March 23 (Bloomberg) -- Indoor tanning salons will charge customers a 10
percent tax beginning in July in one of the changes Americans will see as
a result of the U.S. health-care overhaul signed into law by President Barack
Obama.
Insurers will be required by September to begin providing health coverage
to kids with pre-existing illnesses and allow parents to keep children younger
than 26 on their plans as the clock has begun ticking on many of the law’s
provisions. Medicare recipients will receive a $250 rebate for prescription
drugs when they reach a coverage gap called the donut hole if the Senate passes and the president signs companion legislation approved March 21 by the U.S. House.
The $940 billion overhaul subsidizes coverage for uninsured Americans, financed by Medicare cuts to hospitals and fees or taxes on insurers, drugmakers, medical-device companies and Americans earning more than $200,000 a year. Many of the changes in the bill of more than 2,400 pages, such as requiring most people to have health insurance and employers to provide coverage, will take at least two years to go into effect.
“Most of the major public policy changes embodied in the health care reform legislation will become effective only after the next presidential election in 2012,” said Maury Harris, an economist with UBS AG, said in a research report.
High-Risk Pools
Within 90 days, the law will provide immediate access to high-risk insurance plans for people who can’t get insurance because of a pre-existing medical problem, Harris said. These high-risk pools will be funded by $5 billion in federal grants.
Companies led by Minnetonka, Minnesota-based UnitedHealth Group Inc., the largest health insurer, will be banned within six months from dropping a person’s coverage because of severe illness and from limiting lifetime or annual benefits.
Participants in Medicare, the U.S. government’s health coverage for those 65 and older, are expected get a $250 rebate toward prescription drugs once their benefits run out -- a coverage gap know as the “doughnut hole.” The benefit is part of the package of amendments to the legislation now pending in the Senate. Drugmakers led by New York-based Pfizer Inc. will have to offer discounted drugs to Medicare recipients next year, according to an analysis of the legislation by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit group based in Menlo Park, California
In 2013, individuals whose annual income is more than $200,000 and couples making more than $250,000 will see an increase in Medicare payroll taxes. Those taxes will also be expanded to cover dividend, interest and other unearned income.
Employer Coverage
In 2014, employers with more than 50 employees will be required to provide health coverage and most people will be required to have health insurance, Harris said in his report.
A tax on high-cost “Cadillac” policies won’t go into effect until 2018. The insurance industry also faces about $60 billion in additional fees under the health bill through 2018, and more beyond, though it was able to postpone the levy until 2014.
By 2019, the bill is expected to have expanded health insurance coverage to 32 million people, according to UBS’s Harris.
The U.S. Health and Human Services Department will have two years to set penalties on hospitals with high readmission rates and longer to test new payment systems for Franklin, Tennessee- based Community Health Systems Inc., the largest U.S. chain, and its rivals.
Financial Disclosure
Insurers also will have to reveal how much of members’ premiums they spend on medical care, as opposed to executive salaries or other administrative costs. Next year, they’ll owe a rebate to customers if the insurers spend less than 80 percent on benefits for people in individual or small-group plans.
Starting in 2014, states have their say. The legislation leaves it to them to set up and run the online marketplaces, known as exchanges, where customers will comparison-shop for coverage. Among other powers, the exchanges will be able to banish plans for premium increases deemed to be unjustified.
The legislation also creates an Independent Payment Advisory Board to suggest cuts in spending by Medicare, the government health program for the elderly and disabled, that could threaten payments for drug and device-makers. Starting in 2014, the panel’s recommendations would take effect unless federal lawmakers substitute their own reductions.
To contact the reporter on this story: Alex Nussbaum in New York anussbaum1@bloomberg.net; Shannon Pettypiece in New York spettypiece@bloomberg.net
The passage of the health care law shows that the US
empire is declining because it illustrates the fact that
people expect the state to take care of them, David
Murrin, the co-founder of Emergent Asset Management
hedge fund manager, told CNBC.
Cost of healthcare
On Tuesday, US President Barack Obama signed into law
health care legislation that expands health coverage for
the poor, imposes new taxes on the rich and forbids
insurance practices such as refusing coverage to those
with pre-existing conditions.
In their expansionary phase, empires force people to go
out, seek risks and fend for themselves, Murrin said,
reminding of the dismantling of the British empire after
the war, when the
National Health Service, which ensures universal health
coverage in Britain, was created.
"This (empire decline) is actually a dead-set course that societies get into and it will happen very quickly I'm afraid," he told "Squawk Box Europe."
"As you start to build a system it becomes cohesive because of its success… the fractures in the American system I think are more apparent than ever," Murrin added.
China's rise will be much faster than most people anticipate as the country's military prowess increases, he said.
"We all know there's going to be a change, the surprise will be the pace of that change," Murrin said, noting that "all empires when they decline they underestimate their challengers."
The peak for commodities will be reached somewhere between 2020 and 2025 and it's the period before that that must be watched, as China seems much more willing to take risks than Western countries, he predicted.
"You have a lot more males in China then you do in the west," he said, noting that 56 percent of the Chinese society was male, because of the country's policies to control population and because of traditions which value males more than females.
"What that means is that they're far more risk-oriented than a society in the West…if you look at conflict and your ability to risk your males in conflict," Murrin explained.
China has started to innovate and has worked out what the West's weaknesses are so it can overtake developed countries, he added.
The country is investing heavily in Africa, which Murrin calls a "huge opportunity" because it has the best demographics in the world and a big resource pool.
"I think Africa, as a generic theme, is the hottest thing in town," he said.
“I observe a benevolent feeling here…. There is also tenderness….
But, beware, tender hearts! Don’t you know where tenderness leads?
To the gas chambers….
“Never in the history of the world have there been so many civilized,
tenderhearted souls as have lived in this [twentieth] century. Never
in the history of the world have so many people been killed. More
people have been killed in this century by tender-hearted souls than
by cruel barbarians in all other centuries put together….
“My brothers, let me tell you where tenderness leads — To the gas
chambers….”
Father Smith’s sermon, from Walker Percy’s monitory novel The
Thanatos Syndrome
Rejoice and be glad, Americans!
Owing entirely to the visionary compassion of the Dear Leader and his party, the same regime that has slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans, that poured trillions of dollars into the coffers of Wall Street kleptocrats, that brought its unique healing touch to victims of the post-Katrina disaster in New Orleans, and that routinely commits similar acts of divine charity, will now relieve you of the burden of making your own health care decisions.
This point was made — albeit unintentionally — in a widely syndicated “news analysis” intended to celebrate this development.
“Rarely does the government, that big, clumsy, poorly regarded oaf, pull off anything short of war that touches all lives with one act, one stroke of a president’s pen,” observed AP commentator Calvin Woodward. “Such a moment has come.” (Emphasis added.)
War requires the domestic regimentation of all private life and the confiscation of private property to accomplish the mass destruction of foreign property and the mass annihilation of foreign lives. Mass murder is the only undertaking in which government consistently out-performs its private sector competition. Yet we are supposed to believe that this engine of destruction can also serve as an instrument of compassionate healing.
Despite the best efforts of its servants to swaddle it within layer after layer of tender-hearted rhetoric, the State remains as Nietzsche described it: “the coldest of all cold monsters…. Everything it says, it lies; and whatever it has it has stolen.” It “bites with stolen teeth, and it bites often….”
Bearing that last maxim in mind, we can discern the true intentions behind “Obamacare” in the fact that it includes the largest expansion of the IRS — both in terms of power and personnel — since the reign of FDR, America’s first fascist President-For-Life.
“Reform” will mean fewer doctors and more tax collectors. Those are the priorities of an entity built to consume life, not to preserve it.
“Coldly it lies,” Nietzsche wrote of the State “and this lie slips from its mouth: ‘I, the State, am the people.’”
“We proved that this government — a government of the people by the people — still works for the people,” lied the Dear Leader himself — seemingly determined to validate Nietzsche’s analysis down to the details — following the party-line vote in the House.
“Community organizers” of Mr. Obama’s ilk see the “people” as an undifferentiated mass to be mobilized in pursuit of collectivist objectives. They likewise assume that only those thus enlisted in the cause of collectivism qualify as “the people.” That perspective is pregnant with terrible portents regarding the treatment of tens of millions of Americans — including the author of these words — who will not participate in the Regime’s system of regimented, rationed health care.
The good news here is that the governments of 38 states — beginning with my home state of Idaho — are preparing acts of legal interposition against the Regime’s individual health insurance mandates.
Perhaps it could also be regarded as ambivalently good news that the Regime’s expanded effort to cartelize health care will inevitably create a black market in which fee-for-service treatment will flourish. This assumes, of course, that anybody retains sufficient wealth to pay for medical care as the omnivorous Regime devours everything within its sphere of influence.
Both Obama and his allies admit that the measure that passed yesterday — call it “Enhanced Cartelization” of the health industry — is merely another step toward undisguised government control of health care. Before Sunday’s vote, our nation was more than halfway there. As Calvin Woodward admits: “Federal and state programs now cover half the cost of health care purchased in the country and were expected to go over 50 percent in the next year or two even absent Obama’s plan.”
What this means, of course, is that the federal government — the world’s largest medical “insurance” provider — created the very market distortions now being invoked to justify further federal control over health care. The same can be said of the “two-tier system” execrated by those who seek to create a uniform, government-run medical service.
In the 1930s, writes Woodward, “the American Medical Association denounced proposals for organized medical services as an ‘incitement to revolution’ at the hands of ‘Medical Soviets.’ And that wasn’t even about government-run health care. The AMA’s fierce opposition to collectivism included objections to private insurance, the norm today, and the pooling of doctors into what became health maintenance organizations decades later.”
Like other statist stenographers, Woodward either doesn’t recognize or will not admit that the AMA’s critique of “Medical Soviets” has been entirely vindicated.
As Dr. Miguel Faria, a Cuban-born neurosurgeon and health freedom activist, summarizes:
“Although proponents of socialized medicine delight in scoring rhetorical points against free market medicine by reciting horror stories about HMOs, the managed care/managed competition philosophy should not be considered free market medicine, but rather a form of collusion between private entities and government.”
It is true, as proponents of Obama’s “reform” proposals contend, that we already have a de facto system of health care rationing. But as Dr. Faria notes, this is “largely a product of federal intervention”; furthermore, “while under a ’single-payer’ system coverage would be universal, access to care would be rationed by the central government or its agents.”
In his victory speech, Obama pointedly observed that the new “reform” framework reflects the efforts of collectivists from both sides of the narrow partisan divide.
While the State-centric media tirelessly linked Obama’s name with those of FDR and LBJ, his most important antecedent was actually the much-reviled Richard M. Nixon, during whose reign the Feds created the corporatist health care cartel whose power will be dramatically enhanced under the current “reform” measure.
In a prescient analysis published more than a decade ago, Dr. Faria recounted the relevant history:
“The emergence of HMOs began in the years 1971—74, during which time President Richard Nixon openly embraced Keynesian economics and enacted such measures as wage and price controls. The imposition of the managed care/managed competition ideology on our health care system is part of the same package of government interventions. The mechanics of managed competition were carefully worked out with the diligent cooperation of President Nixon and Senator Ted Kennedy…. Working in collaboration with private sector interests, the Nixon/Kennedy axis created the template for a fascist health system in which government-approved entities — HMOs and similar health care provider networks — would deliver medical care under government supervision.”
In that system, physicians “employed by HMOs are required to practice a form of rationing, called ‘cost-effective analysis’ or ‘data credentialing,’” continued Dr. Faria. “HMO administrators, in turn, employ utilization review data to assess doctor performance in terms of financial impact rather than sound medical judgment or patient needs. Physicians who are deemed cost-ineffective, including those who incur expenses by treating the sickest patients and dealing with the most difficult cases, confront … the possible loss of their membership status in hospitals and health care networks.”
During my own recent hospitalization, several physicians with whom I spoke confirmed elements of Dr. Faria’s analysis and expressed severe frustrations over the burdens and limitations of the corporatist health care system. One of them confided to me that his favorite time to work is Christmas Day, since he is freed from the oversight of bureaucratic administrators “and so I’m actually free to practice medicine.”
What Dr. Faria describes is a post-Hippocratic medical system in which the physician is required to act on behalf of the collective, rather than the interests of the individual patient. This same perverse ethic was enshrined in the post-Bismarck German social welfare state, with consequences as familiar as they are horrifying.
When medical care is collectivized, the system operates in the supposed interests of “the people,” rather than for the benefit of any individual person — with special exceptions made for those who belong to the presiding oligarchy, of course.
It must not be forgotten that the State creates nothing. This means that, in economic terms, rationing — the allocation of resources on a political basis — is all that it does.
During the two world wars, America was shackled in a system of economic central planning that included rationing of practically every worthwhile consumer good. This is what government will do whenever it is given a pretext in the form of a suitable crisis. Apply that model to the delivery of health care and you’ll get a good idea — to paraphrase the Blessed One Himself — of what “change will look like.”
Writing last week on the eve of the House vote, Dr. Faria pointed out that within the medical treatment and research community, “the word is out that ‘more care is not necessarily better’….
[This is because] health care gurus see the imminent U.S. government takeover of American medicine, and this … will mean not only increased taxation on the horizon, but also massive rationing and the drastic curtailment of medical services….”
Government disruption of the market leads to scarcity, which leads to demands for even greater interventions — thereby creating a self-sustaining cycle that ends only when the “official” economy is destroyed and the productive are driven underground, where they are pursued as “economic criminals.”
Nietzsche described those who preside over the State and enforce its decrees as “destroyers” who “lay snares for the many … they hang a sword and a hundred cravings over them.” Subservience to the state is “slow suicide,” he warned, since it is an all-devouring idol from which arises the incessant stench of countless human sacrifices.
Dispensing death is what government does. We should expect business to pick up really soon.
According to the Virginia brief, the government takeover of health care “contains an individual mandate which will require a majority of Virginians after December 31, 2013 to purchase health insurance for themselves and their dependents subject to a civil penalty.” This contradicts Virginia law, which states that “No resident of this Commonwealth, regardless of whether he has or is eligible for health insurance coverage under any policy or program provided by or through his employer, or a plan sponsored by the Commonwealth or the federal government, shall be required to obtain or maintain a policy of individual insurance coverage…”
In short, both laws cannot stand. For its part, the White House was optimistic that the individual mandate would be upheld by the courts. “The Commerce Clause of the Constitution does say that people need to meet certain requirements,” said Nancy-Ann DeParle, director of the White House Office of Health Care Reform. “The requirement to have coverage is one of them. So, we’re not concerned about that.”
They should be. First off, the Commerce Clause neither contains a requirement nor any obligation upon individual Americans. It states, from Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution that Congress shall have power “To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.” What requirement does that place upon an individual? Does one have to hold the Constitution at a certain angle away from the light to find a penumbra requiring individuals to some sort of action?
The Commerce Clause solely includes commerce between states and other sovereign entities. So, for example, Congress could prohibit the sale of alcohol across state lines, or allow it. Or impose tariffs on imported goods from foreign countries, or not. But by no means does it provide Congress with the power to compel an individual to purchase alcohol or imported goods. Such would be a tyrannical usurpation, far afield from what the Constitution allows.
Cuccinelli said the individual mandate was unprecedented, and cited the dangers of interpreting the Commerce Clause in this fashion, as reported by CNS News: “Just being alive is not interstate commerce. If it were, there would be no limit to the U.S. Constitution’s Commerce Clause and to Congress’s authority to regulate everything we do. There has never been a point in our history where the federal government has been given the authority to require citizens to buy goods or services.”
To be certain, whether Congress has the power to force individuals to purchase anything is untested, since it’s never been attempted before, reports CNS. According to the Congressional Research Service, “Whether such a requirement would be constitutional under the Commerce Clause is perhaps the most challenging question posed by such a proposal, as it is a novel issue whether Congress may use this clause to require an individual to purchase a good or service.” And, an August 1994 Congressional Budget Office report on the Clinton health care takeover stated that the government had never compelled Americans to buy anything.
All of which puts the lie to White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs’s statement that “there is a pretty longstanding precedent on the constitutionality of this.” Really? Which case was that? Per Cuccinelli’s brief, there are precedents — against utilizing the Commerce Clause to regulate non-commercial activities, citing United States v. Lopez (1995) and United Sates v. Morrison (2000).
Further, Cuccinelli asserts that the decision not to purchase insurance is not a commercial activity: “The status of being a citizen or resident of the Commonwealth of Virginia is not a channel of interstate commerce; nor a person or thing in interstate commerce; nor is it an activity arising out of or connected with a commercial transaction. Instead, the status arises from an absence of commerce, not from some sort of economic endeavor, and is not even a non-economic activity affecting interstate commerce. It is entirely passive.”
Truly, if the courts now uphold the provisions for the individual mandate in ObamaCare, they will have removed whatever limits once existed upon Congress’ powers against regulating every aspect of living. They will have single-handedly turned what started out as an innocuous provision of the Constitution — that was perverted over time — into a mechanism for totalitarian control. A tyranny will surely have risen.
Americans for Limited Government is dedicated to putting the principles of limited government into action. They work with local groups across the nation to promote freedom, limited government, and the principles of the U.S. Constitution. Their goal is to harness the power of American citizens and grassroots groups in order to put the people back in charge in states across the country.
By additional taxes and fees, and by sliding subsidies, ObamaCare introduces powerful incentives against job creation, personal success — and marriage. Is this really good for America?
March 27, 2010 - by Tom Blumer
It’s interesting, isn’t it, how the truth is coming out about ObamaCare now that the House has passed it and the president has signed it?
On Tuesday, Michigan Congressman John Dingell told WJR’s Paul W. Smith, in response to a question about why much of the legislation doesn’t kick in until 2014, that:
… 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.
Many of us already knew that this has been the agenda all along; but now it’s out there, and they can’t take it back.
David Leonhardt, the propagandist who pretends to be a business reporter for the New York Times, let the redistributionist cat out of the bag in Wednesday ’s paper in a piece entitled “In Health Bill, Obama Attacks Wealth Inequality.” Note: not merely “income” inequality, but “wealth” inequality. More on that in a bit.
Then on Thursday morning, as the Democrat-controlled Senate wrestled with Republican members over stripping certain language from the bill, the Associated Press’s Alan Fram confirmed the wire service’s status as the official propaganda arm of the Democratic Party when he sobbed that these maneuvers might prolong “what has been a politically painful ordeal for the party.” Zheesh.
Much has been written about the legislation’s onerous taxes, including items large and small. One of the biggies is a new 3.8% hit on capital gains, dividends, investment income, and rental income. One relatively small but especially annoying item that betrays the control-freak nature of the bill alongside Congress’s breathtaking economic ignorance is its 10% excise tax on indoor tanning services. One tanning salon owner predicts that 1,000 salons will close within 12 months after the tax goes into effect on July 1. Didn’t somebody say in his January State of the Union address that “jobs must be our number-one focus in 2010″?
Beyond the paramount moral issues relating to the quality and availability of medical care, anyone who believes that ObamaCare will only affect high-income earners and a few isolated industries is in for a rude shock if the legislation is not successfully repealed in time. How rude? ObamaCare’s worst financial provisions have nothing to do with taxes, but instead relate to its subsidies. When they take full effect, their impact will dramatically advance each of three goals described above: income and wealth redistribution, control, and the long-term political power of the far left.
The estimable Robert Rector at the Heritage Foundation laid out the numbers on January 20. While Rector’s laudable primary goal was to demonstrate the destructive effect of the subsidy structure on couples’ willingness to get or stay married (which will become apparent without further comment), he also devastatingly detailed what happens to people — married or unmarried — if they simply try to financially advance themselves.
The following information from Tables 2 and 3 of Rector’s post, with boxes added by me, illustrates the overwhelming disincentives of ObamaCare’s subsidy structure. Per Rector, “The subsidies include Medicaid eligibility, insurance premium credits, and out-of-pocket health care expense credits as applicable.” The examples presented involve couples earning equal incomes who have no children. Brace yourself:
The orange boxes represent examples where the subsidy decrease amounts to almost 80% or more than 80% of a couple’s $5,000 increase in combined or joint income. After adding another 7.65% for Social Security and Medicare taxes on top of the typical 15% (or higher) marginal federal income tax rate, the extra $5,000 earned will cost the couple more than $5,000 — even before considering state and local income taxes.
Then there are the purple boxes, where subsidy loss alone amounts to more than $5,000, including one case where it’s more than double that, before considering any other taxes.
The New York Times’s use of “wealth” in its headline for Leonhardt’s story was perhaps accidental, but in reality painfully accurate. People who advance themselves will not only in most cases be left with little or nothing additional to show for their efforts, they will in many situations have to pay for the privilege out of their own “wealth” — or if they don’t have any “wealth” laying around, by borrowing.
There’s a term for a state that penalizes additional earnings on a dollar-for-dollar basis, and it surely isn’t “representative democracy.” I don’t think anyone has yet coined a word describing a political philosophy that is okay with taking more than that. Perhaps it should be “Obamism.” Note that this is far more extreme than virtually anything Europe’s most brazen socialists have attempted since World War II.
Given the disincentives, many and probably most lower- and middle-income Americans will conclude that there’s no point in accepting promotions, working overtime, getting a second job, or attempting any other form of financial self-improvement (except perhaps under the table). They will thus end up stuck where they are. The remarkable income mobility which is so critical to long-term economic growth and prosperity and which has marked this great nation as so unique for centuries will become a distant memory.
Not coincidentally, the “haves” will remain the haves, which takes us back to Congressman Dingell’s statement about “control(ling) the population” and to the far left’s lust for a permanent perch in power without having to endure the “ordeal” of dissent. If ObamaCare is successfully installed, a demotivated population so dependent on government largesse for its very health and its mediocre but low-risk economic well-being will fiercely resist any attempt by those who love freedom and liberty to upset things in any way.
What Congress and Obama have imposed must be utterly repudiated and totally repealed. An America whose population still believes in the values of its Founders would remove from office anyone who voted for this tyrannical monstrosity — if not in November’s elections, shortly thereafter through impeachment. The question is: are we still that country?
Tom Blumer owns a training and development company based in Mason, Ohio, outside of Cincinnati. He presents personal finance-related workshops and speeches at companies, and runs BizzyBlog.com.
Obama’s guarantee that Americans would still be able to keep the same health care plan is already proving fraudulent as businesses, insurance companies and medical device manufacturers jack up prices
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Friday, March 26, 2010
President Obama’s promise that Americans would still be able to keep the
same doctor and the same plan they were on before the health care bill
was passed is already collapsing, with businesses, insurance companies
and medical device manufacturers jacking up prices in response to
Obamacare, and making it clear that the burden of the raft of new taxes
imposed by the legislation will fall on Americans across the income
spectrum.
Accusing critics of “fearmongering” and “over-heated rhetoric.” Obama mockingly said birds were still chirping after he signed the legislation and that armageddon had not arrived during a speech yesterday in Iowa.
“After I signed the bill I looked around to see if there were any asteroids falling or some cracks opening up in the earth – turned out it was a nice day,” quipped Obama.
Obama said “the cynics and naysayers would have to confront the reality,” and that the reform “isn’t a government takeover of our health care system,” claiming that “if Americans like their doctor they’ll be keeping their doctor, you like your plan, you’ll be keeping your plan.”
Obama promised that 6 months from now Americans would still have the “same doctor, same plan”.
Watch the clip below.
However, millions of Americans will lose their doctor and their current plan once businesses, insurance companies, and medical devices manufacturers inevitably raise their prices as a result of Obamacare, which is already happening.
As Business Insider highlights, “Remember the part in the ObamaCare pitch when they said if you like your current healthcare, it won’t change? Turns out it might.”
“Companies are already announcing that their healthcare premium costs are going through the roof. Some are responding by firing people. Some are cutting benefits. And some are presumably eating it.”
As the Wall Street Journal reports, within one day of Obama signing the bill, companies were already warning about higher health costs.
Caterpillar, the world’s largest construction machinery manufacturer, warned even before the bill was passed that new costs under Obamacare to cover its employees would amount to no less than $100 million dollars just within the first year.
Medical device maker Medtronic also cautioned that new taxes imposed by the bill would force the company to lay off thousands of workers to cover the costs.
Zoll, the leading manufacturer of heart defibrillators, also stated that Obamacare will completely eviscerate its profits, forcing it to lay off thousands of employees.
So under Obamacare, not only will tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of Americans not get to keep their health care plan, they won’t even get to keep their jobs as a result of the bill.
Now Verizon is warning its employees that they are unlikely to be able to keep their current health care plan as a consequence of the legislation.
“In an email titled “President Obama Signs Health Care Legislation” sent to all employees Tuesday night, the telecom giant warned that “we expect that Verizon’s costs will increase in the short term.” While executive vice president for human resources Marc Reed wrote that “it is difficult at this point to gauge the precise impact of this legislation,” and that ObamaCare does reflect some of the company’s policy priorities, the message to workers was clear: Expect changes for the worse to your health benefits as the direct result of this bill, and maybe as soon as this year,” reports WSJ.
Verizon also warned that the burden of the 40% tax on high-end health plans under Obamacare “will simply be spread to all workers,” illustrating once again that taxes introduced under the guise of punishing the rich merely hit everyone in the pocket, while elitist Washington insiders like Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Obama himself will be completely exempt from their own bill as a result of a loophole.
“Businesses around the country are making the same calculations as Verizon and no doubt sending out similar messages. It’s only a small measure of the destruction that will be churned out by the rewrite of health, tax, labor and welfare laws that is ObamaCare, and only the vanguard of much worse to come,” concludes the WSJ report.
So there you have it – Obama’s guarantee that Americans will be able to keep the “same doctor, same plan” is a bald-faced lie. Soaring costs across the board as a result of the plethora of new taxes mandated by Obamacare will simply be passed on to every American, amounting to gargantuan health care costs in the region of $15,000 a year for middle class families.
And if you refuse to pay it – Obamacare ensures there’ll be a willing army of heavily armed IRS agents ready to convince you otherwise.
Multiple polls show that Americans are still divided on the issue
of healthcare, and more often than not, they disapprove of the
new healthcare bill.
More Americans oppose the new bill than support it, according
to a poll published Sunday by the Washington Post. According
to the Post, 50% of the respondents opposed the recent health
care reform, and 46% supported the changes. The report states
that the poll results remain “virtually identical” to
those recorded prior to the healthcare vote.
“More people see the changes as making things worse, rather than better, for the country’s healthcare system, for the quality of their care and, among the insured, for their coverage,” the paper reported.
“Majorities in the new poll also see the changes as resulting in higher costs for themselves and for the country,” the report continued. Two-thirds of the respondents said that the changes to healthcare would increase the federal budget deficit, contrary to the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) statement that the healthcare bill would reduce the deficit.
The poll was conducted from March 23-26, drawing from a sample of 1,000 adults from around the nation. Other polls generally support the Post’s data.
A Rasmussen Reports survey said that 54% of the “nation’s likely voters” support the repeal of the healthcare bill, while 42% opposed such an action.
The same poll reported that 55% of respondents believed the bill would increase the cost of health care, and just 17% believed that it would reduce the cost of health care.
Gallup ratings of President Obama showed a temporary spike in approval after the healthcare bill was passed, but the rise was negated by Monday’s report. The newest Gallup poll shows approval ratings of the President Obama at 46%, a figure which ties for the President’s lowest rating.
“It may simply be the case that there was an unusually unfavorable sample taken on the 26th,” the report stated. “On the other hand, it may be that in a Feiler-Faster world, the people processed the healthcare news quickly and then promptly forgot about it, reverting to their pre-signing impressions of Obama.”
A Quinnipiac University poll reveals that the majority of respondents oppose the bill at 49%, as compared with the 40% who approve of healthcare reform. The opposition numbers are down from data drawn prior to the healthcare vote.
And 51% of respondents answered that a state filing a lawsuit to stop the bill from taking effect would be a “bad idea.” Rasmussen Reports, on the contrary, showed 49% of respondents favoring a lawsuit by their state.
A sizeable majority of respondents of the Quinnipiac University poll thought that the healthcare reforms were too expansive and too expensive.
Some 46% answered that the changes to the healthcare system went “too far,” compared with 26% responding “not far enough” and 18% saying the changes were “just right.” And 57% said the changes were “too expensive,” compared with 34% who believed they were “just right.”
Quinnipiac University drew its results from a survey of 1,552 registered voters from around the nation, during March 22-23.
Although the majority of Americans oppose the bill, the Washington Post reported that Democrats have gained momentum recently from within their own party—56% of Democrats showed “strong support” for the bill, up from 41% in February.
Some of the bill’s staunchest opponents are senior citizens. Among respondents age 65 and older, most believed that the bill will worsen the Medicare system—over 60%. And 58% opposed the healthcare bill, many of them voicing strong opposition to it.
Some 32% of those polled said they would likely oppose a lawmaker who voted for the healthcare bill, 26% said they would support that candidate and 40% responded that a candidate’s healthcare vote would not make a difference in how they vote this November.
The Quinnipiac University poll reported that 38% would be “less likely” to vote for a candidate who supported the health care bill, with 25% responding “more likely” and 34% saying the candidate’s position would not make a difference in how they vote this fall.
“The overall political landscape continues to look favorable for Republicans to make gains in November,” the Post reports, “with six in 10 Americans seeing the country as pretty seriously off the wrong track and that broad dissatisfaction likely to fall hardest on incumbents.”
There's no point in going bankrupt to save unsavable lives. But that's a lot different from "killing grandma."
C. Wight Reade,M.D., Seattle, Wash.
As a cardiology nurse of 15 years, this esoteric debate is a daily reality. Patients are often ready to have honest discussions with their health-care providers, but I've found that family members (who are the ones who sue doctors and institutions) are terrified to have conversations about death and dying. If nothing else happens in health-care reform except discussions about realistic expectations of survival, recovery, and quality of life for the elderly, I will count it a success.
Amy Knight, R.Nn.,Grayson, Ga.
Your story was informative and needed. However, the headline was outrageous, misleading, and inflammatory.
Carleton Mckita, Chaplain,Hospice of Nash General Hospital, Rocky Mount, N.C.
For too many seniors, the mere sight of your cover may be enough to convince them that what they've read and seen from a few vocal, right-wing extremists about what health-care reform will do is true. I'm afraid most will fail to get another perspective from the article inside.
John Cosgrove,Keyport, N.J.
As a long-time hospital social worker, I can attest to the importance of older patients discussing their health-care wishes. However, often the most heartrending situations involve non-elderly adults who are terminally ill or suffered a sudden trauma and cannot speak for themselves. Perhaps if the discussion of advanced directives and end-of-life care were multigenerational, "granny" would find it easier to express her wishes since close kin were also expressing theirs. Too often discussions happen in the hospital under stressful, hurried conditions. Better to plan ahead than wait for crisis.
Mary Yank,Franklin, Wis.
Quality of life is what it is all about. If I have a terminal illness and good quality of life, then, by all means, I want continued care. But if I am miserable, then please let me die in peace.
Elliott Brender, M.D.,Villa Park, Calif.
Please, let's get the rhetoric right. "Killing granny" is not the same as allowing granny to die, especially if death is imminent and inevitable. Killing means active euthanasia. Allowing someone to die means withholding treatment so as not to prolong dying. This is the difference between blowing out the candle and allowing it to flicker out on its own. Either way the room is equally dark, but not as chilly.
Carol Mackenzie Jackson,Plymouth Meeting, Pa.
We already have our own bureaucrats: insurance companies who decide to either approve or deny our care. True freedom of choice depends on how deep your pocketbook is.
Van Phan Villa,Corpus Christi, Texas
As a 64-year-old granny, I'm all for "quality of death" after quality of life is over.
Cheryl Breeden,Fort Collins, Colo.
'No Country for Sick Men'
When all is said and done, what distinguishes our system from others is that, in the U.S., medical practitioners and the health insurance CEOs view medicine as a pathway to riches, whereas their counterparts in Europe, Canada, and New Zealand do not.
