windfall that will never come. Is there any difference between a woman who imagines she’s won the lottery and politicians who will pay for future expenses from invented revenues?

A careful reading of the evidence suggests that the Baucus bill will add as much as $376 billion to the federal deficit through 2019. And that figure understates the full impact of the bill on the budget. If the big-spending parts of the proposal started next year rather than in 2014, the fiscal damage would be much greater.

At face value, the Baucus bill seems to be close to what the president ordered. According to the CBO, the bill gives coverage to 29 million uninsured Americans for less than $900 billion while simultaneously reducing the deficit. The problem is that the bill counts as savings large cuts to Medicare providers that will almost certainly never happen.

The most blatant example is the annual cut in fees paid by Medicare to physicians. The cuts started out small, about 5% a year, but even that was unsustainable. To “solve” the political problem without having to admit to a big increase in the deficit, Congress has given doctors a series of one-year fixes. The foregone payment reductions add up, and next year Medicare is supposed to slash doctor’s fees 21%. Clearly, that will not happen.

The Ohio hoaxer was arrested and she is believed to be mentally disturbed. But politicians can do the same thing without worrying about being dragged away by the men in white coats. Steve Chapman talks about how Washington, having just watched the financial system destroyed by a real estate bubble, is inflating another to take its place.

Watching Washington policymakers in action, I sometimes think they make mistakes because of unrealistic goals, flawed thinking, blind obedience to party, or dubious information. And sometimes I think they make mistakes because they are—how to put this?—clinically insane.

There is no other way to explain what is going on at the Federal Housing Administration, which provides federal guarantees for home mortgages. Given the collapse in real estate prices, the weak economy, and the epidemic of foreclosures, banks are acting with more caution than before. They now commonly require home buyers to make down payments of 20 percent to qualify for a loan. But the FHA often requires only 3.5 percent.

That’s the equivalent of playing pool with a guy named Snake, and it’s had two predictable effects. The first is that the agency is insuring about four times as many home loans as it did just three years ago. The other is that the number of FHA-approved borrowers who are not repaying their loans is climbing. Since last year, the default rate has jumped by 76 percent.

Another likely consequence looms: you and I eating the losses.

Chapman says, “a former executive of mortgage giant Fannie Mae told a congressional subcommittee that the FHA ‘appears destined for a taxpayer bailout in the next 24 to 36 months.’” Is anybody surprised? Should anybody be surprised? Chapman describes the behavior as akin to being “clinically insane”. Maybe the problem is exactly as Sir Howard Davies described it: the culture of dependency which in some circles is confused with the phrase “scientific socialism”. When even people who should know better believe they can get something for nothing — striking academics in the UK, shoppers in a store, people with health care insurance, people with mortgages — the problem comes to resemble not ordinary debt but participation in a scam. It’s almost as if a hoaxer had appear on the national scene and grandly offered to pick up the tab for a dazzling future without a real dime to his name — and people believed him. How could it happen? And what happens when the joker is unmasked?


Read more articles by Richard Fernandez here.

HIGH PRICE OF OBAMACARE

Now that Reconciliation, known as the 'Nuclear Option', has been approved by tax cheat Charlie Rangel of the House Ways & Means Committee, we, the majority, are about to be overrun by the elite majority. Was there any question why House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wanted to keep Rangel, rather than force him to step down.

Dick Morris breaks down the tax ramifications:


HIGH PRICE OF OBAMACARE
by Dick Morris, October 15, 2009

Will a young, healthy, childless individual or couple buy health insurance costing 7.5 percent of their income, as required by Obama's health legislation? Not until they get sick. Then they can always buy the insurance, and the Obama bill requires the insurance companies to give it to them. And if the premiums come to more than 7.5 percent of their income because they are now sick, no problem. Obama will subsidize it.

Instead, young, healthy, childless people will likely opt to pay the $1,000 fine (aka slap on the wrist) mandated in the bill. After all, even if they make as little as $50,000 a year, the fine is a lot cheaper than 7.5 percent of their income (or $3,500 a year)!

So...these young households will not contribute to the coffers of any health insurance company until they are sick and need the coverage. By then, their costs will come to vastly more than their premiums.

Who will subsidize the difference? We will.

The insurance industry estimates that the bill will drive up premiums for the average family by $1,700 a year. By the time the bill takes effect in 2013, it estimates that the average annual family health insurance premiums (now $12,300) will rise to $17,200 if the Obama bill is passed, but only to $15,500 if it is defeated.

And who do you think the voters will blame for the hike in their premiums? The Democrats who passed the bill.

Supporters of the bill are quick to counter that greater efficiency, etc., will hold down premiums. But they have little to answer the argument that, without higher fines, the young and healthy will not consent to pay an arm and a leg for insurance they don't need.

Any lingering motivation to pay the premiums will disappear once the Obama bill requires insurance companies to cover them when they do, finally, limp in the door, desperately in need of insurance. Why pay now when you can always pay later? And, with a government subsidy, you gain nothing by paying for all those years when you don't need insurance.

So Obama's program turns out not to be one to spread insurance and thus spread the risk of costly illness, but one to make people pay 7.5 percent of their incomes once they get sick, with the government picking up their remaining premium and the health insurance customers paying for the medical expenses. Some deal!

So tote up the cost of this bill on the middle class:

• $1,700 more in insurance premiums for the average family

• Medical devices like wheelchairs and hearing aids get taxed

• Those who are sick must pay an average of about $600 more a year in income taxes because the bill raises the threshold for deducting medical expenses from 7.5 percent of income to 10 percent

• A $404 billion cut in Medicare

• Ending the subsidized Medicare Advantage insurance for costs over and above Medicare. Without Medicare Advantage, the elderly can only augment Medicare by buying Medigap coverage, for which no subsidy is available and whose premiums are higher (offered, conveniently enough, by Obama's buddies at the AARP)

• No importation of Canadian medicines and no competitive bidding to hold down prescription drug costs (Obama's deal to get Pharma's support and advertising dollars)

• A shortage of medical personnel and equipment as 30 million new patients are added without any expansion of the population of doctors and nurses. This shortage will make rationing inevitable, even if it shortens life expectancies among the elderly.

And all of this assumes that the House bill, which imposes a 4.5 percent payroll tax (which will discourage new employment), does not pass.

...And that the cost estimates of this program prove realistic. Despite the Congressional Budget Office's concurrence, one can't help noticing that Massachusetts's program was estimated to cost $200 million in 2005 and now costs $700 million!

This healthcare bill is, indeed, Obama's first tax on the middle class.


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THE MOST SQUALID 'REFORM' DEAL YET

Congress is back at it this week, and will be using every dirty trick in the book to ram this government run health care bill through the Senate, first being the lie about the (public) government option. The 2nd being the billions of dollars cut from Medicare.

This needs to be watched carefully, and Dick Morris continues his brilliant analysis in the New York Post:


THE MOST SQUALID 'REFORM' DEAL YET
by Dick Morris & Eileen McGann, October 2, 2009

Why is Congress so eager to cut $160 billion-plus from Medicare Advantage? The program does things that President Obama and other liberals normally praise. Is the cut simply the price charged by AARP (the American Association of Retired Persons) for overlooking the rest of the $500 billion in Medicare cuts meant to finance "health-care reform"?

Medicare Advantage offers a range of benefits beyond basic Medicare. It combines many elements Obama and other liberals like -- such as subsidized premiums for low-income elderly, "pooling" of insurees to provide bargaining power and managed care that emphasizes prevention, treatment of chronic conditions and coordination among doctors.

As a result, it keeps the cost of care, and thus insurance premiums, much lower than do policies.

Ten million seniors have voluntarily enrolled in Medicare Advantage and realized savings of about $1,000 a year in enhanced benefits over and above what Medicare itself provides. These extra benefits include reduced out-of-pocket costs and comprehensive drug coverage, as well as vision, dental and hearing benefits -- plus programs promoting wellness (such as gym memberships) disease management and care coordination.

It essentially implements all the economies and efficiencies that Obama preaches nonstop. Doctors speak to one another, duplication is avoided, care is managed, and there is an emphasis on prevention.

Yet the Democratic health-care bills targets Medicare Advantage for drastic cuts -- which would force up premiums and drive millions of seniors to drop it.

Which brings us to AARP -- which makes a hefty profit selling Medigap coverage, the chief alternative to Medicare Advantage.

Medigap is a more traditional policy -- it offers fewer benefits at higher premiums. It lacks such features as no-care coordination, chronic-care management and pay-for-performance incentives.

And Medigap doesn't do as much to control costs. Because Medicare Advantage negotiates payment levels and saves money via bulk purchasing, inpatient costs run 20 percent or more below Medigap charges. More patients are handled through outpatient care. X-rays and other radiation cost 10 percent to 20 percent less; devices like wheelchairs, walkers and oxygen bottles run a fifth less than under conventional policies.

But AARP is probably the most potent lobby in Washington -- and the White House has consistently tried to buy off the lobbyists on health-care reform. Its deals with the insurance and pharmaceutical lobbies have gotten some coverge -- will we someday learn of a similar bargain with AARP?

The deal would represent special-interest politics at its worst: a group betraying the constituency it's supposed to serve for the sake of its own coffers.

"Health-care reform" would slash Medicare -- and not just Medicare Advantage -- to subsidize insurance for much younger people who can't qualify for Medicaid and thus, by definition, aren't poor. And the supposed protector of poor old people will stand by, content with its own cut of the action.

Is this what liberal Democrats have come to?


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SEN. BAUCUS'S DEATH PANEL?

If anyone is up to reading all 1,018 pages of the House government run health care bill, they will not find the words 'death panel'. Nor will they find them in the Senate Baucus government run health bill.

It's implied, and it might behoove members of congress to get a grasp of this concept, because -- "There, but for the grace of God, go I". They will all eventually become Senior Citizens, and the Golden Rule is something to live by.

A short, but excellent, analysis of the Baucus bill in the American Spectator:


Sen. Baucus's Death Panel?
by Doug Bandow, October 1, 2009

While the various health care "reform" proposals do not literally contain a "death panel" to consign patients to the grave, any system of political rationing will trade off treatment with expense. And no one interested in his or her own medical care--or that of loved ones--really wants such decisions to be made by politicians and bureaucrats. Just look at nationalized systems for the result.

One of the most worrisome measures to emerge from the Baucus bill is the proposal to reduce reimbursements for doctors who prescribe the most expensive Medicare treatments. According to the National Right to Life Committee:

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus's "Mark," released September 16 is currently being considered in committee. The bill contains a provision penalizing doctors based on how much medical treatment they direct for senior citizens on Medicare. It establishes that for at least five years (2015-2020), Medicare physicians who authorize treatments for their patients that wind up in the top 10% of per capita cost for a year will lose 5% of their total Medicare reimbursements for that year.

How to deal with exploding Medicare costs and the dilemma of "end-of-life" treatment are among the most vexing issues facing us. But this provision risks creating a direct incentive to arbitrarily reduce Medicare treatment for the sole purpose to avoid being penalized by Washington. The goal should be to eliminate unnecessary treatment and reduce the cost of unnecessarily expensive treatment. It should not be to reduce any and all treatment, come what may.

Even some supporters of the measure apparently recognize the dangers. Reports the National Right to Life Committee:

Although Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND) voted against the Kyl Amendment because he disagreed with its budget offsets (required under the committee's rules), he earlier said, "As I try to put my feet in the shoes of a doctor, I don't know how you separate out overutilization that is really overutilization. There is no way of knowing when you go through the year, what you are going to do at the end of the year." He warned that the provision could come back to "haunt us" in a few years.

Sen. Conrad is right. He should reconsider his vote. In not too many years he or a family member might be the retiree being treated by a doctor worried about being penalized for authorizing too much and too much expensive treatment. This might not be a death panel per se. But the result, especially if the policy becomes permanent, could be the same--unnecessary and early death for people forced to rely on the government for medical care.

Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. A former Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan, he is the author of "Beyond Good Intentions: A Biblical View of Politics" (Crossway).

THE SECRET MEDICARE CUTS

Seniors are becoming more and more aware of how much this government run health care bill will hurt them by robbing Medicare and the money seniors have paid into it over their lifetime. It's their hard earned money, paid to the government to set aside for health care of their choice.

Because of greedy government, Medicare is on shaky ground with highway robbery on the horizon. A high percentage of seniors use Medicare Advantage, which will be the sacrificial lamb if this goes through. RedState writes further:


The Secret Medicare Cuts
Posted by Dan Perrin, September 29, 2009

Republicans are in possession of a letter which asks: Where are the secret Medicare cuts going to come from?

Given that both Rasmussen and the AP polls have come up with the same answer: 59% of seniors are opposed to ObamaCare, the draft letter below has greater significance for Seniors than just the political implications for the Democrats.

Dick Morris discusses the policy implications for seniors:

“The latest poll by Scott Rasmussen not only shows national opposition to Obamacare rising - now it is 41-56 against - but also shows the elderly moving against it even more strongly, by 33-59, or almost 2:1.

And well they should! Three-quarters of ObamaCare is to be financed by slashing $500 billion from Medicare over the next 10 years. That comes to an 8 percent cut. Next year’s total Medicare spending, for example, will be about $500 billion by itself, so this is like having one year without Medicare at all! Obama’s fatuous claim that the cut will not affect care for the elderly is specious, as any thinking person would realize. We have gone through previous incarnations of those who wanted to slash Medicare and pretended that it would not affect the elderly. Newt Gingrich tried to sell this act of alchemy in 1995, and the elderly didn’t buy it then and aren’t buying it now!

It is obviously impossible to cut Medicare reimbursement without slashing the time doctors spend with patients. It is equally obvious that you cannot cover 30 million new patients without more doctors and nurses. And the Medicare cuts in doctors’ fees will, of course, cause a decrease in the number of medical professionals. Investors Business Daily conducted a poll in September that showed that 45 percent of all doctors said they would seriously consider retiring or closing their practices if the Obama bill passes. A larger number will likely refuse to treat Medicare patients. Indeed, current law provides for a 21 percent cut in Medicare fees to doctors next year and a 6 percent cut the year after. The new $500 billion in cuts are on top of these reductions! What kind of medical care do we expect our elderly to receive when the doctor they visit is getting $35 or $40 for seeing them!”

The draft letter reads, in part:

We do know that around $113 billion from reductions in entitlements will come out of Medicare Advantage, meaning that 10.2 million seniors on this program will not be able to keep the coverage they currently have.

But this leaves roughly $227.6 billion — a good chunk of the remainder of the $4-500 billion — consisting of unspecified Medicare cuts coming from reductions in payments to providers or subject to the determinations of a 15-member panel.

There are two competing dangers to these secret cuts, which are not necessarily mutually exclusive:

The first is that these Medicare unspecified cuts will lead to “rationing by underpricing.” Even accepting vague promises that benefits and eligibility will not be slashed, this leaves one central possibility: price reductions to the point at which providers fail to deliver services to Medicare recipients.

The New York Times admitted this, in an editorial Sunday morning attacking all Senate “Republicans” when it stated, with respect to “cuts in payments to hospitals and other health care providers” which would cause them to cease to serve Medicare patients: “If true, that is a problem that Congress will have to address in the future.”

If this bill, in fact, is going to cause seniors to lose access to doctors, hospitals, and services they now enjoy –- or to face “rationing by underpricing” -– that is a problem we need to face NOW.

The second possibility is that the “secret cuts” are illusory -– and that this bill will become a deficit engine which will irrevocably destroy the American economy.

Either or both of these contingencies is enough for us to pause a minute before cramming this bill down the throats of the American people in order to “make history.”

Finally, we believe that the Senate Finance Committee deserves legislative language -– and a CBO score based on legislative language.”

I wonder how many Seniors know that an unelected commission will be cutting their Medicare?

BEWARE THE PUBLIC OPTION TRAP

Beware the slight of hand in re-naming the public option (more correctly government option) to co-op or trigger. They are all one in the same.

But what is most hidious about this government run healthcare bill is the assault on senior citizens by way of robbing Medicare by at least half a TRILLION dollars.  This is taxpayer money, paid in by citizens specifically for retirement health care, and is nothing short of highway robbery.

Dick Morris explains:


BEWARE THE PUBLIC OPTION TRAP
By Dick Morris & Eileen McGann, September 16, 2009

As any good Persian rug dealer knows, you have to hold back a bargaining chit so that you can whip it out at the very end to tie down the sale. That's how Obama is playing the so-called public option in his health care program. His plan seems to be to combine its abandonment with some form of tort reform and try to buy off some Republicans - maybe only Maine's Olympia Snowe - to give moderate Democrats enough confidence in the veneer of bi-partisanship to win their backing for his bill.

But it's a fraud and a trick.
 
Here's why:

(a) Whether or not there is a public option makes no difference in the fundamental objection most elderly have to the bill - that it guts Medicare and Medicaid. All of the bills now under consideration cut these two programs by one half of a trillion dollars. And all of them require the medical community to serve thirty to fifty million new patients without any concomitant growth in the number of doctors or nurses. These cuts and shortages will lead to draconian rationing of medical care for the elderly, whether under a public option or not.

(b) The most likely proposal is to replace the public option with some form of buyer's co-op. But since there is no currently existing co-op to serve as a vehicle for health insurance, it would have to be formed. By who? The government, of course. That would mean, as a practical matter, that the "co-op option" would be a government run plan for several years. In fact, they may not get around to setting up a co-op at all.

(c) The other alternative, mentioned by Senator Snowe herself, would be for a "trigger" mechanism. This provision would require the creation of a public alternative to private insurance plans if, after a specified period of time, they did not lower rates to a pre-determined level. Given the escalation of health care costs, it is almost inevitable that this provision would lead to a government plan. And, anyway, who says that the government insurance option would be more successful in reducing costs?

But Obama has to at least appear to be willing to compromise, so he has invented the idea of re-packaging the public option in order to seem to be flexible.
 
The key, here, is not to be distracted by the debate over the public option. It matters very much to private insurance companies whether the government becomes their competitor, but, for the elderly (and the near-elderly), the key concern is not the public option by the rationing and cuts projected under the program.

In the Clinton Administration, we worked hard to kill the proposed Medicare cuts and are no less committed to stopping them in the Obama presidency. That they were once proposed by the right and are now being pushed by the left makes no difference. A cut is a cut is a cut. And Medicare should not be cut.

OBAMA, THE MORTAL

One of the most brilliant minds of our day, outlines the rise and fall of Barack Hussein Obama to a tee. For those who saw this from the beginning, it's a sweet affirmation. Thank you, Mr. Krauthammer.


Obama, the Mortal
By Charles Krauthammer, September 3, 2009

What happened to President Obama? His wax wings having melted, he is the man who fell to earth. What happened to bring his popularity down further than that of any new president in polling history save Gerald Ford (post-Nixon pardon)?

The conventional wisdom is that Obama made a tactical mistake by farming out his agenda to Congress and allowing himself to be pulled left by the doctrinaire liberals of the Democratic congressional leadership. But the idea of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi pulling Obama left is quite ridiculous. Where do you think he came from, this friend of Chávista ex-terrorist William Ayers, of PLO apologist Rashid Khalidi, of racialist inciter Jeremiah Wright?

But forget the character witnesses. Just look at Obama's behavior as president, beginning with his first address to Congress. Unbidden, unforced and unpushed by the congressional leadership, Obama gave his most deeply felt vision of America, delivering the boldest social democratic manifesto ever issued by a U.S. president. In American politics, you can't get more left than that speech and still be on the playing field.

In a center-right country, that was problem enough. Obama then compounded it by vastly misreading his mandate. He assumed it was personal. This, after winning by a mere seven points in a year of true economic catastrophe, of an extraordinarily unpopular Republican incumbent, and of a politically weak and unsteady opponent. Nonetheless, Obama imagined that, as Fouad Ajami so brilliantly observed, he had won the kind of banana-republic plebiscite that grants caudillo-like authority to remake everything in one's own image.

Accordingly, Obama unveiled his plans for a grand makeover of the American system, animating that vision by enacting measure after measure that greatly enlarged state power, government spending and national debt. Not surprisingly, these measures engendered powerful popular skepticism that burst into tea-party town-hall resistance.

Obama's reaction to that resistance made things worse. Obama fancies himself tribune of the people, spokesman for the grass roots, harbinger of a new kind of politics from below that would upset the established lobbyist special-interest order of Washington. Yet faced with protests from a real grass-roots movement, his party and his supporters called it a mob -- misinformed, misled, irrational, angry, unhinged, bordering on racist. All this while the administration was cutting backroom deals with every manner of special interest -- from drug companies to auto unions to doctors -- in which favors worth billions were quietly and opaquely exchanged.

"Get out of the way" and "don't do a lot of talking," the great bipartisan scolded opponents whom he blamed for creating the "mess" from which he is merely trying to save us. If only they could see. So with boundless confidence in his own persuasiveness, Obama undertook a summer campaign to enlighten the masses by addressing substantive objections to his reforms.

Things got worse still. With answers so slippery and implausible and, well, fishy, he began jeopardizing the most fundamental asset of any new president -- trust. You can't say that the system is totally broken and in need of radical reconstruction, but nothing will change for you; that Medicare is bankrupting the country, but $500 billion in cuts will have no effect on care; that you will expand coverage while reducing deficits -- and not inspire incredulity and mistrust. When ordinary citizens understand they are being played for fools, they bristle.

After a disastrous summer -- mistaking his mandate, believing his press, centralizing power, governing left, disdaining citizens for (of all things) organizing -- Obama is in trouble.

Let's be clear: This is a fall, not a collapse. He's not been repudiated or even defeated. He will likely regroup and pass some version of health insurance reform that will restore some of his clout and popularity.

But what has occurred -- irreversibly -- is this: He's become ordinary. The spell is broken. The charismatic conjurer of 2008 has shed his magic. He's regressed to the mean, tellingly expressed in poll numbers hovering at 50 percent.

For a man who only recently bred a cult, ordinariness is a great burden, and for his acolytes, a crushing disappointment. Obama has become a politician like others. And like other flailing presidents, he will try to salvage a cherished reform -- and his own standing -- with yet another prime-time speech.

But for the first time since election night in Grant Park, he will appear in the most unfamiliar of guises -- mere mortal, a treacherous transformation to which a man of Obama's supreme self-regard may never adapt.

IT'S ALL A DEATH PANEL: THE TRUTH ABOUT OBAMACARE

The constant cry from the left about 'death panels' -- "It's not in the bill". It doesn't have to be in the bill. Common sense tells you, the only way to pay for 50 million new people is to ration.

Dick Morris defines the Obama-speak:


IT'S ALL A DEATH PANEL: THE TRUTH ABOUT OBAMACARE
By Dick Morris & Eileen McGann, August 17, 2009

Washington is all atwitter about "death panels": President Obama derides the idea that his health-care reform calls for them; the Senate is stripping "end of life" counseling language from its bill -- and last Friday the voice of the liberal establishment, The New York Times, ran a Page One story "rebutting" the rumor that ObamaCare would create such boards to decide when to pull the plug on elderly patients.

But all those protests miss the fundamental truth of the "death panel" charge.

Even without a federal board voting on whom to kill, ObamaCare will ration care extensively, leading to the same result. This follows inevitably from central features of the president's plan.

Specifically, his decisions to (1) pay for reform with vast cuts in the Medicare budget and (2) grant insurance coverage to 50 million new people, vastly boosting demand without increasing the supply of doctors, nurses or other care providers.

Whether or not he admits it even to himself, Obama's talk of cutting "inefficiencies" and reducing costs translates to less care, of lower quality, for the elderly. Every existing national health system finds ways to deny state-of-the-art medications and necessary surgical procedures to countless patients, and ObamaCare has the nascent mechanisms to do the same. With the limited options that Obama's vision would leave them, many will find that "end of life counseling" necessary and even welcome.

"Reform" would cut care to the elderly in several ways:

* Slash hundreds of billions from Medicare spending, largely by lowering reimbursement rates to doctors and hospitals for patient care.

If a hospital gets less money for each MRI, it will do fewer of them. If a surgeon gets paid less for a heart bypass on a Medicare patient, he'll perform them more rarely. These facts of the marketplace are not only inevitable consequences of Obama's cuts but are also its intended consequence. Without them, his savings will prove illusory.

* Expanding the patient load by extending full coverage to 50 million Americans (including such "Americans" as illegal immigrants) without boosting the supply of care will force rationing decisions on harried and overworked doctors and hospitals.

People with insurance use a lot more health-care resources -- so today's facilities and personnel will have to cope with the increased workload. Busy surgeons will have to decide who would benefit most from their treatment -- de facto rationing. The elderly will, inevitably, be the losers.

* The Federal Health Board, established by this legislation, will be charged with collecting data on various forms of treatment for different conditions to assess which are the most effective and efficient. While the bills don't force providers to obey the board's "guidance," its recommendations will still wind up setting the standards and protocols for care systemwide.

We've already seen Medicare and Medicaid lead a similar race to the bottom with their formularies and other regulations. With Washington dictating what every policy must cover and regulating all rates, insurers and providers will all have to follow the FHB's advice on limiting care to the elderly -- a de facto rationing system.

* In assessing whether to allow certain treatments to a given patient, medical professionals will be encouraged to apply the Quality-Adjusted Remaining Years system. Under QARY, decision-makers seek to "amortize" the cost of treatment over the remaining "quality years of life" likely for that patient.

Imagine a hip replacement costing $100,000 and the 75-year-old who needs it, a diabetic with a heart condition deemed to have just three "quality" years left. That works out to $33,333 a year -- too steep! Surgery disallowed! (Unless of course, the patient has political connections . . . )

Younger, healthier patients would still get the surgery, of course. The QARY system simply aims to deny health care to the oldest and most infirm, "scientifically" condemning them to infirmity, pain and earlier death than would otherwise be their fate.

In short, ObamaCare doesn't need to set up "death panels" to make retail decisions about ending the lives of individual patients. The whole "reform" scheme is one giant death panel in its own right.

Make sure to order his new book "CATASTROPHE" here

MEDICARE IS A GOVT RUN HEALTH CARE PLAN, SAYS OBAMA

If Obama wants to use Medicare as an example of how great government run health care is, let's take a look. Example -- Medicare, created in 1966, had an annual cost of $3 billion, with a predicted cost of $12 billion by 1990. The actual cost for Medicare in 1990 was $107 billion, which is an 800% increase.

This year, we are looking at $484 billion, and by 2018 -- $885.1 Billion. Are we nuts?

Jeff Emanuel uses the New Testament as an analogy with a powerful message, and writes in The American Spectator:


Wicked, Lazy Servants
By Jeff Emanuel, August 18, 2009

The New Testament book of Matthew contains a well-known allegorical tale known as the "Parable of the Talents." In this story, Jesus told of a man who entrusted his property to three servants while he was away. One servant was given five silver talents; another two; and a third one. The first two servants put that which their master had given them to good use, and doubled his money while he was away. The third servant, who had been given but one talent, buried the valuable quantity of silver to preserve it until his master returned, neither risking its safety nor putting it to good use while its owner was away.

Upon his return, the two servants who had taken that which he had entrusted them with and used it wisely during his absence presented their master with their earnings. He replied to each, "Well done, my good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things."

The third servant, who had merely protected that portion of his master's wealth with which he had been entrusted, presented the single talent upon the man's return. Seeing this, the master flew into a rage, chastising the "wicked, lazy servant" for allowing cowardice and irresponsibility to prevent his putting the master's money to good use and ordering the servant to surrender his talent to the servant who had proved his resourcefulness and trustworthiness by doubling his master's five talents.

The moral of this New Testament parable -- be a good steward of a little and you will be trusted with more, but poor stewardship will lose you the privilege of being trusted with anything in the future -- is recalled to mind by the federal government's current attempt to take over the American health care system. The 33 years Medicare has been in existence have provided the federal government with an opportunity to demonstrate what type of steward its legislators and bureaucrats will be of a national health care program millions of Americans are trusting for their coverage and care.

"Medicare is… a government-run health care plan that people are very happy with," said President Obama, at a late July town hall meeting in an effort to defend Medicare as a popular and successful example of government health care at its best.

A simple look at the numbers is enough to rebuff Obama's claim that the program is an example of the federal government being a good steward of American health care dollars and coverage, while also serving to demonstrate the government's inability to accurately predict the future costs of its programs (a very important fact to keep in mind in light of Congress' claims that a health care overhaul can be undertaken without costing future generations trillions).

At its inception in 1966, Medicare carried an annual price tag of $3 billion. Its Congressional founders predicted that cost would rise to $12 billion a year by 1990 -- a figure that accounted for inflation.

The true cost of Medicare is stunning. In 1990, rather than costing American taxpayers $12 billion, Medicare cost $107 billion -- an increase of 800% over the government's best guess at the program's cost 23 years before. That cost has increased exponentially as the years have passed since 1990. This year, $484 billion will be spent on mandatory Medicare outlays; by 2018, that number will be $885.1 billion, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. The total amount owed Medicare beneficiaries (American workers who are at least 22 years old and who have paid into the system, meaning they are due Medicare coverage upon retirement) is a staggering $32.3 trillion -- an amount over twice America's GDP, and nearly five times the publicized national debt.

The fact that the federal government has allowed a key health coverage program with which it has been entrusted to fall over thirty trillion dollars in debt should send a powerful message about Washington's ability (or, more correctly, inability) to be a good steward of Americans' health care dollars and coverage.

Further, the fact that Congress has refused to do away with a law requiring seniors to enroll in Medicare or forfeit their Social Security benefits -- a regulation that is currently being challenged in federal court by a group of plaintiffs led by former Republican Congressman Dick Armey -- for fear of losing massive numbers of seniors to private health coverage serves to reinforce both the undesirability of the government-run program. It also demonstrates the federal government's willingness, when given the opportunity, to force citizens onto the rolls of government care by denying them the opportunity to choose their coverage.

Medicare, the chief example of health care as run by the federal government, is an utter mess that is losing doctors, resorting to anti-choice laws to keep seniors enrolled, and hemorrhaging taxpayer dollars by the trillions. President Obama and his allies in the Democratic-led Congress should demonstrate their ability to be good stewards of the people's health care dollars and coverage by fixing their own Medicare mess before they seek to expand their grip on America's health care system as a whole.