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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Alighieri who wrote (15398)	3/25/2010 12:06:20 PM
From: i-node	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

When bush took office he started life as POTUS with a ~200B surplus and the CBO's estimated that we were looking at a 10 year surplus of approx $5T...when he left office the national debt had been doubled from approx $5T to more than $10T Liberal reality. Clinton's projected "surpluses" were money in the bank. ...so he effectively spent $10T through tax cuts, deficits, 2 wars But it had nothing to do with the collapse of an economic bubble which GWB inherited, or the 9/11 attack on the heart of our financial district, or the worst natural disaster suffered by our country in years. and a drug bill that will cost nearly as much as the current health care bill...not one cent of that was funded...not ONE. This, of course, indicates just how stupid you are, Al. Medicare Part D has come in massively under budget every year thus far and likely WOULD HAVE come in at 300B over its first 10 years had the Ds not screwed it up by eliminating any element of personal responsibility in the program. Part D will now become one more liberal train wreck of a government program. And you're not going to be able to blame it on Bush. IT IS THE DEMOCRATS PROBLEM NOW.

To: Alighieri who wrote (15398)	3/25/2010 12:36:32 PM
From: Sdgla	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42652

Now what did you get for that? When he left office the country was in the midst of the deepest recession since the great depression, the financial system was in a state of collapse, and we were losing jobs at a rate of 750K/month. Few points of discussion : The surplus you point to were projected not actual. Katrina 911 Afghanistan Iraq To further the discussion I will grant you whatever grade you want to assign GW's handling of them. We can also do the same re the Dems who took control of both the House and Senate in 2007. GW's spending is one of the area's of his admin where I agree with you... the current admin has surpassed all of GW's spending exponentially. I am still waiting for your rebuttal of my estimate of the effect on payroll taxes for the head of the lucky $250K year family. Are you referring to your statement that you wont be shedding any tears for those in that income bracket ? If so then my response is they earned that $$ and the desire to generate that kind of income benefits everyone via job creation. Taxing individuals and small business's produce negative growth. That is why it would be good to know where you consider the ceiling should be for what the gov believes it is OK for you to keep. Try instead your hand at coming up with solutions to the problem of caring for our elders and the care of all americans, not just the ones who can afford it. Now if you can do that effectively, I will give you some credit. Until then, you are just bitching about the misfortune of the financially fortunate. Here is where we part ways. The financially fortunate are not fodder for socialists to pillage. Why is it you believe the government knows how to spend the fortunates $$ more wisely or efficiently than those that were smart enough to earn it in the first place ? Why is it you believe families and individuals do not care for their own already ? The government is not the answer they are the problem. The Buffet and Gates of the world donate a large portion of their disposable millions to the less fortunate. The rest of the population struggles to get by and I for one am sick of watching an inefficient bunch of buffoons piss my tax $$'s down the proverbial pisser all under the guise of government. The care of all Americans is not the governments job. We each are responsible for taking care of our own families. You want the government to perform that task for you ?

To: Alighieri who wrote (15398)	3/25/2010 6:39:54 PM
From: Peter Dierks	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

Obamacare Not For President or Congressional Leaders by Connie Hair 03/25/2010 The “Vote-a-Rama” got into full swing last night as the Senate worked through amendments to the healthcare reconciliation bill. The floor action lasted until the wee hours, adjourning at 3:00 am after Republicans successfully raised two points of order under the Byrd rule concerning Pell grants, having these items stripped from the healthcare legislation. The health care reconciliation bill will go back to the House for yet another vote after the Senate amendment process is completed. Senate Democrats rejected an amendment last night offered by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) that would have required the President, Vice President, cabinet members, top White House staff, and the congressional leadership and committee staff who drafted the proposal to purchase their health insurance through the government exchanges like everyone else. “As a result, President Obama will not have to live under the Obama healthcare reforms, and neither will the congressional staff who helped to write the overhaul,” Grassley said. “The message to the people at the grassroots is that it’s good enough for you, but not for us.” Senate Democrats also voted 57-42 in favor of providing Viagra to sex offenders and 54-43 to give a ringing endorsement of the backroom, sweetheart deals for individual states such as Louisiana that remain in the bill. (I single out Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana’s $300 million sweetheart deal simply because of the prime comic relief afforded by her attempts to defend her actions from the Senate floor.) The Senate reconvenes at 9:45 am to continue the amendment voting today with a final Senate vote on the reconciliation bill expected this afternoon. The Backlash: Reform Turns Personal That blaring headline in Politico yesterday declared that the government takeover of healthcare only got personal when alleged threats had been made against the Democrat legislators voting in favor of health care reform. How could anything as intimate as someone’s private health decisions be anything but personal? As an example of these alleged death threats, Rep. Bart Stupak’s office released a voicemail of a woman saying, “Think about this, millions of people out there wish you ill.” That’s what they’re calling death threats these days? Average, everyday Americans are affected by this government takeover of healthcare. And they’re upset. These are life and death matters that politicians want to centralize in Washington, giving nameless, faceless government bureaucrats the power to deny medical services. Medicare already denies procedures to our seniors at twice the rate of any private insurance company, the glaring difference being Medicare doesn’t simply deny payment. When Medicare refuses coverage the procedure, not the payment, is denied. Removing over half a trillion dollars from Medicare is not going to improve that circumstance. Further, it’s not difficult to read that writing on the wall for the rest of our health care system. And when one-size-fits-all medical decisions kill people, there is no taking it back. That just may have a few people upset. Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) pulled off his mask on Monday when he told Detroit WJR News/Talk 760 radio talk show host Paul W. Smith that Democrat “reforms” wouldn’t be in place until 2014 because it takes time for the government to get control over people. “The harsh fact of the matter is when you're going to pass legislation that will cover 300 [million] American people in different ways it takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people,” Dingell said. Control the people. That’s a stunning admission. It’s what opponents of this government takeover have warned all along: This was never about health and it most certainly isn’t about care. It’s about cradle-to-grave government control over “the people.” We, the people, do not take kindly to throwing grandma under the bus. That’s not a slogan -- that’s a real-life consequence when the President says grandma can’t have pacemaker surgery, she needs to just take the pain pill. It’s an issue of personal religious conscience when the government takes your hard-earned money and uses it to pay for killing innocent babies in the womb. From time immemorial matters of such import have sparred great wars as a means to settle. Politics is a continuation of war by other means. Our founding fathers settled the issue of princelings who seek to rule over their fellow man using the full force of government tyranny. It is the duty of our elected representatives to be stewards of our liberty, not to reshape our representative republic by their own designs. Read the Declaration of Independence and you’ll find that tyranny is timeless. The long train of abuses articulated by our founders in that historic document is as relevant today as when they were first written. Consider these few: “He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.” Gee, that sounds eerily like basing the comparative effectiveness research death panels that make the cookie cutter decisions about your health care at the National Institutes of Health in Washington, D.C. “He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.” Let’s see, the Pay Czar, Car Czar, Health Choices Czar, TARP Czar, Diversity Czar, the Safe Schools Czar and a Behavioral Science Czar, to name but a few of the dozens of unaccountable czars appointed by this administration. “He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation.” If that doesn’t bring to mind the United Nations nothing ever will. “For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent.” Healthcare mandates and taxes and fines or jail time. The American people overwhelmingly reject the federal government seizing control of our health care system using “government-approved” insurance mandates, fines and taxation. “In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.” I think that one speaks for itself. A free people will not go quietly into the night. We will not “move on” from the healthcare takeover. The November elections loom large. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Connie Hair is a freelance writer, a former speechwriter for Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) and a former media and coalitions advisor to the Senate Republican Conference. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- humanevents.com

To: Alighieri who wrote (15398)	3/29/2010 9:22:01 AM
From: Peter Dierks	1 Recommendation Respond to of 42652

Healthcare Bill Is a Budgetary Disaster by James C. Capretta 03/27/2010 President Obama and his allies in Congress have argued throughout the healthcare debate that their plan would not only cover more people with insurance but would also cut the federal budget deficit, especially in the second ten-years after enactment. They credit all of the provisions in the plan that “bend the cost-curve” for bringing this about. To bolster their case, they point to the cost estimates produced by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). And, in fact, it is true that CBO’s most recent cost estimate for the bill (together with amendments expected to be cleared by the Senate this week) shows deficit reduction of $143 billion over ten years from its enactment, and CBO says there could be even more deficit reduction in the years 2020 to 2029. CBO’s Flawed Estimates But CBO’s cost estimates are built on the legislative specifications Congress hands to it. A close reading of what CBO has actually reported to Congress shows that the Democratic claim of large-scale deficit reduction from the health bill is built on budgetary gimmicks, sleight of hand and dubious assumptions. When those are exposed and removed from the accounting, the health bill is quite plainly another unfinanced and fast-growing entitlement expansion. All Deficit Reduction Vanishes For starters, CBO’s tally doesn’t include more than $200 billion in additional spending for physician fees under the Medicare program which the President and Democratic leaders have endorsed. This is the so-called “doc fix,” which would reverse a misguided cut that will be implemented unless addressed by Congress. The White House absolutely wants to spend the money on full “doc fix.” It’s in the President’s budget, and was in the original House version of the health bill. But to pretend that their health plan costs “only” $1 trillion, they want to pass the “doc fix” separately. That allows them to use all of the Medicare cuts in the health bill as offsets for the massive entitlement expansion they have pushed, even though everyone knows the physician fee problem needs fixing. The President contends he shouldn’t have to pay for the “doc fix.” But why not? Never before did Congress move to add the cost of a permanent repeal of the current law cuts to the national debt. But that is precisely what the President now wants to do. When the cost of the “doc fix” is properly included in the accounting of the Democratic healthcare agenda, all of the claimed deficit reduction from the President’s health plan vanishes. Then there’s the double-counting. The Democratic health plan starts up yet another entitlement program, providing voluntary long-term care insurance. Enrollees have to pay premiums for a number of years before they qualify for any benefits. Consequently, at startup, there’s a surplus of premium collections –$73 billion over ten years, according to CBO–because no one qualifies for the benefits yet. The President and his team count this savings against the cost of the health reform bill even though the money will be needed very soon to pay out long-term-care insurance claims. When this gimmick is taken out of the accounting, the President’s health proposal goes even deeper into the red. Middle Class Hit For months now, the President has pointed to the “Cadillac” tax on high-cost insurance plans to demonstrate his commitment to “bending the cost-curve.” But his commitment was no match for union pressure. In a last minute switch, the plan postpones this tax until 2018, well past the point when President Obama will have left office. But once in place, the threshold used to determine what constitutes “high-cost” will rise only with the Consumer Price Index, beginning in 2020. That means a very large segment of the middle class would get hit with the tax as the years passed. The President has shown that he is unwilling to actually collect this tax on his own watch. But he wants us to believe that we can count on a huge revenue jump over the long run because his successors will have more stomach for it than he does. In Medicare, the administration likes to highlight so-called “delivery system reforms” the administration has touted. In the main, these are extremely small-scale initiatives and pilot programs. CBO says they will amount to virtually no savings. The big Medicare cuts in the President’s plan come from across-the-board payment-rate reductions. In particular, the President wants to cut the inflation update for hospitals, nursing homes and others by half a percentage point every year, in perpetuity. On paper, this change produces huge long-run savings. But it does nothing to control the underlying cost of treating patients. It just pays everyone less, without regard to patient need or quality of care. The chief actuary of the program has said repeatedly that these cuts are completely unrealistic for these very reasons. If implemented, he expects they would drive one in five facilities into serious financial distress. And yet the White House wants us to believe these savings can be counted on to pay for the President’s massive entitlement promises. And massive they are. CBO says the coverage expansion provisions in the plan would cost about $200 billion by 2019, and that cost would rise 8% every year thereafter. But even these estimates understate the true cost. The health bill would extend generous new insurance subsidies to low- and moderate-wage workers getting insurance through the new “exchanges.” Workers in job-based plans would get no additional help. That means two workers with identical incomes would be treated very differently. Gene Steuerle of the Urban Institute has estimated that, in 2016, a worker with job-based coverage and a $60,000 income would get $4,500 less than someone with the same income but health insurance through the exchange. This kind of inequitable treatment would never last: one way or another, the entitlement would get extended to everyone in the targeted income range, sending the overall costs of the program soaring. The President started off last year by saying he wanted to pass genuine reform to slow the pace of rising costs. But after a year of partisan political and legislative maneuvering, all that’s left is a massive entitlement expansion–one that will almost certainly get even more expensive with time as more people become eligible for it. These new costs would get piled on top of the unreformed and unaffordable entitlements already on the books. The health bill is not the answer to rising federal budget deficits. In fact, it’s a budgetary disaster in the making. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mr. Capretta is the Ethics and Public Policy Center Fellow for The Heritage Foundation. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- humanevents.com