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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hope Praytochange who wrote (49916)	3/14/2012 9:40:58 AM
From: Peter Dierks	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

Projections tend to be rosy. You can probably take it to the bank that these projections massively underestimate the costs. ObamaCare could well cost more like $20 Trillion over the next ten years. If you consider the costs of driving great doctors out of the industry and replacing them with barely qualified replacements and the health cost to the nation it could be twice that estimate.

To: Hope Praytochange who wrote (49916)	3/14/2012 9:42:08 PM
From: greatplains_guy	1 Recommendation Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 71588

ObamaCare: If Possible, The News Is Getting Worse 3/14/2012 @ 12:27PM By Grace-Marie Turner ObamaCare is taking on water as we head into the second anniversary since it passed, and the news about the president’s signature legislation gets worse by the day. To mark the law’s two-year anniversary, the House of Representatives is planning a vote to repeal one of the law’s most unpopular provisions — the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), which many seniors fear will become Medicare’s rationing board. A few days later, the Supreme Court will hear a remarkable six hours of oral argument in the case with 26 states challenging the law’s constitutionality. Demonstrators will fill the streets outside the Supreme Court during the three days of hearings March 26-28. For much of the last year, the White House had adopted a “strategy of silence” on ObamaCare. That’s clearly over. After the 2010 election drubbing, the president rarely talked about his signature legislative achievement and even when he did, he only spoke about the small early provisions — 26-year-old children on their parents’ insurance, “free” preventive care, and more help for seniors with their drug costs. For a while, the strategy was working. ObamaCare has died down as a major issue. The House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to repeal the law a year ago, and, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll, about half of those polled afterward thought the law has been repealed or weren’t sure. The confusion — and the lack of their basic knowledge of civics — suited the White House just fine. But ObamaCare is back to center stage this month, and the more people learn about the law, the more unpopular it becomes. Here are just some of the recent revelations: · Soaring costs. ObamaCare will cost $1.76 trillion over a decade, according to a new projection released Tuesday by the Congressional Budget Office, rather than the $940 billion forecast when it was signed into law. The new 10-year projections cover nine years of ObamaCare’s implementation (2013-2022). Original estimates counted only six years of implementation — a budget gimmick to obscure the true cost of the law. At this rate, the conservative estimates of ObamaCare’s cost will be $2 trillion over 10 years, not the $1 trillion that President Obama promised. · Lost coverage. Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY) released a statement saying that the CBO’s estimate also shows that the new health law will dramatically increase Medicaid spending and result in 4 million fewer people getting health insurance through their jobs. So much for being able to keep the coverage you have now “no matter what,” as the president promised. · Opposition locked in. An AP-GfK poll taken early this month shows that only about a third of Americans (35 percent) support the health care law, while nearly half (47 percent) oppose it. That’s about the same split as when it passed. Opposition remains strongest among seniors, many of whom object to Medicare cuts that were used to help finance coverage for younger uninsured people. · Anti-conscience mandate. And then there is the mega-controversy the administration created over the anti-conscience contraceptive mandate. The president had tried to make the issue about “women’s health.” But the American people understand that it is a violation of the constitutionally-guaranteed protection of religious freedom to force Catholic hospitals, universities, and charities to cover drugs that cause abortion, sterilization, and contraceptives in violation of their strong moral beliefs. A new poll from The New York Times and CBS News reveals that a substantial majority of Americans — 57 percent to 36 percent — favor an exemption for religious-affiliated employers. And a sizable majority — 51 percent to 40 percent — still favors a religious and moral exemption for all employers. This is the same poll that shows the president’s approval rating dropping to 41 percent. · Loss of 25 Dem seats. President Obama personally promised Democratic members of Congress that if they voted for the bill, their constituents soon would thank them, arguing that a vote against the bill would be most damaging. Yet a new study by American Politics Research found that at least 25 members of Congress lost their seats in Congress during the 2010 elections precisely because they voted for ObamaCare. · Bi-partisan opposition to ObamaCare is brewing. When the House of Representatives votes next week on repealing ObamaCare’s unaccountable, unelected IPAB board, at least some Democrats are likely to support repeal. The IPAB repeal bill, sponsored by Rep. Phil Roe (R-TN), received bi-partisan support as it made its way through House committees, showing that Democrats are equally worried about the power of the board to usurp the job of the people’s elected representatives. · Employers will drop coverage. A new study of employers conducted by Willis Human Capital Practice found that employers expect higher health costs for both employers and employees as a result of ObamaCare, and many expect to shift employees into taxpayer-paid coverage once the option is available. That shift would certainly exacerbate the exploding costs of the law. Last year, health costs rose 9 percent for employers, triple the rate of the year before ObamaCare’s provisions began to be implemented. Employers expect costs to only go higher. · Investors recoil. Uncertainty about the future of the health sector is also drying up investor capital — and threatening tomorrow’s medical innovations. The share of venture dollars flowing to seed and early-stage investments in biotechnology and medical devices has plummeted since 2007, when investors pumped $3.6 billion into 332 deals in which a price was disclosed, according to data compiled for Kaiser Health News by FactSet Research Systems. Overall venture investing declined by nearly one-third as the economic recession set in. The list goes on: If public opposition is hardening now against ObamaCare, just wait until the mandate kicks in on January 1, 2014, when everyone will be required to purchase expensive government-dictated health insurance under penalty of federal law. And as seniors find it harder and harder to find a doctor who can afford to see them. And as they begin to fear the impact of the cuts of ObamaCare’s rationing board. And as states find it is impossible to provide basic services because the mandate to vastly expand Medicaid is gobbling up virtually all of their budgets. And as the unemployment rate refuses to drop because employers are frightened about the huge costs they are facing with the employer mandate. And as taxpayers see the gusher of red ink that will explode the federal budget deficit as ObamaCare’s subsidy costs explode. If the Supreme Court does not throw out the whole law, the voters will have to finish the job with their votes in November. forbes.com

To: Hope Praytochange who wrote (49916)	3/19/2012 8:58:10 AM
From: Peter Dierks	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

KING & DEMINT: End Obamacare, don’t mend it Americans must ensure Republicans don’t settle for partial repeal By Rep. Steve King and Sen. Jim DeMint - The Washington Times Friday, March 16, 2012 Every election, voters are told that this election is the most important of our lifetimes. In most elections, it’s not really true. In 2012, though, it probably is true, for one reason: Obamacare. Two years after a Democratic Congress and President Obama foisted onto the American people an unpopular trillion-dollar takeover of American health care, we know that Obamacare is, in fact, even more unpopular than before and that it will cost almost $2 trillion. The American people were told Obamacare would reduce health care costs, but premiums already are jumping. The American people were told they could keep their own coverage, but a new Congressional Budget Office report says millions will lose their current coverage every year. Indeed, the final hurdle for Obamacare’s passage was Mr. Obama’s and then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s scramble to convince religiously minded Democrats that religious liberty and individual conscience rights would be protected under their new law. The recent abortion-pill mandate shows those 11th-hour promises were false. So, as should be the case about something as important as a government takeover of one-sixth of the economy, the final decision about Obamacare must be made by the American people at the ballot box. Already, voters voiced their disapproval in the historic 2010 elections, which sent many Obamacare supporters to the unemployment line. This year, the November elections will either return to Washington a pro-Obamacare president and Congress or a pro-repeal president and Congress. They will have a mandate to enact the public’s will, one way or the other. Conservatives should affirm these certitudes: First, legislating according to the consent of the governed is what our republic is all about. Second, Obamacare - contrary to Democrats’ expectations - has only grown more unpopular since it was passed, as its ugly details have emerged and offended. Third, Obamacare is not an indirect, gimmicky campaign issue but a direct, concrete, firable offense the president and Democrats in Congress committed against our will and in plain view. Were the entire 2012 general election debate reduced to “candidates from this party will implement Obamacare and candidates from that party will repeal Obamacare,” that debate would do our nation credit and do great service to the electorate. Unfortunately, the clarity of that choice may soon be muddied, not by Democrats desperate to hide from their record, but inexplicably, by Republicans pushing a vote on a bill to undo one part of Obamacare: the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB). IPAB is one of the most obnoxious parts of Obamacare: The unelected, unaccountable board of “experts” who effectively will be able to decide which patients can receive which treatments at what costs and from which doctors. The essence of Obamacare is government rationing of people’s access to medicine: IPAB bureaucrats are the rationers. So we are as adamantly opposed to IPAB as we are to the rest of Obamacare - from the individual mandate to the abortion-pill requirement to the multitrillion-dollar price tag. But IPAB is not distinct from Obamacare; it’s an inextricable part of the whole. As such, it should be repealed as part of the whole. The same holds true for attempts to surgically extract out the attack on religious freedom, the individual mandate and the financially unsustainable CLASS Act long-term care entitlement. Repealing little pieces of Obamacare here and there to render the cataclysmic merely disastrous undermines not only the essential causes of liberty and repeal, but the clarity of the choice the American people deserve. The Democratic Party is the party of Obamacare. If Republicans, through their toying with Obamacare, present themselves to voters as the party of some of Obamacare, we will lose. We will deserve to lose. The blame for the coming decades of debt, dependence and decline will fall to us. A vote to repeal only IPAB sends the message that we believe Obamacare is the patient and IPAB is the cancer that needs to be removed to save Obamacare. Our true patient is health care freedom, and Obamacare - not part of it, but all 2,000 pages - is the malignancy. Given a choice between Obamacare as it is or full repeal, a majority of Americans and - if not now, very soon - a majority of Congress will choose full repeal. Therefore, that must be the only choice Republicans offer. Until Obamacare is fully repealed, the only health care votes Republicans should cast should be for full repeal of the unconstitutional takeover. The idea that we can “fix” Obamacare is as fatal as the president’s conceit in contending that Obamacare would “fix” the health care system. We know what real reform looks like - people owning their own health plans; treatment decisions made privately between patients and their doctors; freedom to purchase health plans across state lines; and help for the poor, the elderly and the sick. It looks nothing like the monstrosity the president forced on us, and it looks nothing like the slightly less monstrous version partial repeals would leave us with. The American people’s message to the Republican Party in 2010 should be the same message we send back to the people in 2012. When it comes to Obamacare, end it, don’t mend it. Rep. Steve King is from Iowa. Sen. Jim DeMint is from South Carolina. Both have authored legislation to fully repeal Obamacare. washingtontimes.com