WILL AMERICAN PEOPLE FINALLY REVOLT IN 2010?

By Deroy Murdock

TEMECULA, California — Where is Nelson Mandela when we need him?

In an especially memorable moment in Clint Eastwood’s fine new film Invictus, South Africa’s first black president (exquisitely portrayed by Morgan Freeman) inspects his first official pay check.

“This is terrible,” Mandela says. He decides he earns too much money and subsequently donates a third of his salary to charity. Thus was born the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund.

http://www.nelsonmandelachildrensfund.com/index.php

Mandela’s humility and fiscal restraint would be as exotic in the nation’s capital as a giraffe atop the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Washington, D.C.’s lavish self-aggrandizement and relentless march toward bankruptcy cruelly mock Mandela’s noble sacrifice.

Today’s thoughtless and corrosive spend-o-rama began under a Republican Congress and the feckless Bush-Rove Administration. Despite candidate Barack Obama’s promise to scour the budget “line by line” for excess, today’s White House and Democratic Congress briskly outspend their predecessors.

In stunning contrast to Mandela’s example, the profligate Congress carpet-bombs taxpayer dollars on greedy federal bureaucrats — even as Americans struggle, and often fail, to pay their mortgages and rents.

Between December 2007 and June 2009, USA Today reported December 10, federal employees earning more than $100,000 annually increased 46 percent to 382,758. Those making more than $150,000 rose 119 percent to 66,538. Only one Transportation Department employee scored more than $170,000 as the recession began. By last June, that number had soared to 1,690.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2009-12-10-federal-pay-salaries_N.htm

While Americans endure 10 percent unemployment and widespread economic anemia, for federal bureaucrats and their congressional enablers, this remains a long, lazy summer at Versailles, circa 1788. Washington has no apparent shame, self control, nor even a sense that it might be patriotic to snatch just a little less. Washington’s overriding principle seems to be that the American people can go to Hell, so long as their tax-payments keep coming. Bonnie and Clyde were mere shoplifters compared to today’s federal kleptocratic class.

Federal indulgence and incompetence are too vast to catalogue. But these illustrations are sufficiently maddening.

*After Cash-for-Clunkers gloriously shipped $3 billion chiefly to Tokyo- and Seoul-based automakers, the Obama Administration concocted Cash for Caulkers — fresh subsidies to make homes more energy-efficient. This program likely will cost $2 billion to as much as $20 billion, if House Democrats prevail. So far, Texas has spent $1.8 million in federal funds and has weatherized seven homes, averaging $257,000 each. Instead, this money could have purchased 10.4 median-priced homes.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-obama-caulkers16-2009dec16,0,4079415.story?track=rss

http://energyandenvironmentblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2009/12/in-print-texas-received-163m-t.html

*Congress sent President Obama a $447 billion, 2,442-page omnibus spending bill on December 14. It ballooned federal spending 12 percent while inflation inches along at 1.8 percent. This measure contained 5,224 pork-barrel projects worth $3.9 billion, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense. These included $292,200 to eliminate blight in Scranton, Pennsylvania (Vice President Joseph Biden’s hometown) and $700,000 for “Shrimp Industry Fishing Effort Research Continuation” in Silver Spring, Maryland. Despite Obama’s promises, these luxuries all survived, line by line, when he signed it December 16.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cpi.pdf

*Breaking the law that launched the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the House on December 16 misallocated $154 billion in repayments by TARP-funded banks. That money legally must finance deficit reduction. The Democratic House nevertheless flouted the law and instead channeled this cash to America’s fourth economic stimulus package.

*Even worse, political favoritism has infected stimulus spending. The free-market Mercatus Center discovered that the average congressional district has received $355 million from Obama’s $787 billion stimulus package. However, Democratic congressmen’s districts averaged $439 million (a 23.7 percent bonus), while Republican districts averaged just $232 million (a 35.6 percent penalty). The typical district won 128 projects. Democratic districts averaged 152 such outlays (an extra 18.75 percent). GOP districts averaged 94 awards (26.6 percent fewer).

http://mercatus.org/publication/stimulusfacts

*Obama visited the Copenhagen climate conference December 18 and promised to muster up to $100 billion annually for 10 years to help developing nations battle the bogeyman of so-called “global warming.” This could equal $1 trillion in carbon-coated foreign aid. Even if other industrialized nations participate, it’s hard to imagine America funding less than 10 percent of this budget. That alone totals $100 billion.

http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2009a/12/133734.htm

*With a 1:08 A.M. procedural vote on December 21, the Senate’s 60-member Democratic caucus advanced a $2.5 trillion health “reform” that 61 percent of Americans oppose, according to CNN. Greased by Majority Leader Harry Reid’s taxpayer-funded bribes to wobbly Democrats, the bill’s final passage at dawn on Christmas Eve was engineered to approve the measure before senators faced pesky constituents back home who want to euthanize the bill.

*The Treasury announced on Christmas Eve, and therefore buried, the news that it will give blank checks to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for the next three years. In essence, the Treasury (meaning you) will grab the check whenever Fannie or Freddie needs fresh capital. Rather than padlock these failed institutions and auction their parts, Treasury is weighing new cost estimates as high as $400 billion.

This fiscal gluttony rattles China, which kindly pays America’s bills these days.

“The United States cannot force foreign governments to increase their holdings of Treasuries,” warned Zhu Min, the People’s Bank of China’s deputy governor. As Shanghai Daily reported, Zhu recently told academics: “The world does not have so much money to buy more US Treasuries.”

http://www.shanghaidaily.com/article/print.asp?id=423054

Washington’s relentless spending and resultant debt auctions prompted Moody’s to hint that America’s triple-A bond rating could disappear. It recently called U.S. public finances “resilient” – not bad, but a notch below Canada, France, and Germany’s “resistant” rating. Beside America’s, their debt profile looks less like a junkie trolling for heroin.

One of 2010’s most intriguing questions will be whether the American people’s aggregated nausea by November triggers the peaceful overthrow of the United States government.

New York commentator Deroy Murdock is a columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University.

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Healthcare as a Human Right: the wrong prescription

by jacob mcangama

The idea that governments should be legally obliged to provide healthcare for its citizens is now an apparently uncontroversial idea. The “right to health” forms the basis of policy for the UN, many international NGOs and national development agencies, and exists in the constitutions of many countries.

However, the political and legal ascendance of the “right to health” is unwarranted and counterproductive, according to this new International Policy Network Report by Danish human rights scholar Jacob Mchangama.

Turning healthcare into an individual enforceable human right creates all kinds of legal complexities, undermines the rule of law and stifles political pluralism. Neither is there any evidence that “the right to health” has actually improved healthcare anywhere in the world – in some cases it has undermined it.

In reality, the rights which are really fundamental to improved healthcare are those which underpin prosperity and economic development – such as the right to own and exchange property. Such rights are denied to millions, yet are vital for creating the prosperity needed to pay for good healthcare.
CLICK HERE FOR THE REPORT

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Harry Reid Turns Insurance Into a Public Utility

by RICHARD A. EPSTEIN

As Harry Reid’s 2,000 page health-care bill is being rammed through the Senate, most of the public debate has been focused on its expanded coverage, its now defunct public option, and its high taxes. Lost in the shuffle has been its intensely coercive requirements on health insurance issuers, especially in the individual and small group markets. Taken together, these restrictions are likely to drive them out of business and run afoul of the constitutional guarantee that all regulated industries have to a reasonable, risk-adjusted, rate of return on their invested capital.

The perils of the Reid bill are made evident in a recent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report that focused on the bill’s rebate program, which holds that once an insurance company spends more than 10% of its revenues on administrative expenses, its customers are entitled to an indefinite statutory rebate determined by state regulatory authorities subject to oversight by the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Defining these administrative costs is a royal headache, but everyone agrees that they are heaviest in the small group and individual markets, where they typically range between 25% and 30%, without the new regulatory hassles.

The CBO concluded that this one restriction turned the Reid bill into “an essentially governmental program.” In other words, the targeted health insurers would become de facto public utilities whose profits are gutted when the huge compliance costs under the Reid bill are piled on top of the hefty costs inherent in running a labor intensive health-care insurance business.

Worse still, the statutory rebate is only the tip of a larger regulatory iceberg that permeates the bill. Normally, insurers have the power to underwrite-to choose their line of business, to select and to price risks, and to decline unattractive risks. Not under the Reid bill. In its frantic effort to expand coverage to the uninsured, the bill will create state health-care exchanges supported by generous federal subsidies to unspecified millions of needy and low-income individuals. Any health insurance carrier that steers clear of these exchanges cannot keep its customers. Any insurance carrier that enters Mr. Reid’s inferno will lose its financial shirt.

Here are some reasons why. Initially, all insurers have to take all comers and to renew all policies except for nonpayment of premiums. Insurers are not allowed to take into account differential risks based on pre-existing conditions. And the premium differentials based on such matters as age and tobacco use are smaller than the market spreads. If too many customers demand coverage from a given insurer to insure efficiently, it’s the government that will decide how many they have to keep and who they are.

Next, it’s the government that requires extensive coverage including “ambulatory patient services, emergency services, hospitalization, maternity and newborn care, mental health and substance abuse disorder services, prescription drugs, rehabilitative and habilitative [sic!] services and devices, laboratory services, preventive and wellness services and chronic disease management, pediatric services, including oral and vision care.” The price squeeze gets even tighter because in every required area of care a collection of government standards will help set the minimum level of required services.

Ostensibly, the Reid bill does not impose any direct price controls on what health insurers can charge for this veritable cornucopia of services. But the bill’s complex, cooperative federalism scheme authorizes state regulators, after recommendations from the federal government, to exclude insurers from the exchanges if their prices are too high, which would again be a competitive death knell. Exile from the exchange does not, however, restore traditional underwriting controls, as the Reid bill and other federal and state regulation continue to apply to these firms.

One common talking point of proponents of the Reid bill is that competitive markets don’t really do a very good job of reining in costs. Indeed, the most common justification for the public option was to supply real competition to the private sector. Now that the option has vanished, the alternative regulatory technique is brute regulatory force. The argument seems to be that price controls alone can force out the waste and inefficiency that are posited to be the hallmark of private markets.

By this twisted logic, rent control is the perfect path to efficient competitive markets. Unfortunately, here no insurer can simply cut back on services provided given the minimum standards. And if it raises rates, the rebates cut ever more deeply during the next period. So essentially, there is no viable option for these firms either on the state exchange or off it.

The economic chaos that is likely to follow the disruption of private insurance health-care markets draws no attention from its Democratic supporters. Oddly enough, it has also been overlooked by the opponents of the bill who are so appalled by this hydra-headed monster that they don’t have the patience to parse its mind-numbing provision.

Perhaps that indifference will end if the Supreme Court takes a hard look at this new adventure into rate regulation. Traditional public utility regulation applies to such services as gas, electric and water, which were supplied by natural monopolists. Left unregulated, they could charge excessive or discriminatory prices. The constitutional art of rate regulation sought to keep monopolists at competitive rates of return.

To control against the risk of confiscatory rates, the Supreme Court also required the state regulator to allow each firm to obtain a market rate of return on its invested capital, taking into account the inherent riskiness of the venture. The orthodox legal approach was summed up in Justice William Rehnquist’s unanimous 1989 decision in Duquesne Light v. Barasch. Duquesne Light allowed the state regulators a wide choice of methods so long as the “bottom line” secured the appropriate rate of return. There’s no need to discuss the fine points here, because not one syllable in the Reid bill is dedicated to securing that constitutionally guaranteed minimum rate of return.

Duquesne Light carries extra weight here because health-insurance industries are far from natural monopolies, so that regulating their rates calls for an extra dollop of judicial scrutiny. At this point, the Reid bill is on a collision course with the Constitution. I take it for granted that, constitutionally, the federal government could not just require all private health insurers to liquidate tomorrow, without compensation.

What’s done here is a close second. The inexorable squeeze between the constricted revenue sources allowable that insurers get under the Reid bill and the extensive and uncertain new legal obligations it imposes is likely to result in a massive cash-flow crunch that will drive the firms in the individual and small-group health insurance markets into speedy bankruptcy. The Supreme Court should apply the constitutional brakes to this foolhardy scheme if Congress doesn’t come to its senses first.
-Mr. Epstein is a professor of law at the University of Chicago and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. This article is based on a longer study released by the Manhattan Institute at

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NJ College student, Class of 2011

“I will correct something. It’s not $100 million, it’s $300 million, and I’m proud of it and will keep fighting for it,” Senator Mary Landrieu from Louisiana told reporters last month after she cast her vote to end Republican filibuster of the healthcare bill. The millions of dollars bestowed on her by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was just one in a string of monetary bribes – including the “Cornhusker Kickback” for Senator Ben Nelson – intended to secure a positive vote. In exchange for Sen. Landrieu’s vote, Louisiana will receive an additional $300 million in Medicare funding.

This, then, prompts the following question: Was Senator Landrieu merely playing politics – and well at that? Her vote did guarantee additional benefits for her state, something substantial to show voters when she is up for re-election. Was Senator Reid correct when he remarked, “That’s what this legislation’s all about – it’s the art of compromise.” Was this merely a compromise? Or, was it more scandalous than that? Was it an incident of corruption as Senator Tom Coburn believes: “And it’s a shame that that’s the only way we can come to consensus in this country is to buy votes.” Yes, it is true Senator Landrieu’s vote guaranteed additional benefits for her state, but at what cost? One certainly must grant that Senator Landrieu’s vote looks like a payoff. This leads to a further question: why did it require $300 million to compel the senator from Louisiana to vote for debate? If the healthcare bill is so beneficial, such an improvement, then let it be voted for on its own merits. Rather than favors and funding, the bill should be read, debated, and voted on for its contents. Finally, the numerous payoffs extended in an effort to pass healthcare legislation are strikingly contrary to President Obama’s promises of a new Washington, change for Congress and constituents. Is this an example of change we can believe in? It seems to resemble more politics as usual.

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By SCOTT GOTTLIEB

Democrats are touting the American Medical Association’s endorsement of President Obama’s health plan. But there’s an important reason why the American College of Surgeons and 18 other specialty groups are opposed.

The plan’s most tangible efforts to restrain medical costs are through its controls on specialist physicians. Based on the government’s premise that they often make wasteful treatment decisions, the health-care legislation in Congress will subject doctors to a mix of financial penalties and regulations to constrain their use of the most costly clinical options. The penalties and regulations are aimed first and foremost at surgeons and the medical devices that they use, largely because that’s where the bulk of spending is.

It all starts with the sweeping power that the Senate bill gives to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The agency will be given the authority to unilaterally write new rules on when medical devices and drugs can be used, and how they should be priced. In particular, the Obama team wants to give the agency the power to decide when a cheaper medical option will suffice for a given problem and, in turn, when Medicare only has to pay for the least costly alternative.

The government has already sought to acquire this same power administratively. But on Tuesday the Obama Justice department got swatted down by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, in what the judges described in their opinion as an attempt by Mr. Obama’s legal team to “end-run around the statute [Medicare].”

Hays v. Sebelius involved a patient who said Medicare unfairly denied her a prescribed treatment for her serious lung disease. Medicare decided instead to pay for a different drug that bureaucrats argued was a suitable but cheaper alternative.

Now the Obama team will use murky provisions embedded in the Senate bill to subtly attain in law those powers they couldn’t more artfully acquire in court. In fact, the bill lets Medicare seek almost any restrictive payment authority it wants from a Medicare Commission established for the purposes of cost control.

If Congress believes Medicare has overreached, it has to pass a separate law to explicitly block the agency’s newly acquired powers. These provisions are deliberately designed to leverage Congress’s inability to act in a timely fashion.

The Senate health-care bill also exempts Medicare’s actions from judicial review, taking away the right of patients to sue the government. Unlike existing Medicare coverage laws, patients won’t have the ability to appeal any of the decisions of this new Medicare Commission.

Ironically, private health insurers must comply with new patient appeals rights under the Senate bill. The government has exempted itself from the same sort of protections.

Thus Medicare will have the power to control which medical devices surgeons use. But clamping down on expensive procedures also means the agency will need to have authority over the specialists themselves. The organization of doctors into mostly small, disaggregated practices always made it hard for a central bureaucracy to control individual physicians. ObamaCare tries to fix this by putting doctors on the financial hook for their treatment decisions.

Primary-care doctors who refer patients to specialists will face financial penalties under the plan. Doctors will see 5% of their Medicare pay cut when their “aggregated” use of resources is “at or above the 90th percentile of national utilization,” according to the chairman’s mark of Section 3003 of the bill. Doctors will feel financial pressure to limit referrals to costly specialists like surgeons, since these penalties will put the referring physician on the hook for the cost of the referral and perhaps any resulting procedures.

Next, the plan creates financial incentives for doctors to consolidate their practices. The idea here is that Medicare can more easily apply its regulations to institutions that manage large groups of doctors than it can to individual physicians. So the Obama plan imposes new costs on doctors who remain solo, mostly by increasing their overhead requirements—such as requiring three years of medical records every time a doctor orders routine medical equipment like wheelchairs.

The plan also offers doctors financial carrots if they give up their small practices and consolidate into larger medical groups, or become salaried employees of large institutions such as hospitals or “staff model” medical plans like Kaiser Permanente. One provision, laid out in Section 3022, allows doctors to share with the government any savings to the government they achieve by delivering less care—but only if physicians are part of groups caring for more than 5,000 Medicare patients and “have in place a leadership and management structure, including with regard to clinical and administrative systems.”

While these payment reforms are structured as pilot programs in the legislation, this distinction has little practical meaning. Medicare is being given broad authority, for the first time, to roll these demonstration programs out nationally without the need for a second authorization by Congress.

Regulation of medicine has always been a local endeavor, and it’s mostly the province of medical journals and professional medical societies to set clinical standards. This is for good reason. Medical practice evolves more quickly than even the underlying technologies that doctors use. This is especially true in surgery, where advances flow from experimentation by good doctors to try different surgical approaches.

The regulation of medical devices and their pricing will also have consequences for patients by discouraging innovation. Most improvements in medical devices come incrementally, with each generation of a device having small but clinically relevant advance over prior versions. This owes to the underlying hardware, which turns on embedded software and microprocessors that themselves undergo constant upgrades.

But if Medicare starts pricing similar devices off one another—a form of the same “reference” pricing schemes used in Europe—manufacturers will start holding back the small changes. Instead, they will introduce new models every four or five years that are sufficiently unique to fall outside of Medicare’s pricing scheme. Meanwhile, patients will have lost the benefit of regular improvements and annual upgrades that characterize medical devices today.

The impact of these provisions won’t be confined to Medicare. Private insurance sold in the federally regulated “exchanges” will take cues from Medicare, since they’re both managed from the same bureaucracy. Medicare will set the standard for medical care across the entire marketplace.

Mr. Obama promised that under his plan people wouldn’t have to change their doctors. But it’s clear that doctors will be forced to change how they make their medical decisions.

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By Rimma Shpigelman, 25, Brooklyn, NY

How much would you ask for your convictions? Are they up for sale? I believe most of you would say absolutely not. Our convictions make us what we are, they guide our lives, they make young men and women in uniforms leave their comfortable lives at home and go to the worst places in the world to fight for us and their country based on the convictions they have. Speaking of the soldiers we speak of the best of America, now let’s examine the worst… Our elected officials, at least most of them at the present time, get elected based on their convictions and promises. However, once they get to the office they seem to put a price tag on everything.

Recently the term Conservative Democrat became an oxymoron. Sen. Mary Landrieu sold her convictions and received a new “Louisiana Purchase”, and Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska who up until recently stood firm against the Senate Healthcare Bill “had to” give up. Apparently his firm stance had nothing to do with his Conservative views, promises to the electorate or even strong belief that the monstrosity concocted by the liberals would destroy the best healthcare system in the world. No, on the opposite, the price for his “yes” vote wasn’t right and once it became acceptable, Sen. Ben Nelson joined the group hell-bent on destroying our future and the quality of the healthcare in America.

The federal government led by the Obama Administration and his cronies promised to pick up most of Nebraska’s future Medicaid expenses, forever. Hey there in New York or Georgia, are you happy? Who will pick your state’s Medicaid bill? You will!!! As part of the Nelson’s sell-out deal, the federal government will pay for every new Medicaid recipient in Nebraska. Over the first decade, this deal is worth about $45 million.

Here are your Conservative Democrats – $45 million only for the first decade to Nebraska, $300 million to Louisiana. Harry Reid turned from the Senate Majority Leader to a kind Santa, the only problem is that he is giving out gifts that came from your taxes, ignoring the fact that the majority of the American people oppose the health care bill as it currently stands in the US Senate.

When those you honor with your support and vote break their promises and sell their convictions, they should be voted out of office and never be allowed back in. Take a moment to realize what this health care bill would do to you, your family, your children, your country and our future. Fight back, before we have nothing to fight for anymore!!!

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Call Now to Stop Obamacare Plan!

Dear Friend,

We MUST keep the pressure up on Congress, we can NEVER surrender.

Even though it’s Christmas, Obama and his allies are plotting to ram through their socialistic health plan.

In the dark of the night, Harry Reid and Senate Democrats rammed through Congress a health care BILL that will radically change our health care system.

Because hanging in the balance is the future of America – freedom or socialism. The League of American Voters needs your help to fight Obama Care every single step of the way.

As you know, Dick Morris, our chief strategist, crafted our powerful campaign that caused the Democrats to modify their plans, especially in the Senate. In the Senate plan, they did away with the “Public Option” which would have bankrupted private insurers, they did away with giving Medicare for everyone over 55 which would HAVE enormously increased the public debt, they did away with a 5% “rich” income tax to fund Obamacare.

But this does not mean the Democrats won’t plan to sneak through these terrible proposals when the final bill comes out of the House and Senate conference.

We know that liberal Democrats are scheming to “revisit” the Public Option.

“It will be revisited,” boasts leftist Democrat Senator Tom Harkin. “This is just the beginning. … What we’re building is a starter home, not a mansion. And guess what? We have room for expansions and additions later on.”

Former DNC Chair Howard Dean: “I would let this thing go to conference committee, and let’s see if we can fix it some more.”

“We now have to fight for the changes in the conference committee,” added SEIU union boss Andy Stern.

But let there be no doubt. Even without the “Public Option,” Harry Reid’s bill creates a government-run plan where non-elected bureaucrats are empowered to stand between patients and doctors.

It is still a disaster for healthcare in America. It must be defeated!

Medicare is slashed by $470 billion, including cuts to Medicare home health care services. These are cuts the Congressional Budget Office says will “reduce access to care or diminish the quality of care” for seniors
Medicare Advantage is cut $120 billion for seniors
Raises taxes by $518 billion, including new taxes on the middle class, new taxes on wheelchairs, pacemakers, heart valves, and other medical devices, and new taxes on individuals and employers who do not retain the type of health care plans that Washington dictates
Senate Democrats’ bill creates an Independent Medicare Advisory Board (IMAB) of non-elected government bureaucrats, empowered to cut Medicare providers limited access to care for seniors
The bill forces a huge unfunded federal mandate on states to expand Medicaid, with the exception of those states where Democrat senators cut “sweetheart deals” with Obama and Reid for their vote
If you live in any of the following states, you MUST call your Senator NOW. If you don’t live in one of these states, call anyway!

Tell them you are a member of the League of American Voters and that you oppose both the Reid and Pelosi Obamacare plans.

Call the U.S. Senate switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask to be connected.

Tell the Senate you OPPOSE the Obamacare Plan and that they must vote AGAINST it!

Also, we here at the League along with Dick Morris are already planning our next phase: fighting the final bill.

Remember, it takes just ONE senator to say “NO” and vote against the bill to stop Obamacare dead in its tracks.

Please help us prepare for our next TV ad campaign — Please Donate to Stop Obama Care — Go Here Now.

Thank you for saving our healthcare system!

Yours,

Bob Adams
Executive Director
League of American Voters

Call the U.S. Senate switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask to be connected.

Arkansas

Senator Blanche Lincoln

Senator David Pryor

Maine

Senator Olympia Snowe

Senator Susan Collins

Nebraska

Senator Ben Nelson

Louisiana

Senator Mary Landrieu

Connecticut

Senator Joe Lieberman

Indiana

Senator Evan Bayh

North Dakota

Senator Kent Conrad

Senator Byron Dorgan

Virginia

Senator Jim Webb

Senator Mark Warner

Missouri

Senator Claire McCaskill

Florida

Senator Bill Nelson

Please Note: Tell your Senator you OPPOSE both the Reid and Pelosi Obamacare plans and you want them to vote “NO.” Don’t forget to mention you a member of the League of American Voters. And make sure you help us continue the fight on TV — Go Here Now.

Paid for by the League of American Voters. Contributions to the League of American Voters are not tax deductible as charitable contributions for federal income tax purposes. Contributions from individuals and corporations are permitted by law and welcome.

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By Dick Morris via. Newsmax

click here

Obama’s healthcare bill, the poisoned Kool-Aid making its way through the Senate, will not confer any of its supposed benefits on Americans until 2013. But they will find themselves chafing at its restrictions and paying its taxes immediately after the law takes effect. Then, they will see no gain, but plenty of pain, for the next three years.

This odd juxtaposition of “suffer now, benefit later” is the byproduct of the administration’s sleight of hand in specifying ten years worth of cuts and taxes in the legislation, but deferring its benefits for the first four years. By comparing six years of spending with ten years of taxing, it managed to appear deficit neutral under the rules of the Congressional Budget Office. In fact, the annual revenues fall far short of covering any single year’s worth of spending, adding to the deficit for each of the last six years over the next ten, but, viewing the decade as a whole, it appears deficit neutral.

Yet the political price is hardly neutral. Democrats who misguidedly vote for this monstrosity will face immediate political repercussions.

The harshest of these backlashes will come from the elderly who will suddenly visit their doctors and be told “no” when they ask for therapies or treatments. The rationing of medical care will start immediately on enactment and, one hopes, the outraged phone calls will start to descend on those whose votes enabled it.

The first “no” will hit the ten million elderly who now rely on Medicare Advantage to pay for the care Medicare itself does not cover. In a payoff to AARP, Obama gutted this program in his bill, ending over $100 billion in federal premium subsidies. These ten million voters will get the grim news that their premiums are going up and their benefits dropping early in 2010. The goal, of course, is to force them to drop Medicare Advantage and sign up, instead, for Medigap insurance — offered, not coincidentally, by the AARP — which provides less coverage at higher cost.

Young people without health insurance can expect to start writing $750 annual checks to Washington to pay the fines written into the bill. (And, after the conference committee finishes its work, the fines may be higher.)

All Americans will soon find their insurance premiums rising as a result of the bill. The young, uninsured will not buy policies. Why should they? Why not just pay the $750 fines each year? Why pay between two percent and 10 percent of their household income before subsidies kick in? It makes no financial sense for anyone making more than $30,000 to pay for coverage. (And most of those under that threshold will be covered by Medicaid, not by private insurance.)

There is no reason for the young to buy private insurance. The legislation requires that health insurers take all comers and not raise rates based on pre-existing conditions. So the young can get coverage when they need it, having only paid $750 per year beforehand.

The difference in cost will, of course, be borne by families throughout America who will see their health insurance premiums increase. President Obama and his Democratic rubber stamps may appreciate that they are not raising taxes on the middle class, just raising mandatory health insurance premiums, but the distinction is likely to be lost on swing voters.

From now on, any increase in health insurance premiums will become the political responsibility of the Obama administration. As Gen. Colin Powell once said of Iraq, “You break it. You own it.” Since these premiums have been rising by an average of 10% per year for more than the past decade, this is a legacy most politicians would sensibly avoid if they could.

By Deroy Murdock

TEMECULA, California — While hastily ramming his 2,457-page, $2.5 trillion ObamaCare package through the Senate before Christmas, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D – Nevada) must see himself as Saint Nick. High atop his sleigh, Santa Harry has piled 12 brand-new taxes and six tax hikes totaling $398.1 billion.

“If your family earns less than $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes increased a single dime,” President Obama told Congress on February 24. “I repeat: Not a single dime.”

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/remarks-of-president-barack-obama-address-to-joint-session-of-congress/

This remains technically true. For families earning less than $250,000, taxes would rise between 2010 and 2019 by much more than a single dime. According to Americans for Tax Reform, seven of Santa Harry’s tax hikes violate Obama’s pledge and collectively cost $81.8 billion. These include:

*A $2.7 billion levy on indoor tanning salons that Reid imposed after ditching a plastic-surgery tax. He just as arbitrarily could tax haircuts, or heirloom tomatoes, or Hula Hoops. Why not a tax on guys named Harry?

*A $5 billion Medicine Cabinet Tax would prohibit using money in Health Savings Accounts, Flexible Spending Accounts, or Health Reimbursement Accounts for non-prescription, over-the-counter medications, except insulin. While diabetics thankfully are spared, how does this benefit those who use antacids or asthma inhalers?

*A $15 billion individual mandate would force Americans to buy health insurance. In 2014, those without “qualifying,” government-approved coverage would pay $495 or 0.5 percent of Adjusted Gross Income, whichever is higher. In 2016, that rises to 2 percent of AGI, or approximately $640 today.

http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/article/0,,id=102886,00.html

*A $15.2 billion tax requires costs to reach 10 percent of AGI, up from 7.5 percent, before Americans may deduct itemized medical expenses.

*A $28 billion tax would hit employers who do not provide health coverage to their payrolls of at least 50 employees. If only one worker qualifies for a healthcare tax credit, the employer must pay a fine of $750 on all 50 staffers, not just the one tax-credited employee. For 50 staffers, this penalty equals $37,500 annually. Small-business owners who file personal returns and earn below $250,000 will suffer this tax themselves.

Senator Mike Crapo (R – Idaho) tried to enforce Obama’s pledge by deleting from ObamaCare all taxes on families earning less than $250,000 and individuals making under $200,000. Every Republican supported Crapo’s amendment. All but five Democrats ganged up and killed it.

Beyond the $250,000 threshold, Santa Harry’s sleigh overflows with other new taxes:

*A $149.1 billion, 40 percent excise tax awaits those with “Cadillac” health plans worth at least $8,500 per individual and $23,000 per family. These taxes, the Congressional Budget Office predicts, “would be largely passed through to consumers in the form of higher premiums for private coverage.” Also — in an affront to equality before the law — Longshoremen are exempt from this tax. Why not ship captains, or nurses, or test pilots?

http://www.talkleft.com/story/2009/11/30/134417/50

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704304504574610194107807878.html?mod=djemEditorialPage

*An additional $59.6 billion tax on health insurance companies also will make costly coverage costlier.

*A $22.2 billion tax on drug companies would increase price pressures and slash funds available for pharmaceutical research and development.

*A $19.2 billion medical-device tax would boost prices of hearing aids, heart stents, artificial limbs, and similar implements and divert money to Washington that could refine such products and create new therapeutic, life-saving inventions.

Despite this massive picking of citizens’ empty pockets, ObamaCare still would leave 24 million Americans uninsured. Among them, Reid claimed Monday, “On average, an American dies from lack of health insurance every 10 minutes.” If true, 210,384 Americans will drop dead waiting until 2014 for the start of ObamaCare’s benefits, such as they are. Why are profligate Democrats so desperate to do so little so slowly for so few?

All this is possible thanks to the Senate’s Kremlinesque procedural vote last Sunday night/Monday morning at 1:08 AM. Liberal Democrats once chanted “The whole world is watching.” Santa Harry and his snow-covered Democratic elves built a sleigh full of tax hikes while the whole world was sleeping.

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=111&session=1&vote=00385

New York commentator Deroy Murdock is a columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University.

By Scott Gottlieb

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Obamacare No Exit

Perhaps the most common question I’m asked about ObamaCare is: “Will I be able to buy my way out of it?” The answer is: “Not unless you’re very rich.”

The plan before the Senate creates a set of 50 state-based insurance “exchanges” that are established as markets for health plans. Consumers must buy policies from their employers or through the exchanges–but, either way, their choice of coverage is limited to one of four basic insurance plans that the government sanctions.

Private insurers will still compete to offer policies but must model their coverage on one of these four templates. In short, the Senate bill explicitly standardizes health benefits and then establishes elaborate mechanisms (including subsidies and penalties) to pay for them.

In short, beneficiaries are trapped inside the Medicare insurance scheme, just as they’ll soon be trapped inside the ObamaCare exchanges.
Here’s the rub: While these four plans vary from low- to high-cost options, the benefits offered under them are pretty much the same. The difference between the cheaper and pricier plans is mostly the amount of cost sharing (e.g., you pay less for insurance if your co-pays are higher).

In effect, the plan creates a single national health-insurance policy. Consumers’ only real option is to trade higher co-pays for lower premiums. But we’ll all get the same package of benefits established by a series of new agencies and an “insurance czar” seated in Washington.

Once the exchanges are in place, the individual market–the ability to go directly to an insurer and buy a health-care policy–will disappear. You’ll have only two places to buy insurance, in the exchanges or through your workplace.

As for health plans offered by employers, “no health-insurance policies could be issued (other than grandfathered plans) that don’t meet the actuarial standards set for these plans” sold in the exchanges. The government will “define the essential health benefits” that all plans must eventually offer, not only those sold in the exchanges but also plans offered by employers. But like other elements of today’s private coverage, the grandfathered plans also disappear in short time. While the bill allows some employer plans to continue as they are today, that’s only so long as the policy doesn’t change–and natural market forces will ensure that most such policies must change within a few years after the bill becomes law.

All of which brings us to the question of whether you’ll be able to spend extra money to add benefits that exceed the government’s basic package or opt out of that plan entirely. The bill doesn’t address this question directly–yet I can say with great confidence that it will be costly and in some cases impossible.

The bill leaves these issues in the hands of the bureaucracies that will write the law’s enabling regulations. And it’s clear both what the spirit of the Obama plan and the habits of these bureaucracies will produce.

The overriding goal of this reform is to turn health insurance into a more “egalitarian” benefit that’s the same for everyone, regardless of income, personal preference or need. So rules written under President Obama to implement the Obama plan are a sure bet to intentionally curtail anyone’s ability to wrap around this national coverage with a supplemental policy or to contract privately with doctors to pay your way out of its limitations.

This is exactly what the bureaucracy’s done with Medicare. Doctors accepting Medicare can’t contract privately with Medicare patients to bill for services that Medicare doesn’t cover. Nor can patients buy added coverage to help plug Medicare’s gaps. (The “Medigap” that many seniors now buy are tightly regulated by the government to limit how much they expand on Medicare’s basic benefits; they mostly just help defray co-pays.)

In short, beneficiaries are trapped inside the Medicare insurance scheme, just as they’ll soon be trapped inside the ObamaCare exchanges. Doctors can’t offer benefits not covered by the government plans, and patients can’t buy extra insurance to make up for many gaps.

These restrictions were designed into Medicare for a reason: Progressives don’t want it to be easy for rich seniors to buy their out; they fear that if the well-off can leave the federal plan, it will become a lower-end benefit. That is, it will wind up like Medicaid, whose enormous problems are largely ignored by politicians because poor Americans don’t have the political power to force improvements.

The very rich, of course, will be able to buy their way out of ObamaCare. Many of the best doctors will go cash only, opting entirely out of the Obama program, to cater to a wealthy clientele. But only the truly affluent will have the cash to escape.

The vast rest of us will be locked inside the new system–stuck with the same collection of government-decreed medical benefits.

Scott Gottlieb, M.D., is a resident fellow at AEI.

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