07.22.09
Cap and Tax: The 8 cap-and-tax Republicans… and the 44 Democrats who voted no
The 8 cap-and-tax Republican turncoats again are:
Bono Mack (CA) (202) 225-5330
Castle (DE) (202) 225-4165
Kirk (IL) (202) 225-4835 (And he’s seriously considering running for Senate!)
Lance (NJ) (202) 225-5361
LoBiondo (NJ) (202) 225-6572
McHugh (NY) (202) 225-4611
Reichert (WA) (202) 225-7761
Smith (NJ) (202) 225-3765
In case you were wondering, here are the 44 Democrat NAY votes:
Altmire
Arcuri
Barrow
Berry
Boren
Bright
Carney
Childers
Costa
Costello
Dahlkemper
Davis (AL)
Davis (TN)
DeFazio
Donnelly (IN)
Edwards (TX)
Ellsworth
Foster
Griffith
Herseth Sandlin
Holden
Kirkpatrick (AZ)
Kissell
Kucinich
Marshall
Massa
Matheson
McIntyre
Melancon
Minnick
Mitchell
Mollohan
Nye
Ortiz
Pomeroy
Rahall
Rodriguez
Ross
Salazar
Stark
Tanner
Taylor
Visclosky
Wilson (OH)
Reminder: The two Republicans who didn’t vote: Jeff Flake (AZ) and John Sullivan (OK).
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07.19.09
The Failed Promises of Government Funded Health Care
The health care debate in this country is an old story. It began in 1934 when President Franklin D. Roosevelt attempted to include government-funded health care in his “New Deal” as part of his comprehensive Social Security legislation. President Roosevelt was very concerned that the Supreme Court might rule parts of his “New Deal” unconstitutional. He tried to induce Congress to approve increasing the total number of justices on the Supreme Court to fifteen, attempting thereby to circumvent the judiciary and the Constitution by stacking the Court in his favor.
Subsequently, government funded health care has been debated in nearly every session of Congress since 1939.
Many people assume that the establishment of Medicare in 1965 was the result solely of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society legislation. In fact, the establishment of Medicare was the culmination of decades of efforts by progressive liberals, and was seen as a stepping stone to government funded health care for all. In fact, some of the tactics the government used to pass Medicare were illegal at the time, employing taxpayer money to lobby for political programs.
Today President Obama theorizes that a government “option” will increase competition, lower costs, and provide better medical care for larger numbers of people. In any scientific endeavor the veracity of a theory is determined by whether it is supported by empirical evidence and predictive of future outcomes. Therefore, we must examine Obama’s assertions in light of the available evidence.
1. A government health care option will increase competition.
In order to determine whether this is the case, we must review whether government involvement has ever increased competition in the past. We must remember that the force of law attends government involvement and that the force of law gives an advantage to the government. For instance, Medicare and Medicaid employ price-fixing, which is illegal for any private organization. The government decides on the worth of medical services and the providers of those services must comply. The government therefore utilizes unfair practices to establish a monopoly, transferring costs to the private sector, artificially magnifying the cost of private insurance and hiding the true cost of government coverage.
When Medicare was passed senior citizens were promised that Medicare would not prevent them from utilizing private primary insurance if they wanted to. This assurance was false. Private primary health insurance has become all but impossible for persons over 65 to obtain.
Medicaid recipients, as well as and those on military health plans, are significantly restricted in their choices. This lack of choice has stifled competition. Contrary to the claims of the current administration, every time government has gotten involved in health care, competition has been suppressed by practices that would be prosecutable if carried out by private companies. Far from promoting competition, a government plan will eventually eliminate private health care, thereby eliminating all competition.
Tom Miller, Director of Health Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, explained:
“As fiscal pressures mount, the federal government does not ‘negotiate’ with medical providers for lower prices for covered services. It dictates below-market reimbursements with its near-monopoly power as a purchaser of health care for seniors. The full costs of such price discounts eventually reduce access to quality care and hold health care markets hostage to political exploitation.”
2. A government option will decrease costs.
It is naïve to believe that increased government intervention will lower the cost of medicine. All past evidence indicates that the reverse is true. In 1965, the government promised that Medicare part A would cost $9 billion by 1990. The actual cost was more than $66 billion — over seven times projected costs. There has never been a single large federal social program that has come in at budget or has performed as predicted.
Democrats have tried to pin the rising cost of medical care on the private sector. It is, however, government interference and government regulations that have caused the high cost of medical care in the past and that will continue to increase the costs of medical care in the future. Medicare increases the cost of medical care by shifting federal administrative overhead to the private sector and through oppressive regulation.[i] These practices will undoubtedly accelerate under “Obamacare” as the following chart, using data from the Congressional Budget Office, indicates:
The estimated $1.6 trillion for Obama’s proposed legislation will cover only about one third of his claimed 45 million uninsured. If historical precedents and evidence are any indication, the actual costs of the plan could be seven times higher than this estimate. Adding to the fiscal nightmare, Mr. Obama is planning on cutting benefits for Medicare and Medicaid in order to transfer funding to his new health plan. This is another example that government does not contain costs, but shift costs from one program to another.
The effect of Obama’s program will be to increase taxes on small businesses and further worsen unemployment. This loss of jobs will result in driving people into the government-funded plan. Increasing the costs of the plan would create a vicious cycle of unemployment, increasing costs, rising taxes, and unending dependence on government.
3. A government option will improve health care and cover more people.
Mr. Obama’s claim of 45 million Americans without medical insurance is completely unfounded. His health care plan will initially cover about 13 million people. However, nearly 100 million people will be eligible for the proposed government option. As mentioned above, nothing about the plan would promote increased competition.
Once the government has a monopoly on all health care in America and the costs to the government have skyrocketed, the government will do what it has always done: use its power to ration services and increase taxes. This will result in inferior medical care for the American people.
Once this rationing occurs, there will be no turning back. The government will be in complete control, as it is with Medicare and Medicaid. We need only ask Medicare or VA patients about the difficulties they face in trying to obtain payments for their medical care to understand what the end result will be. Denial of payment for care is simply rationing by another name. Furthermore, the evidence shows that government funded health care initiated at the state level, such as the programs in Massachusetts and Oregon, have failed miserably. We will likely have to consider the morgue as an integral part of any government health care system in the future.
Albert Einstein once defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. Mr. Obama’s theories are undeniably refuted by historical fact and therefore his projections are unreliable and even dangerous. There is overwhelming evidence that his health care plan will result in a fiscal and medical care disaster. More important, his plan would result in a wider unconstitutional expansion of government control over our lives. We must demand real solutions, not the trading of unsustainable benefits for votes, the loss of our liberty, and greater dependence for our medical care — not on those trained in the healing arts — but on government and professional politicians.
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Sergeant First Class John C. Beale
Killed in action the week before, the body of Sergeant First Class John C. Beale was returned to Falcon Field in Peachtree City , Georgia , just south of Atlanta , on June 11, 2009 . The Henry County Police Department escorted the procession to the funeral home in McDonough , Georgia . A simple notice in local papers indicated the road route to be taken and the approximate time.
Please watch this amazing tribute to one of our fallen heroes. Just this past week I did a devotion about the song Taps. It was written by a young Confederate soldier who was actually found by his Union Father. Upon hearing the moans of a soldier, the father braved the gunfire and tried to “rescue” the fallen man, not knowing whether it was a Union soldier or a Confederate soldier. Unfortunately the young man didn’t make it. It wasn’t until daylight the next day that he realized that this was his son who had gone South to study music and had joined the Confederate Army. When asked if he could honor his son at his funeral, he was given permission to have one musician play the notes that were found in the pocket of the young man. His father chose a bugler to play the song. The rest is history……At the end of this video you will hear the haunting melody of Taps…..Karen
Killed in action the week before, the body of *Staff Sergeant First Class John C. Beale* was returned to Falcon Field in Peachtree City , Georgia , just south of Atlanta , on June 11, 2009. The Henry County Police Department escorted the procession to the funeral home in McDonough , Georgia . A simple notice in local papers indicated the road route to be taken and the approximate time. This was filmed during the procession by a State Trooper.
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James David Manning, PhD from ATLAH Worldwide
James David Manning, PhD discusses Senator Demint’s statements and outlines the life of Barack Hussein Obama:
James David Manning, PhD says everyone is out to get whitey. This message comes from The Manning Report on Wednesday, 15 July 2009:
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It’s Not An Option
By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Wednesday, July 15, 2009 4:20 PM PT
Congress: It didn’t take long to run into an “uh-oh” moment when reading the House’s “health care for all Americans” bill. Right there on Page 16 is a provision making individual private medical insurance illegal.
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IBD Exclusive Series: Government-Run Healthcare: A Prescription For Failure
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When we first saw the paragraph Tuesday, just after the 1,018-page document was released, we thought we surely must be misreading it. So we sought help from the House Ways and Means Committee.
It turns out we were right: The provision would indeed outlaw individual private coverage. Under the Orwellian header of “Protecting The Choice To Keep Current Coverage,” the “Limitation On New Enrollment” section of the bill clearly states:
“Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day” of the year the legislation becomes law.
So we can all keep our coverage, just as promised — with, of course, exceptions: Those who currently have private individual coverage won’t be able to change it. Nor will those who leave a company to work for themselves be free to buy individual plans from private carriers.
From the beginning, opponents of the public option plan have warned that if the government gets into the business of offering subsidized health insurance coverage, the private insurance market will wither. Drawn by a public option that will be 30% to 40% cheaper than their current premiums because taxpayers will be funding it, employers will gladly scrap their private plans and go with Washington’s coverage.
The nonpartisan Lewin Group estimated in April that 120 million or more Americans could lose their group coverage at work and end up in such a program. That would leave private carriers with 50 million or fewer customers. This could cause the market to, as Lewin Vice President John Sheils put it, “fizzle out altogether.”
What wasn’t known until now is that the bill itself will kill the market for private individual coverage by not letting any new policies be written after the public option becomes law.
The legislation is also likely to finish off health savings accounts, a goal that Democrats have had for years. They want to crush that alternative because nothing gives individuals more control over their medical care, and the government less, than HSAs.
With HSAs out of the way, a key obstacle to the left’s expansion of the welfare state will be removed.
The public option won’t be an option for many, but rather a mandate for buying government care. A free people should be outraged at this advance of soft tyranny.
Washington does not have the constitutional or moral authority to outlaw private markets in which parties voluntarily participate. It shouldn’t be killing business opportunities, or limiting choices, or legislating major changes in Americans’ lives.
It took just 16 pages of reading to find this naked attempt by the political powers to increase their reach. It’s scary to think how many more breaches of liberty we’ll come across in the final 1,002.
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Obama: His reform drive has led to bills that hurt everyone who has insurance now.
By BETSY MCCAUGHEY
PRESIDENT Obama promises that “if you like your health plan, you can keep it,” even after he reforms our health-care system. That’s untrue. The bills now before Congress would force you to switch to a managed-care plan with limits on your access to specialists and tests.
Two main bills are being rushed through Congress with the goal of combining them into a finished product by August. Under either, a new government bureaucracy will select health plans that it considers in your best interest, and you will have to enroll in one of these “qualified plans.” If you now get your plan through work, your employer has a five-year “grace period” to switch you into a qualified plan. If you buy your own insurance, you’ll have less time.
And as soon as anything changes in your contract — such as a change in copays or deductibles, which many insurers change every year — you’ll have to move into a qualified plan instead (House bill, p. 16-17).
When you file your taxes, if you can’t prove to the IRS that you are in a qualified plan, you’ll be fined thousands of dollars — as much as the average cost of a health plan for your family size — and then automatically enrolled in a randomly selected plan (House bill, p. 167-168).
It’s one thing to require that people getting government assistance tolerate managed care, but the legislation limits you to a managed-care plan even if you and your employer are footing the bill (Senate bill, p. 57-58). The goal is to reduce everyone’s consumption of health care and to ensure that people have the same health-care experience, regardless of ability to pay.
Nowhere does the legislation say how much health plans will cost, but a family of four is eligible for some government assistance until their household income reaches $88,000 (House bill, p. 137). If you earn more than that, you’ll have to pay the cost no matter how high it goes.
The price tag for this legislation is a whopping $1.04 trillion to $1.6 trillion (Congressional Budget Office estimates). Half of the tab comes from tax increases on individuals earning $280,000 or more, and these new taxes will double in 2012 unless savings exceed predicted costs (House bill, p. 199). The rest of the cost is paid for by cutting seniors’ health benefits under Medicare.
There’s plenty of waste in Medicare, but the Congressional Budget Office estimates only 1 percent of the savings under the legislation will be from curbing waste, fraud and abuse. That means the rest will likely come from reducing what patients get.
One troubling provision of the House bill compels seniors to submit to a counseling session every five years (and more often if they become sick or go into a nursing home) about alternatives for end-of-life care (House bill, p. 425-430). The sessions cover highly sensitive matters such as whether to receive antibiotics and “the use of artificially administered nutrition and hydration.”
This mandate invites abuse, and seniors could easily be pushed to refuse care. Do we really want government involved in such deeply personal issues?
Shockingly, only a portion of the money accumulated from slashing senior benefits and raising taxes goes to pay for covering the uninsured. The Senate bill allocates huge sums to “community transformation grants,” home visits for expectant families, services for migrant workers — and the creation of dozens of new government councils, programs and advisory boards slipped into the last 500 pages.
The most recent ABC News/Washington Post poll (June 21) finds that 83 percent of Americans are very satisfied or somewhat satisfied with the quality of their health care, and 81 percent are similarly satisfied with their health insurance.
They have good reason to be. If you’re diagnosed with cancer, you have a better chance of surviving it in the United States than anywhere else, according to the Concord Five Continent Study. And the World Health Organization ranked the United States No. 1 out of 191 countries for being responsive to patients’ needs, including providing timely treatments and a choice of doctors.
Congress should pursue less radical ways to cover the uninsured. We have too much to lose with this legislation.
Betsy McCaughey is founder of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths and a former lieutenant governor of New York. betsy@hospitalinfection.org
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