Obama's Health Care Plan and Conservative Ideas

• From Politico.com and other sources come some of the items on Obama's "new" health care plans for us all:
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• 1) Crack down on waste and fraud in Medicare
• 2) Allow for abortions paid for by the government, on Indian reservations and at Community Centers, which will be funded with $11 Billion of our dollars (wherein there is no language disallowing these abortions).
• 3)Close the “donut hole” for Medicare prescription drug beneficiaries.
• 4) Include a legal requirement on all Americans to own insurance or pay a fine
  5) Subsidize lower-income Americans to purchase health insurance

  6) Add a 2.9% Medicare payroll tax on couples earning more than $250,000 a year.  We all already pay Medicare taxes on every dollar we earn.

  7) Raise the Medicare payroll tax

  8) Increase fees on large employers that do not provide health insurance

  9) Collect $10 billion more from the pharmaceutical industry

  10) Delay the excise tax  on "Cadillac" health plans until 2018 - when Obama will be safely out of office, and the anger will come after his reelection, not before

  11) Delay implementation of the taxes on various health care industry players, and change the fee on medical device manufacturers to an excise tax.
  

  12) Find more savings in the Medicare Advantage program. 

  13) Give the federal government sweeping new powers to curb exorbitant rate hikes by the nation’s health insurance companies [in other words - price fixing].
  14) Cut fees from Medicare to doctors by 21% - [rationing, here we come, for more and more doctors will now be unable to afford seeing Medicare patients.  See how that works, and what Sarah Palin meant about Death Panels?] 
  

  
  
  Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/33275_Page3.html#ixzz0gNfBSHvJ

  
  
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• Below are some of the other new taxes proposed in an effort to make the bill deficit-neutral.  The CBO cannot yet provide their estimate of cost because they don't have enough of the specifics.
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• Elimination of the Medicare Part D (prescription drug) deduction ($5.4 billion);
• A tax on branded drugs ($22.2 billion);
• An annual tax on the health insurers ($60.4 billion)
• A 40 percent excise tax on "high value" health care ($149.1 billion in new taxes over the next 10 years); and joint earners over $250,000 ($53.8 billion);
• Changes in health savings accounts (HSAs), ($5 billion);
• A $2,500 cap on FSAs in cafeteria plans ($14.6 billion);
• An increase from 10 percent to 20 percent in the penalty for early non-qualified HSA withdrawals ($1.3 billion);
• A tax on companies that manufacture or import medical devices ($19.3 billion);
• An increase in the floor of the medical expenses deduction from 7.5 percent of adjusted gross income to 10 percent, except for seniors, who will stay at 7.5 percent ($15.2 billion); 
• [None of these taxes will result in higher prices for us consumers, right?]
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• Charles Hurt of the NY Post writes: "Included in President Obama's latest stab at health-care reform released yesterday is one of the more astonishing admissions of political deception in recent memory. After months of swearing that his health legislation would lower the skyrocketing costs of insurance premiums, Obama finally acknowledged that actually it would not.
  So, instead, he has included a new provision that can simply outlaw premium increases his administration deems "unreasonable and unjustified." 
  While he's at it, Obama should go right ahead and outlaw unemployment. Then he could make foreclosures illegal. That would fix all our problems.
  Heck, if any problems remain in health care after he has jammed his bill through Congress before his co-conspirators get run out of town, Obama could just make sickness illegal."
  
  
  Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national
  /prez_newest_idea_simply_outlaw_reality_A9lsWAXwaEQj2UheOJojIK#ixzz0gNhp8yIV
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  Asked if he was disappointed the bill doesn’t include a public option, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said, “We’re going to fight to put it in.”

  Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/33322_Page3.html#ixzz0gMwvBvVO
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  Following is the Guest Commentary I submitted to my local paper.  I do not expect that they will use it.....
  

  This week President Obama is presiding over a so-called bi-partisan discussion of his plans for government health care insurance for all Americans.  It has been noted by some that the Senate and House Democrats will come to the meeting armed with a bill which they are ready to pass, and they will be willing to pass the bill with a vote of only 51 Senators instead of the 60 usually required.  Resorting to this parliamentary device, Reconciliation, goes against Senate Rules.  Reconciliation is intended to be used to tweak small parts of large bills – not to pass a bill which will control 16% of our economy.  It demonstrates their desperation to cram down our throats what we stupid people don’t understand is good for us.  Sometimes being "The Party of No" is the right and courageous thing to be. The Democrats in Congress and the President have repeatedly stated that the Republicans have no plan and have offered no solutions of their own.  I beg to differ, and what follows are some of the ideas which have already been suggested, but so far have been dismissed without debate or even discussion:

   

  1)      Health Savings Accounts, whereby Americans will be encouraged to shop for competitive prices, and to keep unused funds for a future health crisis.

  2)      Making legal the sale of health insurance across state lines.  This will cause great competition for customers resulting in lower costs to the insured.

  3)      Tort reform, intended not to bar lawsuits against malpractice, but to keep frivolous lawsuits out of the courts, and to bar excessive lawyer fees which in turn raise the need for excessive judgments. This alone will save billions of dollars now being spent on defensive medicine.

  4)      Enrolling the approximately 12 million Americans who now qualify for Medicaid and S-Chip but who have not yet enrolled.

  5)      Insurance portability - the ability of those who are insured to keep their current insurance policy when they change jobs or are laid off. President Obama admits that his highly touted pledge that we can keep our current insurance if we wish has disappeared, saying, “I think that some of the provisions that got snuck in might have violated that pledge”.  This mandate was in the law prior to his statements.  As the law is currently written, we MUST go onto government insurance once we change or lose our jobs – no exceptions.

  6)      Not allowing preexisting conditions to prevent a patient from getting insurance.

  7)       Enhancing health care for the uninsured.

  8)      The Patients’ Choice Act which would bring market based reforms to health care.

  9)      Ridding the system of fraud in Medicare, which will save billions of dollars and requires no new laws

        

  We often hear that George Bush and his Democrat Congress added $3.8 trillion dollars to the federal debt during his eight years in office, an amount that was entirely too much and has angered conservatives.  It is convenient to omit the fact that during President Obama’s first year in office, he has overseen the addition of $1.5 trillion to the federal debt, a rate of more than three times the Bush rate.   This is true even without adding the extreme cost of President Obama’s health care plan for us all.  Only after this year’s election does he plan to finally reduce the budget, and only after his own reelection will we begin the health care Single Payer plan.  How convenient – and obvious to those who seek the truth.  We are left to wonder if our country will ever recover.