Emergency Inside the Healthcare Bill Total Government Control in your life!!!!
Angry Patriot:
here it is 1990 pages.....
http://health.burgess.house.gov/UploadedFiles/House_HCR_bill.pdf
menace:
A Paid Insider Can’t Be An Objective Outsider Judge
OMB director Peter Orszag and MIT economists Jonathan Gruber are both very smart, successful individuals. While I may not agree with them on every policy, that does not mean I don’t respect their intelligence. Both have knowledge and perspective to add to the health care debate. The problem is that it turns out they have the exact same insider perspective.
We have recently learned that they are both effectively employees of the Obama administration. Both were heavily invested in shaping the health care bill, and that gives both of them a very strong desire to see it become law. Neither is an outside observer, despite the fact that Jonathan Gruber is allowing himself to be depicted that way in multiple media outlets. Gruber has been quoted in numerous newspaper articles, none of which, to my knowledge, disclosed his connection to the White House. In fact, when directly asked by the Washington Post before writing an Op-Ed on the excise tax if he had any conflict of interest he said no. In reality Gruber, like Orszag was a paid part of the Obama health care team, and his statements should have been treated just like Orszag’s.
Gruber was not an objective third party observer, he was an Obama health care team member. This is critically important for judging his public statements. He was financially, professionally, and emotionally invested in actively shaping the health care reform bill. This can’t help but affect judgment of the final product. Just like some film directors might be very good movie critics, that does not mean I would not be very skeptical of their personal reviews of their own movies. Do I think the film director is lying because he thinks his film is the best movie ever? No, I don’t doubt he honestly believes that the movie he helped make is amazing, but I would very much want someone else’s opinion. Gruber falsely allowed himself to be viewed as an independent movie critic when in reality he was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to help make the film.
Think back to Ron Brownstein’s article on cost control. It was heavily based on the statements of Gruber. Do you think Brownstein could have or would have written the same article if he replaced all of Gruber’s opinions with Peter Orszag’s? Do you think an article based on Orszag’s judgment of the bill would have been as well received, widely circulated, or strongly promoted by the White House as proof of the bill’s cost control measures? Clearly, the answer is no, and that is the problem. Those inside the bubble may completely believe what they say, but the problem is that they are inside the bubble. They inherently have blindspots as a result of being part of the team and invested in the outcome. They can’t properly judge what they have been paid to work on.
Gruber’s ethnical failing is that he allowed himself to be falsely depicted as an objective outsider judge, which he was not. Even if Gruber believed 100% everything he ever publicly said about the bill, that is not the point. Being a well-paid consultant working on the bill, in itself, can dramatically change one’s perspective. You can’t be paid well over $400,000 to work on a project, and still objectively judge it as an outsider. Gruber did a serious disservice to the health care debate with his lack of candor. If we wanted an insider’s perspective about the bill, we could just ask Peter Orszag. At least then we would honestly know what we were getting.
http://pnhp.org/blog/2009/12/14/nejm-accepts-baucus-claim-of-no-financial-interests/
NEJM accepts Baucus claim of no financial interests?
The following letter to the editor by Dr. Howard Green of Florida was sent to the New England Journal of Medicine in early November. It had not yet been published as of the Dec. 10 issue.
The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) has had a decades-old policy of financial disclosure by authors of editorials in order to “prevent financial interests from infringing on the editorial content of the Journal.”
This policy was grossly violated when the editors of the NEJM recently chose to publish an opinion piece by Senator Max Baucus titled “Doctors, Patients, and the Need for Health Care Reform” (Vol. 361:1817-1819, Nov. 5, 2009, No. 19) that included a statement by the author that he had no financial interests to disclose.
In the past year alone, Sen. Baucus has received payments from drug and health insurance companies many times in excess of the $10,000 limit which the Journal recognizes as significant to alter an author’s credibility. By failing to disclose those contributions to Journal readers, Sen. Baucus and the editors of the NEJM have violated their own code of ethics and disclosure meant to support the veracity of opinions and data presented in their journal.
Disclosure of the senator’s directly or indirectly received payments from health insurance and pharmaceutical companies would help readers understand why Sen. Baucus continues to support a government-subsidized, high-overhead, low-outcome private insurance industry operating parallel to and within Medicare insurance.
Disclosure of the senator’s receipt of such “contributions” from the health care sector might demonstrate why he supports a private health insurance industry that siphons away, via administrative overhead, hundreds of billions of dollars annually from physician subscribers to the NEJM, patients, clinics, therapists, and pharmacies.
In addition to failing to disclose in the NEJM the monies he has received from pharmaceutical and health insurance companies, Sen. Baucus failed to inform readers of his personal and his Senate Finance Committee’s continued support for (or acquiescence to) the following policies:
* A federal exemption for private health insurance companies from antitrust regulations.
* A prohibition on Medicare insurance establishing a drug formulary through competitive bidding.
* No federal grants to develop a single EMR and billing system for physicians, hospitals and therapists which would reveal clinical, preventative and surgical outcomes. Outcome revelations would crush the health insurance companies, and allow for free-market competition among doctors and hospitals based on quality and efficiency.
* Protection of private health insurance companies from medical malpractice lawsuits via federal ERISA laws.
* Part D taxpayer subsidies to health insurance and drug corporations.
* Medicare Advantage taxpayer subsidies to health insurance companies.
* Reckless and negligent medical rationing by private health insurance companies via their non-physician employees.
* A government ban on collective bargaining by physicians.
* An inability of Medicare to enlarge its limited risk pool beyond that of the oldest, sickest and most physically disabled citizens of our nation.
* Personal bankruptcies due to a medical illness.
* No real change in malpractice reform. Real malpractice reform would allow internists and family practitioners to fulfill their role as primary care physicians efficiently and productively, tackling dynamic illnesses without prematurely referring their sicker patients to expensive specialists without medical benefit.
By allowing Sen. Baucus to express his opinion without a comprehensive disclosure of the large sums he has received from health insurance and pharmaceutical companies or of his continued support of current health care policies, the editors of the NEJM have surrendered their objective status as an advocate of integrity in research and patient care.
http://pnhp.org/blog/2009/12/14/nejm-accepts-baucus-claim-of-no-financial-interests/
menace:
Petition for Transparency in Congress
http://www.visiontoamerica.com/
Reid-Pelosi Backroom Deal For ObamaCare Underway
http://www.grassfire.com/3122/offer.asp?Ref_ID=3041&CID=122&RID=22015751
menace:
Here's where we're at on socialized health care. The House and Senate have passed ObamaCare bills, but the two versions are very different. So, the bill can't go to the President until they iron out the differences.
Make no mistake about it. This legislation moves us down the road towards socialism, and it will result in even more gun owners being disqualified from owning firearms.
We need to regroup and renew our efforts to kill ObamaCare -- an outcome which is still very doable.
Now, repeat this phrase over and over: A MORAL CESSPOOL.
If we are going to defeat the anti-gun ObamaCare legislation, these words are going to have to be repeated millions of times over the next month.
The U.S. Senate has become a moral cesspool.
The U.S. Senate has become a moral cesspool.
The U.S. Senate has become a moral cesspool.
Why is this refrain so important? There are several reasons why, but consider this: Throughout this fight over ObamaCare, Senators have lied about guns... they've lied about the deficit... they’ve lied about the costs of health insurance premiums and how the bill will affect senior citizens. They have lied over and over to their constituents about all these issues.
That's why it's time that we tell Democrat Senators how corrupt their vote for ObamaCare really was. Obviously, they won't agree. So let each Senator make the argument that, "I am not a crook."
That argument never wins elections.
Already, Democrat Representatives and Senators are either switching parties or announcing their retirements. They know the American people are disgusted with the moral bankruptcy of the U.S. Congress -- a situation that has become obvious to anyone who watches the nightly news.
Consider the following despicable practices which were perpetrated in order to push ObamaCare through the Senate last month:
1. Lies
* For months, Senators claimed there were no anti-gun provisions in the ObamaCare legislation. But everyone knew they were lying. So last month, a provision was inserted into the Senate bill which claims to allay the concerns of gun owners -- but leaves the most important problem unremedied. If they weren't lying to begin with, then why try to fix what they claimed wasn't there?
* Senators are now insisting that the current Senate health bill protects the rights of gun owners, even though this version would still allow the BATFE and FBI to troll through the ObamaCare database for gun owners who would be disqualified because of their medical information. This could result in millions of Americans -- who are suffering from PTSD and other similar conditions -- being put into the NICS system and denied the right to buy firearms.
2. Bribes
* A $100 million bribe to treat Sen. Ben Nelson's state different from all others, in exchange for Ben Nelson's vote.
* A $100-300 million bribe to treat Sen. Mary Landrieu's state different from all others, in exchange for Mary Landrieu's vote.
* $10 billion for community health centers operated by groups similar to ACORN, in exchange for Sen. Bernie Sanders' vote.
* A bribe to Sen. Max Baucus in order to treat Libby, Montana, different from any other town.
* A bribe to Sen. Chris Dodd consisting of a $100 million medical center in Connecticut.
* Bribes to Sens. Kent Conrad, Brian Dorgan, Bill Nelson, etc., etc., etc.
* In fact, there are so many bribes in the Senate version of the ObamaCare bill that the bribe-meister himself, Majority Leader Harry Reid, publicly bragged that if your senator doesn't have a bribe in this bill, it "speaks poorly" of him.
3. Extortion
* Threats to take away Sen. Joe Lieberman's chairmanship because of his opposition to the government run "public option."
4. Fraud
* Senators are claiming that the Senate-passed version reduces the deficit, even though:
a. $247 billion of the bill's costs are being snuck through in separate legislation;
b. The "savings" rely on $465 billion of Medicare "cuts," which no one believed were achievable; and
c. The "savings" rely on making new taxes take effect 3-5 years before any of those tax monies are spent.
* Senators are claiming that the bill would make Medicare solvent -- but this claim can only be made by fraudulently double-counting the effects of the phony Medicare cuts.
* Senators are claiming that health care costs would be brought under control, when the government's own Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services found that costs would go up $245 billion.
* Senators are claiming that premiums would be brought under control, even though the Congressional Budget Office found that policies under the "exchange" (i.e., those policies which you would have to buy, under penalty of law) would be 10-13% more expensive than if Congress did nothing.
5. Secrecy
* The final version of the 2407-page bill wasn't revealed until less than 48 hours before Congress began voting on it.
Now that the Christmas holidays are behind us, we need to get back to work. Please take the time to contact your Senator, so that we can protect the rights of gun owners by defeating socialized medicine.
ACTION: Over the next month, the term "moral cesspool" needs to become part of the political lexicon. Below, you will find that two sample communications are attached -- one for Democrat Senators, the other for Republicans.
So please send your letter, and then get your relatives, your friends, your neighbors, your gun clubs, churches, etc., to do the same.
You can use the Gun Owners Legislative Action Center to send a pre-written message to your Senators -- the appropriate e-mail will automatically be sent to your Senator, based on whether he or she is a Republican or Democrat.
----- Pre-written letter for Democrat Senators -----
Dear Senator:
The U.S. Senate has become a moral cesspool, and you need to begin doing something about it before this whole country is sacrificed on the altar of the Senate's moral decay.
I am disgusted with the lies, bribes, and fraud which you have advocated by voting for the Senate ObamaCare legislation:
* Millions of American taxpayer dollars were spent in the states of Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu and Chris Dodd to obtain their votes. In fact, so many bribes were shelled out that the chief bribe-meister, Harry Reid, publicly bragged that if a senator doesn't have a bribe in this bill, it "speaks poorly" of him.
* The Senate bill was passed on the claim that the Reid bill reduces the deficit, even though:
a. $247 billion of the bill’s costs are being snuck through in separate legislation;
b. The "savings" rely on $465 billion of Medicare "cuts," which no one believed were achievable; and
c. The "savings" rely on making new taxes take effect 3-5 years before any of those tax monies are spent.
* Senators claimed that health care costs would be brought under control, when the government's own Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services found that costs would go up $245 billion.
* Senators also claimed that premiums would be brought under control, even though the Congressional Budget Office found that policies under the "exchange" (i.e., those policies which you would have to buy, under penalty of law) would be 10-13% more expensive than if Congress did nothing.
There is still time to change course. I implore you to change your vote on ObamaCare.
Sincerely,
----- Pre-written letter for Republican Senators -----
Dear Senator:
Thank you for voting against the ObamaCare fiasco.
For months, Senators claimed there were no anti-gun provisions in the ObamaCare legislation. But everyone knew they were lying. So last month, a provision was inserted into the Senate bill which claims to allay the concerns of gun owners -- but leaves the most important problem unremedied.
Some Democrat Senators are now claiming that the current Senate health bill protects the rights of gun owners, even though this version would still allow the BATFE and FBI to troll through the ObamaCare database for gun owners who would be disqualified because of their medical information. This could result in millions of Americans -- who are suffering from PTSD and other similar conditions -- being put into the NICS system and denied the right to buy firearms.
Bottom line: Please do everything in your power to kill the ObamaCare legislation. What can you, as a senator, do about this?
Please take away the incentive that the suicidal Democrats have for selling their votes on ObamaCare for posh nominations in the Obama administration after they are defeated at the polls or retire.
You can do this by announcing you will place a "hold" on the nominations of Blanche Lincoln, Evan Bayh, Chris Dodd, Brian Dorgan, and Michael Bennet -- nominations which will inevitably be made next year as a payoff for their votes on behalf of ObamaCare.
It's time that the bribes stopped, and you can make this happen
http://capwiz.com/gunowners/issues/alert/?alertid=14528481
menace:
1. Creates a special deal for union members. Starting in 2018, a single union worker in a multiemployer health plan would be completely exempt from the “Cadillac tax” (a 40% tax on high-cost plans) unless the price of that plan exceeds $27,500. In contrast, a single, non-union worker living right next door would start paying that Cadillac tax as soon as the value of her health plan exceeds $10,200.
2. Makes a bad surtax worse. Twenty-two House Democrats opposed a surtax contained in an earlier version of the Democrats’ health care bill. That surtax would have started at a rate of 2% and would have applied to Americans earning over $280,000 for singles and $350,000 for couples. Under the current version of the bill, however, the Medicare surtaxes on both earned income (imposed at a rate of 0.9%) and investment income (imposed at a higher rate of 3.8%) feature far lower thresholds – $200,000 for singles and $250,000 for couples.
3. Increases taxes on real estate investments. The 3.8% Medicare surtax would hit average, middle-class investors in real estate. A middle-class taxpayer who happens to sell real estate for a significant gain in a particular year would be liable for this new tax, regardless of how low her income might be in other, more typical years. The National Association of Realtors wrote to Speaker Pelosi and Ways and Means Chairman Levin urging that Congress reject this unfair tax increase, especially given the flagging economy.
4. Vastly expands IRS powers. According to a new report, the Democrats’ health care bill vastly expands the responsibilities of the Internal Revenue Service and would strengthen the IRS’s heavy hand in dealing with ordinary taxpayers who play by the rules. If this bill becomes law, the IRS may have to hire up to 16,500 additional auditors, agents, and other employees just to enforce all the new taxes and penalties. The bill would empower the IRS to: (1) verify that Americans have “acceptable” health care coverage; (2) fine Americans up to $2,085 or 2 percent of income (whichever is greater) for the failure to purchase “minimum essential coverage”; (3) confiscate tax refunds; and (4) increase audits.
5. Imposes new marriage penalties. Because the Democrats’ subsidies for health insurance are solely based on the federal poverty level, if two people make $32,000 per year, they would pay between $6,000 and $10,000 more for health insurance than before they said “I do.” This is because as singles they were poor enough to receive health care subsidies, but as a married couple, these Americans are too rich for federal assistance. A discussion of how a prior version of the bill would have imposed these marriage penalties can be accessed here.
6. Breaks the President’s pledge on not taxing the middle class in at least a dozen ways. The Democrats’ health care bill contains at least a dozen direct and indirect tax increases that would break President Obama’s pledge not to raise taxes on those making less than $200,000 for singles and $250,000 for couples. These include: (1) a “Cadillac tax” on high-cost plans, (2) an individual mandate tax on Americans who do not purchase government-approved health insurance, (3) an increase in the 7.5% AGI floor for medical expense deductions to 10%, (4) limits on Flexible Spending Accounts in cafeteria plans, (5) increased penalties for nonqualified HSA distributions, (6) other restrictions on Health Savings Accounts, Health Reimbursement Accounts, and Flexible Spending Accounts, (7) a tax on tanning services, ( an employer mandate tax, (9) a sales tax on medical devices, (10) a tax on health insurance premiums, (11) a tax on prescription drugs, and (12) a tax on insured and self-insured health plans.
7. Ensnares a growing number of people in the Cadillac tax. The Cadillac tax in the Democrats’ health care bill would not keep pace with medical inflation after it comes into effect in 2018, meaning a larger and larger tax hit over time. Beginning in 2020, this tax would be indexed by only the consumer price index. Given that health insurance premiums will likely increase faster than CPI, the Cadillac tax would hit more and more plans each year and take a bigger bite from those already covered
8. Repeats the mistakes of the AMT. Instead of learning the lesson of the Alternative Minimum Tax, which hits more and more Americans every year because the exemption level is not indexed for inflation, the Democrats’ bill repeats this mistake by failing to index the exemption threshold for the Medicare surtaxes on both earned and unearned income.
9. Forces those with catastrophic costs to pay even more. Current law provides important tax relief to Americans who suffer catastrophic out-of-pocket medical expenses, permitting a deduction for costs above 7.5% of income. The Democrats’ bill would raise that threshold to 10% of income in 2012 (2016 for seniors and the disabled). This is a particularly hard hit on those with the highest medical costs who can least afford to pay more taxes. And, according to the non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation, more than 95% of the revenue generated from this tax increase would come from taxpayers earning less than $200,000.
10. Punishes investment in our economy. Under the Democrats’ bill, the Medicare tax would, for the very first time, apply to capital gains, dividends, interest, rents, royalties, and other investment income of singles earning over $200,000 and couples earning over $250,000. Currently, capital gains and dividends are taxed at a top rate of 15%, but those rates are already scheduled to rise in 2011 to 20% and 39.6%, respectively. When the expansion of the Medicare tax is coupled with the already scheduled rate increase, capital gains rates on these types of investment income, long-term capital gains rates would rise by almost 60% next year – from 15% to 23.8% – and the top tax rate on dividends would nearly triple – from 15% to 43.4%.
11. The Senate-passed Tax Extenders bill (H.R. 4213, as amended) includes one-year extensions of important tax relief policies for both individuals and businesses that expired on December 31, 2009. These include the deduction for state and local sales taxes, the R&D tax credit, and numerous energy-related incentives. Just weeks ago, the Senate decided to “pay for” those provisions by making “black liquor” ineligible for the cellulosic biofuel producer credit and by codifying the economic substance doctrine into law. Yet Democrats have now chosen to steal those very same revenue offsets – totaling $28.1 billion – to help finance their trillion dollar health bill instead. This begs the question: To the extent Democratic Leaders decide to adhere to PAYGO on Tax Extenders, what new taxes will they raise to replace all that lost revenue?
12. On Page 1336 of the “Affordable Health Care for America Act says that Readmissions based on ratios? This Rationing!
1 Subtitle C—Provisions Related to
2 Medicare Parts A and B
3 SEC. 1151. REDUCING POTENTIALLY PREVENTABLE HOSPITAL READMISSIONS.
The plan uses statistics to judge whether someone may be readmitted to the hospital. A patient will be allowed readmission only if a certain number of people with the same “applicable condition” have been discharged from that hospital. This is rationing, pure and simple
Page 42 of HC Bill: The Health Choices Commissioner will choose your HC benefits for you
Page 58 HC Bill: Govt will have real-time access to individuals' finances & a 'National ID Health card' will be issued.
Page 59 HC Bill lines 21-24: Govt will have direct access to your bank accounts for elective funds transfer.
Page 85 Line 7 HC Bill: Specifications of Benefit Levels for Plans -- The Govt will ration your health care
Page 272 SEC. 1145: Treatment of certain cancer Hospitals - Cancer patients - welcome to rationing
Page 280 Sec 1151: The Govt will penalize hospitals for whatever the Govt deems preventable
Page 298 Lines 9-11: Doctors: If you treat a patient during initial admission that results in a re-admission -- the Govt will penalize you.
Page 341 Lines 3-9: The Govt has authority to disqualify Medicare Advance Plans, HMOs, et
Page 354 Sec 1177: The Govt will RESTRICT enrollment of 'special needs people
Page 430 Lines 11-15: The Govt will decide what level of treatment you will have at end - of-life!
Page 494-498: Govt will cover Mental Health Services including defining, creating, and rationing those services.
13. Allows the ATF to troll the confidential medical records in order to take guns away from Americans. This is because the "individual mandate" in Sections 1501 and 1502 of the Senate-passed bill would make it impossible for people to keep private, medical information out of the government-controlled medical database that was created by the stimulus bill.
Health Care Takeover by the Numbers
$1.2 trillion: The total cost of the bill between 2010 and 2020 (though the real costs do not start until 2014), including $940 billion in coverage subsidies, $144.2 billion in additional mandatory spending, $70 billion in discretionary spending in the Senate bill, and $41.6 billion in unrelated education spending.
$208 billion: The cost of a ten year patch for the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) to prevent reduction in Medicare physician payments. This cost is hidden because it was included in the earlier Democrat bill, but was dropped to provide a better cost estimate. It is expected to move separately and would bring the true cost of the takeover to $1.4 trillion.
$569.2 billion: Tax increases in the legislation, including $48.9 billion in new tax increases in the reconciliation bill alone.
$52 billion: The amount of new taxes on employers who cannot afford to pay their employees health care, imposed at a time when unemployment is 9.7 percent.
12: The number of new tax increases in the bill that violate President Obama’s pledge that, “Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase.”
46%: The percentage of families making less than $66,150 who will be forced to pay the individual mandate tax.
16,500: The estimated number of IRS auditors, agents and other employees that may be needed to collect the hundreds of billions in new taxes levied on the American people.
$20 billion: The estimated amount of money that the IRS and HHS will need for the cost of additional regulations, bureaucracy, and red tape over the next ten years. This spending is not included in CBO’s cost estimate of H.R. 4872.
$53 billion: The amount of revenue this bill raids from Social Security to appear as if it actually reduces the deficit.
$202.3 billion: The amount of money cut from the Medicare Advantage program for seniors to help offset the costs of a new entitlement.
$436 billion: The amount of federal subsidies in the bill that will go directly to insurance companies to provide health care in the exchange.
63%: The percentage of physicians surveyed who feel that health reform is needed, but are opposed to this sweeping overhaul legislation.
$9 billion: The amount that the Ways and Means Committee estimated Medicare would spend annually after 25 years when it was passed in 1965. In reality, Medicare spent $67 billion in 1990, or seven times the initial cost estimate.
$1.55 trillion: The projected FY 2010 deficit—11 times the ten year “savings” Democrats claim the bill will produce by spending more than $1 trillion for this government takeover of health care.
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