Monday, March 22, 2010
The real arithmetic of health care reform
Subject: txt 1st hcare -
On Thursday, the Congressional Budget Office reported that, if enacted, the latest health care reform legislation would, over the next 10 years, cost about $950 billion, but because it would raise some revenues and lower some costs, it would also lower federal deficits by $138 billion.
In reality, if you strip out all the gimmicks and budgetary games and rework the calculus, a wholly different picture emerges: The health care reform legislation would raise, not lower, federal deficits, by $562 billion...
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Health Care Bill, CBO Estimates Based on 'Nefarious' Assumptions
Subject: txt 1st hcare = Economist Morici:
That critic was University of Maryland economist Peter Morici, who expressed skepticism of the assumptions built into the health care reform bill, projected that it would raise costs for many average families and it would add "substantially" the federal deficit.
"There's a lot of assumptions in this bill that are kind of nefarious, uh, and I believe that the typical American family will pay $1,000 to $2,000 more for coverage for a family of four,"
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What America Will Look Like If The White House Gets Its Way
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America stands on the precipice of sweeping liberal health care reform that will radically reshape one-sixth of the U.S. economy, and a 153-page House bill is all that stands between us and a fundamentally changed America.
What will that change look like? Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said, “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,” and President Barack Obama said, “By the time the vote has taken place, not only will I know what’s in it, you’ll know what’s in it.”
In other words, here’s a ticket to ride, get on board, we can’t tell you where it’s going, but you’ll like it once you get there. We promise.
A picture of America’s future under Obamacare can be revealed, though, after peeling away the pages and digging through the dirt. Here’s 10 things you can expect:
- 1. A Massively Engorged Government, to the tune of $2.5 trillion in new entitlement spending. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), new entitlement spending in the plan would cost $216 billion by 2019, then increase by 8 percent every year thereafter.
- 2. A Cornhusker Kickback for All. No, special deals aren’t removed from Obamacare this time around. Instead, the House bill extends new federal funding for Medicaid to all states. Incidentally, you’re paying for it.
- 3. A Freight train of taxes, slamming the American people in 2018. You’ve heard of the “Cadillac” tax on high-cost insurance plans? It will be pushed back to 2018, and given the way “high-cost” plans will be defined, a large segment of the middle class would get hit with the tax over time.
- 4. Beware the shape-shifting tax monster. New taxes will take many forms, including taxes on prescription drugs, medical devices (like wheel chairs), and health insurance.
- 5. Unconstitutional mandates, courtesy of Congress. Don’t want to buy health insurance? Congress will penalize you if you don’t, regardless of income.
- 6. Higher health care costs will be sneaking in. The plan gives subsidies to low-to-moderate wage families, but the subsidies will increase at a lower rate than the rate at which premiums increase. In other words, those families will pay more every year.
- 7. Lights out for small businesses. Companies that hire certain low-income Americans will have to pay $3,000 per employee, per year, even if the company offers insurance.Oh, and if a company employs 50 or more workers, they’ll face higher tax penalties to the tune of $2,000 per full-time employee.
- 8. Abortions. You will pay for them, like it or not. The House bill includes major funding for community health centers with no restrictions on federal taxpayer funding of abortions.
- 9. Let's dampen investment while we're at it. The House bill slaps a 3.8% tax on investment income.
- 10. It’s not a federal system, after all. States will have less power. They’ll no longer have authority to regulate health care premiums. Instead, the federal government will take on the job. States and local governments won’t be able to control their own employee health plans; they’ll have to abide by new federal regulations.
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Health Overhaul's Assault On Business
Subject: txt 1st hcare sclm bbro mny -
Taxes: If ObamaCare becomes permanent, no one will suffer more than U.S. businesses. They'll face higher taxes, more regulations and a higher cost of capital. But don't take our word for it. Go ask Caterpillar.
The heavy-equipment giant reckons its insurance costs will go up 20%, or $100 million, the first year after the health care system is overhauled, and may go even higher. Multiply that by literally tens of thousands of companies nationwide, large and small, and ask yourself what effect it will have toward the goal of "jobs, jobs, jobs" the White House so recently assured us was Job 1...
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[It's never been about health 'care'.]
Obama Supporter: ‘What’s Wrong With A Little Bit Of Socialism?’
Subject: txt 1st hcare sclm -
Yesterday, we attended an impromptu Tea Party outside the Evanston, IL office of Democrat Rep. Jan Schakowsky. Below are some photos and our in-depth video report documenting the event. Very few people turned out, but that didn’t prevent the scene from turning dramatic as a couple of Obama supporters tossed around accusations of racism, called everyone idiots, and asked the absurd question: “What’s wrong with a little bit of Socialism?”
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Barbarians at the Gates
Subject: txt hcare -
If you're not overly concerned with the government takeover of a sixth of our nation's economy {and all the individual liberty it will obliterate in the process}, I have a video recommendation: The Barbarian Invasions.
Set in Canada with French dialogue and English subtitles, it won last year's Academy Award for best foreign film, and Americans should view it if only to see how much worse being sick is when government controls health care.
The Barbarian Invasions documents the mediocrity, rationing, mindless bureaucracy, corruption, and elitism that inevitably follows government involvement in anything...
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Socialism Vs. Capitalism: Illustrated on Film
Subject: txt sclm bdd vals bbro -
Although he probably didn’t mean to say this, director Godfrey Reggio’s excellent 1982 film Koyaanisqatsi has a sequence that beautifully illustrates the failure of large socialized programs vs free market capitalism. This illustration reveals why if government spending often results in poor services and bankrupt results over time.
Here’s the clip. We start with scenes of New York majesty followed by a street slum, followed by rows of project apartment buildings as urban blight. Then, at the end, we’re shown gleaming glass towers which are the product of free market capitalism. The project buildings were products of President Johnson’s war on poverty which spent billions and did exactly what you’d expect billions of tax dollars thrown at an abstract problem like poverty would do. Those apartment buildings would have gone up in the 60s. The film was shot around 1979. Less than 20 years. Think on that when you watch the clip above.
That’s government in action right there. Some of those buildings were barely 20 years old, if that. And they want to take over 1/6th of our economy, the health care business, and manage it the way they do everything else. You know, as effectively as Medicare, Social Security, The Post Office, Amtrak which are all about to go under. Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae? Failing badly. Hey, why not just show the government debt while we’re at it to see how well they run things. They’ve created trillions in debt based on promises they made. Promises made by politicians that you and your descendants would be footing these bills. They didn’t ask for your consent. Just as they are ignoring the public’s will with the health care bills.
Governments don’t produce, they consume. They take from the people who create things and convert some of those resources into “benefits”. These benefits are, more often than not, bribes to ease us into letting them keep spending our money like mad. At some point, a long time ago, they stopped caring about wanted and started telling us what was good for us. They began taking more and more tax dollars and bribing the least productive citizens so they’d have voters who can override the productive citizens if they complained too much.
They used a divide and conquer strategy. They promised every splinter group what they wanted, but what they got is something else.
Nothing the government does is created out of thin air. It’s made from the wealth it has taken from others. While the free market has created many wonders on its own, most of the government’s great works are in the distant past and they’re falling apart from neglect. Or they’re maintained local governments or free enterprise. Most of the great towers of Manhattan and other cities were built by companies who earned their own wealth to build them. The rotting projects that have fallen into disarray were neglected by a government that promised those people they’d be lifted from poverty. Instead it segregated then into a decaying hell and trapped them into a cycle of dependence.
Tax dollars don’t solve problems. Neither does government.
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ObamaCare: a social justice nightmare for the whole world
Subject: txt intl hcar - sclm -
According to AP reports, “Catholic nuns are urging Congress to pass President Barack Obama’s health care plan, in an unusual public break with bishops who say it would subsidize abortion.”
Reportedly, 60 leaders of religious orders sent lawmakers a letter pleading with them to pass the Senate healthcare bill. The AP clearly has not noticed the virtual ongoing war within the Catholic Church, especially with regards to government responsibility as opposed to private/church responsibility.
In no sphere is this internal war more evident than when it comes to matters involving the Church’s Doctrine on Social Justice...
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Is President Obama At War With America?
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If a frontal assault on the foundational principals and values of American life can qualify as being “at war” - then yes, Barack Obama is in combat with our country... [snip]
Yet at the epicenter of all of this – all the bribes, manipulations, and heavy-handed mandates – is the narrow, political self-interest of one man: Barack Obama. America’s cultural “right” decries the loss of freedom and the rise of abusive government, while the “left” decries a government that lines the pockets of for-profit corporations (companies that are presumed to be “greedy”), all for the benefit of one self-serving politician.
This is the assault on America’s foundational principals and values. It is the assault of governmental cronyism, on our basic understandings of what is right, and fair...
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