What is actually in the Healthcare Bill?

During the healthcare summit there was a charged moment where President Obama accused Republican Senator Lamar Alexander of misrepresenting how the cost of private healthcare insurance premiums would change if the current Senate bill were adopted. The President chided Senator Alexander, speaking down to him as you would an unruly child, “This is one of those times when it is important to get the facts straight” insisting that premiums for private healthcare insurance would go down under his plan.

As it turns out, the President’s figures are, as usual, a product of careful crafted semantics. According to the CBO analysis, the cost for private healthcare insurance will rise between ten and thirteen percent but the president doesn’t want to discuss that. What he referred to are plans that will be constructed with the new mandates for increased coverage; plans that the insurers will have to provide if they wish to sell their insurance as one of the “approved” plans through the proposed exchange. If private insurance currently offered plans that cover pre-existing conditions and if they offered plans that provided portability and only if these plans were available to anyone regardless of which state they live in; these expanded plans offered through the government exchange would be lower in cost than you could have purchased them without the exchange.

Well, that assessment may be theoretically correct but it’s hardly honest. Those plans do not exist because the mandates that will force insurers to provide the key components have not been passed into law, at least not yet. Senator Alexander was absolutely correct in stating that the plan that you have now will see a price increase of ten to thirteen percent as a direct result of the passage of this bill. How the President claims that premium costs for a plan that doesn’t exist yet will drop is nothing more than D.C. trickery and can only be achieved if you are willing to imagine what those plans would have cost if they did exist in the absence of a national exchange, premium caps and government subsidies.

If just the first five minutes of the summit exposed such a blatant lie, then what else is there? Let’s start with their favorite phrase…budget neutral. The President said he would not sign a bill that added one dime to the deficit. Really? This week, everyone is aware of Senator Bunning’s resistance to the passage of a bill that will provide an emergency extension of unemployment benefits and will extend Medicare payments that were facing an automatic 21% cut. The emergency bill has a price tag of ten billion dollars and Bunning wants to know how it is being paid for before he votes for it. The Senate just passed “Pay-go”, a Senate law that requires them to offset new spending with either tax increases or corresponding cuts in other areas of the budget. It is Bunning’s opinion that if the can’t find ten billion for this, then what is the possibility that they will obey the Pay-go mandate on larger bills that require even harder choices; like healthcare.

As it turns out, the Healthcare bill would have added to the deficit even with the planned $500 billion in Medicare cuts and $500 billion in new taxes so they resorted to nothing less than voodoo economics to show the neutrality the President said he would require. The taxes and spending cuts begin in year one while the expenditures are pushed off until 2014. The CBO analysis shows ten years worth of income but only six years of expenses but since Congress didn’t request an analysis of the ten years from 2014 to 2024, the report doesn’t show the real deficits in the legislation. The 2014-2024 analysis was performed through a series of independent audits and estimates the real deficit to be anywhere from $2.7 trillion dollars to a whopping $5 trillion dollars. Why don’t I believe the CBO? Well, they can only score what is given to them and this bill was written by the masters of deception to intentionally take advantage of the scoring system. Congress used the same tactics to pass Johnson’s “Great Society” and the result was the CBO said Medicare and Medicaid would only cost $9 billion dollars a year by now and it is currently a mind numbing $408 billion dollars or 13.34% of the Federal budget. With all this in mind, do you trust the CBO?

Worse yet is the $500 billion in Medicare cuts are being counted twice; once to reduce the cost of the Medicare program and then again to expand Medicare coverage to the poor. Well, everyone knows you can’t spend the same dollar twice; everyone that is, except Congress. That logic reminds me of the old cartoons where the character had a string tied to his nickel so he could pluck it back out of the pay phone after making his call. Yeah, it was an old cartoon. The point is that was theft and so is this. In fact, if anyone else tried this budget maneuver, especially public companies, it would be a criminal act but somehow, Congress has exempted itself from any real examination so I guess it’s only a criminal act if someone is watching. That this is the lesson we have learned from the actions of Congress is shameful.

Republicans have been asking for the retirement of a Federal regulation that prohibits health insurers from competing across State lines. The President says this is already in the Senate bill; but is it? What the Republicans are talking about is an actual free market reform where the insurance companies themselves would advertise their product and compete with each other. What the President is talking about is the exchange. The exchange would feature plans from a whole host of providers that meet the government seal of approval. These plans would be available only through the exchange so there would be no competition between plans across State lines unless the Federal government has its fingers in the middle of it. What is the difference? Free competition across State lines doesn’t cost the American taxpayer anything. The exchange is a part of this multi-trillion dollar healthcare bill.

If you have a plan that you like you can keep it also seems to have been subtly changed. If you’ve noticed, they haven’t really been saying that lately and have changed it by saying instead “you can keep your doctor”. Ok, you can keep your doctor as opposed to what? Seeing a plumber or a used car salesman for medical care? They gave up on saying that you can keep a health insurance plan you like because that is simply not true with this legislation. Certain plans that meet government approval will be “grandfathered” in, only to be phased out at a later date. Of course the grandfathering will depend on whether or not those plans will even exist once the mandates for expanded care and pre-existing conditions have been imposed. Those that already meet government approval are the higher priced “Cadillac” plans that will have an additional tax placed on them. When that tax will be imposed depends largely on which plan makes it through the reconciliation process. The President’s alternative delays that tax until 2018 while the Senate bill imposes the tax immediately.

This is just the tip of the iceberg with other, more nefarious, details carefully hidden from view until the controlling board is formed and the mandates start flowing from that body of twenty-six Presidential appointees, shaping the care you will receive. When the President says there are no death panels or rationing in this bill, he is right; to a point. The reason that the opposition cannot find them and the President can stand firm on his claims that they don’t exist is that the bulk of what this “reform” legislation is capable of doing is entirely in the hands of the new bureaucracy it will create. The health benefits board will determine what benefits will be covered and who will receive them. We saw a preview of that when the government panel that advises the nation on healthcare issues released a document downgrading the importance of breast cancer screenings; raising the age when first screenings should take place and limiting them to once every two years instead of the currently recommended annual examination.

Of course, doctors and women’s rights advocates across the county shouted out against this and the government dismissed the outcry, saying it was merely a suggestion but what happens when the government controlled health benefits board begin to make policy that affects medical insurance coverage based on those recommendations? We already have a fiscal crisis looming that will affect every man, woman and child in America as our deficit and debt spiral out of control. If I am right in my assessment and all we will have after ten years of government control of health insurance is government health insurance or “Universal” care, will that care be rationed because of the financial crisis? Of course it will. All you need to do is look at the nations that have already adopted a single payer healthcare system and every one of them has rationed care, waiting lists or both.

Paul

Congress and Christmas

It isn’t as though we needed a reminder of the iconoclastic nature of Congressional Democrats but just to make sure we haven’t forgotten what they represent, they have scheduled the final Senate vote on healthcare reform for Christmas Eve.

Isn’t ironic that they chose the day that many of us will spend preparing to celebrate the birth of Jesus to move this legislation forward? For Christians, Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s promise, the messiah that was to free the world from suffering and the lamb that would eventually be offered for the forgiveness of all sins. The founding fathers recognized that man’s rights descended from God and that all mankind was born free through the grace of God.

The unalienable rights so carefully described by these extraordinary men were not accorded by the act of a beneficent King or through the acts of an enlightened government; they are divine, eternal and inexorable. Jesus represents God’s promise that man should not be slave to man and that our rights, both enumerated and implied in the Constitution, are an affirmation of that liberty. Curiously, the healthcare bill places many of those rights in jeopardy as the roughly seventy new agencies and administrative boards formed under this legislation will for the first time, allow government to determine how we live our lives.

We will find ourselves under government mandate to live healthier lives based on a government agency’s definition of healthy. The bill already contains a special tax on beverages containing sugar and on tanning salons since the current heath advisory panels have already determined these are unhealthy. As the left gain more control the extremists will have more to say about your life than you will.

Animal rights activists have tried to advance their agenda by promoting the health benefits of a vegetarian lifestyle for decades. Studies conducted with the same unscrupulous manipulation of data corrupting the Climate Change argument have already suggested that consuming meat presents a hazard to one’s health. Cass Sunstein, Obama’s regulatory Czar, has already weighed in on the subject in previous writings and would be more than happy to “nudge” people into a meat-free lifestyle using the regulatory authority of the government and the weight of punitive “sin” taxes to achieve that goal.

Gun control, animal rights, leisure activities, hunting and a whole host of other things that we take for granted now, can all be reigned in given the broad brush healthcare officials will be given to paint with. This bill is not centered on healthcare but on preventative care which would give the administration an incredible amount of new power where basic lifestyle choices are concerned.

Worse of all, the sanctity of life itself will be jeopardized by this bill. The new agencies and health panels will mete out care based on your current health, age and their actuarial assessment of how many years of “quality” life you have remaining. As Dad approaches 80, the usual course of medical intervention for prostate cancer may be limited to a regimen of less effective treatment only because it is less costly. For the first time in American history, choices will be made by authoritative government boards that will determine how resources will be allocated based on the need to contain the overall cost of healthcare and not on the need of the patient or the desired outcome of treatment. Grandma may get a prescription for pain medication and a wheelchair instead of the hip replacement she would receive now.

This legislation enacts new taxes and the cuts in Medicare reimbursements immediately even though the benefits of the bill are not fully realized for four years; a little accounting trick to show “budget neutrality” over a ten year period simply to gain passage of the bill. The truth is that the cuts are not going to reduce the cost of the program but to fund a host of entirely new entitlement programs, including subsidies for the low income purchase of insurance through the exchange. Without the promised cuts going to reduce the cost of the overall program, the program must go into financial difficulty in year five through fifteen, forcing cuts in services and draconian rationing of healthcare to anyone that does not fall under the government definition of a “contributing” member of society.

No? Well that was one of the prescribed ideas of Dr. Ezekiel Emmanuel, architect of the Healthcare Bill and brother of White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emmanuel. Dr. Emmanuel believes in redefining the doctors Hippocratic Oath to allow assisted suicide and euthanasia. He also believes in the rationing of care based on an assessment of the patient’s ability to contribute to society and that only government can possess the impartiality required to make those assessments.

In order to pass this legislation, the government has had to manipulate the definition of commerce just to claim the authority for government to intervene in healthcare. They are using the Commerce Clause in the Constitution to find that authority, similar to what FDR did in the 1930’s. Even though you are seeking local medical care from a local doctor and purchasing your medicine from a local pharmacy, the government makes the leap that even this activity has a broad effect on the interstate relationship of the entire healthcare industry. That is a sham and they know it.

The fact is, and the general admission from Congressman James Clyburn is that most of what Congress does is not authorized in the Constitution. It is only the complacency of the American public that has allowed this to continue for as long as it has. Progressives have created an entire segment of the population that not only pays no taxes at all, but actually receives payments from the government for being good little dependents. With only 53% of the population actually paying taxes, we are fast approaching the tipping point where an election based on issues instead of preserving a government entitlement will no longer be possible.

The American people have been lied to since the debate on healthcare began. The truth now, is as it always was, is that the government’s lust for healthcare reform is that they must reduce the costs of their own failed and corrupt programs of Medicare and Medicaid. These programs were in trouble a mere three years after their inception and the short term cure in 1968 was to raid the Social Security trust fund and use that money to prop up Medicare/Medicaid, leaving Social Security as a hollow promise that they would deal with later. Well, later is now and thanks to the Federal government, all three programs are bankrupt and threatening the solvency of the United States. Without an enormous infusion of money, the government will have to admit their gross mismanagement and close the books on the Federal entitlement system or close the doors of the Federal government. The easiest way to achieve that was to channel the American healthcare system through the Federal entitlement machine. Dumping one sixth of our economy into the wide end of that funnel and regulating what drips out of the small end through cuts in benefits and services will allow them to keep the illusion of success alive, but for how long?

In the end, best estimates are saying that the current healthcare bill will only extend the life of Medicare and Medicare through 2019. Beyond that, it will have to collapse because there is little left they can take from us to keep it going. Not to worry, the loss of freedoms guaranteed by this bill will allow our benevolent government to make even more of those hard decisions on our behalf and euthanasia may even become a mandate based on who and what you are. If we let our rights dissolve now, how can we stop it then?

Don’t forget the government already has a free hand to do what the rest of us are still prohibited from doing. Government is still the only place in America where it is allowable to use race in the execution of policy. Government is still the only place where prejudice is allowable e.g.: rich vs. poor in the tax system, right vs. left in public broadcasting and let’s not forget government vs. religion in nearly every expression of faith. The government’s National Endowment for the Arts is prohibited from using public funds for religious art so it will not support the creation of a devotional scene involving a crucifix but it will find art where a crucifix is submerged in a beaker of urine.

As we near Christmas all Americans must ask themselves what they believe. What are our rights? Where do those rights come from? Most importantly, will we heed the call of duty Thomas Jefferson charged us with and fulfill our obligation to defend those rights for our progeny?

Paul

Don't Read the Bill....Trust Us!

Now that the healthcare bill has cleared the house (barely), I have been receiving a number of messages from the Democratic National Committee trying to drum up support for the bill in the Senate. On Tuesday, Tim Kaine sent a request for letters to be written to local newspapers and today I received a call to action from Jen O’Malley encouraging phone calls to Republican Senators to demand that they vote in favor of the legislation.

That’s strange? I thought it was the Republican Party and corporate America that were secretly manufacturing opposition to Healthcare. Nancy Pelosi actually referred to Tea Party opposition to the bill as inconsequential because it was not a legitimate grass roots movement but merely “Astroturf”, which was bought and paid for by Republicans and special interest. I’ve never heard from the Republicans on this but the Democrats have been shamefully trying to stack the deck in favor of this bill from the start.

I have received a lot of information on the healthcare debate from a myriad of sources and it’s true that most of it was very negative. What I find curious is that the opposition to this bill printed their objections and then did something odd. They actually provided a location where one could download the bill in PDF format and then provided the page and section numbers associated with their claims so that anyone could look up the information for themselves. That is hardly a strategy you would expect from them if what they were saying were not true.

The Democratic National Committee, the House and Senate leadership and even the President have only refuted these claims by saying they are lies. In all of the ads, comments and appearances by those in favor of this measure have you seen even one of them offer proof of their claims in black and white? Have they provided links to the bill and page numbers that prove the opposition is lying to us? No they haven’t and the reason is, because they can’t. The only thing they have done is to try to silence the opposition when what we are really asking them to do is answer the damned questions.

Democrats continue to play a game of semantics. They claim the bill will not cover illegal immigrants because you can not find one reference to coverage for illegal’s in the bill. What they do not tell you is that since the bill says “all Americans”, by law that includes anyone that is here. Without definitive language excluding illegal immigrants, it would be unlawful for them to deny coverage to anyone under this legislation. Democrats have refused to put that language in the bill since this debate began.

They claim that if you like your existing insurance plan you can keep it. Again, there is nothing written into the bill that eliminates private insurance. Of course, what they do not tell you is that every major analysis of this bill (excluding the ones funded by the DNC and Congress) say that private insurance cannot compete against a federally subsidized “public option”. In fact, the bill as written provides every incentive for businesses to eliminate their employee’s private insurance benefits as a matter of fiscal policy.

The tax imposed on businesses with more than 100 employees under this bill, is far less than the cost of providing care. That offers a quick boost to the bottom line for employers that dump private insurance and what business owner wouldn’t take that? Under this bill, businesses with less than 100 employees face no penalties for not providing care so those that do not, have no compelling reason to do so now. Those small businesses that do offer benefits will most likely drop that coverage now that their employees have a public option to turn to. Why would they continue to provide care benefits when they can eliminate the expensive premiums of small group health insurance plans and perhaps offer to pay a portion of the public option premium at a fraction of what it cost them to provide coverage in the past?

A better question is how many medium sized companies with 110 or 120 employees will downsize to eliminate the mandate and tax penalty to provide insurance, especially if they do not provide insurance now? Medium sized companies whose specialty is in labor intensive manufacturing ordinarily do not provide healthcare insurance. Not because they are evil but because they cannot afford to. Independent analysis reports this bill will cost the American economy more than 5 million jobs as medium sized companies struggle with the new taxes placed on them.

They say there are no death panels in the bill and that is also true. There is nothing written in the bill that explicitly says that bureaucrats will ration care or determine benefits based on age or health condition. Many of the opponents have also gotten this one wrong by citing the provisions for end of life counseling for people age 65 and over. The end of life counseling is merely meant to offer advice on things like how to construct a living will and how to appoint family members or others to act on your behalf if you are incapacitated.

The real death panel is hidden in the Health Benefits board created by the bill. The board is comprised of a total of twenty-seven appointees that will determine the benefit levels offered under the plan. It’s amazing that actual health benefits or the criteria for delivering that care is not already spelled out but instead, is being left up to a board that will determine that later so in essence, we are being asked to trust them again.

Don’t forget that it wasn’t all that long ago in Oregon, where they have both a state run public option healthcare plan and have allowed doctor assisted suicide, that death panels became a reality. A cancer patient in Oregon received a letter from the state run health plan stating that they would not cover the cancer drugs prescribed by her doctor but would instead cover “comfort care” and “doctor aid-in-dying”. If you want to know the purpose of a heath benefits board and the compassion of a government run health system you would be wise to look to Oregon for the example. Oregon has both and they are doing now what a national system will do later if this bill ever becomes law. By the way, despite distribution of that infamous letter to the media, Oregon heath plan officials still deny the existence of “death panels” in their health system.

Just as Oregon denies what is painfully obvious to anyone that investigates what they will and will not cover, Democrats continue to deny the most disturbing provisions in their own plan for healthcare overhaul. There are few progressive Democrats that have not been caught on film at one time or another calling the public option an important first step on the road to a single payer, government run system. Even the President admitted in an interview filmed as recently as 2007 that they will not be able to eliminate private healthcare insurance immediately and there would necessarily be a “transition” period to achieve universal care. Even though so many Democrats have said that universal care is their ultimate goal, they still publically deny that this bill is a Trojan horse to bring us to that reality.

I’m sorry. I just don’t trust them. Not because I am a cynic at heart (I am) but rather, I do not trust them for very tangible reasons. They have never offered black and white guarantees in the legislation that would prevent these things from becoming reality. Instead they say, “Trust us”. They have never offered the page numbers and excerpts from the actual bill that would refute their critic’s charges. Instead they say, “Trust us”. In fact, they didn’t even want to put the bill on line for us to see. Dripping with condescendence, they insisted that the legal language in the bill would be too complicated insinuating that the average American peasant is far too ignorant to make sense of it and that we would be far better off just trusting the people we sent to Congress to do what is best for us.

Well, all the trust we placed in Congress in the past has brought us to a twelve-trillion dollar national debt, one-hundred trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities for our current social programs, more than ten percent unemployment and the loss of not just jobs, but entire industries because of bad treaties and confiscatory taxation. This is not only a bad bill; it is in fact damaging to the economic future of this nation and will jeopardize the quality of the healthcare we currently receive.

Paul