Health Care Costs, Its Illegal to be Illegal!

The AP reports:
Economic experts at the Health and Human Services Department concluded in a report issued Thursday that the health care remake will achieve Obama's aim of expanding health insurance — adding 34 million to the coverage rolls.
But the analysis also found that the law falls short of the president's twin goal of controlling runaway costs, raising projected spending by about 1 percent over 10 years. That increase could get bigger, since Medicare cuts in the law may be unrealistic and unsustainable, the report warned.
It's a worrisome assessment for Democrats.
In particular, concerns about Medicare could become a major political liability in the midterm elections. The report projected that Medicare cuts could drive about 15 percent of hospitals and other institutional providers into the red, "possibly jeopardizing access" to care for seniors.
"During 2010-2019, however, these effects would be outweighed by the increased costs associated with the expansions of health insurance coverage," wrote Richard S. Foster, Medicare's chief actuary. "Also, the longer-term viability of the Medicare ... reductions is doubtful." Foster's office is responsible for long-range costs estimates.
In another flashing yellow light, the report warned that a new voluntary long-term care insurance prog created under the law faces "a very serious risk" of insolvency.
[It has been suggested that this report was ready one week prior to the big vote, but was withheld because they didn't want to "influence the vote".  Now isn't that just terrific?]
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100423/ap_on_bi_ge/us_health_care_law_costs
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A Republican Texas lawmaker plans to introduce a tough immigration measure similar to the new law in Arizona, a move state Democrats say would be a mistake.

Rep. Debbie Riddle of Tomball said she will push for the law in the January legislative session, according to Wednesday's editions of the San Antonio Express-News and Houston Chronicle.
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Fox News reports:  After making national headlines for a new law on illegal immigrants, the Arizona Legislature passed a bill Thursday that would ban ethnic studies programs in the state that critics say currently advocate separatism and racial preferences.  The bill, which passed 32-26 in the state House, had been approved by the Senate a day earlier. It now goes to Gov. Jan Brewer for her signature.
The new bill would make it illegal for a school district to teach any courses that promote the overthrow of the U.S. government, promote resentment of a particular race or class of people, are designed primarily for students of a particular ethnic group or "advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals."
State Superintendent for Public Instruction Tom Horne called passage in the state House a victory for the principle that education should unite, not divide students of differing backgrounds.
"Traditionally, the American public school system has brought together students from different backgrounds and taught them to be Americans and to treat each other as individuals, and not on the basis of their ethnic backgrounds," Horne said. "This is consistent with the fundamental American value that we are all individuals, not exemplars of whatever ethnic groups we were born into. Ethnic studies programs teach the opposite, and are designed to promote ethnic chauvinism."
Horne began fighting in 2007 against the Tucson Unified School District's program, which he said defied Martin Luther King's call to judge a person by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. Horne claimed the ethnic studies program encourages "ethnic chauvanism," promotes Latinos to rise up and create a new territory out of the southwestern region of the United States and tries to intimidate conservative teachers in the school system.
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Human Events has written:  It has been revealed 33 employees over the last several years, making between $90,000 and $222,000 a year, paid for with your hard earned money, were spending up to eight hours daily downloading pornography during working hours.
The names of these offenders have not been revealed, but the biggest offender was a SEC lawyer making in excess of $222,000 a year who spent so much time downloading porn he filled up his government hard drive. He then began “burning” porn to CDs and DVDs that were stored in his office. If you began watching the videos he downloaded, you’d be watching porn for over 16 years without a break. That seems like an obsession, but worse, how does anybody get any work done in that environment? 
The Obama Administration continues to demonize businesses in the healthcare industry and now the financial sector without looking at the corruption in the federal government. If the President was really for “hope and change” he’d start with cleaning up his own mess first. Make sure every agency of the federal government is tightened up from top to bottom.
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So now, in response to those critics, lawmakers have removed “lawful contact” from the bill and replaced it with “lawful stop, detention or arrest.” In an explanatory note, lawmakers added that the change “stipulates that a lawful stop, detention or arrest must be in the enforcement of any other law or ordinance of a county, city or town or this state.”
“It was the intent of the legislature for ‘lawful contact’ to mean arrests and stops, but people on the left mischaracterized it,” says Kris Kobach, the law professor and former Bush Justice Department official who helped draft the law.  “So that term is now defined.”
The second change concerns the word “ In a safeguard against racial profiling, the law contained the phrase, “The attorney general or county attorney shall not investigate complaints that are based solely on race, color or national origin.”  Critics objected to that, too, arguing again that it would not prevent but instead lead to racial profiling.  So lawmakers have taken out the word “solely.”
“There were misstatements by the opponents of the law that this was written to permit some consideration of race in the enforcement of this law,” says Kobach, “and that’s not the case at all.”
“They are minor changes to clarify some of the terms the ACLU and others had been distorting in public.  In an abundance of caution, the legislature and the governor’s office have made a few minor adjustments to respond to the mischaracterizations.”
Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/in-response-to-critics-arizona-tweaks-new-immigration-law-92495249.html#ixzz0mbOlV7Tf

[On the subject of the new Arizona Immigration Law, I find it laughable that a state has to have a law saying that the law is the law, that being illegal is illegal.  Already the illegals are returning to Mexico!  I find it terrifying that our President is once again fomenting class warfare and hatred of selected groups.  And he is doing so by saying that the police will ask for the papers of a family taking their children out for an ice cream cone.  The bill clearly states that profiling is not to be used, that some other legal contact has had to have occurred prior to asking for proof of citizenship.  If there is to be any fault, it will be for rogue cops who may not follow the law.  I recall that during the health care bill campaign, Obama accused doctors of cutting off limbs and tonsils just to get patients and more money.  Barack Obama has in other words called the 70% of Arizonans who like this bill RACIST.
As I spoke at the time he was elected, I have feared that, rather than being a "post-racial" president, this Obama administration would prove to be a dangerous one for our country, with an administration and media which will turn to the accusation of racism whenever Obama doesn't like what some Americans believe. Statements such as these should never come from our President.  To me, unfortunately, it is no longer shocking.]
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http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/04/026189.php      Powerline reports that:  President Obama has selected Dr. Donald Berwick to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Berwick is a Harvard professor, a pediatrician, and the CEO of a nonprofit that, according to its website, has a staff of over 100 people. These seem like dubious qualifications to head a massive organization with a budget greater than that of the Department of Defense. As Jeffrey Anderson explains, however, Dr. Berwick is a perfect pick for Obama. For like Obama, Berwick believes that our health-care system should be run through Washington,

Unlike Obama, Berwick is completely up-front about this. His view of the rationing of health care is that "the decision is not whether or not we will ration care -- the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open." Berwick has his eyes on the British method of rationing, as implemented through Great Britain's National Health Services (NHS) and its National Institute for Clinical Health and Excellence (NICE).