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Getbig Main Boards => Politics and Political Issues Board => Topic started by: George Whorewell on June 29, 2012, 08:01:30 PM
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Regardless of my own political leanings, I take exception to this ruling because it amounts to a legal comedy of contradictions and blatant fallacies that cannot be reconciled with reality. And by blatant fallacies, I don't mean matters of opinion. Demonstrable, actual, factual fraud has been perpetrated upon the American people.
I read the 180+ page decision. In addition, I also read and re-read the Roberts opinion and the 70+ page dissent twice. Had this law been upheld on sound legal ground through the legitimate application of the constitution, then I would come to accept the result. However, this is simply not the case—and no argument can be made to the contrary. Unfortunately, winning trumps the truth every single time (especially in politics and law).
I'm not going to delve into the legalese too much, but in simple terms there are three glaringly obvious misstatements of fact which ultimately preserved the individual mandate of the ACA (The affordable care act) as a constitutionally permissible tax.
(1) On the first day of oral arguments, solicitor general Verrilli argued that the individual mandate was not a tax. On day two, he argued that it was a tax. When Justice Alito questioned Verrilli as to whether the Supreme Court had ever ruled that an aspect of legislation is a tax for one purpose while simultaneously not being a tax for another, Verrilli answered in the negative. Yet, that is the crux of the Roberts opinion. On page 15 of the Roberts opinion he plainly states that the individual mandate is not a tax while on page 35 he opines the EXACT opposite. Throw in the following facts: Obama has repeated ad nauseum that the individual mandate is not a tax, the Federal Government argued in more than one of the district court cases which led to the SC showdown that the bill was not a tax and that the bill was RENAMED and restructured prior to its passage to purposely remove the tax label in an unsuccessful effort to shield Congressional Democrats from the 2010 midterm onslaught.
(2) Even the liberal justices on the court DISSENT from Robert’s mindless theory that the individual mandate is a tax.
(3) By legal definition and the plain statutory language of the ACA, the individual mandate is penalty and NOT a tax. Page 18 of the dissenting opinion says in relevant portion: “In a few cases, this court has held that a “tax” imposed upon private conduct was so onerous as to be in effect a penalty. But we have never held—never-- that a penalty imposed for violation of the law was so trivial as to be in effect a tax. We have never held that any exaction imposed for violation of the law is an exercise of Congress’ taxing power—even when the statute calls it a tax, much less when (as here) the statute repeatedly calls it a penalty.”
I can go on and on—but the bottom line here is that this decision was upheld on an invalid and utterly dishonest legal premise.
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Roberts is a traitor and should resign his seat immediately.
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Regardless of my own political leanings, I take exception to this ruling because it amounts to a legal comedy of contradictions and blatant fallacies that cannot be reconciled with reality. And by blatant fallacies, I don't mean matters of opinion. Demonstrable, actual, factual fraud has been perpetrated upon the American people.
I read the 180+ page decision. In addition, I also read and re-read the Roberts opinion and the 70+ page dissent twice. Had this law been upheld on sound legal ground through the legitimate application of the constitution, then I would come to accept the result. However, this is simply not the case—and no argument can be made to the contrary. Unfortunately, winning trumps the truth every single time (especially in politics and law).
I'm not going to delve into the legalese too much, but in simple terms there are three glaringly obvious misstatements of fact which ultimately preserved the individual mandate of the ACA (The affordable care act) as a constitutionally permissible tax.
(1) On the first day of oral arguments, solicitor general Verrilli argued that the individual mandate was not a tax. On day two, he argued that it was a tax. When Justice Alito questioned Verrilli as to whether the Supreme Court had ever ruled that an aspect of legislation is a tax for one purpose while simultaneously not being a tax for another, Verrilli answered in the negative. Yet, that is the crux of the Roberts opinion. On page 15 of the Roberts opinion he plainly states that the individual mandate is not a tax while on page 35 he opines the EXACT opposite. Throw in the following facts: Obama has repeated ad nauseum that the individual mandate is not a tax, the Federal Government argued in more than one of the district court cases which led to the SC showdown that the bill was not a tax and that the bill was RENAMED and restructured prior to its passage to purposely remove the tax label in an unsuccessful effort to shield Congressional Democrats from the 2010 midterm onslaught.
(2) Even the liberal justices on the court DISSENT from Robert’s mindless assertion that the individual mandate is a tax.
(3) By legal definition and the plain statutory language of the ACA, the individual mandate is penalty and NOT a tax. Page 18 of the dissenting opinion says in relevant portion: “In a few cases, this court has held that a “tax” imposed upon private conduct was so onerous as to be in effect a penalty. But we have never held—never-- that a penalty imposed for violation of the law was so trivial as to be in effect a tax. We have never held that any exaction imposed for violation of the law is an exercise of Congress’ taxing power—even when the statute calls it a tax, much less when (as here) the statute repeatedly calls it a penalty.”
I can go on and on—but the bottom line here is that this decision was upheld on an invalid and utterly dishonest legal premise.
Great analysis George.
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A
wise getbigger once summed up this entire issue with all it's complex legal, economical, and constitutional repercussions, by saying:
"You're just angry that kids with pre-existing conditions will be able to get insurance now. "
-garebear
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Regardless of my own political leanings, I take exception to this ruling because it amounts to a legal comedy of contradictions and blatant fallacies that cannot be reconciled with reality. And by blatant fallacies, I don't mean matters of opinion. Demonstrable, actual, factual fraud has been perpetrated upon the American people.
I read the 180+ page decision. In addition, I also read and re-read the Roberts opinion and the 70+ page dissent twice. Had this law been upheld on sound legal ground through the legitimate application of the constitution, then I would come to accept the result. However, this is simply not the case—and no argument can be made to the contrary. Unfortunately, winning trumps the truth every single time (especially in politics and law).
I'm not going to delve into the legalese too much, but in simple terms there are three glaringly obvious misstatements of fact which ultimately preserved the individual mandate of the ACA (The affordable care act) as a constitutionally permissible tax.
(1) On the first day of oral arguments, solicitor general Verrilli argued that the individual mandate was not a tax. On day two, he argued that it was a tax. When Justice Alito questioned Verrilli as to whether the Supreme Court had ever ruled that an aspect of legislation is a tax for one purpose while simultaneously not being a tax for another, Verrilli answered in the negative. Yet, that is the crux of the Roberts opinion. On page 15 of the Roberts opinion he plainly states that the individual mandate is not a tax while on page 35 he opines the EXACT opposite. Throw in the following facts: Obama has repeated ad nauseum that the individual mandate is not a tax, the Federal Government argued in more than one of the district court cases which led to the SC showdown that the bill was not a tax and that the bill was RENAMED and restructured prior to its passage to purposely remove the tax label in an unsuccessful effort to shield Congressional Democrats from the 2010 midterm onslaught.
(2) Even the liberal justices on the court DISSENT from Robert’s mindless assertion that the individual mandate is a tax.
(3) By legal definition and the plain statutory language of the ACA, the individual mandate is penalty and NOT a tax. Page 18 of the dissenting opinion says in relevant portion: “In a few cases, this court has held that a “tax” imposed upon private conduct was so onerous as to be in effect a penalty. But we have never held—never-- that a penalty imposed for violation of the law was so trivial as to be in effect a tax. We have never held that any exaction imposed for violation of the law is an exercise of Congress’ taxing power—even when the statute calls it a tax, much less when (as here) the statute repeatedly calls it a penalty.”
I can go on and on—but the bottom line here is that this decision was upheld on an invalid and utterly dishonest legal premise.
George, No one truly knows but Roberts, but if you had to guess, why do you think he ruled this way? Seizure medication (as Michael Savage said)? Not as pro-constitutionalists as were were led to believe? Did not want the SC to be seen as partisan?
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George, No one truly knows but Roberts, but if you had to guess, why do you think he ruled this way? Seizure medication (as Michael Savage said)? Not as pro-constitutionalists as were were led to believe? Did not want the SC to be seen as partisan?
there's another clear option you and others fantasizing over republicans being the saviors of free America are not considering lol...
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I don't think it was the seizure meds - Roberts has been very conservative since the incident.
I think he got soft on socialized medicine after sitting in a hospital bed scared for his life. He probably thinks conservative is the way to go for plenty of things in society, but when it comes to healing illness and removing that fear of dying, everyone deserves the same.
That's my guess... He had a near-death experience, realized how helpless that feels, and knows it can all be over at any second. So he is a liberal on this one issue now.
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I don't think it was the seizure meds - Roberts has been very conservative since the incident.
I think he got soft on socialized medicine after sitting in a hospital bed scared for his life. He probably thinks conservative is the way to go for plenty of things in society, but when it comes to healing illness and removing that fear of dying, everyone deserves the same.
That's my guess... He had a near-death experience, realized how helpless that feels, and knows it can all be over at any second. So he is a liberal on this one issue now.
fixed.
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A wise getbigger once summed up this entire issue with all it's complex legal, economical, and constitutional repercussions, by saying:
"You're just angry that kids with pre-existing conditions will be able to get insurance now. "
-garebear
Thanks for taking note, bro.
I appreciate it.
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George, No one truly knows but Roberts, but if you had to guess, why do you think he ruled this way? Seizure medication (as Michael Savage said)? Not as pro-constitutionalists as were were led to believe? Did not want the SC to be seen as partisan?
I think that Savage's comment is moronic to be honest with you.
Roberts caved to external pressures. He is concerned with the courts legacy (on his watch) and is determined to be remembered by Law School professors and the elites in the MSM as a hero. He abandoned the law and his principles in favor of praise and adulation. That is undoubtedly part of the explanation for his remarkable change of heart.
I also believe that Roberts is trying to have it both ways. He is being a little bit too clever by half. By leaving the law in tact and calling it a tax, he effectively punts the ball back to the public and leaves the possibility of repeal in the hands of the legislature. Extremely dangerous, reckless and quite frankly stupid calculation on his part. He can avoid personal responsibility for his legally fallacious opinion, while trumpeting his neutrality and pushing the issue back onto the table for the upcoming presidential/ congressional elections.
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fixed.
Look at the facts. Roberts is a lifetime conservative who gets soft on healthcare, after he has a health scare. Do you have another theory? I don't see how his medicine affects ONLY this aspect of his performance.
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Look at the facts. Roberts is a lifetime conservative who gets soft on healthcare, after he has a health scare. Do you have another theory? I don't see how his medicine affects ONLY this aspect of his performance.
Is that why Roberts wrote his equally lawless opinion in the Arizona immigration case? His own healthcare scare?
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Is that why Roberts wrote his equally lawless opinion in the Arizona immigration case? His own healthcare scare?
he wants to ensure 12 million illegals aren't sent back. If they're sent back, they can't enjoy universal healthcare.
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:)
Fuck you. For you to think this is anything but a complete disaster beyond words just shows why liar you are, not to mention a socialist piece of shit.
he wants to ensure 12 million illegals aren't sent back. If they're sent back, they can't enjoy universal healthcare.
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:)
Fuck you. For you to think this is anything but a complete disaster beyond words just shows why liar you are, not to mention a socialist piece of shit.
As a Canadian living in the United States for the past 17 years, I am frequently asked by Americans and Canadians alike to declare one health care system as the better one.
Often I'll avoid answering, regardless of the questioner's nationality. To choose one or the other system usually translates into a heated discussion of each one's merits, pitfalls, and an intense recitation of commonly cited statistical comparisons of the two systems.
Because if the only way we compared the two systems was with statistics, there is a clear victor. It is becoming increasingly more difficult to dispute the fact that Canada spends less money on health care to get better outcomes.
Yet, the debate rages on. Indeed, it has reached a fever pitch since President Barack Obama took office, with Americans either dreading or hoping for the dawn of a single-payer health care system. Opponents of such a system cite Canada as the best example of what not to do, while proponents laud that very same Canadian system as the answer to all of America's health care problems. Frankly, both sides often get things wrong when trotting out Canada to further their respective arguments.
As America comes to grips with the reality that changes are desperately needed within its health care infrastructure, it might prove useful to first debunk some myths about the Canadian system.
Myth: Taxes in Canada are extremely high, mostly because of national health care.
In actuality, taxes are nearly equal on both sides of the border. Overall, Canada's taxes are slightly higher than those in the U.S. However, Canadians are afforded many benefits for their tax dollars, even beyond health care (e.g., tax credits, family allowance, cheaper higher education), so the end result is a wash. At the end of the day, the average after-tax income of Canadian workers is equal to about 82 percent of their gross pay. In the U.S., that average is 81.9 percent.
Myth: Canada's health care system is a cumbersome bureaucracy.
The U.S. has the most bureaucratic health care system in the world. More than 31 percent of every dollar spent on health care in the U.S. goes to paperwork, overhead, CEO salaries, profits, etc. The provincial single-payer system in Canada operates with just a 1 percent overhead. Think about it. It is not necessary to spend a huge amount of money to decide who gets care and who doesn't when everybody is covered.
Myth: The Canadian system is significantly more expensive than that of the U.S.Ten percent of Canada's GDP is spent on health care for 100 percent of the population. The U.S. spends 17 percent of its GDP but 15 percent of its population has no coverage whatsoever and millions of others have inadequate coverage. In essence, the U.S. system is considerably more expensive than Canada's. Part of the reason for this is uninsured and underinsured people in the U.S. still get sick and eventually seek care. People who cannot afford care wait until advanced stages of an illness to see a doctor and then do so through emergency rooms, which cost considerably more than primary care services.
What the American taxpayer may not realize is that such care costs about $45 billion per year, and someone has to pay it. This is why insurance premiums increase every year for insured patients while co-pays and deductibles also rise rapidly.
Myth: Canada's government decides who gets health care and when they get it.While HMOs and other private medical insurers in the U.S. do indeed make such decisions, the only people in Canada to do so are physicians. In Canada, the government has absolutely no say in who gets care or how they get it. Medical decisions are left entirely up to doctors, as they should be.
There are no requirements for pre-authorization whatsoever. If your family doctor says you need an MRI, you get one. In the U.S., if an insurance administrator says you are not getting an MRI, you don't get one no matter what your doctor thinks — unless, of course, you have the money to cover the cost.
Myth: There are long waits for care, which compromise access to care.There are no waits for urgent or primary care in Canada. There are reasonable waits for most specialists' care, and much longer waits for elective surgery. Yes, there are those instances where a patient can wait up to a month for radiation therapy for breast cancer or prostate cancer, for example. However, the wait has nothing to do with money per se, but everything to do with the lack of radiation therapists. Despite such waits, however, it is noteworthy that Canada boasts lower incident and mortality rates than the U.S. for all cancers combined, according to the U.S. Cancer Statistics Working Group and the Canadian Cancer Society. Moreover, fewer Canadians (11.3 percent) than Americans (14.4 percent) admit unmet health care needs.
Myth: Canadians are paying out of pocket to come to the U.S. for medical care.Most patients who come from Canada to the U.S. for health care are those whose costs are covered by the Canadian governments. If a Canadian goes outside of the country to get services that are deemed medically necessary, not experimental, and are not available at home for whatever reason (e.g., shortage or absence of high tech medical equipment; a longer wait for service than is medically prudent; or lack of physician expertise), the provincial government where you live fully funds your care. Those patients who do come to the U.S. for care and pay out of pocket are those who perceive their care to be more urgent than it likely is.
Myth: Canada is a socialized health care system in which the government runs hospitals and where doctors work for the government.Princeton University health economist Uwe Reinhardt says single-payer systems are not "socialized medicine" but "social insurance" systems because doctors work in the private sector while their pay comes from a public source. Most physicians in Canada are self-employed. They are not employees of the government nor are they accountable to the government. Doctors are accountable to their patients only. More than 90 percent of physicians in Canada are paid on a fee-for-service basis. Claims are submitted to a single provincial health care plan for reimbursement, whereas in the U.S., claims are submitted to a multitude of insurance providers. Moreover, Canadian hospitals are controlled by private boards and/or regional health authorities rather than being part of or run by the government.
Myth: There aren't enough doctors in Canada.
From a purely statistical standpoint, there are enough physicians in Canada to meet the health care needs of its people. But most doctors practice in large urban areas, leaving rural areas with bona fide shortages. This situation is no different than that being experienced in the U.S. Simply training and employing more doctors is not likely to have any significant impact on this specific problem. Whatever issues there are with having an adequate number of doctors in any one geographical area, they have nothing to do with the single-payer system.
And these are just some of the myths about the Canadian health care system. While emulating the Canadian system will likely not fix U.S. health care, it probably isn't the big bad "socialist" bogeyman it has been made out to be.
It is not a perfect system, but it has its merits. For people like my 55-year-old Aunt Betty, who has been waiting for 14 months for knee-replacement surgery due to a long history of arthritis, it is the superior system. Her $35,000-plus surgery is finally scheduled for next month. She has been in pain, and her quality of life has been compromised. However, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Aunt Betty — who lives on a fixed income and could never afford private health insurance, much less the cost of the surgery and requisite follow-up care — will soon sport a new, high-tech knee. Waiting 14 months for the procedure is easy when the alternative is living in pain for the rest of your life.
Rhonda Hackett of Castle Rock is a clinical psychologist.
http://www.denverpost.com/ci_12523427?source=share_fb
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there's another clear option you and others fantasizing over republicans being the saviors of free America are not considering lol...
Good post, hope people start to catch on...
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Thanks for taking note, bro.
I appreciate it.
Fight the power! 8)
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Consider the below examples I came up with now totally legitimate under Roberts’ treasonous decision. This does not even scratch the surface of the congress’ new powers:
Apple lobbies obama and the congress to force people to buy an ipad as part of an “education law” or face a tax penalty - legal
Ruger lobbies Romney to force Americans to buy firearms and take self defense classes under ‘anti-Crime” law or face a tax - legal
Chevy wants to recoup its losses from the bailout by lobbying congress to force us to buy a volt or face a tax - legal
Solyndra lobbies obama to force americans to buy its solar panels under new “Environmental Law” or face a tax - legal
NYSC lobbies Romney to force people to buy gym memberships under new “Anti-Obesity” law or face a tax - legal
Monsanto lobbies Obama to force american to buy tomatos, salads, etc under new “Safe Food” law or face a tax - legal
Trek lobbies the congress and president to force people to by a mountain bike as part of “anti-obesity” law or face a tax - legal
Valvoline lobbies president and congress to mandate proof of oil changes in your car every 4,000 miles as part of “transportation law” or face a tax - legal
American Standard lobbies president and congress to by new toilet bowl w new tech as part of “safe water” act or face a tax - legal
Johnson and Johnson lobbies congress to force women to use “green tampons” as part of a “environmental law” or face a tax, legal
National Assoc. of Realtors lobbies Romney and the Congress as part of a “Economic Growth Law” to force Homeowners to purchase mandatory home warranty for 5 years - Legal
See where this is going folks? Roberts is a traitor as he almost single handidly made us slaves this week to literally anything these thugs in the congress want to compel us into.
You liberals, communists, socialists, statists and thugs supporting this should consider the above when more thuggery is forced on you.
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Consider the below examples I came up with now totally legitimate under Roberts’ treasonous decision. This does not even scratch the surface of the congress’ new powers:
Apple lobbies obama and the congress to force people to buy an ipad as part of an “education law” or face a tax penalty - legal
Ruger lobbies Romney to force Americans to buy firearms and take self defense classes under ‘anti-Crime” law or face a tax - legal
Chevy wants to recoup its losses from the bailout by lobbying congress to force us to buy a volt or face a tax - legal
Solyndra lobbies obama to force americans to buy its solar panels under new “Environmental Law” or face a tax - legal
NYSC lobbies Romney to force people to buy gym memberships under new “Anti-Obesity” law or face a tax - legal
Monsanto lobbies Obama to force american to buy tomatos, salads, etc under new “Safe Food” law or face a tax - legal
Trek lobbies the congress and president to force people to by a mountain bike as part of “anti-obesity” law or face a tax - legal
Valvoline lobbies president and congress to mandate proof of oil changes in your car every 4,000 miles as part of “transportation law” or face a tax - legal
American Standard lobbies president and congress to by new toilet bowl w new tech as part of “safe water” act or face a tax - legal
Johnson and Johnson lobbies congress to force women to use “green tampons” as part of a “environmental law” or face a tax, legal
National Assoc. of Realtors lobbies Romney and the Congress as part of a “Economic Growth Law” to force Homeowners to purchase mandatory home warranty for 5 years - Legal
See where this is going folks? Roberts is a traitor as he almost single handidly made us slaves this week to literally anything these thugs in the congress want to compel us into.
You liberals, communists, socialists, statists and thugs supporting this should consider the above when more thuggery is forced on you.
QFT and what makes this decision even more outrageous is that the precedent set by this case will be intact regardless of who wins the 2012 election or which party gains majority control of the legislative branch. That's what all the idiots celebrating this case fail to realize. In order to take this hideously unjust decision off the books the taxing power issue will have to be re-litigated, successfully challenged, brought to the Supreme Court and overruled.
Follow me here= The only possible way to save this country and reestablish the rule of law is for Romney to win, Ginsberg to die, a new Conservative Supreme Court Justice to be appointed AND THEN the issue of the taxing power would have to somehow reappear before the Supreme Court. That's a lot of if's and's and maybes.
Until then, the Federal Government has unlimited power to tax. UNLIMITED. Never mind that the constitution only provides Congress with 3 permissible ways to tax-- none of which are addressed by the Obamacare decision. Basically, Roberts re-wrote the ACA in violation of the constitution by using an incoherent and legally inconsistent functionality test that was pulled out of thin air. Article 1 section 8 clause 1 sets forth the only enumerated and permissible means by which Congress can tax. Roberts addresses none of these, nor does he explain how he gets around the requirements of Article 1. He simply invented new legal precedent without explanation to ensure the ACA was upheld as constitutional.
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QFT and what makes this decision even more outrageous is that the precedent set by this case will be intact regardless of who wins the 2012 election or which party gains majority control of the legislative branch. That's what all the idiots celebrating this case fail to realize. In order to take this hideously unjust decision off the books the taxing power issue will have to be re-litigated, successfully challenged, brought to the Supreme Court and overruled.
Follow me here= The only possible way to save this country and reestablish the rule of law is for Romney to win, Ginsberg to die, a new Conservative Supreme Court Justice to be appointed AND THEN the issue of the taxing power would have to somehow reappear before the Supreme Court. That's a lot of if's and's and maybes.
Until then, the Federal Government has unlimited power to tax. UNLIMITED. Never mind that the constitution only provides Congress with 3 permissible ways to tax-- none of which are addressed by the Obamacare decision. Basically, Roberts re-wrote the ACA in violation of the constitution by using an incoherent and legally inconsistent functionality test that was pulled out of thin air. Article 1 section 8 clause 1 sets forth the only enumerated and permissible means by which Congress can tax. Roberts addresses none of these, nor does he explain how he gets around the requirements of Article 1. He simply invented new legal precedent without explanation to ensure the ACA was upheld as constitutional.
Yup - even if Romney repeals Obamacare we are stuck with ruling that gives these traitors in the Congress unlimited taxing power. Even worse - Roberts' decision basically voided the Commerce Clause as some possible check on the congress since now all they have to do is add a tax or penalty for non-compliance for whatever activity they are trying to compel and its totally legal now.
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Yup - even if Romney repeals Obamacare we are stuck with ruling that gives these traitors in the Congress unlimited taxing power. Even worse - Roberts' decision basically voided the Commerce Clause as some possible check on the congress since now all they have to do is add a tax or penalty for non-compliance for whatever activity they are trying to compel and its totally legal now.
They're coming for your guns.
Better buy some more.
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They're coming for your guns.
Better buy some more.
Fuck off troll. Obama and his AG tried that w fast n furious and it failed.
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Until then, the Federal Government has unlimited power to tax. UNLIMITED. Never mind that the constitution only provides Congress with 3 permissible ways to tax-- none of which are addressed by the Obamacare decision. Basically, Roberts re-wrote the ACA in violation of the constitution by using an incoherent and legally inconsistent functionality test that was pulled out of thin air. Article 1 section 8 clause 1 sets forth the only enumerated and permissible means by which Congress can tax. Roberts addresses none of these, nor does he explain how he gets around the requirements of Article 1. He simply invented new legal precedent without explanation to ensure the ACA was upheld as constitutional.
I don't disagree that Roberts' decision cracks opens a door that should have stayed close but you may want to read up on the 16th Amendment, which slightly alters the calculus of taxes since Article 1 isn't the only thing that applies and which makes your "legal analysis" not quite right: "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration."
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I don't disagree that Roberts' decision cracks opens a door that should have stayed close but you may want to read up on the 16th Amendment, which slightly alters the calculus of taxes since Article 1 isn't the only thing that applies and which makes your "legal analysis" not quite right: "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration."
How is a mandate or penalty "income".
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How is a mandate or penalty "income".
You don't need to worry about "income" since you don't have any.
HTH.
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You don't need to worry about "income" since you don't have any.
HTH.
STFU troll. You are a brain dead TBI riddled moron who thinks you are getting something for nothing.
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By JOHN YOO
White House judge-pickers sometimes ask prospective nominees about their favorite Supreme Court justice. The answers can reveal a potential judge's ideological leanings without resorting to litmus tests. Republican presidential candidates similarly promise to appoint more judges like so-and-so to reassure the conservative base.
Since his appointment to the high court in 2005, the most popular answer was Chief Justice John Roberts. But that won't remain true after his ruling on Thursday in NFIB v. Sebelius, which upheld President Barack Obama's signature health-care law.
Related Video
Editorial board member Dorothy Rabinowitz and assistant editorial page editor James Freeman on why John Roberts sided with liberal justices in upholding the individual mandate. Photo: Getty Images
Justice Roberts served in the Reagan Justice Department and as a White House lawyer before his appointment to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals and then to the Supreme Court by President George W. Bush. Yet he joined with the court's liberal wing to bless the greatest expansion of federal power in decades.
Conservatives are scrambling to salvage something from the decision of their once-great judicial hero. Some hope Sebelius covertly represents a "substantial victory," in the words of conservative columnist George Will.
After all, the reasoning goes, Justice Roberts's opinion declared that the Constitution's Commerce Clause does not authorize Congress to regulate inactivity, which would have given the federal government a blank check to regulate any and all private conduct. The court also decided that Congress unconstitutionally coerced the states by threatening to cut off all Medicaid funds if they did not expand this program as far as President Obama wants.
All this is a hollow hope. The outer limit on the Commerce Clause in Sebelius does not put any other federal law in jeopardy and is undermined by its ruling on the tax power (discussed below). The limits on congressional coercion in the case of Medicaid may apply only because the amount of federal funds at risk in that program's expansion—more than 20% of most state budgets—was so great. If Congress threatens to cut off 5%-10% to force states to obey future federal mandates, will the court strike that down too? Doubtful.
Worse still, Justice Roberts's opinion provides a constitutional road map for architects of the next great expansion of the welfare state. Congress may not be able to directly force us to buy electric cars, eat organic kale, or replace oil heaters with solar panels. But if it enforces the mandates with a financial penalty then suddenly, thanks to Justice Roberts's tortured reasoning in Sebelius, the mandate is transformed into a constitutional exercise of Congress's power to tax.
Enlarge Image
Associated Press
U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts
Some conservatives hope that Justice Roberts is pursuing a deeper political game. Charles Krauthammer, for one, calls his opinion "one of the great constitutional finesses of all time" by upholding the law on the narrowest grounds possible—thus doing the least damage to the Constitution—while turning aside the Democratic Party's partisan attacks on the court.
The comparison here is to Marbury v. Madison (1803), where Chief Justice John Marshall deflected President Thomas Jefferson's similar assault on judicial independence. Of the Federalist Party, which he had defeated in 1800, Jefferson declared: "They have retired into the judiciary as a stronghold. There the remains of federalism are to be preserved and fed from the treasury, and from that battery all the works of republicanism are to be beaten down and erased." Jeffersonians in Congress responded by eliminating federal judgeships, and also by impeaching a lower court judge and a Supreme Court judge.
In Marbury, Justice Marshall struck down section 13 of the Judiciary Act of 1789, thus depriving his own court of the power to hear a case against Secretary of State James Madison. Marbury effectively declared that the court would not stand in the way of the new president or his congressional majorities. So Jefferson won a short-term political battle—but Justice Marshall won the war by securing for the Supreme Court the power to declare federal laws unconstitutional.
While some conservatives may think Justice Roberts was following in Justice Marshall's giant footsteps, the more apt comparison is to the Republican Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes. Hughes's court struck down the centerpieces of President Franklin Roosevelt's early New Deal because they extended the Commerce Clause power beyond interstate trade to intrastate manufacturing and production. Other decisions blocked Congress's attempt to delegate its legislative powers to federal agencies.
FDR reacted furiously. He publicly declared: "We have been relegated to a horse-and-buggy definition of interstate commerce." After winning a resounding landslide in the 1936 elections, he responded in February 1937 with the greatest attack on the courts in American history. His notorious court-packing plan proposed to add six new justices to the Supreme Court's nine members, with the obvious aim of overturning the court's opposition to the New Deal.
After the president's plan was announced, Hughes and Justice Owen J. Roberts began to switch their positions. They would vote to uphold the National Labor Relations Act, minimum-wage and maximum-hour laws, and the rest of the New Deal.
But Hughes sacrificed fidelity to the Constitution's original meaning in order to repel an attack on the court. Like Justice Roberts, Hughes blessed the modern welfare state's expansive powers and unaccountable bureaucracies—the very foundations for ObamaCare.
Hughes's great constitutional mistake was made for nothing. While many historians and constitutional scholars have referred to his abrupt and unprincipled about-face as "the switch in time that saved nine," the court-packing plan was wildly unpopular right from the start. It went nowhere in the heavily Democratic Congress. Moreover, further New Deal initiatives stalled in Congress after the congressional elections in 1938.
Justice Roberts too may have sacrificed the Constitution's last remaining limits on federal power for very little—a little peace and quiet from attacks during a presidential election year.
Given the advancing age of several of the justices, an Obama second term may see the appointment of up to three new Supreme Court members. A new, solidified liberal majority will easily discard Sebelius's limits on the Commerce Clause and expand the taxing power even further. After the Hughes court switch, FDR replaced retiring Justices with a pro-New Deal majority, and the court upheld any and all expansions of federal power over the economy and society. The court did not overturn a piece of legislation under the Commerce Clause for 60 years.
If a Republican is elected president, he will have to be more careful than the last. When he asks nominees the usual question about justices they agree with, the better answer should once again be Scalia or Thomas or Alito, not Roberts.
Mr. Yoo, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law who served in the Bush Justice Department, is the author of "Taming Globalization" (Oxford University Press, 2012).
A version of this article appeared June 30, 2012, on page A15 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Chief Justice Roberts and His Apologists.
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http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/07/01/Doctors-despair-over-Obamacare?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BigGovernment+%28Big+Government%29
What a disaster.
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I don't disagree that Roberts' decision cracks opens a door that should have stayed close but you may want to read up on the 16th Amendment, which slightly alters the calculus of taxes since Article 1 isn't the only thing that applies and which makes your "legal analysis" not quite right: "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration."
Not really. But thanks for your input.
The 16th amendment applies ONLY to personal income tax and was ratified by the states as the lone exception to Article 1 in 1913. But let's take your proposition as true for arguments sake.
Is the individual mandate PENALTY just another tax on personal income? Maybe. Maybe not. We'll never know because the issue was never addressed. The issue was never briefed in detail by either side ( except the landmark legal foundation). In fact, the possibility never seriously entered the minds of the 9 Supreme Court Justices. If its not a tax under Article 1, if it is not an income tax under the 16th amendment and if ( as Roberts writes in his opinion) the individual mandate is not a tax for the purposes of the anti injunction act, then under what legal definition can the individual mandate possibly be considered a tax?
From the text of the 16th amendment: The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived
The Supreme court has defined derived income as: "undeniable accessions to wealth". Unless the English language as we know it has suddenly ceased to exist, the refusal to buy a product or service cannot be defined as a form of income or accession of wealth under any legal or linguistic analysis.
With that said, please explain to me how the individual mandate is a tax, except in the mind of John Roberts....
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Being alive now qualifies!
Not really. But thanks for your input.
The 16th amendment applies ONLY to personal income tax and was ratified by the states as the lone exception to Article 1 in 1913. But let's take your proposition as true for arguments sake.
Is the individual mandate PENALTY just another tax on personal income? Maybe. Maybe not. We'll never know because the issue was never addressed. The issue was never briefed in detail by either side ( except the landmark legal foundation). In fact, the possibility never seriously entered the minds of the 9 Supreme Court Justices. If its not a tax under Article 1, if it is not an income tax under the 16th amendment and if ( as Roberts writes in his opinion) the individual mandate is not a tax for the purposes of the anti injunction act, then under what legal definition can the individual mandate possibly be considered a tax?
From the text of the 16th amendment: The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived
The Supreme court has defined derived income as: "undeniable accessions to wealth". Unless the English language as we know it has suddenly ceased to exist, the refusal to buy a product or service cannot be defined as a form of income or accession of wealth under any legal or linguistic analysis.
With that said, please explain to me how the individual mandate is a tax, except in the mind of John Roberts....
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To strengthen your point, George:
(1) Find me where the words "health," "care," or "insurance" are found in the Constitution, and I might agree that Obamacare is Constitutional. Any powers not expressly granted to the federal government in the Constitution are left up to individuals and the states.
(2) The taxing power of the federal government is for the purposes of generating revenue, not regulating behavior or social engineering. Any and all prohibitive and redistributive taxation is unconstitutional.
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How is a mandate or penalty "income".
I don't think it is.
George wrote that "Article 1 section 8 clause 1 sets forth the only enumerated and permissible means by which Congress can tax." and I said that that is simply not true. In addition to its Article 1 tax powers, the Government has additional powers that are more, shall we say, "liberal" for lack of a better term, that give it extraordinarily wide berth in levying taxes. (Another horrible Amendment that should be repealed, but that's a whole 'nother topic).
I think that we all agree that if Congress had written the law to explicitly say "Everyone must pay an additional $X in income tax. Everyone who has health insurance that meets requirements set out in ... gets a tax credit of $X." the provision would be constitutional, instead of this ridiculous "penalties" nonsense and whatnot.
Was it sensible for Roberts to try to see if he could shoehorn the mandate in as a tax to uphold it? I don't think so. But, unfortunately, he did.
With that said, please explain to me how the individual mandate is a tax, except in the mind of John Roberts....
I wouldn't presume to explain how the mandate is a tax in the mind of John Roberts, or anyone else for that matter, especially when I disagree with Roberts' conclusion. And anyways, his opinion speaks for itself.
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To strengthen your point, George:
(1) Find me where the words "health," "care," or "insurance" are found in the Constitution, and I might agree that Obamacare is Constitutional. Any powers not expressly granted to the federal government in the Constitution are left up to individuals and the states.
(2) The taxing power of the federal government is for the purposes of generating revenue, not regulating behavior or social engineering. Any and all prohibitive and redistributive taxation is unconstitutional.
Is the internet unconstitutional?
I can't find the word in there.
Thanks.
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Is the internet unconstitutional?
I can't find the word in there.
Thanks.
The Federal Government mandates you have an Internet connection and "fines" you (aka taxes you) if you don't? ???
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Another thing - if Cuntlosi and Ghettobama are complaining about the so called "free riders" abusing the ER, why are we not taking care of the biggest abuse of all? Illegal Aliens?
How much do illegals cost in unreimbursed care?
Oh that's right - the communist left needs the votes of illegals so they feel its ok to saddle middle class and working people with higher costs and avoid dealing with illegals going to the ER
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Undoing Obamacare
By Andrew B. Wilson on 7.2.12 @ 6:09AM
Suddenly, everyone wants out.
You would have thought that Chief Justice John Roberts had shouted "fire" in a crowded theater. In upholding Obamacare, he set off a headlong race for the exits by the same lobbying groups -- believe it or not -- that had cut deals with the administration to create the legislation. Back then, the lobbyists were telling each other: If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu. Now the bodies are piling up in the doorway as those who pandered to the president trample over each other in their haste to get out of the blazing or crumbling structure that is Obamacare. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde on the death of Little Nell, no one without a heart of stone can witness this deadly scene without wanting to laugh out loud.
As reported on the front page of this weekend's Wall Street Journal, every one of the health-care industry groups that signed on to Obamacare in 2009 is looking for a way out.
Hospital groups now say they want Congress to peel back $155 billion in payment cuts that they agreed to in 2009. Representatives of Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, Aetna, Inc., and Humana Inc. say they need greater freedom to adjust premiums to reflect risk. Medical-device companies are making a new push to roll back their 2.3% tax. Hotels, retailers, and restaurant chains are clamoring for a two-year delay in enforcement of a requirement that they cover full-time workers or pay a penalty, giving them until 2016 to comply.
Implement-and-improve, the Democrats are now saying in indicating a new willingness to make election-year concessions in revising the hated law. Or as the president put it on Thursday: "The highest court in the land has now spoken. We will continue to implement this law. And we'll work together to improve on it where we can."
But the race to the exits by doctors, hospitals, drug makers, insurers and others is evidence that the law is already beyond repair. To put that another way, the series of deals between the government and health-industry groups that gave rise to Obamacare is falling apart.
"The bargain that was struck seems to be out the window," Bruce Siegal, chief executive of the National Association of Public Hospitals and Health Systems, was quoted as saying.
It is worth recalling how the White House and the Democratic leadership in Congress brought the doctors, the hospitals, and other special interest on board in the first place. In her telling of the story ("Democrats Hoodwink the Health Lobby," WSJ, July 10, 2009), Kimberly Strassel noted that after retaking the House in 2006, Democratic Party leaders put out the word that drug companies and others that did not hire Democratic lobbyists would not get a hearing in Washington. She wrote in her Potomac Watch column:
The ruling party is now seeing the fruits of its bullying. These days, a meeting of health-care lobbyists is better described as a reunion of Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus's former aides. The new cabal of Democratic lobbyists does not exist to protect the industry from Congress. It exists to present Democratic ultimatums to business.
When Senate Republicans last month hosted a meeting to discuss reform ideas, Mr. Baucus's office called in a block of these Democratic lobbyists to deliver a message. "They said, 'Republicans are having this meeting and you need to let all your people know if they have someone there, it will be viewed as a hostile act,' "reported one attendee to the Baucus caucus.
Under such conditions, different industry groups were bullied and cajoled into signing on to a program that clearly threatened their own independence and integrity:
Under the leadership of Billy Tauzin, the Big Pharma lobby agreed to do a $150 million Obamacare-friendly advertising campaign in return for protection against strict price controls on Medicare prescription drugs and drug re-importation from Canada (one of Obama's campaign pledges). Tauzin also agreed to chip in $80 billion from the industry to help close a gap in Medicare drug coverage For his success in brokering a deal with the administration, the former congressman turned pharmaceutical industry lobbyist, was paid $11.6 million in 2010.
The health insurers' lobbying group under Karen Ignagni cut a deal with the administration in which it gave up A and B in order to get C and D: It agreed A) to bite its tongue in the face of avalanche of new mandates and other problems, and B), to commit publicly to squeezing some $2 trillion in costs out of the system, in order to get C), a law that was supposed to force 30 million uninsured to buy insurance, and D), the all-important promise that administration would not put them all out of business by exercising the so-called public option.
The American Medical Association lent public support to Obamacare in return for promises of a "doc fix" -- protecting doctors from the automatic imposition of future reductions in their compensation. In a truly remarkable display of docility, 150 doctors from 50 states played dressy-up for the president in October, 2009 -- wearing White House-provided white lab coats as they applauded his pep talk on Obamacare. "Nobody has more credibility with the American people on this issue than you do," Obama told his guests at the photo op in the Rose Garden.
Hospital groups agreed to $150 billion in future Medicare and Medicaid cuts -- just to protect themselves against even steeper cuts down the road.
Then there was the AARP sell-out. In the fall of 2009, many people were surprised when the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) announced its support for Obamacare even though one of the ways the Democrats proposed to "pay" for the health care law was by taking an axe to the popular Medicare Advantage program and forcing millions of seniors back to the more expensive coverage of traditional Medicare. As David Catron wrote in this space ("The American Association for Retiree Plunder," 3-30-11), AARP is really an insurance company fronting as an advocacy group. Most of its revenues come from sales of "Medigap" policies that fill in for gaps in standard Medicare.
As Catron explained, "AARP endorsed a law that does real financial harm to seniors in order to reap a crop of new customers when Obamacare guts Medicare Advantage." That impression was partly confirmed later in a trove of emails made public by House Republicans. "We really need to talk," an AARP lobbyist wrote in an email to the White House, noting that calls from seniors were running 14 to one against Obamacare.
So those are some of the ways by which the president and his allies in Congress contrived to jimmy up enough credibility to pass the Affordable Health Care bill into law. Even then, with large Democrat majorities in both houses, the bill passed by narrowest of margins.
It was the same kind of luck (or ill fate) that kept the bill from being struck down in its entirety when -- as others have commented -- Chief Justice Roberts rewrote the statute in order to save it, insisting that the individual mandate was constitutionally defensible because it was, in his word, a "tax." He arrived at that conclusion despite repeated assertions by the president and others that the mandate was not a tax.
In reacting to the ruling, President Obama intoned that the Supreme Court had "reaffirmed a fundamental principle that here in America -- in the wealthiest nation on earth -- no illness or accident should lead to any family's financial ruin."
But Chief Justice Roberts said no such thing in rendering his judgment. To the contrary, he looked and sounded like Pontius Pilate publicly washing his hands. He was at pains to absolve himself and the court of further responsibility in having to deal with a very flawed and messy law. Here are two quotes from the chief justice:
"We do not consider whether the Act embodies sound policies. That judgment is entrusted to the Nation's elected leaders."
"Members of this Court are vested with the authority to interpret the law; we possess neither the expertise nor the prerogative to make policy judgments. Those decisions are entrusted to our Nation's elected leaders, who can be thrown out of office if people disagree with them [emphasis added]. It is not our job to protect people from the consequences of their political choices."
All of which sets the stage for a head-on collision in November between a president saying implement-and-improve and his challenger saying repeal-and-replace.
Let us hope that no one advocating repeal is beguiled into thinking that any part of Obamacare should be considered salvageable. The whole thing (all 2,700 pages) should be dumped in the nearest recycling bin.
It is no good pretending -- as the Obama administration has done throughout the long debate over health care -- that anything will come true if you wish for it hard enough.
Ross Kaminsky put it very well in another Spectator article in the weekend edition, when he observed: "Obama's laundry list of items which insurance companies must and must not do [is] a perfect reflection of the Democrat mentality that they can raise costs to insurers and health care providers without hurting quality, availability, or affordability for the public. It is the economic equivalent of believing, as my six-year old daughter does, in magical flying unicorns."
From the start, a clear majority of Americans has grasped that point, recognizing the lunacy of believing that it would be a good idea to launch a massive new entitlement program at a time when the nation -- according to the president's own debt panel -- was careening toward bankruptcy with the entitlement programs we already have.
Not only is the Affordable Health Care Act unaffordable; it is the exact wrong way to go about reforming and improving the health care system. When it comes to making decisions about your health care, the president and his allies in Congress believe that they know how to spend your money better than you do. They want the whole health care industry to be micro-managed by bureaucrats and political appointees, which will reduce both competition and choice -- leading to every imaginable ill from higher costs and rising premiums, to indifferent and inefficient patient care, and to rampant cronyism, favoritism, corruption, and mismanagement. One example of the favoritism that has already occurred: The administration has granted more than 1,000 waivers, mostly to unions and businesses that publicly support Obamacare -- just not for themselves.
It is time to reverse the incipient nationalization of the health care industry and to set about improving the system with new policies aimed at maximizing competition and choice.
There is ample opportunity, for instance, for enabling consumers to reap immediate benefits in the form of lowered premium and greater choice through the simple expedient of allowing health insurance to be sold across state lines. This would give individual consumers the freedom to buy low-cost, low-priced health insurance -- from a far larger universe of sellers.
As much as some of us regret the fact that Chief Justice Roberts did not join the four conservative justices in striking down the law in its entirety, he did accomplish one important thing:
He scared the hell out of the various industry lobbying groups; he made them think about what they had wrought in assisting in the creation of a law that isn't going to do them any good, and may cause them a world of hurt.
Let's hope that others wake up to the same realization before it is too late.
About the Author
Andrew B. Wilson, a former foreign correspondent who spent four years in the Middle East, now writes from St. Louis.
The American Spectator needs your help!
http://spectator.org/archives/2012/07/02/undoing-obamacare
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June 30, 2012
A Surgeon Cuts to the Heart of the ObamaCare Nightmare
By Stella Paul
The day the Supreme Court ruled in favor of ObamaCare, a friend called me. He's an extremely dedicated, much-loved surgeon, and he was frustrated and livid in equal measure.
"I've actually had a lot of experience working in all different types of environments," he began. "I've worked in a government-run socialized medical care system, and I saw the waste and inefficiency.
"The longer people worked in that system, the less work they wanted to do, because the more you wanted to do, the more they dumped on you. So after a while you stop doing it, because they're not paying you to do more. Why should you do a difficult case, a difficult surgery that will take you hours and hours to do?
"You might start out wanting to do it, but after a while, you just run out of energy, because there's no incentive. You'd have to be a superhuman being to continue to work in that system and not be worn down by it.
"Because nobody wanted to work, it would take an hour to turn over the surgical room. In my private practice now, it takes ten minutes.
"And I saw tremendous waste: closets of stuff that never got used. Nobody cared.
"Capitalism has completely transformed my sub-specialty. When I was in training, a common procedure that I do now took 40 minutes, and people needed a month of recovery. Now it takes 10 minutes, and people can go back to work almost immediately.
"And all these improvements were driven by the financial incentive. Capitalism has had a tremendously positive effect on patient care and outcome in my specialty.
"But when I go to meetings now, I see that there's very little innovation going on. Everything's being impacted by ObamaCare, which, among other things, raises taxes on medical devices.
"You know, doctors are people, and we're being hammered on all sides here.
It's the paperwork; it's insurance; it's transitioning to electronic medical records, so the government can get their mitts into your practice. It's lawsuits; it's rising overhead and decreasing compensation; it's stress upon stress upon stress.
"And a lot of doctors are going to say, 'Forget it. I don't want to do this anymore.' Guys that are 5 or 10 years older than me are just going to give up and walk away.
"Why should I be a slave to the government? You know, it used to be that doctors would do charity work at a charity hospital. Nobody wants to do it anymore, because we're too overwhelmed.
"I work 60 to 70 hours a week, so how am I supposed to fight back against this? Most doctors don't have the time to lobby their congressman or go to Washington. If you're a doctor in the trenches, you've got a stressful job; you've got a family. You're seeing the same number of patients and making half the income you used to make. People are litigious these days, so you've got to worry about lawsuits. When are you going to find time to lobby a politician?
"And the American Medical Association threw us all under the bus, even though only 18% of doctors belong to it. These people are ivory-tower academics, and they're liberals. Most of them are in academic medicine; they get a salary with some sort of incentive bonus. They show up to work and go home. They're not in the trenches like me, figuring out how to compete with other doctors and pay for malpractice insurance and how to hire four people I need to implement the electronic medical records and two people I need to deal with insurance.
"And as a doctor, I get it handed to me both ways. My taxes are raised, and my fees are lowered.
"You know, young people today who go to medical school -- I don't know what to tell them. You couldn't pay me to go to medical school today. Some doctors are going to graduate with $500,000 in debt, and how are they going to make a living?
"You're 32 or 33 years old by the time you finish your training; you're married with little kids. You've been an apprentice for 16 years, and now you're faced with socialized medicine. That's the reality on the ground. How are you supposed to manage that?
"Fortunately, I still love what I do. But I don't know what's going to happen. I think we'll wind up with a two-tiered medical system: a private one for the rich who pay cash and a mediocre one for everyone else.
"When my dad was 91, he had a heart attack and ended up with a stent. He had two more good years after that before he died. After ObamaCare, some government employee is going to decide that he is too old for this and not 'approve' for him to have that procedure.
"It's just a feeling of helplessness. The only organizations that are fighting for doctors are the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, and Docs4 Patient Care."
After he hung up, I went to the website of Docs4 Patient Care and found this statement from its president, Dr. Hal Scherz:
The Supreme Court disappointed the majority of Americans who have voiced their opposition to Obamacare, by upholding significant portions of this truly abysmal law. Their decision has left Americans now wondering what it is that the Federal Government can't compel them to do. This is perhaps the worst decision in the history of the Supreme Court and emphasizes the importance of making the correct decision for chief executive, who controls who sits on this bench.
If you want to cure the sickness that's killing America, you'll find a powerful remedy in the voting booth in November.
Write Stella Paul at Stellapundit@aol.com.
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/06/a_surgeon_cuts_to_the_heart_of_the_obamacare_nightmare.html#ixzz1zT3IpnfJ
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NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE www.nationalreview.com PRINT
Obamacare: The Final Battle
By Avik Roy
July 2, 2012 4:00 A.M.
In 1969, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross proposed that there are five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. In the wake of John Roberts’s incoherent Supreme Court flip-floppery, most conservatives appear to find themselves in stage 1 (“Hey, we held the line on the Commerce Clause!”) or stage 2 (“Roberts is a traitor!”). There are some in stage 3 (“If we lay off Roberts, maybe he’ll help us out in the future?”) and a few in stage 4. But the reality is this: Republicans must run the table in November or we will all have to accept the permanence of Obamacare.
Mitt Romney said it best on Thursday. “If we want to get rid of Obamacare, we’re going to have to replace President Obama.” Those who have been sitting on the sidelines, out of complacency or loyalty to someone else from the primaries, must get out of their chairs and get to work. But while that work must end with Mitt Romney in the White House, it must begin with a Republican majority in the Senate.
The plan
There is much confusion and disagreement among Republicans as to whether or not Obamacare can be repealed via reconciliation, which would require 50 votes in the Senate — and a Republican vice president — instead of the filibuster-proof 60. Governor Romney has committed to repealing Obamacare via reconciliation. “We have to repeal Obamacare, and I will do that . . . with a reconciliation bill. . . . We can get rid of it with 51 votes,” he said last October.
It can be done. Reconciliation can be used for any provision that is germane to the budget, and a simple bill repealing Obamacare would certainly be so. And even a more complex bill could get through reconciliation, as Jim Capretta explains, because much of Obamacare’s regulatory architecture — including the individual mandate — revolves around the law’s revenue and spending provisions.
But the Senate majority needed to repeal Obamacare is far from guaranteed. Indeed, if the election were held today, Republicans would probably fail.
The math
Today, Republicans control 47 seats in the upper chamber. Olympia Snowe’s retirement in Maine — a likely pickup for the Democrats — means that Republicans must gain four more seats to control the Senate, and probably six to gain a governing majority. Based on the latest polls in each race, if the election were held today, Republicans would get only to 49. And even 49 is not assured.
At first glance, the math seems favorable. Of the 15 races that RealClearPolitics deems most competitive, Democrats must defend 11 seats: Stabenow (Mich.), Brown (Ohio), Nelson (Fla.), McCaskill (Mo.), Tester (Mont.), and open seats in Connecticut, Hawaii, New Mexico, North Dakota, Virginia, and Wisconsin. Republicans must defend four: Brown (Mass.), Heller (Nev.), and open seats in Arizona and Indiana.
Though Republicans are likely to hold Arizona and Indiana, Massachusetts and Nevada are going to be tight. Senator Scott Brown is tied with Elizabeth Warren as of the latest poll in Massachusetts, and Senator Dean Heller is up by only one percentage point against Democrat Shelley Berkley. If Republicans were to lose both of those seats, they would have to win six of the Democrats’ eleven to get to 50, and eight to get to 52.
And that won’t be easy either. Debbie Stabenow and Sherrod Brown are up by double digits in their respective races. Hawaii and Connecticut are long shots. That leaves Florida, Missouri, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Virginia, and Wisconsin.
In those seven races, as of the latest polls, Democrats are up in Florida (by 1), North Dakota (by 1), Virginia (by 1), and New Mexico (by 5). Republicans are leading in Montana (by 2); Tommy Thompson is up 8 in Wisconsin, and nearly every potential Republican challenger is leading Senator Claire McCaskill in Missouri.
I don’t want to get into a technical discussion of the various polls’ methodologies and precision; I outsource that to Jim Geraghty. The bottom line is that conservative activists need to realize the stakes, and get active in one or more of these races.
The message
Every reader of National Review knows why Obamacare is bad. It will expand the deficit, a problem that John Roberts’s opinion makes materially worse. It rations Medicare. It forces between 17 and 25 million more people into Medicaid, a program with some of the worst health outcomes in the world, in which people die of toothaches because they can’t gain access to care. It raises taxes by more than $500 billion over ten years.
But there is one aspect of Obamacare that, above all others, will matter to the broadest swath of American voters: the degree to which the law drives up the cost of health insurance. And this is the message that opponents of Obamacare must hammer home.
When President Obama was campaigning in 2008, he repeatedly promised that Obamacare would reduce, on an absolute level, Americans’ health premiums. “We’ll start by lowering premiums by as much as $2,500 per family,” candidate Obama said in October of that year.
But the opposite has happened. In 2011, the average family health plan cost $15,073, a jump of $1,303 — 9.5 percent — from 2010, the year that the president signed Obamacare into law. Over the same period, median household income increased by only 4 percent, from $49,445 to $51,413. That means that, for the average family in 2011, health premiums amounted to a staggering 29 percent of household income.
Imagine if the amount you paid in taxes last year went up by 9 percent, even though your income barely budged. That’s what’s going on with American health insurance under Obamacare, and it’s going to get worse. Why? It all comes down to the economics of insurance.
The logic
On the day of the Supreme Court decision, President Obama was ebullient. “Insurance companies can no longer impose lifetime limits on the amount of care you receive,” he said. “They can no longer discriminate against children with preexisting conditions. They can no longer drop your coverage if you get sick. They can no longer jack up your premiums without reason. They are required to provide free preventive care like check-ups and mammograms. . . . All of this is happening because of the Affordable Care Act.”
But the simplest way to explain the economics of insurance is: There’s no such thing as a free lunch. Every one of those “benefits” that the president touts makes insurance more expensive for the vast majority of Americans.
The law’s famous guarantee that you can buy insurance after you’re already sick—the situation otherwise known as “preexisting conditions”—gives Americans a huge incentive to go without insurance until they fall ill. The dirty secret of the law’s individual mandate is that it’s too weak: Millions will decide to pay the $695 fine, knowing they can buy insurance later, instead of ponying up $15,000 for health insurance. Their absence, in turn, will drive adverse selection, the process by which only the sickest people buy insurance, driving premiums to unsustainably high levels.
The law’s community-rating provision forces young people to pay far more for health insurance, in order to subsidize the old. This is especially troubling given that the majority of people without insurance are under the age of 35. In some states, young people could see premium increases of as much as 75 percent, encouraging many of them to drop out of the system, thereby increasing costs for those who remains.
The law’s requirements that plans cover a government-approved list of “minimum essential benefits” requires that every American will have to pay for things he or she isn’t likely to consume, like acupuncture and substance-abuse services. It’s like going to a restaurant where you’re forced to have a seven-course meal when you would have been just fine with three, and you don’t like salmon anyway.
Indeed, by the very act of subsidizing insurance, the law drives up its cost. If you were given a clothes subsidy, would you spend the same amount on clothes as you did before, or splurge from time to time? The laws of economics don’t magically go away when you buy health insurance. One of the costliest aspects of the law is that it requires all plans on the new exchanges to have a generous financial value, called a “minimum actuarial value,” that will force everyone to buy costlier insurance.
A tiny minority of people will benefit financially from Obamacare: those who have serious illnesses, who are uninsured today, and who have low-enough incomes to qualify for maximal subsidies. Everyone else will pay more. Jonathan Gruber, an MIT economist who helped design Obamacare, has predicted that individual-market premiums in Colorado will go up by 19 percent by 2016, owing to the Affordable Care Act. And that’s on top of existing health-care inflation. In Minnesota, Gruber projects, premiums will go up by 29 percent because of the law. In Wisconsin, they’ll go up by 30 percent. And remember: It’s not like health insurance is cheap today.
The challenge
There are two problems, politically, in explaining these issues to American voters. The first is that these concepts aren’t always the simplest things to explain. But it must be done. After years of conservative legwork, many Americans today understand that raising taxes on the “wealthy” means raising taxes on employers. Similarly, conservatives have to do the legwork of explaining how Obamacare’s nice-sounding insurance regulations are a Trojan horse for higher premiums.
The second problem is that the half of Americans who get insurance through their employers don’t get to see how much their insurance costs. We all know what our monthly paychecks look like, but very few of us know how much our employers spend on our health plans. All we know is that we didn’t get a raise last year, or the year before. But that’s what we have to explain to voters: how the rising cost of insurance is soaking up an increasing portion of their wages.
Finally, we have to remind voters that conservatives stand for lowering the cost of insurance by removing costly mandates and by giving people freedom to sign up for the insurance plans of their choosing. Candidates for the Senate must bone up on these concepts and explain them as they campaign for office.
Health care has long been outside of the Republican comfort zone. We find it easier to talk about taxes and the debt. But if we are to repeal Obamacare and gain a mandate for our own reforms, it’s not enough to say “Obamacare is a government takeover” or “I support Mitt Romney’s plan.” It’s important to explain why Obamacare will make health care more costly, and why free-market reforms are better.
If we don’t, we will lose. And if we lose, we will be stuck with Obamacare forever. And, even worse, we will have deserved it.
— Avik Roy is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the author of The Apothecary, the Forbes blog on health-care and entitlement reform. He is a member of Mitt Romney’s Health Care Policy Advisory Group. You can follow him on Twitter at @aviksaroy.
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Morning Bell: Too Many Broken Promises in Obamacare
Alyene Senger
July 2, 2012 at 8:32 am
Yesterday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) almost called Obamacare’s individual mandate a tax, stopping mid-word to call it a “penalty”. White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew and other spokespersons echoed this talking point. This is in spite of last week’s Supreme Court ruling that deemed the mandate unconstitutional under both the Commerce Clause and the Necessary and Proper Clause, but ruled that it could stand as part of Congress’s authority to “lay and collect taxes.”
Dubbing the individual mandate a tax saved the President’s health care law, but it’s a concept that President Obama himself has strongly denied. In a 2009 interview, President Obama argued that his individual mandate was not a tax increase, stating, “I absolutely reject that notion.”
But after last week, President Obama must now admit it’s a tax or admit the mandate is unconstitutional. It’s can only be one or the other.
The mandate is in fact a tax, and it’s just one of many new taxes that hit the middle class in Obamacare. Lo and behold, another broken promise. President Obama claims that the mandate is holding people responsible, keeping with that spirit, here’s a reminder of the other promises the President and his health care law are responsible for breaking:
Promise #1: “Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase.”
Reality: The individual mandate is far from alone on Heritage’s lengthy list of Obamacare’s new taxes and penalties, many of which will heavily impact the middle class. Altogether, Obamacare’s taxes and penalties will accumulate an additional $500 billion in new revenue over a 10-year period. Yesterday, a senior economist for The Wall Street Journal revealed that 75 percent of Obamacare’s new taxes will be paid for by American families making under $120,000 a year. Among the taxes that will hit the middle class are the individual mandate, a 2.3 percent excise tax on medical devices, a 10 percent excise tax on indoor tanning, and an increase of the floor on medical deductions from 7.5 percent of adjusted gross income to 10 percent.
Promise #2: “If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period.”
Reality: Research continues to show that as many as 30 percent of employers will dump their employees from their existing health care coverage. The Administration itself has admitted that “as a practical matter, a majority of group health plans will lose their grandfather status by 2013.”
Promise #3: “I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits—either now or in the future.”
Reality: As Heritage analysts explain, “A close examination of what [the Congressional Budget Office] said, as well as other evidence, makes it clear that the deficit reduction associated with [Obamacare] is based on budget gimmicks, sleights of hand, accounting tricks, and completely implausible assumptions. A more honest accounting reveals the new law as a trillion-dollar budget buster.”
Promise #4: “I will protect Medicare.”
Reality: A Heritage Factsheet shows the various ways Obamacare ends Medicare as we know it, including severe physician reimbursement cuts that threaten seniors’ access to care and putting an unelected board of bureaucrats in charge of meeting Medicare’s new spending cap.
Promise #5: “I will sign a universal health care bill into law by the end of my first term as president that will cover every American and cut the cost of a typical family’s premium by up to $2,500 a year.”
Reality: Obamacare does not accomplish universal coverage; it leaves 26 million Americans without insurance. Moreover, Heritage research outlines 12 ways that Obamacare will increase premiums instead of reducing health care costs. Requirements that plans allow young adults to stay on their parents’ coverage and offer preventive services with no cost sharing are already leading to higher growth in premiums.
When polled, 70 percent of Americans held an unfavorable view of the individual mandate. It’s doubtful that calling it a “tax” will dramatically change their opinion. Now that Obamacare and its broken promises remain the law of the land, it’s up to the American people to see to it that the law is ultimately repealed by Congress. Then, they can move forward with real reform that puts patients’ needs first.
http://blog.heritage.org/2012/07/02/morning-bell-too-many-broken-promises-in-obamacare/?roi=echo3-12450897041-9038362-1c02533eb7ab3b8f5d154964040ced9e&utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning+Bell
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Nearly 20 percent of new Obamacare waivers are gourmet restaurants, nightclubs, fancy hotels in Nancy Pelosi’s district
By Matthew Boyle - The Daily Caller 12:07 AM 05/17/2011
Of the 204 new Obamacare waivers President Barack Obama’s administration approved in April, 38 are for fancy eateries, hip nightclubs and decadent hotels in House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s Northern California district.
That’s in addition to the 27 new waivers for health care or drug companies and the 31 new union waivers Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services approved.
Pelosi’s district secured almost 20 percent of the latest issuance of waivers nationwide, and the companies that won them didn’t have much in common with companies throughout the rest of the country that have received Obamacare waivers.
Other common waiver recipients were labor union chapters, large corporations, financial firms and local governments. But Pelosi’s district’s waivers are the first major examples of luxurious, gourmet restaurants and hotels getting a year-long pass from Obamacare.
For instance, Boboquivari’s restaurant in Pelosi’s district in San Francisco got a waiver from Obamacare. Boboquivari’s advertises $59 porterhouse steaks, $39 filet mignons and $35 crab dinners.
Then, there’s Café des Amis, which describes its eating experience as “a timeless Parisian style brasserie” which is “located on one of San Francisco’s premier shopping and strolling boulevards, Union Street,” according to the restaurant’s Web site.
“Bacchus Management Group, in partnership with Perry Butler, is bringing you that same warm, inviting feeling, with a distinctive San Francisco spin,” the Web site reads. Somehow, though, the San Francisco upper class eatery earned itself a waiver from Obamacare because it apparently cost them too much to meet the law’s first year requirements.
The reason the Obama administration says it has given out waivers is to exempt certain companies or policyholders from “annual limit requirements.” The applications for the waivers are “reviewed on a case by case basis by department officials who look at a series of factors including whether or not a premium increase is large or if a significant number of enrollees would lose access to their current plan because the coverage would not be offered in the absence of a waiver.” The waivers don’t allow a company to permanently refrain from implementing Obamacare’s stipulations, but companies can reapply for waivers annually through 2014.
Café Mason, a diner near San Francisco’s Union Square, got a waiver too. When The Daily Caller asked the manager about the waiver and how the president’s new sweeping federal health care law was affecting his restaurant, he hung up the phone. The Franciscan Crab restaurant on Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco got a waiver. Its menu features entrees ranging from about $15 to $60. The Franciscan’s general manager didn’t return TheDC’s requests for comment.
Four-star hotel Campton Place got one too, as did Hotel Nikko San Francisco, which describes itself as “four-diamond luxury in the heart of the city.” Tru Spa, which Allure Magazine rated the “best day spa in San Francisco,” received an Obamacare waiver as well.
Before hanging up on TheDC, Tru Spa’s owner said new government health care regulations, both the federal-level Obamacare and new local laws in Northern California, have “devastated” the business. “It’s been bad for us,” he said, without divulging his name, referring to the new health care restrictions.
But, the spa owner wouldn’t talk about it or the reason his company sought a waiver. He hung up after saying, “I’ve got clients on the other line, good-bye.”
San Francisco Honda, which has two of its three locations in Pelosi’s district, and San Francisco’s Royal Motors Group both got waivers too. Neither called TheDC back.
Blue & Gold Fleet, which describes itself as “the Bay Area’s premier provider of Bay Cruise, Ferry Service and Motorcoach Tours,” got an Obamacare waiver approved in April. The tour service company didn’t return TheDC’s requests for comment.
Nightclub Infusion Lounge got an Obamacare waiver approved in April too. Infusion Lounge calls itself a “sophisticated nightlife destination” with “Asian inspired sub-rosa lounge, fashioned by Hong Kong’s hottest designer, Kinney Chan,” which makes for a “true ultra lounge catering to both dancing hipsters and young professionals looking to relax in style.” Infusion Lounge’s owners didn’t return TheDC’s requests for comment either.
Simco Restaurants and several other affiliated chains based in the area got waivers for their businesses as well. For example, Gordon Yoshida, the manager of memorabilia store Only in San Francisco, told TheDC that Sandra Fletcher of Simco walked him through the process of getting an Obamacare waiver. Fletcher did not return TheDC’s requests for comment.
Pelosi’s office did not respond to TheDC’s requests for comment either.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/05/17/nearly-20-percent-of-new-obamacare-waivers-are-gourmet-restaurants-nightclubs-fancy-hotels-in-nancy-pelosi%e2%80%99s-district/#ixzz1zTcHKqye
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More people would vote Republican if you copied and pasted more articles.
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More people would vote Republican if you copied and pasted more articles.
Fuck off troll.
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How To Convince the Dem/Libs That Gubermint Can't Run Obamacare & Would Screw Up A Wet Dream!
Wal-Mart vs. The Morons
1. Americans spend $36,000,000 at Wal-Mart Every hour of every day.
2. This works out to $20,928 profit every minute!
3. Wal-Mart will sell more from January 1 to St. Patrick's Day (March 17th) than Target sells all year.
4. Wal-Mart is bigger than Home Depot + Kroger + Target +Sears + Costco + K-Mart combined.
5. Wal-Mart employs 1.6 million people, is the world's largest private employer, and most speak English.
6. Wal-Mart is the largest company in the history of the world.
7. Wal-Mart now sells more food than Kroger and Safeway combined, and keep in mind they did this in only fifteen years.
8. During this same period, 31 big supermarket chains sought bankruptcy.
9. Wal-Mart now sells more food than any other store in the world.
10. Wal-Mart has approx 3,900 stores in the USA of which 1,906 are Super Centers; this is 1,000 more than it had five years ago.
11. This year 7.2 billion different purchasing experiences will occur at Wal-Mart stores. (Earth's population is approximately 6.5 Billion.)
12. 90% of all Americans live within fifteen miles of a Wal-Mart.
You may think that I am complaining, but I am really laying the ground work for suggesting that MAYBE we should hire the guys who run Wal-Mart to fix the economy.
a.. The U.S. Postal Service was established in 1775. They had 234 years to get it right and it is broke.
b.. Social Security was established in 1935. They had 74 years to get it right and it is broke.
c.. Fannie Mae was established in 1938. They had 71 years to get it right and it is broke.
d.. War on Poverty started in 1964. They had 45 years to get it right; $1 trillion of our money is confiscated each year and transferred to "the poor" and they only want more.
e.. Medicare and Medicaid were established in 1965. They had 44 years to get it right and they are broke.
f.. Freddie Mac was established in 1970. They had 39 years to get it right and it is broke.
g.. The Department of Energy was created in 1977 to lessen our dependence on foreign oil. It has ballooned to 16,000 employees with a budget of $24 billion a year and we import more oil than ever before. They had 32 years to get it right and it is an abysmal failure.
The Guberment FAILED in every "government service" shoved down our throats while overspending our tax dollars.
AND YOU WANT AMERICANS TO BELIEVE YOU CAN BE TRUSTED WITH A GOVERNMENT-RUN HEALTH CARE SYSTEM??
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NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE www.nationalreview.com PRINT
Critical Condition
NRO’s health-care blog.
The Top Ten Worst Things in Obamacare
By Grace-Marie Turner
June 28, 2012 5:17 P.M.
“We have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it.”
— Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, March 2010
Now, all the rest of us are going to find out a lot more about what’s in the 2,700-page health overhaul law.
The president now must spend the next four months defending a law that the majority of Americans dislike, and the more they learn about it, the more they dislike it. Worse, the part of the law that is the least popular — the individual mandate — has now been declared a tax.
That’s double jeopardy for the president: The unpopular mandate stands, and it is called a tax. (And this is only one of the 20 new and higher taxes in the law.) Either the president admits it’s a tax as a way of keeping the law on the books, or he says that the Supreme Court is wrong, that it’s not a tax, in which case his law would be invalid.
It’s important to note that the Court did not “uphold Obamacare.” Two specific provisions were being challenged before the Court — the individual mandate and the Medicaid expansion. If either had been struck, then the Court could have decided whether or not to take down the whole law.
Instead, it reached a very narrow decision. The individual mandate is valid as a tax, says the Court. Now, otherwise free citizens will be required to spend our own personal, after-tax money to purchase an expensive private product — $20,000 a year for an average family — or pay a tax. And the Court said the federal government can tell states to dramatically expand their Medicaid programs but that they can’t be coerced with the threat of losing all of their federal Medicaid money if they refuse.
So let’s get ready for the debate. About seven in ten Americans had told pollsters they wanted the Supreme Court to strike down all or part of the health overhaul law. Since it didn’t do that, we all must be armed with the facts as the battles continue at least into November so the voters can issue the final verdict.
Here’s a quick checklist of the ten worst things in the law — in addition to the individual and Medicaid mandates:
1. Employer mandate. Most companies will have to provide and pay for expensive government-determined health insurance for their employees or face federal fines.
2. Anti-conscience mandate. Religious organizations will be required to provide free sterilization, contraceptives, and abortion-inducing drugs to their employees, even if it violates their religious beliefs.
3. New and higher taxes.The law contains at least 20 new taxes totaling $500 billion that will hit medical innovators, health insurance, and even the sale of your home.
4. The Independent Payment Advisory Board. IPAB will still stand, with its rationing power over Medicare.
5. State exchanges. States will be compelled to set up vast new bureaucracies to check into our finances and families so they can hand out generous taxpayer subsidies for health insurance to families earning up to $90,000 a year.
6. Medicare payment cuts. $575 billion in payment reductions to Medicare providers and Medicare Advantage plans will cause more and more physicians to stop seeing Medicare patients, exacerbating access problems.
7. Higher health-care costs. The Kaiser Family Foundation says the average price of a family policy has risen by $2,200 during the Obama administration. The president promised premiums would be $2,500 lower by this year. Hospitals, doctors, businesses, and consumers all expect their taxes and health costs to rise under Obamacare.
8. Government control over doctor decisions.Value-based payments, quality reporting requirements, and government comparative-effectiveness boards will dictate how doctors practice medicine. Nearly half of all physicians are seriously considering leaving practice, leading to a severe doctor shortage.
9. Huge deficits. The CBO has raised its cost estimate for the law to $1.76 trillion over ten years, but that is only the opening bid as more and more people lose their job-based coverage and flood into taxpayer-subsidized insurance. At this rate, the cost will be $2 trillion, not the less than $1 trillion the president promised.
10. 159 new boards, agencies, and programs: The Obama administration will work quickly to set up as many of the law’s new bureaucracies as fast as it can so they can take root before the election.
The November elections are the last hope — we must elect a Congress and a president committed to repealing Obamacare. They, and all of us, will need to be armed with the facts to explain to the American people exactly what is in this monstrous law.
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Is the internet unconstitutional?
I can't find the word in there.
Thanks.
You are an embarrassingly stupid individual. No wonder you fled to China. That $400 monthly stipend must have looked like a fortune to someone of your intellectual strength.
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Free Republic
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Doctors Despair Over Obamacare
Big Govt ^ | 7-1-12 | Wm Bigelow
Posted on July 1, 2012 9:31:52 PM EDT by Dysart
The Doctor Patient Medical Association Foundation conducted a faxed survey of random doctors in May 2012. In the survey, it is clearly delineated that the medical system as it is changing is discouraging doctors from practicing. 83% of the doctors said that current changes made them think about quitting, and 90% of them thought the path of the medical field currently was wrong.
They apparently feel that their Hippocratic oaths are being compromised; 61% of them feel that Hippocratic ethics are getting more difficult to practice, which is troubling, since one of the cardinal parts of the oath is the phrase “I will keep them from harm and injustice.”
85% of the doctors surveyed felt that the patient-physician relationship is declining. 37% of the doctors said they were just squeaking by, and 39% said things would get worse over the next five years.
The doctors were virtually unanimous that the government is at fault for medicine being on the wrong track, and feel that corporate medicine is trying to destroy private practice.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
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You are an embarrassingly stupid individual. No wonder you fled to China. That $400 monthly stipend must have looked like a fortune to someone of your intellectual strength.
I wonder if it's just an act he puts on? ???
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Roberts is a traitor and should resign his seat immediately.
goes to show you who the real partisan is......I guess all judges should rule the way you want them to or else they are "traitors who should resign".
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goes to show you who the real partisan is......I guess all judges should rule the way you want them to or else they are "traitors who should resign".
STFU 95er. Roberta violated hisoath of office as does slumbama daily.
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As a Canadian living in the United States for the past 17 years, I am frequently asked by Americans and Canadians alike to declare one health care system as the better one.
Often I'll avoid answering, regardless of the questioner's nationality. To choose one or the other system usually translates into a heated discussion of each one's merits, pitfalls, and an intense recitation of commonly cited statistical comparisons of the two systems.
Because if the only way we compared the two systems was with statistics, there is a clear victor. It is becoming increasingly more difficult to dispute the fact that Canada spends less money on health care to get better outcomes.
Yet, the debate rages on. Indeed, it has reached a fever pitch since President Barack Obama took office, with Americans either dreading or hoping for the dawn of a single-payer health care system. Opponents of such a system cite Canada as the best example of what not to do, while proponents laud that very same Canadian system as the answer to all of America's health care problems. Frankly, both sides often get things wrong when trotting out Canada to further their respective arguments.
As America comes to grips with the reality that changes are desperately needed within its health care infrastructure, it might prove useful to first debunk some myths about the Canadian system.
Myth: Taxes in Canada are extremely high, mostly because of national health care.
In actuality, taxes are nearly equal on both sides of the border. Overall, Canada's taxes are slightly higher than those in the U.S. However, Canadians are afforded many benefits for their tax dollars, even beyond health care (e.g., tax credits, family allowance, cheaper higher education), so the end result is a wash. At the end of the day, the average after-tax income of Canadian workers is equal to about 82 percent of their gross pay. In the U.S., that average is 81.9 percent.
Myth: Canada's health care system is a cumbersome bureaucracy.
The U.S. has the most bureaucratic health care system in the world. More than 31 percent of every dollar spent on health care in the U.S. goes to paperwork, overhead, CEO salaries, profits, etc. The provincial single-payer system in Canada operates with just a 1 percent overhead. Think about it. It is not necessary to spend a huge amount of money to decide who gets care and who doesn't when everybody is covered.
Myth: The Canadian system is significantly more expensive than that of the U.S.Ten percent of Canada's GDP is spent on health care for 100 percent of the population. The U.S. spends 17 percent of its GDP but 15 percent of its population has no coverage whatsoever and millions of others have inadequate coverage. In essence, the U.S. system is considerably more expensive than Canada's. Part of the reason for this is uninsured and underinsured people in the U.S. still get sick and eventually seek care. People who cannot afford care wait until advanced stages of an illness to see a doctor and then do so through emergency rooms, which cost considerably more than primary care services.
What the American taxpayer may not realize is that such care costs about $45 billion per year, and someone has to pay it. This is why insurance premiums increase every year for insured patients while co-pays and deductibles also rise rapidly.
Myth: Canada's government decides who gets health care and when they get it.While HMOs and other private medical insurers in the U.S. do indeed make such decisions, the only people in Canada to do so are physicians. In Canada, the government has absolutely no say in who gets care or how they get it. Medical decisions are left entirely up to doctors, as they should be.
There are no requirements for pre-authorization whatsoever. If your family doctor says you need an MRI, you get one. In the U.S., if an insurance administrator says you are not getting an MRI, you don't get one no matter what your doctor thinks — unless, of course, you have the money to cover the cost.
Myth: There are long waits for care, which compromise access to care.There are no waits for urgent or primary care in Canada. There are reasonable waits for most specialists' care, and much longer waits for elective surgery. Yes, there are those instances where a patient can wait up to a month for radiation therapy for breast cancer or prostate cancer, for example. However, the wait has nothing to do with money per se, but everything to do with the lack of radiation therapists. Despite such waits, however, it is noteworthy that Canada boasts lower incident and mortality rates than the U.S. for all cancers combined, according to the U.S. Cancer Statistics Working Group and the Canadian Cancer Society. Moreover, fewer Canadians (11.3 percent) than Americans (14.4 percent) admit unmet health care needs.
Myth: Canadians are paying out of pocket to come to the U.S. for medical care.Most patients who come from Canada to the U.S. for health care are those whose costs are covered by the Canadian governments. If a Canadian goes outside of the country to get services that are deemed medically necessary, not experimental, and are not available at home for whatever reason (e.g., shortage or absence of high tech medical equipment; a longer wait for service than is medically prudent; or lack of physician expertise), the provincial government where you live fully funds your care. Those patients who do come to the U.S. for care and pay out of pocket are those who perceive their care to be more urgent than it likely is.
Myth: Canada is a socialized health care system in which the government runs hospitals and where doctors work for the government.Princeton University health economist Uwe Reinhardt says single-payer systems are not "socialized medicine" but "social insurance" systems because doctors work in the private sector while their pay comes from a public source. Most physicians in Canada are self-employed. They are not employees of the government nor are they accountable to the government. Doctors are accountable to their patients only. More than 90 percent of physicians in Canada are paid on a fee-for-service basis. Claims are submitted to a single provincial health care plan for reimbursement, whereas in the U.S., claims are submitted to a multitude of insurance providers. Moreover, Canadian hospitals are controlled by private boards and/or regional health authorities rather than being part of or run by the government.
Myth: There aren't enough doctors in Canada.
From a purely statistical standpoint, there are enough physicians in Canada to meet the health care needs of its people. But most doctors practice in large urban areas, leaving rural areas with bona fide shortages. This situation is no different than that being experienced in the U.S. Simply training and employing more doctors is not likely to have any significant impact on this specific problem. Whatever issues there are with having an adequate number of doctors in any one geographical area, they have nothing to do with the single-payer system.
And these are just some of the myths about the Canadian health care system. While emulating the Canadian system will likely not fix U.S. health care, it probably isn't the big bad "socialist" bogeyman it has been made out to be.
It is not a perfect system, but it has its merits. For people like my 55-year-old Aunt Betty, who has been waiting for 14 months for knee-replacement surgery due to a long history of arthritis, it is the superior system. Her $35,000-plus surgery is finally scheduled for next month. She has been in pain, and her quality of life has been compromised. However, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Aunt Betty — who lives on a fixed income and could never afford private health insurance, much less the cost of the surgery and requisite follow-up care — will soon sport a new, high-tech knee. Waiting 14 months for the procedure is easy when the alternative is living in pain for the rest of your life.
Rhonda Hackett of Castle Rock is a clinical psychologist.
http://www.denverpost.com/ci_12523427?source=share_fb
you realize you lost 3333 after the first sentence right???
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Is the internet unconstitutional?
I can't find the word in there.
Thanks.
Genius post reported
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Genius post reported
95er.
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Bump for anyone who wants to discuss the Roberts decision.
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Is the internet unconstitutional?
I can't find the word in there.
Thanks.
Are you stupid or do you really think the internet is run by the federal government?
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Are you stupid or do you really think the internet is run by the federal government?
uhhhhhh.....actually...i t is
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uhhhhhh.....actually...it is
okay........ ::)
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uhhhhhh.....actually...it is
I assume you are referring to ICANN. If so, then what you're saying has a kernel of truth to it.
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Bump for anyone who wants to discuss the Roberts decision.
I think he was influenced by the Lefts language during the decision making process. It was pretty much "if you strike down this law then we will ruin the image of the court", Roberts got cold feet as evidenced by his strange, poorly thought out and incomprehensible wording of his decision.
He had a chance to do right, but failed as he was influenced by outside forces which isn't supposed to happen.
This whole shit show sets a really, really ,really bad precedent.
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I think he was influenced by the Lefts language during the decision making process. It was pretty much "if you strike down this law then we will ruin the image of the court", Roberts got cold feet as evidenced by his strange, poorly thought out and incomprehensible wording of his decision.
He had a chance to do right, but failed as he was influenced by outside forces which isn't supposed to happen.
This whole shit show sets a really, really ,really bad precedent.
Roberts originally voted to vote down the mandate and changed his vote at the last minute due to the assault by Leahy, Obama, the MSM, etc.
Notice how they focused on Roberts and not Kennedy beforehand to the vote? That was because it was leaked how Kennedy was so adamant that the entire law be struck down and Roberts was a little wishy washy.
Obama's thuggery and threats worked, sadly. Roberts, instead of upholding the reputation of the court, made a mockery of it by issuing a ridiculous ruling that that the mandate WAS NOT A TAX for the purposes of the Anti-Injunction Act, but could possibly vbe viewed AS A TAX for purposes of the rest. He ruled it against the commerce clause, but instead vastly increased Govt powers by issuing this insane ruling.
Of course to the "ends justify the means" Democrats, they could care less, but most people see this treason for what it is - bowing down to the Tyrant in Chiefs' threats.
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I think he was influenced by the Lefts language during the decision making process. It was pretty much "if you strike down this law then we will ruin the image of the court", Roberts got cold feet as evidenced by his strange, poorly thought out and incomprehensible wording of his decision.
He had a chance to do right, but failed as he was influenced by outside forces which isn't supposed to happen.
This whole shit show sets a really, really ,really bad precedent.
wow....very tortured logic here...."influenced by the left"..hmmmmmm...all of sudden Roberts a pantsy of the left, succumbing to pressure?...not likely,,,,,,it was actually one of two things....that Roberts truly felt that the court had drifted too far to the right and that guys like Alito-Scalia-Thomas were simply voting in lockstep with every single decision and not looking at cases on the merits.....and he felt he had to remedy this by actually being fair....
or he had an ulterior motive and wanted to maintain some respect for his court by swinging the other way upholding the bill thus avoiding public erosion of the good will the court has enjoyed....
either way to say that Roberts succumbed to pressure from Obama is truly and pathetically laughable....lotta crybabies here who are gasping at straws (again) to figure out why they lost on this issue....it just had to be Obama and the MSM AGAIN
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wow....very tortured logic here...."influenced by the left"..hmmmmmm...all of sudden Roberts a pantsy of the left, succumbing to pressure?...not likely,,,,,,it was actually one of two things....that Roberts truly felt that the court had drifted too far to the right and that guys like Alito-Scalia-Thomas were simply voting in lockstep with every single decision and not looking at cases on the merits.....and he felt he had to remedy this by actually being fair....
or he had an ulterior motive and wanted to maintain some respect for his court by swinging the other way upholding the bill thus avoiding public erosion of the good will the court has enjoyed....
either way to say that Roberts succumbed to pressure from Obama is truly and pathetically laughable....lotta crybabies here who are gasping at straws (again) to figure out why they lost on this issue....it just had to be Obama and the MSM AGAIN
Go read the reports from CBS and Salon.com before typing jackass. I swear - you 95ers are such a joke and usually get 95% of everything dead wrong just to support your Messiah.
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Go read the reports from CBS and Salon.com before typing jackass. I swear - you 95ers are such a joke and usually get 95% of everything dead wrong just to support your Messiah.
you are so stupid....this has nothing to do with Obama...despite every effort you make toward linking him to everything in your life.....in your mind he's probably the cause of your erectile dysfunction as well...
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wow....very tortured logic here...."influenced by the left"..hmmmmmm...all of sudden Roberts a pantsy of the left, succumbing to pressure?...not likely,,,,,,it was actually one of two things....that Roberts truly felt that the court had drifted too far to the right and that guys like Alito-Scalia-Thomas were simply voting in lockstep with every single decision and not looking at cases on the merits.....and he felt he had to remedy this by actually being fair....
or he had an ulterior motive and wanted to maintain some respect for his court by swinging the other way upholding the bill thus avoiding public erosion of the good will the court has enjoyed....
either way to say that Roberts succumbed to pressure from Obama is truly and pathetically laughable....lotta crybabies here who are gasping at straws (again) to figure out why they lost on this issue....it just had to be Obama and the MSM AGAIN
Brilliant legal analysis ::)
So up until this past Supreme Court session ( where in practically every single case prior Roberts concurred with the conservatives on the court and wrote numerous opinions to that effect) he suddenly said to himself "Aww shucks, i'll ignore the law, ignore Supreme Court precedent, ignore the facts, ignore the legislative history, ignore the words of the statute and look at the merits (whatever that means) so I can be more "fair".
He obviously caved to external pressures and had to draft an incomprehensible opinion in furtherance of what amounts to a legally impossible outcome.
And what public good will are you talking about? Unless the court votes for monstrosities like Miranda rights for terrorists, abortion or some other abomination, the MSM and morons like you bitch about how bad and "mean" the court is.
Here's what it is once and for all: You are a fucking idiot who doesn't know anything about the healthcare law, the Supreme Court or how to shower properly. Those three shortcomings are all interrelated and go a long way toward explaining why you think Obama is a good president.
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Brilliant legal analysis ::)
So up until this past Supreme Court session ( where in practically every single case prior Roberts concurred with the conservatives on the court and wrote numerous opinions to that effect) he suddenly said to himself "Aww shucks, i'll ignore the law, ignore Supreme Court precedent, ignore the facts, ignore the legislative history, ignore the words of the statute and look at the merits (whatever that means) so I can be more "fair".
He obviously caved to external pressures and had to draft an incomprehensible opinion in furtherance of what amounts to a legally impossible outcome.
And what public good will are you talking about? Unless the court votes for monstrosities like Miranda rights for terrorists, abortion or some other abomination, the MSM and morons like you bitch about how bad and "mean" the court is.
Here's what it is once and for all: You are a fucking idiot who doesn't know anything about the healthcare law, the Supreme Court or how to shower properly. Those three shortcomings are all interrelated and go a long way toward explaining why you think Obama is a good president.
its really weird how you bump for whoever wants to discuss the Supreme Court ruling then when its discussed you proceed to into name-calling and the obligatory Obama-bashing....as if Obama twisted Robert's arm to vote for the bill....everything was fine and hunky-dory when the court was upholding conservative thought but they vote one time for a liberal bill and you freak out and like 3333, say it has to do with Obama and the MSM..why not throw in the black panthers, ACORN, etc since you are on a roll, you girl......this has nothing to do with my opinion or whether the court is bad or mean as you put it....I thought we were going to have an intellectual conversation you fag cry-baby....I just speculated on what his motivation might be.....you emphatically state his decision had to be based on his having caved to external pressures.....why would that be so???.,,I guess you can read minds.... Roberts has the only job in the world where he does not answer to anyone.....he doesn't owe anyone an explanation as to his thought process yet you, the quasi-law graduate fagboy can ascertain from a bodybuilding board his true motives.....
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Americans See More Economic Harm Than Good in Health Law
Gallup ^ | July 5, 2012 | Gallup
Posted on July 5, 2012 9:17:57 PM EDT by Innovative
Americans are more likely to say the 2010 healthcare law upheld by the Supreme Court last week will hurt the national economy (46%) rather than help it (37%), while 18% say they don't know or that it will have no effect.
Independents polled: 34% help; 47% hurts the economy
(Excerpt) Read more at gallup.com ...
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Roberts originally voted to vote down the mandate and changed his vote at the last minute due to the assault by Leahy, Obama, the MSM, etc.
Notice how they focused on Roberts and not Kennedy beforehand to the vote? That was because it was leaked how Kennedy was so adamant that the entire law be struck down and Roberts was a little wishy washy.
Obama's thuggery and threats worked, sadly. Roberts, instead of upholding the reputation of the court, made a mockery of it by issuing a ridiculous ruling that that the mandate WAS NOT A TAX for the purposes of the Anti-Injunction Act, but could possibly vbe viewed AS A TAX for purposes of the rest. He ruled it against the commerce clause, but instead vastly increased Govt powers by issuing this insane ruling.
Of course to the "ends justify the means" Democrats, they could care less, but most people see this treason for what it is - bowing down to the Tyrant in Chiefs' threats.
Dude, Obama was as quiet as a mouse before the decision because he didn't want to piss the Justices off..where do you get this shit???????
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Dude, Obama was as quiet as a mouse before the decision because he didn't want to piss the Justices off..where do you get this shit???????
Lol. Remember his speech attacking the court you ouche?
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Lol. Remember his speech attacking the court you ouche?
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Andre - like the rest of the 95ers are blind sheep to this con man. they would accept a life of slavery in chains under the whip for this creep if he asked them to do so. Obama has done nothing but shit on blacks for 4 years and they still worship this fraud, its pathetic.
I saw one stupid ass Jamaican in the DD this morning with one of those early 90's Africa pendants and an Obama shirt that said "Myobama" and listed a punch of delusional shit like you see w Kwanza and shit like that.
I just shook my head in disgust.
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Andre - like the rest of the 95ers are blind sheep to this con man. they would accept a life of slavery in chains under the whip for this creep if he asked them to do so. Obama has done nothing but shit on blacks for 4 years and they still worship this fraud, its pathetic.
I saw one stupid ass Jamaican in the DD this morning with one of those early 90's Africa pendants and an Obama shirt that said "Myobama" and listed a punch of delusional shit like you see w Kwanza and shit like that.
I just shook my head in disgust.
That was Andre.
You should have taken a picture of the fool and posted it here so that we could all laugh at the liberal dummy.
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That was Andre.
You should have taken a picture of the fool and posted it here so that we could all laugh at the liberal dummy.
Dude then go in an unmarked van that was all beat up with grafitti on it and a broken tail light.
Welcome to Da Bronx aka Obamaville
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33,
Do you believe Romneycare was a TAX upon the ppl of mass?
I mean, mitt called it a PENALTY.
but is there a frreakin difference?
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33,
Do you believe Romneycare was a TAX upon the ppl of mass?
I mean, mitt called it a PENALTY.
but is there a frreakin difference?
Mitt has got himself into a dilly of a pickle here.
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33,
Do you believe Romneycare was a TAX upon the ppl of mass?
I mean, mitt called it a PENALTY.
but is there a frreakin difference?
Yes its a tax.
Both need to move on from this bullshit.
The issue is the economy, period. Obama is perfectly ok w this country deep sixing itself under his agenda.
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Yes its a tax
Both need to move on from this bullshit.
The issue is the economy, period. Obama is perfectly ok w this country deep sixing itself under his agenda.
Maybe the jobs numbers will give mittens the ability to finally take a position about antyhing.
he's scared to piss off anyone. Here's the prob 33- -Romeny WILL NOT tell us what he'll cut. He flirted with saying "hell yes, I will cut teachers, firefighters and police" then instead of sticking with it - reverted to "but but but states do that" - neglecting the fact they use federal dollars to do it.
Romney WOULD do well today with the numbers - IF he had a plan other than "Obama is bad and I'll be better, but I can't say how"
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Maybe the jobs numbers will give mittens the ability to finally take a position about antyhing.
he's scared to piss off anyone. Here's the prob 33- -Romeny WILL NOT tell us what he'll cut. He flirted with saying "hell yes, I will cut teachers, firefighters and police" then instead of sticking with it - reverted to "but but but states do that" - neglecting the fact they use federal dollars to do it.
Romney WOULD do well today with the numbers - IF he had a plan other than "Obama is bad and I'll be better, but I can't say how"
I already said Myth is a pussy and is horrible. What more do you want? I'm A B O - it is what it is.
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Why Obamacare is Bad for America
by Marc Gindin
July 5, 2012
Admit it. You have an acquaintance, a coworker, maybe even a -- gulp -- friend equivocal about, or even in support of, Obamacare because it gets health insurance to more people. Maybe you've argued about this at length in the past, both of you agreeing to disagree but you, in your own mind, wondering what more you could have said to make your point that Obamacare is bad for the country. Good news: you've stumbled on to the right article.
We now lay out the case that Obamacare is bad for America. There's nothing complicated or twisted about this argument; in fact, these issues are quite obvious.
So why is Obamacare bad policy? Well, first, Obamacare is bad for America because a majority of people don't want it. Support for repeal, according to months of polling data by Rasmussen Reports consistently holds between 51 and 60 percent of Americans, an incredible level of opposition for a federal law. The oft-repeated line that Obamacare was rammed down the throats of Americans is true -- because a majority pressured their representatives to vote against it. No law with such a weak level of support gets off the ground on very solid footing.
So the fact that such a comprehensive overhaul like Obamacare is so unpopular makes it bad policy on its face. But perhaps your acquaintance believes that government was ahead of the curve here, knowing it had to do something to address the growing health care crisis? Not so much -- because the crisis is one largely of the government's own making. It was government, after all, that passed the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) of 1986 that forces hospitals to provide care for anyone, anytime without regard to citizenship, legal residence, or ability to pay. Sounds compassionate, right? For free-riders it is. For everyone else it's VERY expensive, for as more and more people, especially lower income folks and illegal aliens, utilize emergency rooms as their primary care providers and do not pay for services, hospitals try to find some of that money through higher and higher costs pushed onto those who DO pay -- including individuals and insurance companies. What's the fix? Get the government out of hospital care mandates and let emergency rooms cater to those who CAN pay -- either because they have the means or because they have insurance. Stop forcing hospitals to offer precious man hours and resources to freeloaders.
But EMTALA isn't the only government mandate that has made health insurance more expensive. The health insurance industry is so heavily regulated that states -- and now the federal government -- decide exactly what insurance polices must cover, how much to cover, where customers must reside to purchase coverage, and who else in the customer's family must be eligible to piggyback on that coverage. As a health insurance consumer, an individual has very little choice now regarding who to buy insurance from or what type of insurance to buy. Perhaps a younger, healthier adult would prefer to buy a cheaper catastrophic plan that covers the bigger, yet less likely events, choosing to pay for smaller expenses like doctor visits and basic lab work out of pocket. Obamacare bars this. Perhaps a consumer in Pennsylvania likes a plan offered by an insurance company in Ohio and would like to purchase that policy. Obamacare does nothing to permit insurance companies to sell policies across state lines. Perhaps an individual just wants to disconnect from the system, not carry insurance, and pay for medical care completely out of pocket because he has the means. Obamacare bars this as well (unless one pays the penalty/fine/tax, that is). So with fewer companies selling insurance with fewer choices, the market breeds far less competition, and prices rise. Think about that local cable company that owns a near-monopoly on television signals in many areas around the country -- and how expensive those monthly bills are. So what's the fix here? Get the government out of the market and allow insurance companies to sell insurance in all 50 states with the coverage types and levels people want.
But your acquaintance has one final concern: the uninsured. These are the folks with pre-existing conditions who private insurance companies consider bad risks, folks who often can't get a private insurance policy or can't get one that isn't prohibitively expensive. What are those unlucky folks to do in a country without EMTALA, without a guaranteed insurance plan? Some may have savings. Others can take jobs with health benefits. Still others might lean on family, friends, their religious institutions, or programs in their neighborhoods and towns for financial support. And in the most dire of circumstances, there is no prohibition on states from creating health benefits for their highest risk, least insurable citizens with the consent of the taxpayers of the states. In the end, many states might do this -- some might not. But in a country of 50 sovereign, competing states, someone who is desperate, someone needing a certain level of state-provided or state-subsidized health benefit can look to every state for the best option and move to the one that will help the most without being trapped by Obamacare, which may or may not be designed to help.
The real question for your acquaintance, your friend, your coworker, your business partner, your mother -- whoever -- is that if government has created the health care crisis by forcing prices upward through its own destructive policies, how on Earth is it feasible that Obamacare will fix the problem instead of compounding it? The real solution is to unwind decades of federal interference in health care: repeal EMTALA, free the health insurance markets and allow insurance companies to compete against one another, and free people who really do need help to get it from the most local of sources first -- friends, family, charitable folks, and folks in their communities. With this approach America preserves a top-notch health care system that works for almost everyone while controlling costs and providing the services people want. That, in the end, is a win for everyone.
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Andre - like the rest of the 95ers are blind sheep to this con man. they would accept a life of slavery in chains under the whip for this creep if he asked them to do so. Obama has done nothing but shit on blacks for 4 years and they still worship this fraud, its pathetic.
I saw one stupid ass Jamaican in the DD this morning with one of those early 90's Africa pendants and an Obama shirt that said "Myobama" and listed a punch of delusional shit like you see w Kwanza and shit like that.
I just shook my head in disgust.
unfortunately YOU are the only slave to Obama,.,,you talk about him incessantly and bring him up even in threads that have nothing to do with him.....expect a knock on your door soon by the secret service as the election grows near....I'm sure they already have an eye on you
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HSA's Targeted by Obama
Red State ^ | 7/6/12 | Darling
Posted on July 6, 2012 10:42:29 PM EDT by 54fighting
Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) are an oasis in the desert of government-run health care. That is why President Obama’s health care bureaucrats are intent on killing HSAs.
According to a recent Wall Street Journal piece by 2021, health care spending will be almost one fifth of the whole U.S. economy. In nine years, the government share will be about half.
By 2021, health-care spending is likely to be nearly a fifth of the U.S. economy, at 19.6% of gross domestic product, up from 17.9%, or roughly a sixth, in 2010. The government share of the spending also would be greater, at nearly 50%, up from 46%, mostly because of the anticipated growth in Medicare enrollment.
The government is projected to spend more on health care than the private sector. That is a degree of socialism that is accelerating under ObamaCare and will cause the health care providers to be less responsive to consumers.
HSAs are a force for good in health care markets and have been a positive element of the market since their creation in 2003. An HSA is an account that individuals can set up to earn tax free health care funds on an annual basis. They have been increasing in use since the day they were created.
The idea behind these private accounts is to empower the consumer to make decisions on how to spend tax exempt dollars. Clearly, the last bastion of free market forces with the existence of HSAs is a threat to government run health care. As a result, government bureaucrats are targeting HSAs for death.
HSAs provide quality medical coverage at the direction of the policyholder — not the government or insurance company bureaucrats. That is why liberals hate them.
HSAs provide power to the consumer to make health care choices. People who have them, love them, because it empowers the consumer to make their own choices.
It should not come as a surprise that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is promulgating regulations that could rip 5 million policies out of the hands of small business plans and individuals. Known as “Medical Loss Ratio,” these new regulations will make it nearly impossible for individuals or small businesses to use HSAs in the ObamaCare health exchanges.
Many states will resist setting up ObamaCare exchanges for fear that the federal government will use these exchanges to control state based health care policy. The battle over full repeal of ObamaCare will be fought into the fall elections, yet the bureaucrats in the Obama Administration will be working overtime to implement a law they hope will not be repealed by the voters this fall.
This crushing of free market HSAs is consistent with the liberal idea of creeping socialism. They will not exterminate the free market in one day, or even one year, but over a long drawn out period of time. The slow creep to socialism is difficult to stop, because it is incremental and done in small steps and by quiet bureaucrats who you will never hear about.
We all known that ObamaCare was built on a foundation of deceit but one promise made by the president was perfectly clear — he said that if you liked your plan and wanted to keep it — you could. Add this to the long list of broken Obama promises. Apparently Obama’s promise to allow you to keep your plan will not extend to HSAs should this new “Medical Loss Ratio” rule be implemented by Obama’s HHS Department.
Now that the Supreme Court has tossed another roadblock in the way of full repeal of ObamaCare, conservatives need to dig in and defend HSAs as one of the few remaining free market ideas left that provides consumers with the power over health care decisions.
Many conservatives understand that ObamaCare was drafted in such a way as to deftly move people out of the private health market and into a government-run system. Individuals and small business HSAs policyholders appear to be the first guinea pig in this experiment.
Congress needs to make sure to play defense on the free market and make sure that HSAs are not the next casualty of government centered health care.
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This thread is four pages in and I still don't have the bottom line on Obamacare.
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This thread is four pages in and I still don't have the bottom line on Obamacare.
you expected to get that from 3333???????? ???
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you expected to get that from 3333???????? ???
I want coachisright and Fox news links.
I don't know how to work a browser.
My mom gets me to this page.
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I want coachisright and Fox news links.
I don't know how to work a browser.
My mom gets me to this page.
your mom is slacking....3333's mom feeds and changes him
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I want coachisright and Fox news links.
I don't know how to work a browser.
My mom gets me to this page.
Bottomline:
We are now a socialist society. Truthtellers/patriots like 33... is now in jail or executed.
There are no doctors anymore they quit to become dustmen.
There is X million people who now have access to health insurance and might actually survive getting sick but they apparently live in the twilight zone so they dont matter
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Jack Mintz: If Obamacare is a tax and not a penalty, Americans could be taxed for not biking.
National Post>Financial Post ^ | Jack Mintz
Posted on Sunday, July 08, 2012 10:52:52
Jack Mintz: If Obamacare is a tax and not a penalty, Americans could be taxed for not biking
Taxing people on what they don’t consume creates a dangerous precedent
Talk about confusion.
First U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts decides that the Obamacare mandate is really a tax. Then the Republicans admonished the Democrats for raising taxes, followed by Democrats’ insistence — to avoid the tax-and-spend epithet — that the health mandate payment is a penalty. Then, of all people, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney sides with the Democrats, since his own Massachusetts plan had a similar levy on the uninsured population. Next, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a VP contender, claims the mandate is both a tax and a penalty.
Great drama, but in the scheme of things, this Supreme Court decision reasserts the power of governments to levy taxes of all sorts, making it very much a political decision. Worse, the decision opens up a new approach to taxing people that sets a dangerous precedent, not only for the United States but for others like Canada.
Under Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, individuals who do not purchase health insurance pay a “shared-responsibility payment,” starting in 2014. For example, by 2016, the payment is 2.5% of individual income, with a minimum of $695 per year and a maximum that is the average yearly premium for insurance that covers 60% of the cost of 10 specified services (expected to be about $4,800). The payment would be reimbursed as part of the income tax remitted by an expected four million U.S. taxpayers.
Even though the act describes the payment as a penalty, Judge Roberts argues that it is not. The shared-responsibility payment is not a punishment for an unlawful act, he reasons. Instead, the payment is based on income and household characteristics, like dependent children, that determine the amount owing. Nothing in the legislation states it is illegal not to buy insurance and non-filers need not pay the tax.
Judge Roberts then contends that the shared-responsibility payment is like any other tax that raises revenue for governments. Like excise taxes and tariffs, the tax is intended to change behaviour — in this case to encourage individuals to buy health insurance, just like tariffs that encourage home-based manufacturing or sales taxes to discourage smoking. The mandate tax cannot be so high as to force all individuals to purchase health insurance — “the power to tax is not the power to destroy.”
For tax-policy eggheads, the question as to what is a tax versus a penalty is pretty exciting stuff. Most citizens look at taxes, fees and penalties as taking money out of their pocketbooks, no matter the name. For governments designing policy and legislation, however, it is crucial to define correctly the type of levy being imposed to make sure legislation is appropriately framed. Advertisement
Governments raise all sorts of taxes and levies to fund public services or change behaviour. Taxes such as income, sales and payroll levies are compulsory payments to the government. Some are “benefit taxes” whereby a payment is made to a compulsory-enrolled social program like social security or health care. Non-tax levies like user charges and royalties are cost-recovery payments for a government service that people may choose or not to purchase. Penalties discourage illegal behaviour.
In the case of Obama’s shared responsibility payment, it could have fallen into one of several categories depending on design.
As a penalty, the Obama levy is not a good example. The penalty is not related to the social cost associated with those not buying insurance, which is the higher premiums that would be set on those purchasing health insurance. If the penalty was set at the household cost of enrolling in a health insurance plan for all (and unrelated to the income tax), it would have been more like a penalty for not buying a plan.
Nor is the shared responsibility payment a good example of a user charge or benefit tax. When an American does not have health insurance, the patient can still obtain subsidized services from community and hospital services often supported by the government. In these circumstances, it could be argued that the payment is used to cover the public cost of these uninsured services. However, the payment is unrelated to these benefits, so it therefore does not qualify as a user fee or benefit tax.
This leaves the shared-responsibility payment to be similar to an excise tax to change behaviour and raise revenue, as Roberts contends. Around the world, governments levy all sorts of excises, such as those on cigarettes and liquor (to discourage smoking and drinking), luxuries, fuel and tariffs on imported goods. What is perhaps troubling about Roberts’ excise-tax argument is that these taxes are intended to discourage particular forms of consumption and indirectly encourage consumption of something else.
But it is hard to think of excise taxes on things we don’t consume. It is therefore difficult to think of taxes similar to the Obamacare mandate payment. This does not mean that the mandate payment is not a tax, since governments can institute taxes in innovative ways.
Roberts did not mention that some people could choose not to buy a regulated health insurance plan if they prefer to self-insure. A person could put some savings aside to fund future health care, just like funding retirement and other individual needs. In effect, the Obama shared-responsibility payment is a tax on not consuming regulated privately provided health insurance in the United States.
More worrisome, this approach to taxation opens up new avenues. For example, governments could impose taxes on firms that do not provide pension plans. They could tax people who choose not to bike to work. Or they could tax people who don’t go to publicly funded universities or colleges.
After the reading the judgment, I do think Roberts is right that the mandate tax is a tax, not a penalty. However, if we start to tax people according to what they don’t consume, an endless number of new taxes could be concocted to promote government priorities. That is a new ball of wax.
Financial Post
Jack M. Mintz is Palmer chair at the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary.
________________________ ________________________ __________________
Bottom line is that the thugs who support ThugCare are a bunch of totalitarian freaks.
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latimes.com/health/la-me-cap-healthcare-20120709,0,5687736.column
latimes.com
CAPITOL JOURNAL
'Affordable' Care Act? Not so much for Sacramento
Obama's healthcare overhaul is one more costly program for a red-ink state.
George Skelton
Capitol Journal
July 9, 2012
In Washington, it's called the Affordable Care Act. In Sacramento, it could be become known as another budget buster.
Obamacare — as it's pugnaciously tagged by the political right — may not be affordable at all for California state government.
Soon after the federal healthcare act was passed by Congress in 2010, the Schwarzenegger administration in Sacramento calculated a state price tag of up to $2.65 billion annually.
The Brown administration has torn up that price tag, but doesn't have a new one. They're working on it, "trying to be much more precise," says Len Finocchio, associate director of the Department of Health Care Services.
Good luck on that. As Sacramento consistently demonstrates, being precise on government spending projections is virtually impossible.
But Finocchio acknowledges that the federal act will result in a heavier state financial load. "We almost certainly will be adding Medi-Cal enrollees, and that will be a cost," he notes.
The additional burden on the states is a negative aspect of the healthcare overhaul that seldom gets discussed, especially in Obama-rooting, liberal-dominated Sacramento.
It's as if somehow it would be contradictory — even Democratic heresy — to support a laudable expansion of healthcare coverage and to also acknowledge that it was going to require more California tax dollars. To ignore the cost is to be intellectually dishonest.
There's a lot of emphasis on the additional federal funds — up to $15 billion annually — expected to be spent in California because of the healthcare law.
But there will be an added state cost for the expansion of Medi-Cal, the California version of the federal Medicaid program for the poor. Finocchio estimates that up to 1.6 million more Californians will enroll in Medi-Cal. But it's really anybody's guess. Each person will cost the state more money.
Some of those enrollees will be people currently eligible for Medi-Cal but for whatever reason — perhaps stigma — haven't signed up. Under the new law, it will be easier and more beneficial to enroll.
The other newcomers to Medi-Cal will be people who became eligible only because of the new law's looser eligibility rules.
The cost of coverage for the currently eligible will be shared 50-50 by the feds and the state. Washington will pay 100% of the tab for newly eligible enrollees for two years, then reduce it to 95% and permanently kick in 90% starting in 2020.
In all, 7 million Californians now are uninsured. Starting in 2014, more than 2 million are expected to buy policies with federal subsidies for families earning $92,000 or less.
"We want to make it as easy as buying a book on Amazon," says Peter Lee, executive director of the California Health Benefit Exchange, an online market where consumers and small businesses will be able to comparison shop for medical insurance.
"This is by far the biggest change in health coverage since Medicare" was enacted in 1965, he says.
But the big cost to the state will be for the generous expansion of Medi-Cal, a Medicare offshoot.
And it's ironic because California can't even afford its current Medi-Cal program. It has been cutting back on poor people's care in recent years to staunch budget bleeding.
The state budget passed by the Legislature and signed by Gov. Jerry Brown last month included more than $1 billion in cuts to Medi-Cal and other health programs.
Two years ago, after passage of the federal act, Kim Belshe, then secretary of the California Health and Human Services Agency, told me: "Medicaid is crumbling. It makes no sense to be building on a house that's falling apart."
And then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proclaimed: "I have always supported the need for comprehensive health reform. However, for healthcare reform to succeed, states must either have the flexibility to live within the revenues that are available to them or the federal resources to fully fund its mandates."
In upholding the constitutionality of Obama's prized act, theU.S. Supreme Courtgave the states an opportunity to bow out of the Medicaid expansion without penalty. But there's virtually no chance that California will take the court up on its offer.
First, California always has had one of the most generous Medicaid programs for patients — although for physicians it's one of the worst because of low fees.
Second, as Finocchio notes: "It's hard for politicians to take something away" once it has been given.
The Brown administration has been moving at full speed to position California for the act's implementation. In fact, it already has begun covering 280,000 people — mostly childless adults — as part of a demonstration program.
"This is a very great day," state Health and Human Services Secretary Diana Dooley declared after the court gave the act the green light. "We are in the full-go mode here."
Brown asserted that the court's decision "removes the last roadblock to fulfilling President Obama's historic plan to bring healthcare to millions of uninsured citizens."
But it's another state cost that no one is considering how to pay for — not nearly as extravagant as the mostly unfunded bullet train, but the same basic idea: meritorious, but moneyless.
Hey, what's the hurry? Maybe Mitt Romney will boot Obama, Republicans will capture the Senate and they'll repeal Obamacare.
Maybe the California economy will be roaring back by 2014 and pumping barrels of tax dollars into Sacramento. Maybe the governor and Legislature will reform the state's outdated tax system so it generates a reliable revenue stream.
One thing is certain: Something better happen or California will be stuck with yet another government program it can't afford.
george.skelton@latimes.com
Copyright © 2012, Los Angeles Times
________________________ ________________________ _______
BOTTOM LINE IS THAT THUGCARE MAKES STATES SICK
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:D
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Remember when Glenn Beck said that he could not deny that Obama had established re-education camps?
Whatever became of that?
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Remember when Glenn Beck said that he could not deny that Obama had established re-education camps?
Whatever became of that?
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i want to know where are the death panels :D :D :D :D :D
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i want to know where are the death panels :D :D :D :D :D
Right here.
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This doesn't answer my question.
In which state are the re-education camps?
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July 10, 2012 4:00 A.M.
Obamacare: Storm Coming
Amid the debate over mandates, more fundamental medical problems are overlooked.
By Marc Siegel
There may be a debate over whether Obamacare’s individual mandate is a penalty or a tax, but there is no debate among doctors and their patients about the fact that Obamacare will be bad for America’s health.
The climate in my medical office is changing; my patients sense that a storm is coming. They are worried, and there is little I can do to reassure them. They are used to my office manager getting approvals for the CT scans, mammograms, PSAs, and MRIs I order, and they realize that many of these tests will no longer be covered by insurance once Obamacare’s committees — which look at so-called comparative-effectiveness research and review current guidelines — are through with them.
Last week, with the Fourth of July looming, I was able to get a quick CT scan to rule out appendicitis for one patient, and an ultrasound of the legs to quickly diagnose a blood clot for another. Tests like these — ordered solely on the basis of my medical intuition – may not be possible in a few years. Since in both cases the symptoms weren’t “textbook,” I would probably have had to appeal to some Kafkaesque committee, wasting precious time; in an extreme instance, this could even cost a patient his or her life.
My patients know that their premiums will be going up and that, paradoxically, they will be receiving less service for their money. This is what happens when more people enter the system and are covered with easy-to-overuse insurance. Patients who overuse services will ultimately crowd out legitimate use for the group, as more regulations are imposed by both public and private insurers to preserve their bottom lines. Unfortunately, this process jeopardizes the art of medicine and real medical treatments, as doctors are pressured to conform to guidelines and insurers refuse to cover creative solutions. Obamacare caters to the worried well by allowing anyone to use the insurance, whether he or she is sick or not, with lower co-pays and deductibles and therefore no incentive against overuse. My patients also realize that I will be paid less for seeing them — first by Medicare and Medicaid, and then the private insurers will follow suit. Patients anticipate longer waits in my office and less time to spend with me. No one is asking me any more when I will change my office carpet or paint the peeling walls.
My patients know that there is a doctor shortage, and that many of the doctors who are practicing medicine today are not accepting their insurance. They know that this reality applies to specialists as well as primary-care doctors. Nurse practitioners are well trained and have a focus on nutrition and prevention that many doctors lack, but my patients know they are not interchangeable with me.
My patients are smart, and they can see into the Obamacare future, but there are a few things they may not anticipate. First, I believe our newest technology is in jeopardy because it is made for targeted, super-specialized treatment. We have been leaving the age of one-size-fits-all solutions and entering the age of personalized genetic and immunological treatments for cancer and other chronic diseases. Not only are these treatments expensive, but they also won’t work with an insurance or government-run model of care, which cannot justify a big expense for a treatment for a small group of bpatients (known as an orphan drug). This problem already exists in the current health-care world (Avastin and other targeted treatments for cancer, as well as the latest surgical techniques, are not always covered), but it will only get worse with Obamacare, which has strained to throw the insurance blanket over more and more people.
Second, there will be fewer and fewer opportunities to pay for health care out of pocket. Flexible-spending accounts will be reduced to less than $2,500 per year beginning in 2013, and tax deductions for medical services will be harder to get. Paying out of pocket makes a patient more aware of what he or she is getting for the money and, even with the tax deduction, less likely to see a doctor unless the need is real. Reducing these options is one of Obamacare’s big mistakes.
Third, as long as doctors practice in a climate where frivolous lawsuits are a constant threat, they will be particularly vulnerable to the whims of Obamacare. Remember, if I believe you should have a test for your prostate or your lungs or your breast but insurance won’t cover it, I am the only one liable if there is a bad outcome, not the insurance company, and not the government agency that issues guidelines insisting the test isn’t necessary. Even if I were simply following a government guideline, I could still be sued frivolously for a bad outcome.
Of course, there will still be doctors who consider medicine a calling rather than a business, doctors who will continue to practice medicine with the same careful, caring approach, no matter how it affects their bottom lines. This may be the only way for doctors to continue to feel good about what they do, but unfortunately, it is not the most practical way to survive the Obamacare storm.
— Marc Siegel, M.D., is an associate professor of medicine at the NYU Langone Medical Center and medical director of the center’s Doctor Radio. He is a member of the Fox News Medical A Team and the author of The Inner Pulse: Unlocking the Secret Code of Sickness and Health.
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http://newsok.com/obamacare-a-minefield-for-workers-in-oklahoma/article/3691058/?page=1
Great article for you leftist panzies still confused on ThugCare.
Its a freaking disaster.
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Auditors: Obama administration is bending health law
By Stephen Dinan
The Washington Times
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
Congress’s non-partisan investigative arm said Wednesday President Obama is stretching the law to give bonuses to mediocre private Medicare plans — an $8 billion program the auditors had already urged the administration to cancel.
In a pointed letter, the Government Accountability Office’s chief lawyer said the administration hasn’t shown that it can learn anything by a “demonstration” project to pay bonuses to average-performing plans in the Medicare Advantage program. The lawyer also questioned “the agency’s legal authority to undertake the demonstration.”
Opponents have said the $8 billion project amounts to a slush fund designed to cover up the Medicare cuts in Mr. Obama’s health care law, at least until 2014 when the law kicks into full effect.
The administration counters that it’s using the money to learn what kinds of incentives can spur private companies to offer better coverage.
The GAO, Congress’s independent auditors, said that’s a stretch, since the demonstration seems designed to produce little useful data and could even reduce incentives for private plans to provide better care.
Because the demonstrations will likely fail, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which is part of her department, don’t have the authority to enact them, GAO said.
“Although CMS stated its expectation that plans will use additional bonus payments to improve the quality of care provided to beneficiaries, it did not address the fact that current Medicare regulations preclude plans’ ability to do so,” GAO General Counsel Lynn H. Gibson wrote.
The administration didn’t reply to a request for comment Wednesday afternoon.
Ms. Sebelius had previously rejected the audit agency’s findings and said her department would move ahead with the demonstration project.
Republican opponents of Democrats’ health law said the GAO letter proves the administration is trying to cover for the law’s cuts to Medicare Advantage, an alternative private plan-based system that provides coverage for about a quarter of all Medicare beneficiaries.
“Lacking the legal authority to undertake a project of this magnitude shows how the Obama administration tried to use a technicality to sidestep Congress and write itself a blank check to spend more money for political purposes leading into this year’s elections,” said Sen. Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, who has been keeping a close eye on the matter.
Earlier this year GAO issued a report saying the program was likely doomed to fail. In unusually stern language, the auditors urged the administration to cancel it altogether.
Wednesday’s letter went a step further in questioning the legal authority of the administration even to go forward.
GAO answers to Congress and does not have independent authority to halt the demonstration project. Congress could withdraw funding, but Democrats have been wary of taking any action that would appear to undo major parts of the health law.
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Obamacare Now Estimated to Cost $2.6 Trillion in First Decade
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obamacare-now-estimated-cost-26-trillion-first-decade_648413.html
11:29 AM, Jul 11, 2012 • By DANIEL HALPER
The Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee will later today release the following chart, detailing the rising projected cost of President Obama's signature legislation, Obamacare:
The latest estimate, as the chart details, is that Obamacare will cost $2.6 trillion dollars in its first real decade. The bill does not fully go into effect until 2014, therefore the estimate begins with that year.
"President Obama promised a joint session of Congress in 2009 to spend $900 billion over ten years on his health care law: 'Now, add it all up, and the plan that I’m proposing will cost around $900 billion over 10 years.' Adding up all the different spending provisions in the health care law, however, (including closing the Medicare 'donut hole,' implementation costs, and other spending) total gross spending over the FY 2010–19 period is about $1.4 trillion, based on CBO estimates," the Senate Budget Committee Republican staff explains. "And most of the major spending provisions in the law do not even take effect until 2014. Congressional Democrats delayed these provisions in order to show only six years of spending under the plan in the original 10-year budget window (from FY2010-19) used by CBO at the time the law was enacted. Therefore, the original estimate concealed the fact that most of the law’s spending only doesn’t even begin until four years into the 10-year window. A Senate Budget Committee analysis (based on CBO estimates and growth rates) finds that that total spending under the law will amount to at least $2.6 trillion over a true 10-year period (from FY2014–23)—not $900 billion, as President Obama originally promised."
The chart is being released now to coincide with the House vote later today to repeal Obamacare.
As the chart notes, "Estimates of the gross outlays under the President's health care law in nominal dollars using CBO estimates of major coverage provisions, as well as Senate Budget Committee Republican projections based on CBO estimates of the remaining costs."
________________________ ____________
Another Obama lie.
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Obamacare Now Estimated to Cost $2.6 Trillion in First Decade
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obamacare-now-estimated-cost-26-trillion-first-decade_648413.html
11:29 AM, Jul 11, 2012 • By DANIEL HALPER
The Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee will later today release the following chart, detailing the rising projected cost of President Obama's signature legislation, Obamacare:
The latest estimate, as the chart details, is that Obamacare will cost $2.6 trillion dollars in its first real decade. The bill does not fully go into effect until 2014, therefore the estimate begins with that year.
"President Obama promised a joint session of Congress in 2009 to spend $900 billion over ten years on his health care law: 'Now, add it all up, and the plan that I’m proposing will cost around $900 billion over 10 years.' Adding up all the different spending provisions in the health care law, however, (including closing the Medicare 'donut hole,' implementation costs, and other spending) total gross spending over the FY 2010–19 period is about $1.4 trillion, based on CBO estimates," the Senate Budget Committee Republican staff explains. "And most of the major spending provisions in the law do not even take effect until 2014. Congressional Democrats delayed these provisions in order to show only six years of spending under the plan in the original 10-year budget window (from FY2010-19) used by CBO at the time the law was enacted. Therefore, the original estimate concealed the fact that most of the law’s spending only doesn’t even begin until four years into the 10-year window. A Senate Budget Committee analysis (based on CBO estimates and growth rates) finds that that total spending under the law will amount to at least $2.6 trillion over a true 10-year period (from FY2014–23)—not $900 billion, as President Obama originally promised."
The chart is being released now to coincide with the House vote later today to repeal Obamacare.
As the chart notes, "Estimates of the gross outlays under the President's health care law in nominal dollars using CBO estimates of major coverage provisions, as well as Senate Budget Committee Republican projections based on CBO estimates of the remaining costs."
________________________ ____________
Another Obama lie.
MSM should be all over this. I'll be holding my breath.
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http://newsok.com/obamacare-a-minefield-for-workers-in-oklahoma/article/3691058/?page=1
Great article for you leftist panzies still confused on ThugCare.
Its a freaking disaster.
How about you copy and paste it?
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http://washingtonstatewire.com/blog/staggering-health-insurance-premiums-right-around-the-corner-predicts-premera-vice-president
50-70% rate hikes likely.
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http://washingtonstatewire.com/blog/staggering-health-insurance-premiums-right-around-the-corner-predicts-premera-vice-president
50-70% rate hikes likely.
200 million a day :D
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http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/experts-argue-obamacare-mistake-could-doom-key-part-212811734.html
Bbboooommmmmmm
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MSM should be all over this. I'll be holding my breath.
I thought you were a christian ??? Helping the 30 million get health care seems like a good and christian thing to do. However you focus on the $$
"I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”
You are no christian amigo sorry
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I thought you were a christian ??? Helping the 30 million get health care seems like a good and christian thing to do. However you focus on the $$
"I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”
You are no christian amigo sorry
He's not a real Christian. He's a cherry picker.
As long as he can feel superior to others, the rest goes straight into the garbage.
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I see I see, so as long as religous teachings or your interpretation of them coincide with your belief its ok to base your political ideology of them?
good to know I guess we wont ever hear anything about abortion and religion from you morons again?
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I thought you were a christian ??? Helping the 30 million get health care seems like a good and christian thing to do. However you focus on the $$
"I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”
You are no christian amigo sorry
Ok. I'll play. :) What on earth does the verse you quoted have to do with Obamacare costing over $2 trillion that we don't have?
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I see I see, so as long as religous teachings or your interpretation of them coincide with your belief its ok to base your political ideology of them?
good to know I guess we wont ever hear anything about abortion and religion from you morons again?
Oh I doubt that. lol
Some pretty retarded logic.
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Ok. I'll play. :) What on earth does the verse you quoted have to do with Obamacare costing over $2 trillion that we don't have?
Dude......most of that two trillion is money that would have been spent anyway...Obamacare slows down spending .....which is the best we were going to get from Congress
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Dude......most of that two trillion is money that would have been spent anyway...Obamacare slows down spending .....which is the best we were going to get from Congress
Go back to bed you drunkard.
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Ok. I'll play. :) What on earth does the verse you quoted have to do with Obamacare costing over $2 trillion that we don't have?
That money for you comes before people.
You are the opposite of a christian.
In christianity people always comes before money.
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I see I see, so as long as religous teachings or your interpretation of them coincide with your belief its ok to base your political ideology of them?
good to know I guess we wont ever hear anything about abortion and religion from you morons again?
No but if you claim to be a christian you should at least do what you preach.
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That money for you comes before people.
You are the opposite of a christian.
In christianity people always comes before money.
I see. So you want to make this about me. ::)
What does the Bible say about debt and fiscal responsibility?
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I see. So you want to make this about me. ::)
What does the Bible say about debt and fiscal responsibility?
"Have no thought for tomorrow"
put all your troubles and cares on Jesus, etc.
Where's your faith Beach Bum?
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I see. So you want to make this about me. ::)
What does the Bible say about debt and fiscal responsibility?
teach a man to fish.
obama has taken banks out of the student loan middleman job so more people can learn to fish.
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teach a man to fish.
obama has taken banks out of the student loan middleman job so more people can learn to fish.
and he robbed seniors in the process and fostering more debt slaves.
great job crock of barack!
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"Have no thought for tomorrow"
put all your troubles and cares on Jesus, etc.
Where's your faith Beach Bum?
My faith is in God, my own hard work, and having the government stay the heck out of my way. :) Where is yours Mr. Magoo?
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teach a man to fish.
obama has taken banks out of the student loan middleman job so more people can learn to fish.
Wrong.
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Wrong.
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and he robbed seniors in the process and fostering more debt slaves.
great job crock of barack!
He's trying to rob a lot more than seniors.
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He's trying to rob a lot more than seniors.
Simpletons like 180 and Andre always fall for the latest Obama shell game like this. Obama relys on thee gullible dupes because he knows that you can always fool some of the people all of the time.
His base of choomers, dope addicts, communists, gays, racist minorities, public sector goons, guilt ridden white yuppies, and other fringe elements are what keeps him at 40-45%
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Simpletons like 180 and Andre always fall for the latest Obama shell game like this. Obama relys on thee gullible dupes because he knows that you can always fool some of the people all of the time.
His base of choomers, dope addicts, communists, gays, racist minorities, public sector goons, guilt ridden white yuppies, and other fringe elements are what keeps him at 40-45%
to be fair, those dope addicts and yuppies have never told a public message board they'd like to see a nuke go off on US soil.
If a nuke went off in DC and took out all of these criminals and traitors, I would celebrate loudly.
Also, I think on that list you forgot to add "educated people".
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to be fair, those dope addicts and yuppies have never told a public message board they'd like to see a nuke go off on US soil.
Also, I think on that list you forgot to add "educated people".
There are plenty of people who have graduated college that are no smarter than the day they entered.
Obama has a JD and is perhaps on the most legally illiterate attorneys I have EVER witnessed. He could not even handle negotiating a traffic ticket if he had to.
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There are plenty of people who have graduated college that are no smarter than the day they entered.
Obama has a JD and is perhaps on the most legally illiterate attorneys I have EVER witnessed. He could not even handle negotiating a traffic ticket if he had to.
you don't have that ability to separate intelligence from political ideology.
Rachel Maddow is much smarter than Joe The Plumber. You agree with Joe's politics, but he can barely finish a sentence. Maddow has a stack of PhDs and is impossible to beat in a point-by-point debate. brilliant woman, no matter how misguided politically.
I guess you'll spend your day believing high school dropouts are 'smarter' than phds cause you cannot separate these things.
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to be fair, those dope addicts and yuppies have never told a public message board they'd like to see a nuke go off on US soil.
Also, I think on that list you forgot to add "educated people".
-Populations totals for those states?
-Age of population
-# of Universities?
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you don't have that ability to separate intelligence from political ideology.
Rachel Maddow is much smarter than Joe The Plumber. You agree with Joe's politics, but he can barely finish a sentence. Maddow has a stack of PhDs and is impossible to beat in a point-by-point debate. brilliant woman, no matter how misguided politically.
I guess you'll spend your day believing high school dropouts are 'smarter' than phds cause you cannot separate these things.
When has she ever had anyone on that didn't dove-tail with her political views? She is smart, no doubt about it, but come on now.
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When has she ever had anyone on that didn't dove-tail with her political views? She is smart, no doubt about it, but come on now.
Her little ads on MSNBC are a joke, especially the ones in front of the Hoover Dam.
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Simpletons like 180 and Andre always fall for the latest Obama shell game like this. Obama relys on thee gullible dupes because he knows that you can always fool some of the people all of the time.
His base of choomers, dope addicts, communists, gays, racist minorities, public sector goons, guilt ridden white yuppies, and other fringe elements are what keeps him at 40-45%
It's true his base will support him no matter what. It's almost comical to hear Obama say or do some truly asinine things and watch his base fall right in line like little parrots.
That said, I know a lot of smart people who are still supporting him, probably because they are just diehard liberals.
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When has she ever had anyone on that didn't dove-tail with her political views? She is smart, no doubt about it, but come on now.
Maddow is annoying as piss is warm...
but when she has a point to make, she completely covers every angle and is the master of "gotcha" points where a candidate owns himself.
She is very smart. I can say Ed schultz is very dim. Chris mathews used to be very smart, has lost it with age. Andrea mitchell very shrewd. contessa is clueless. most of the men on msnbc are clueless and emotional as the say is long.
maddow is a smart cookie. She was an example, for 33 to say "No, I believe joe the plumber is more intelligent than her".
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It's true his base will support him no matter what. It's almost comical to hear Obama say or do some truly asinine things and watch his base fall right in line like little parrots.
That said, I know a lot of smart people who are still supporting him, probably because they are just diehard liberals.
I keep telling you - your assessment of these people being smart is flat wrong. I know you are friends with them, but for fucks' sake, would you call the captain of a cruise ship who just hit a rock backing up in order to hit the rock again smart?
No, face it - your friends are fools.
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I keep telling you - your assessment of these people being smart is flat wrong. I know you are friends with them, but for fucks' sake, would you call the captain of a cruise ship who just hit a rock backing up in order to hit the rock again smart?
No, face it - your friends are fools.
Nah. It's willful ignorance. One of them just told me the other day to stop talking about politics. lol. They just plug their ears.
Smart people do dumb things sometimes.
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Nah. It's willful ignorance. One of them just told me the other day to stop talking about politics. lol. They just plug their ears.
Smart people do dumb things sometimes.
Exactly - so they are not smart. Someone who is smart recognizes they made a mistake and adjusts accordingly, not go back for seconds.
You see the same traits of stupidity and incompetence on this site by people like andre, vince , benny, gaybear, straw, etc.
does this remind you of anyone?
________________________ _______________________
"The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting an inexperienced man like him with the Presidency.
It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama Presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their President.
The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails America.
Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince.
The Republic can survive a Barack Obama. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their President."
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Exactly - so they are not smart. Someone who is smart recognizes they made a mistake and adjusts accordingly, not go back for seconds.
You see the same traits of stupidity and incompetence on this site by people like andre, vince , benny, gaybear, straw, etc.
does this remind you of anyone?
________________________ _______________________
"The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting an inexperienced man like him with the Presidency.
It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama Presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their President.
The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails America.
Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince.
The Republic can survive a Barack Obama. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their President."
They just have a different opinion than me. That doesn't make them dumb. I had a very long discussion with one of my best friends the other day. He's married to an Obamabot, but he's an independent like me. He was spouting the Obama talking points like crazy. I think part of his stance is based on trying to keep peace in his house. :)
You really think everyone who still supports Obama is stupid?
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They just have a different opinion than me. That doesn't make them dumb. I had a very long discussion with one of my best friends the other day. He's married to an Obamabot, but he's an independent like me. He was spouting the Obama talking points like crazy. I think part of his stance is based on trying to keep peace in his house. :)
You really think everyone who still supports Obama is stupid?
I would say 65% at least since most of those supporting him are doing so based on a false narrative and total lies they have bought in to about this communist freak show.
The other 35% are corrupt and/or directly benefit from obama's pilfering the treasury w his socialism.
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Nearly one in 10 employers to drop health coverage
The Washington Times ^ | July 24, 2012 | Paige Winfield Cunningham
Posted on Tuesday, July 24, 2012
About one in 10 employers plan to drop health coverage when key provisions of the new health care law kick in less than two years from now, according to a survey to be released Tuesday by the consulting company Deloitte.
Nine percent of companies said they expect to stop offering coverage to their workers in the next one to three years, the Wall Street Journal reported. Around 81 percent said they would continue providing benefits and 10 percent said they weren't sure.
The companies, though, said a lot will depend on how future provisions of the law unfold, since most of the key parts are scheduled to take effect in 2014. One in three respondents said they could stop offering coverage if the law requires them to provide more generous benefits than they do now, if a tax on high-cost plans takes effect in 2018 as scheduled or if they decide it would be cheaper for them to pay the penalty for not providing insurance.
While small business don't face fines for failing to offer coverage, companies with 50 or more full time employees face a penalty starting at $2,000 per worker.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
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I would say 65% at least since most of those supporting him are doing so based on a false narrative and total lies they have bought in to about this communist freak show.
The other 35% are corrupt and/or directly benefit from obama's pilfering the treasury w his socialism.
I think it's more along the lines of buying into a false narrative. They really have to ignore a lot to be a supporter.
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I think it's more along the lines of buying into a false narrative. They really have to ignore a lot to be a supporter.
Correct - its not that don't know anything, the problem is that what they think they "know" is total bs.
He check this out. LOL.
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Correct - its not that don't know anything, the problem is that what they think they "know" is total bs.
He check this out. LOL.
lol. That's actually pretty mild No death threats? Hoping someone dies?
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CBO to employers: Obamacare has $4B more in taxes than expected
July 24, 2012
13Comments
Business owners will pay $4 billion more in taxes under President Obama’s Affordable Care Act (ACA) than the Congressional Budget Office had previously expected.
“According to the updated estimates, the amount of deficit reduction from penalty payments and other effects on tax revenues under the ACA will be $5 billion more than previously estimated,” the CBO reported today. “That change primarily effects a $4 billion increase in collections from such payments by employers, a $1 billion increase in such payments by individuals, and an increase of less than $500 million in tax revenues stemming from a small reduction in employment-based coverage, which will lead to a larger share of total compensation taking the form of taxable wages and salaries and a smaller share taking the form of nontaxable health benefits.”
In short, CBO revised the Obamacare tax burden upward by $4 billion for businesses and $1 billion to $1.5 billion for individual workers.
CBO couldn’t help but bump into Chief Justice John Roberts controversial decision uphold the individual mandate as a constitutional exercise of Congress’s taxing power. The report dubs the individual mandate a “penalty tax” — that is, “a penalty paid to the Treasury by taxpayers when they file their tax returns and enforced by the Internal Revenue Service.”
http://washingtonexaminer.com/cbo-to-employers-obamacare-has-4b-more-in-taxes-than-expected/article/2503013
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Nonpartisan budget office says Obama’s health law still reduces deficit, fewer will be covered
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul will shrink rather than increase the nation’s huge federal deficits over the next decade, Congress’ nonpartisan budget scorekeepers said Tuesday, supporting Obama’s contention in a major election-year dispute with Republicans.
About 3 million fewer uninsured people will gain health coverage because of last month’s Supreme Court ruling granting states more leeway, and that will cut the federal costs by $84 billion, the Congressional Budget Office said in the biggest changes from earlier estimates.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/nonpartisan-budget-office-says-obamas-health-law-still-reduces-deficit-fewer-will-be-covered/2012/07/24/gJQAHMj26W_story.html
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Nonpartisan budget office says Obama’s health law still reduces deficit, fewer will be covered
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul will shrink rather than increase the nation’s huge federal deficits over the next decade, Congress’ nonpartisan budget scorekeepers said Tuesday, supporting Obama’s contention in a major election-year dispute with Republicans.
About 3 million fewer uninsured people will gain health coverage because of last month’s Supreme Court ruling granting states more leeway, and that will cut the federal costs by $84 billion, the Congressional Budget Office said in the biggest changes from earlier estimates.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/nonpartisan-budget-office-says-obamas-health-law-still-reduces-deficit-fewer-will-be-covered/2012/07/24/gJQAHMj26W_story.html
good post...the problem is WE know this but Obama and his people seem not to...they are the worst I have ever seen at touting themselves and all the good things they've done
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good post...the problem is WE know this but Obama and his people seem not to...they are the worst I have ever seen at touting themselves and all the good things they've done
To many FOX viewers in this country
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There are plenty of people who have graduated college that are no smarter than the day they entered.
Obama has a JD and is perhaps on the most legally illiterate attorneys I have EVER witnessed. He could not even handle negotiating a traffic ticket if he had to.
these statements are so ironic and self-owning, it's amazing!
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BOOOMMM
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University kills insurance plan for students over Obamacare provisions
Campus Reform ^
Posted on July 26, 2012 1:45:40 PM EDT by oliverdarcy
A Lutheran University in Minnesota has announced they will cancel a voluntary insurance plan for students rather than comply with a recent Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate.
In a letter to the campus community, vice president of Gustavus Adolphus College cited an unspecified HHS mandate as the reason for cutting students from the service.
“Recent changes to student health plan regulations and the Affordable Care Act issued by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) have resulted in our reconsideration of offering a voluntary health plan to Gustavus students,” wrote JoNes VanHecke in a letter recently forwarded to Campus Reform by a student. “The result is that Gustavus will discontinue offering any health care coverage for students,” said VanHecke.
(Excerpt) Read more at campusreform.org ...
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Serious question, how does Obama care provide access to health care? Only thing I see it doing is providing/forcing access to health insurance
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Nonpartisan budget office says Obama’s health law still reduces deficit, fewer will be covered
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul will shrink rather than increase the nation’s huge federal deficits over the next decade, Congress’ nonpartisan budget scorekeepers said Tuesday, supporting Obama’s contention in a major election-year dispute with Republicans.
About 3 million fewer uninsured people will gain health coverage because of last month’s Supreme Court ruling granting states more leeway, and that will cut the federal costs by $84 billion, the Congressional Budget Office said in the biggest changes from earlier estimates.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/nonpartisan-budget-office-says-obamas-health-law-still-reduces-deficit-fewer-will-be-covered/2012/07/24/gJQAHMj26W_story.html
Bump for the repub who have been attacking Obama 24/7
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Serious question, how does Obama care provide access to health care? Only thing I see it doing is providing/forcing access to health insurance
Yep but know people can seek help without fear of going bancrupt.
That way they catch more health dangers before they develops and therefore saves us health care bills in the long run.
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An Indiana-based medical equipment manufacturer says it's scrapping plans to open five new plants in the coming years because of a looming tax tied to President Obama's health care overhaul law.
Cook Medical claims the tax on medical devices, set to take effect next year, will cost the company roughly $20 million a year, cutting into money that would otherwise go toward expanding into new facilities over the next five years.
"This is the equivalent of about a plant a year that we're not going to be able to build," a company spokesman told FoxNews.com.
He said the original plan was to build factories in "hard-pressed" Midwestern communities, each employing up to 300 people. But those factories cost roughly the same amount as the projected cost of the new tax.
"In reality, we're not looking at the U.S. to build factories anymore as long as this tax is in place. We can't, to be competitive," he said.
Company executive Pete Yonkman first revealed the scuttled plans in an interview with the Indianapolis Business Journal. The company later confirmed the decision to FoxNews.com.
The Affordable Care Act imposed a 2.3 percent tax on medical devices beginning in 2013. It is projected raise nearly $30 billion over the next decade.
But the Cook Medical spokesman said the impact is greater than just a 2.3 percent uptick in taxes. He said the impact on actual earnings is another 15 percent, and he projected the company's total tax burden next year will rise to over 50 percent.
Republicans and medical device makers have been railing against the tax all along, with the GOP-controlled House approving a bill last month to repeal it. The Senate, though, hasn't taken it up.
A recent study by the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, though, said the complaints by the industry are exaggerated.
"The tax will not cause manufacturers to shift production overseas. The tax applies equally to imported and domestically produced devices, and devices produced in the United States for export are tax-exempt," the study said. It also said repealing the tax would "undercut health reform" by requiring Congress to offset the repeal by potentially killing spending provisions in the law and by potentially encouraging similar repeals.
Cook Medical is part of a family of companies that produce medical devices for surgery, obstetrics, gynecology and other fields.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/07/27/indiana-company-scraps-plans-for-expansion-over-obamacare-device-tax
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Yep but know people can seek help without fear of going bancrupt.
That way they catch more health dangers before they develops and therefore saves us health care bills in the long run.
Do you really believe that?
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Do you really believe that?
In the long run absolutely
You dont?
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In the long run absolutely
You dont?
No I do not, anything the government touches ends up costing 10x what they claim ( mostly because of their creative accounting). Most likely scenario to this is a single payer government run system, then we are all fucked, so be careful what you wish for you just might get it.
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RIVERSIDE, Calif. — In the Inland Empire, an economically depressed region in Southern California, President Obama’s health care law is expected to extend insurance coverage to more than 300,000 people by 2014. But coverage will not necessarily translate into care: Local health experts doubt there will be enough doctors to meet the area’s needs. There are not enough now.
Other places around the country, including the Mississippi Delta, Detroit and suburban Phoenix, face similar problems. The Association of American Medical Colleges estimates that in 2015 the country will have 62,900 fewer doctors than needed. And that number will more than double by 2025, as the expansion of insurance coverage and the aging of baby boomers drive up demand for care. Even without the health care law, the shortfall of doctors in 2025 would still exceed 100,000.
Health experts, including many who support the law, say there is little that the government or the medical profession will be able to do to close the gap by 2014, when the law begins extending coverage to about 30 million Americans. It typically takes a decade to train a doctor.
“We have a shortage of every kind of doctor, except for plastic surgeons and dermatologists,” said Dr. G. Richard Olds, the dean of the new medical school at the University of California, Riverside, founded in part to address the region’s doctor shortage. “We’ll have a 5,000-physician shortage in 10 years, no matter what anybody does.”
Experts describe a doctor shortage as an “invisible problem.” Patients still get care, but the process is often slow and difficult. In Riverside, it has left residents driving long distances to doctors, languishing on waiting lists, overusing emergency rooms and even forgoing care.
“It results in delayed care and higher levels of acuity,” said Dustin Corcoran, the chief executive of the California Medical Association, which represents 35,000 physicians. People “access the health care system through the emergency department, rather than establishing a relationship with a primary care physician who might keep them from getting sicker.”
In the Inland Empire, encompassing the counties of Riverside and San Bernardino, the shortage of doctors is already severe. The population of Riverside County swelled 42 percent in the 2000s, gaining more than 644,000 people. It has continued to grow despite the collapse of one of the country’s biggest property bubbles and a jobless rate of 11.8 percent in the Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario metro area.
But the growth in the number of physicians has lagged, in no small part because the area has trouble attracting doctors, who might make more money and prefer living in nearby Orange County or Los Angeles.
A government council has recommended that a given region have 60 to 80 primary care doctors per 100,000 residents, and 85 to 105 specialists. The Inland Empire has about 40 primary care doctors and 70 specialists per 100,000 residents — the worst shortage in California, in both cases.
Moreover, across the country, fewer than half of primary care clinicians were accepting new Medicaid patients as of 2008, making it hard for the poor to find care even when they are eligible for Medicaid. The expansion of Medicaid accounts for more than one-third of the overall growth in coverage in President Obama’s health care law.
Providers say they are bracing for the surge of the newly insured into an already strained system.
Temetry Lindsey, the chief executive of Inland Behavioral & Health Services, which provides medical care to about 12,000 area residents, many of them low income, said she was speeding patient-processing systems, packing doctors’ schedules tighter and seeking to hire more physicians.
“We know we are going to be overrun at some point,” Ms. Lindsey said, estimating that the clinics would see new demand from 10,000 to 25,000 residents by 2014. She added that hiring new doctors had proved a struggle, in part because of the “stigma” of working in this part of California.
Across the country, a factor increasing demand, along with expansion of coverage in the law and simple population growth, is the aging of the baby boom generation. Medicare officials predict that enrollment will surge to 73.2 million in 2025, up 44 percent from 50.7 million this year.
“Older Americans require significantly more health care,” said Dr. Darrell G. Kirch, the president of the Association of American Medical Colleges. “Older individuals are more likely to have multiple chronic conditions, requiring more intensive, coordinated care.”
The pool of doctors has not kept pace, and will not, health experts said. Medical school enrollment is increasing, but not as fast as the population. The number of training positions for medical school graduates is lagging. Younger doctors are on average working fewer hours than their predecessors. And about a third of the country’s doctors are 55 or older, and nearing retirement.
Physician compensation is also an issue. The proportion of medical students choosing to enter primary care has declined in the past 15 years, as average earnings for primary care doctors and specialists, like orthopedic surgeons and radiologists, have diverged. A study by the Medical Group Management Association found that in 2010, primary care doctors made about $200,000 a year. Specialists often made twice as much.
The Obama administration has sought to ease the shortage. The health care law increases Medicaid’s primary care payment rates in 2013 and 2014. It also includes money to train new primary care doctors, reward them for working in underserved communities and strengthen community health centers.
But the provisions within the law are expected to increase the number of primary care doctors by perhaps 3,000 in the coming decade. Communities around the country need about 45,000.
Many health experts in California said that while they welcomed the expansion of coverage, they expected that the state simply would not be ready for the new demand. “It’s going to be necessary to use the resources that we have smarter” in light of the doctor shortages, said Dr. Mark D. Smith, who heads the California HealthCare Foundation, a nonprofit group.
Dr. Smith said building more walk-in clinics, allowing nurses to provide more care and encouraging doctors to work in teams would all be part of the answer. Mr. Corcoran of the California Medical Association also said the state would need to stop cutting Medicaid payment rates; instead, it needed to increase them to make seeing those patients economically feasible for doctors.
More doctors might be part of the answer as well. The U.C. Riverside medical school is hoping to enroll its first students in August 2013, and is planning a number of policies to encourage its graduates to stay in the area and practice primary care.
But Dr. Olds said changing how doctors provided care would be more important than minting new doctors. “I’m only adding 22 new students to this equation,” he said. “That’s not enough to put a dent in a 5,000-doctor shortage.”
Annie Lowrey reported from Riverside, and Robert Pear from Washington.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/29/health/policy/too-few-doctors-in-many-us-communities.html?_r=3&partner=MYWAY&ei=5065&pagewanted=print
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No I do not, anything the government touches ends up costing 10x what they claim ( mostly because of their creative accounting). Most likely scenario to this is a single payer government run system, then we are all fucked, so be careful what you wish for you just might get it.
So how about the health care system in Canada for instance?
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So how about the health care system in Canada for instance?
What about it? I live in America not Canada
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What about it? I live in America not Canada
According to your logic it should be fucked there, no?
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According to your logic it should be fucked there, no?
See this is exactly what is wrong with the country, instead of demanding excellence from our country, you would rather us emulate some other shitty system. More government is not the solution it is the problem, the sooner you accept that the better off you are going to be.
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See this is exactly what is wrong with the country, instead of demanding excellence from our country, you would rather us emulate some other shitty system. More government is not the solution it is the problem, the sooner you accept that the better off you are going to be.
I dont think capitalism and health care is a good mix
Denying people health care so you can make money?
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I dont think capitalism and health care is a good mix
Denying people health care so you can make money?
And how did the insurance companies end up in the position they are in? I'll give you a hint - the federal government. I can remember having a family doctor, an aspirin didn't cost $300.00, and the doctor actually cared about you well being. Enter the government, they created this mess, and their idea of fixing it is making a bigger one. Any way you look at it medical care is provided by a trained professional that has spent years of their lives and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Health care is not a right, it is a service you must pay for, if you like the intervention of the government jacking up the price, then by all means support Obamacare.
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And how did the insurance companies end up in the position they are in? I'll give you a hint - the federal government. I can remember having a family doctor, an aspirin didn't cost $300.00, and the doctor actually cared about you well being. Enter the government, they created this mess, and their idea of fixing it is making a bigger one. Any way you look at it medical care is provided by a trained professional that has spent years of their lives and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Health care is not a right, it is a service you must pay for, if you like the intervention of the government jacking up the price, then by all means support Obamacare.
Ah but how do you explain they have "free" health care in Europe for instance?
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Ah but how do you explain they have "free" health care in Europe for instance?
You are the stupidest fucking person on the planet.
nothing is free.
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Ah but how do you explain they have "free" health care in Europe for instance?
There is no "free" health care in Europe. There's 50% tax rates and low quality, rationed health care.
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See this is exactly what is wrong with the country, instead of demanding excellence from our country, you would rather us emulate some other shitty system. More government is not the solution it is the problem, the sooner you accept that the better off you are going to be.
people like you are ignorant of the fact that OTHER countries have good ideas too..nothing wrong with implementing something that works in a similar system as our own...
Our mayor here in NYC many years ago visited another country and saw that they had bike lanes....he implemented them here in NYC....I guess he''s a traitor huh?
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people like you are ignorant of the fact that OTHER countries have good ideas too..nothing wrong with implementing something that works in a similar system as our own...
Our mayor here in NYC many years ago visited another country and saw that they had bike lanes....he implemented them here in NYC....I guess he''s a traitor huh?
Fencing bikes lately now?
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people like you are ignorant of the fact that OTHER countries have good ideas too..nothing wrong with implementing something that works in a similar system as our own...
Our mayor here in NYC many years ago visited another country and saw that they had bike lanes....he implemented them here in NYC....I guess he''s a traitor huh?
Yes everyone is ignorant except you of course ::), For cripe sake it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize a bike lane is a good idea. The fact that your mayor had to go to another country to see this should speak volumes.
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Ah but how do you explain they have "free" health care in Europe for instance?
Free? Really? How does their government pay for it? And one other thing "free" doesn't mean its good
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Thanks, Obamacare: Doctor Shortages, Jobs Destroyed, Coverage Dropped
Townhall.com ^ | July 30, 2012 | Guy Benson
Posted on July 30, 2012 8:44:11 PM EDT by Kaslin
The Supreme Court's decision last month to uphold the Obamacare mandate tax did not vindicate the propriety or efficacy of the law itself, a point Chief Justice Roberts explicitly stated in his ruling. "It is not [The Court's] job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices,” he wrote. As we learn more about Obamacare's practical consequences, the urgent need for repeal becomes increasingly apparent. Consider the following news items from the past week alone:
(1) "Doctor Shortage Likely to Worsen with Health Law":
The Association of American Medical Colleges estimates that in 2015 the country will have 62,900 fewer doctors than needed. And that number will more than double by 2025, as the expansion of insurance coverage and the aging of baby boomers drive up demand for care. Even without the health care law, the shortfall of doctors in 2025 would still exceed 100,000. Health experts, including many who support the law, say there is little that the government or the medical profession will be able to do to close the gap by 2014, when the law begins extending coverage to about 30 million Americans. It typically takes a decade to train a doctor.
“We have a shortage of every kind of doctor, except for plastic surgeons and dermatologists,” said Dr. G. Richard Olds, the dean of the new medical school at the University of California, Riverside, founded in part to address the region’s doctor shortage. “We’ll have a 5,000-physician shortage in 10 years, no matter what anybody does.” Experts describe a doctor shortage as an “invisible problem.” Patients still get care, but the process is often slow and difficult. In Riverside, it has left residents driving long distances to doctors, languishing on waiting lists, overusing emergency rooms and even forgoing care. “It results in delayed care and higher levels of acuity,” said Dustin Corcoran, the chief executive of the California Medical Association, which represents 35,000 physicians. People “access the health care system through the emergency department, rather than establishing a relationship with a primary care physician who might keep them from getting sicker.”
The article goes on to mention the draining pool of doctors who are accepting new Medicaid patients, which will throw up another obstacle to care for indigent Americans -- especially after the entitlement program undergoes a massive, Obamacare-mandated expansion. As opponents of the law repeatedly warned, access to health coverage does not equal access to health care. In Canada and other countries with socialized medicine, everyone is "covered," but doctors are scarce, innovation is curtailed and treatment is limited. This can lead to long waiting periods, government rationing, perverse doctor lotteries and denied care. Furthermore, Democrats chose to exclude meaningful tort reform from their 2,700 page bill, further hanging physicians out to dry. This is why older doctors are quickly shuffling towards retirement, and many promising young students eschew medical school in favor of other careers. Obamacare takes our demographic struggles on this front and makes them even more acute, much sooner.
(2) "One in 10 Employers Plans to Drop Health Benefits, Study Finds:"
About one in 10 employers plans to end workers' health insurance as the new healthcare law takes effect, according to a new study. The finding could bolster opponents of the law, who argue that its changes to the healthcare system will force workers out of insurance plans they like. Supporters of the law say most people will keep their current coverage. Surveying 560 U.S. companies, consulting firm Deloitte found that 9 percent of employers are planning to drop employee health benefits within three years. Eighty-one percent said they would continue covering employees, and 10 percent said they were not sure.
Is your employer among the 19 percent that are either planning to drop coverage, or are still considering it? Let's also recall the president's verbatim promise during the healthcare debate: “If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period. If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what.”
(3) "CBO - Obamacare to Cost $1.93 Trillion, Leave 30 Million Uninsured:"
The latest CBO scoring of Obamacare, in the wake of the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision upholding the overhaul's individual mandate as an allowable (although seemingly unprecedented) tax on inactivity, shows that President Obama's centerpiece legislation would cost about $2 trillion over its real first decade (2014 through 2023). The CBO also says that — despite its colossal cost and its unprecedented expansion of power and control over Americans' lives — Obamacare would, as of a decade from now, leave 30 million people uninsured. At the time of Obamacare's passage, Democrats touted the fact that the CBO had then said that the gross cost of Obamacare's insurance coverage provisions would be "only" $938 billion.
Moreover, the CBO and/or the Medicare chief actuary have previously said that Obamacare would raise health insurance premiums, would raise overall U.S. health costs, would raise taxes on Americans and on American businesses, and would siphon something approaching $1 trillion (from 2014 through 2023) out of Medicare. In the process (according to the Medicare chief actuary), Obamacare would reduce reimbursement rates for Medicare providers to the point where they'd be lower even than the notoriously low reimbursement rates paid to Medicaid providers — therefore jeopardizing seniors' access to care. Oh, and Obamacare would also establish the unelected and largely unaccountable 15-member Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) to institute further Medicare cuts.
(4) "Surprise: Obamacare Medical Device Tax Killing Jobs in the Industry:"
“None of this was allocated three years ago when we created a strategic plan to become profitable,” CEO Mike Minogue told the House Committee on Small Business last week. Minogue testified the amount Abiomed will pay for the excise tax is the equivalent of 15 percent of the company’s research and development budget, 10 percent of its employee head count, or almost double what it spends on health care for hundreds of employees. “This tax will affect jobs. It will mix health care reform with tax policy and it will be extra detrimental to companies that are not yet profitable and need every dollar to survive,” he said. Minogue also cited logistical concerns. The exact regulation, still not finalized, goes into effect Jan. 1 2013, and Abiomed’s books have to be closed and audited by March. According to the medical-device industry’s national association, the field employs more than 400,000 Americans, and 70 percent of medical device companies are small businesses.
This is merely one small component of a larger picture, which led the CBO to conclude that Obamacare will cost the US economy 800,000 jobs. The latest NYT/CBS poll shows public approval of Obamacare underwater by a 36/50 margin. Rasmussen's new numbers reflect an enduring majority in favor of legislative repeal. The vast majority of national Democrats continue to support the even-less-popular Obamacare mandate tax, in lockstep with the president. The only way to rid the country of this costly governmental intrusion and its related repercussions is to defeat those who back the law and replace them with public servants who do not.
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Yep but know people can seek help without fear of going bancrupt.
That way they catch more health dangers before they develops and therefore saves us health care bills in the long run.
YEP...spot on
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Yes everyone is ignorant except you of course ::), For cripe sake it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize a bike lane is a good idea. The fact that your mayor had to go to another country to see this should speak volumes.
you ever admit when you're wrong?..you need some humility
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you ever admit when you're wrong?..you need some humility
Lol.
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Surprise: Obamacare medical device tax killing jobs in the industry
Hotair ^ | 07/30/2012 | MARY KATHARINE HAM
Posted on July 30, 2012 5:46:11 PM EDT by SeekAndFind
An Indiana-based medical device company is canceling plans to build five new plants in the Midwest because of the hit it will take from the 2.3 percent excise tax imposed by Obamacare.
The new tax will cost Cook Medical Inc. between $20 million and $30 million a year, Pete Yonkman, executive director of Cook's strategic business told the Indianapolis Business Journal, limiting the amount Cook can spend on new plants. It took $30 million to revamp an abandoned factory in Canton, Ill. last year that will eventually employ 300 people in this small town.
"We had hoped, as we get bigger, that that would be our model for expansion,--- Yonkman told the Indianapolis Business Journal. To take these small manufacturing facilities and bring them to these communities, that had been hard hit by jobs leaving because they work ethic is amazing and the people are really supportive and excited."
A funny thing happened on the way to the passage of the health care bill. Congress had to pay for it. So, they cobbled together a couple billion here, wrung from taxing small-money business investments via crippling paperwork, and a couple billion there, taken from the wallets of tanning salon denizens. One of those taxes, forecasted to bring in $29 billion over 10 years, hits the medical device industry. Congress exempted such items as contacts and eyeglasses to prevent the tax hike from touching everyday purchases, but that doesn’t mean people won't feel the cost in other ways, as Yonkman's story illustrates.
The House voted to repeal the tax in June, 270-146, but the repeal has since stalled in the Senate, despite bipartisan support from the likes of Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who is part of a Midwestern group of Democrats concerned about the job loss the tax may cause. Even liberal darling Elizabeth Warren, Democratic candidate for Senate in Massachusetts, backs repeal of the tax fearing the impact on a high number of medical device jobs in her home state.
Supporters of the law and the medical device tax argue that companies are exaggerating the toll the tax will take, and that more spending on health care in general will make up for their losses. But medical device companies argue theirs is an industry with many small companies shouldering large research-and-development budgets and competing for elite medical and scientific minds.
As a result, it took Massachusetts-based Abiomed 30 years to show a profit building specialized heart pumps. During that time, the company has grown from 10 to 440 employees, but the company risks being back in the red if the excise tax goes into effect Jan 1, 2013, as planned.
Abiomed reported about $1.5 million in profit on the $126 million in sales the company realized during fiscal 2012. Had the medical device tax been in effect then, the company would have had to turn in every penny of its profits, plus another $1.4 million or so.
“None of this was allocated three years ago when we created a strategic plan to become profitable,” CEO Mike Minogue told the House Committee on Small Business last week.
Minogue testified the amount Abiomed will pay for the excise tax is the equivalent of 15 percent of the company’s research and development budget, 10 percent of its employee head count, or almost double what it spends on health care for hundreds of employees.
“This tax will affect jobs. It will mix health care reform with tax policy and it will be extra detrimental to companies that are not yet profitable and need every dollar to survive,” he said.
Minogue also cited logistical concerns. The exact regulation, still not finalized, goes into effect Jan. 1 2013, and Abiomed’s books have to be closed and audited by March.
According to the medical-device industry’s national association, the field employs more than 400,000 Americans, and 70 percent of medical device companies are small businesses.
In February, Minnesota-based Medtronic said it may have to pass on its costs to consumers and cut back on its investments to pay the $60 million the tax will likely require.
The Minneapolis-based company estimates it will pay a tax of $40 million to $60 million in the 2013 fiscal year, based on the draft regulations currently available, Ellis said today in a telephone interview. Medtronic is trying to determine how much of the tax it can pass on to hospitals and other customers who purchase the company’s devices, he said.
“We’ve looked at this as basically one of the costs we’re going to have to cover as we put together our plans for fiscal year 2013 and as we put together our initiatives on a long-term basis,” Ellis said in a conference call with investors. “We’re going to have to make the tradeoffs and there’s probably going to be things that we can’t do as a result of that,” he said. “It means we won’t have as much to invest going forward.”
In November 2011, Michigan-based prosthetics manufacturer Stryker announced it will cut five percent of its global workforce to cope:
The reductions and restructuring “are being initiated to provide efficiencies and realign resources in advance of the new Medical Device Excise Tax scheduled to begin in 2013, as well as to allow for continued investment in strategic areas and drive growth despite the ongoing challenging economic environment and market slowdown in elective procedures,” the company said in a press release.”
In Tennessee, COO Bill Pittman of DeRoyal Industries succinctly described the problem for medical device companies:
“The medical device tax constitutes the largest cost increase DeRoyal has experienced in its 40-year history. We are working to mitigate this impact in a number of ways from both a revenue and cost perspective. Even in the face of this challenge we are doing everything within our power to preserve US jobs in this incredibly difficult economic environment.”
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you ever admit when you're wrong?..you need some humility
How am I wrong? Everything the government gets involved in gets FUBAR, but this time its going to be different ::). I am at a loss, you watch as the government runs up the debt, make stupid law after stupid law, creates bureaucracy, and attempts to subvert the constitution over and over again. But you are willing to stake your life on what will most likely be some unelected appointed assclown, making decisions on what medical procedures you should get. You need to get some brains
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How am I wrong? Everything the government gets involved in gets FUBAR, but this time its going to be different ::). I am at a loss, you watch as the government runs up the debt, make stupid law after stupid law, creates bureaucracy, and attempts to subvert the constitution over and over again. But you are willing to stake your life on what will most likely be some unelected appointed assclown, making decisions on what medical procedures you should get. You need to get some brains
Idiots like andre and whork straw et al are like the children who still believe in Santa Claus.
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Idiots like andre and whork straw et al are like the children who still believe in Santa Claus.
No they are the reason this country is in decline, and I find it fucking offensive
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Burning Question
Is America running out of doctors?
http://theweek.com/article/index/231267/is-america-running-out-of-doctors
ObamaCare is set to expand the number of insured Americans, but an apparent shortage of doctors could make it difficult to treat them all
posted on July 31, 2012, at 7:54 AM
By the year 2025, the U.S. could have a shortfall of 100,000 doctors. Photo: ThinkStock/Ingram PublishingSEE ALL 103 PHOTOS
The primary objective of President Obama's overhaul of the health-care system is to extend coverage to the tens of millions of Americans currently without insurance. "But coverage will not necessarily translate into care," because there may not be enough doctors to treat everyone, say Annie Lowrey and Robert Pear at The New York Times. The U.S. is already facing a severe shortage of doctors, particularly in rural areas of the country, and the problem is only expected to get worse as more Americans gain insurance. Here, a guide to America's dearth of doctors:
Why aren't there enough doctors?
The pool of new doctors hasn't kept pace with several factors boosting the number of people seeking care: Population growth, the ObamaCare expansion, and an aging Baby Boomer generation that requires additional medical attention. Enrollment in Medicare, the government-run insurance program for the elderly, is expected to swell to 73.2 million in 2025, up from 50.7 million in 2012. Furthermore, the U.S. is facing an acute shortage of primary-care physicians, leaving many patients without access to general practitioners, pediatricians, family doctors, and other providers of basic medical care.
How will the shortage affect patients?
"A shortage of primary-care and other physicians could mean more-limited access to health care and longer wait times for patients," say Suzanne Sataline and Shirley S. Wang at The Wall Street Journal. The shortage will likely most affect those on Medicaid, the insurance program for the poor and disabled, since Medicaid's rolls are expected to expand significantly under ObamaCare. The shortfall of doctors could reach 100,000 by 2025. (There are currently about 1 million doctors in America.)
Why do so few doctors choose to go into primary care?
The main reason is money. Medical school graduates can expect to make an average of $3.5 million more over the course of their careers if they choose to enter a specialized field, such as anesthesiology or radiology. The difference in pay is enough that primary-care physicians carry a stigma within the medical community of being less talented and intelligent. The trend has huge implications for ObamaCare: "It is no exaggeration to say that the success of the health-care law rests on young doctors choosing to do something that is not in their economic self-interest," says Sarah Kliff at The Washington Post.
What can we do about it?
ObamaCare contains modest provisions increasing Medicaid primary-care payments and incentives for medical students to become primary-care physicians. The number of primary-care residencies climbed 20 percent between 2009 and 2011, but it's still not enough. Communities have been encouraged to create more walk-in clinics, and to allow more nurses to provide primary care. In addition, the U.S. could alter its immigration policies to attract doctors from overseas, "which should be very easy to do since doctors in the U.S. earn on average about twice as much as their comparably trained counterparts in Western Europe and Canada," says Dean Baker at Business Insider.
Sources: Business Insider, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post
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No they are the reason this country is in decline, and I find it fucking offensive
sigh.................... ........................ ........................ ......
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sigh..........................................................................
Is he wrong? You are the poster child of decay, debt, decline, deficit, with your whacked out ideas.
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Papa John's Pizza To Raise Prices Because Of Obamacare, CEO John Schnatter Says
The Huffington Post | By Harry Bradford Posted: 08/07/2012 2:51 pm Updated: 08/07/2012 4:51 pm
John Schnatter, CEO of the restaurant chain Papa John's Pizza, says the president's health care reform law will cost his business, and that cost will be passed on to consumers in the form of price increases.
After President Obama's health care law takes full effect, the slogan for national pizza chain Papa John's may need an update. Instead of, “Better ingredients. Better Pizza,” may we suggest, “Better health care. Pricier pizza."
Papa John's CEO John Schnatter says that Obamacare will result in a $0.11 to $0.14 price increase per pizza, or $0.15 to $0.20 cents per order, Pizza Marketplace, a trade publication, reports. (Hat tip: @dkberman via Twitter.)
Under Obamacare, the company, which is the third-largest pizza takeout and delivery chain in the United States, will have to offer health care coverage to more of its 16,500 total employees or pay a penalty to the government.
The National Restaurant Association pointed out following the health care law's Supreme Court approval that it may adversely affect restaurants’ ability to maintain already slim profit margins because it requires companies of more than 50 employees to provide affordable health insurance.
One Papa John's franchise owner in Texas, Judy Nichols, says the law could interfere with her ability to open more restaurants.
“I have two options, I can stop offering coverage and pay the $2,000 fine, or I could keep my number of staff under 50 so the mandate doesn't apply,” she told Legal Newsline. Nichols added that the law may cost her between $20,000 to $30,000 extra in taxes. “Obamacare is making me think about cutting jobs instead," she said.
But with strong sales last quarter and more than 1,500 new retail locations planned in the near future, Schnatter doesn't seem all that bothered -- perhaps because he intends to pass those health care costs on to customers.
“We're not supportive of Obamacare, like most businesses in our industry,” Schnatter was quoted as saying in Politico. “But our business model and unit economics are about as ideal as you can get for a food company to absorb Obamacare."
McDonald’s also expects Obamacare to cost each of its 14,000 franchises between $10,000 and $30,000 annually, according to Businessweek. But, like Schnatter, the company remains optimistic it is well placed to handle the extra costs.
Representatives from other restaurant chains may be less hopeful, however, including Burger King, Quiznos and Dunkin’ Donuts, all which have expressed concern the law may hurt business, according to the Wall Street Journal.