The President at his health care rally in Minnesota yesterday said "If you misrepresent what’s in the plan, we will call you out.". Well, Mr. President I'm calling you out. This from a White House press release: “Undocumented immigrants would be able to buy insurance in the non-exchange private market, just as they do today. That market will shrink as the exchange takes hold, but it will still exist and will be subject to reforms such as the bans on pre-existing conditions and caps.” So the White House has admitted that Rep. Wilson was correct that without a mechanism to verify immigration status that illegal immigrants would be covered under the HR 3200. Point to Rep. Wilson. Which means that the President was not telling the truth to the American people during his address.
In answering the question about illegals the Obama administration opened up another can of worms. Remeber the President's claims that if you were happy with your insurance you could keep it? Not true. "That market will shrink as the exchange takes hold, but it will still exist and will be subject to reforms such as the bans on pre-existing conditions and caps.”. That business about the market shrinking means that health care plans that Americans have and are happy with will be forced out of business by the government. Which means that some Americans will lose the health plans they currently enjoy due to a dictat from the government. How many Americans lose their plans depends on the whims of HHS Secretary Sebelius, it could be millions. Rember it's in the democrats political interest to get as many people on the government option as possible. The more people dependent on the government the better their chances of permanent rule.
The White House also neglects to mention their promises to the immigration pressure groups. The White House has promised a vote on Amnesty after health care, cap and trade and card check are passed. So that promise to keep illegals from getting government provided health care is just posturing. It is their postion that by the time national health care goes into effect they will no longer be illegal and therefore elligible for the "public option".
President Obama is aiming for nothing short of an intrusive and omnipotent Federal government on the European model. Once our freedoms are lost they will be impossible to regain. The American dream will die in a hell of confiscatory taxes, an octopus of regulations and dependency.
Showing posts with label health care. Show all posts
Showing posts with label health care. Show all posts
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Following the Piper
Winston Churchill quipped along the lines that if at 18 you're not a socialist you have no heart, if not a conservative at 30 you have no brains. Somehow I managed to get through college without extolling the virtues of "Das Kapital" and saying stupid things along the lines of "true communism hasn't been tried yet". Which brings me to a vigil thrown by the folks of moveon.org and the political musings of one paticipant. From the Newburyport Daily News "Bliss Parsons will leave on Sunday for Mount Holyoke College but felt it was important to be out helping to shape what will affect her generation in the coming years.
"I follow Obama," Parsons said as she stood with her mother, Christine Booth of Newbury. "I think health care is a necessity for all, and it's a right. It's really going to affect my generation, and I want to be out here making sure no one has to pay for it.""
A tutorial for Ms. Parsons, there is no such thing as free health care. It will be paid for by massive tax increases and draconian rationing. Well, maybe, Rep. Yarmuth admitted he has no idea how it will be paid for.
Here's hoping old Winston was on to something. Otherwise I fear for the future of this country.
"I follow Obama," Parsons said as she stood with her mother, Christine Booth of Newbury. "I think health care is a necessity for all, and it's a right. It's really going to affect my generation, and I want to be out here making sure no one has to pay for it.""
A tutorial for Ms. Parsons, there is no such thing as free health care. It will be paid for by massive tax increases and draconian rationing. Well, maybe, Rep. Yarmuth admitted he has no idea how it will be paid for.
Here's hoping old Winston was on to something. Otherwise I fear for the future of this country.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
What we stand to lose
I just watched a few videos from the rally in Portsmouth NH today. To all that attended, thank you. I understand that 1 liberty loving individual was spat on and kicked in the groin by a union goon. Hopefully that video will be released soon. Here's an article that tells it pretty straight. Unlike the president, who I guess claimed that he has never supported a single payer system. I'll watch the news tonight to see if they call him on his lie, but I'm not holding my breath.
5 freedoms you'd lose in health care reform
If you read the fine print in the Congressional plans, you'll find that a lot of cherished aspects of the current system would disappear.
By Shawn Tully, editor at large
July 24, 2009: 10:17 AM ET
NEW YORK (Fortune) -- In promoting his health-care agenda, President Obama has repeatedly reassured Americans that they can keep their existing health plans -- and that the benefits and access they prize will be enhanced through reform.
A close reading of the two main bills, one backed by Democrats in the House and the other issued by Sen. Edward Kennedy's Health committee, contradict the President's assurances. To be sure, it isn't easy to comb through their 2,000 pages of tortured legal language. But page by page, the bills reveal a web of restrictions, fines, and mandates that would radically change your health-care coverage.
If you prize choosing your own cardiologist or urologist under your company's Preferred Provider Organization plan (PPO), if your employer rewards your non-smoking, healthy lifestyle with reduced premiums, if you love the bargain Health Savings Account (HSA) that insures you just for the essentials, or if you simply take comfort in the freedom to spend your own money for a policy that covers the newest drugs and diagnostic tests -- you may be shocked to learn that you could lose all of those good things under the rules proposed in the two bills that herald a health-care revolution.
In short, the Obama platform would mandate extremely full, expensive, and highly subsidized coverage -- including a lot of benefits people would never pay for with their own money -- but deliver it through a highly restrictive, HMO-style plan that will determine what care and tests you can and can't have. It's a revolution, all right, but in the wrong direction.
Let's explore the five freedoms that Americans would lose under Obamacare:
1. Freedom to choose what's in your plan
The bills in both houses require that Americans purchase insurance through "qualified" plans offered by health-care "exchanges" that would be set up in each state. The rub is that the plans can't really compete based on what they offer. The reason: The federal government will impose a minimum list of benefits that each plan is required to offer.
Today, many states require these "standard benefits packages" -- and they're a major cause for the rise in health-care costs. Every group, from chiropractors to alcohol-abuse counselors, do lobbying to get included. Connecticut, for example, requires reimbursement for hair transplants, hearing aids, and in vitro fertilization.
The Senate bill would require coverage for prescription drugs, mental-health benefits, and substance-abuse services. It also requires policies to insure "children" until the age of 26. That's just the starting list. The bills would allow the Department of Health and Human Services to add to the list of required benefits, based on recommendations from a committee of experts. Americans, therefore, wouldn't even know what's in their plans and what they're required to pay for, directly or indirectly, until after the bills become law.
2. Freedom to be rewarded for healthy living, or pay your real costs
As with the previous example, the Obama plan enshrines into federal law one of the worst features of state legislation: community rating. Eleven states, ranging from New York to Oregon, have some form of community rating. In its purest form, community rating requires that all patients pay the same rates for their level of coverage regardless of their age or medical condition.
Americans with pre-existing conditions need subsidies under any plan, but community rating is a dubious way to bring fairness to health care. The reason is twofold: First, it forces young people, who typically have lower incomes than older workers, to pay far more than their actual cost, and gives older workers, who can afford to pay more, a big discount. The state laws gouging the young are a major reason so many of them have joined the ranks of uninsured.
Under the Senate plan, insurers would be barred from charging any more than twice as much for one patient vs. any other patient with the same coverage. So if a 20-year-old who costs just $800 a year to insure is forced to pay $2,500, a 62-year-old who costs $7,500 would pay no more than $5,000.
Second, the bills would ban insurers from charging differing premiums based on the health of their customers. Again, that's understandable for folks with diabetes or cancer. But the bills would bar rewarding people who pursue a healthy lifestyle of exercise or a cholesterol-conscious diet. That's hardly a formula for lower costs. It's as if car insurers had to charge the same rates to safe drivers as to chronic speeders with a history of accidents.
3. Freedom to choose high-deductible coverage
The bills threaten to eliminate the one part of the market truly driven by consumers spending their own money. That's what makes a market, and health care needs more of it, not less.
Hundreds of companies now offer Health Savings Accounts to about 5 million employees. Those workers deposit tax-free money in the accounts and get a matching contribution from their employer. They can use the funds to buy a high-deductible plan -- say for major medical costs over $12,000. Preventive care is reimbursed, but patients pay all other routine doctor visits and tests with their own money from the HSA account. As a result, HSA users are far more cost-conscious than customers who are reimbursed for the majority of their care.
The bills seriously endanger the trend toward consumer-driven care in general. By requiring minimum packages, they would prevent patients from choosing stripped-down plans that cover only major medical expenses. "The government could set extremely low deductibles that would eliminate HSAs," says John Goodman of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a free-market research group. "And they could do it after the bills are passed."
4. Freedom to keep your existing plan
This is the freedom that the President keeps emphasizing. Yet the bills appear to say otherwise. It's worth diving into the weeds -- the territory where most pundits and politicians don't seem to have ventured.
The legislation divides the insured into two main groups, and those two groups are treated differently with respect to their current plans. The first are employees covered by the Employee Retirement Security Act of 1974. ERISA regulates companies that are self-insured, meaning they pay claims out of their cash flow, and don't have real insurance. Those are the GEs (GE, Fortune 500) and Time Warners (TWX, Fortune 500) and most other big companies.
The House bill states that employees covered by ERISA plans are "grandfathered." Under ERISA, the plans can do pretty much what they want -- they're exempt from standard packages and community rating and can reward employees for healthy lifestyles even in restrictive states.
But read on.
The bill gives ERISA employers a five-year grace period when they can keep offering plans free from the restrictions of the "qualified" policies offered on the exchanges. But after five years, they would have to offer only approved plans, with the myriad rules we've already discussed. So for Americans in large corporations, "keeping your own plan" has a strict deadline. In five years, like it or not, you'll get dumped into the exchange. As we'll see, it could happen a lot earlier.
The outlook is worse for the second group. It encompasses employees who aren't under ERISA but get actual insurance either on their own or through small businesses. After the legislation passes, all insurers that offer a wide range of plans to these employees will be forced to offer only "qualified" plans to new customers, via the exchanges.
The employees who got their coverage before the law goes into effect can keep their plans, but once again, there's a catch. If the plan changes in any way -- by altering co-pays, deductibles, or even switching coverage for this or that drug -- the employee must drop out and shop through the exchange. Since these plans generally change their policies every year, it's likely that millions of employees will lose their plans in 12 months.
5. Freedom to choose your doctors
The Senate bill requires that Americans buying through the exchanges -- and as we've seen, that will soon be most Americans -- must get their care through something called "medical home." Medical home is similar to an HMO. You're assigned a primary care doctor, and the doctor controls your access to specialists. The primary care physicians will decide which services, like MRIs and other diagnostic scans, are best for you, and will decide when you really need to see a cardiologists or orthopedists.
Under the proposals, the gatekeepers would theoretically guide patients to tests and treatments that have proved most cost-effective. The danger is that doctors will be financially rewarded for denying care, as were HMO physicians more than a decade ago. It was consumer outrage over despotic gatekeepers that made the HMOs so unpopular, and killed what was billed as the solution to America's health-care cost explosion.
The bills do not specifically rule out fee-for-service plans as options to be offered through the exchanges. But remember, those plans -- if they exist -- would be barred from charging sick or elderly patients more than young and healthy ones. So patients would be inclined to game the system, staying in the HMO while they're healthy and switching to fee-for-service when they become seriously ill. "That would kill fee-for-service in a hurry," says Goodman.
In reality, the flexible, employer-based plans that now dominate the landscape, and that Americans so cherish, could disappear far faster than the 5 year "grace period" that's barely being discussed.
Companies would have the option of paying an 8% payroll tax into a fund that pays for coverage for Americans who aren't covered by their employers. It won't happen right away -- large companies must wait a couple of years before they opt out. But it will happen, since it's likely that the tax will rise a lot more slowly than corporate health-care costs, especially since they'll be lobbying Washington to keep the tax under control in the righteous name of job creation.
The best solution is to move to a let-freedom-ring regime of high deductibles, no community rating, no standard benefits, and cross-state shopping for bargains (another market-based reform that's strictly taboo in the bills). I'll propose my own solution in another piece soon on Fortune.com. For now, we suffer with a flawed health-care system, but we still have our Five Freedoms. Call them the Five Endangered Freedoms.
5 freedoms you'd lose in health care reform
If you read the fine print in the Congressional plans, you'll find that a lot of cherished aspects of the current system would disappear.
By Shawn Tully, editor at large
July 24, 2009: 10:17 AM ET
NEW YORK (Fortune) -- In promoting his health-care agenda, President Obama has repeatedly reassured Americans that they can keep their existing health plans -- and that the benefits and access they prize will be enhanced through reform.
A close reading of the two main bills, one backed by Democrats in the House and the other issued by Sen. Edward Kennedy's Health committee, contradict the President's assurances. To be sure, it isn't easy to comb through their 2,000 pages of tortured legal language. But page by page, the bills reveal a web of restrictions, fines, and mandates that would radically change your health-care coverage.
If you prize choosing your own cardiologist or urologist under your company's Preferred Provider Organization plan (PPO), if your employer rewards your non-smoking, healthy lifestyle with reduced premiums, if you love the bargain Health Savings Account (HSA) that insures you just for the essentials, or if you simply take comfort in the freedom to spend your own money for a policy that covers the newest drugs and diagnostic tests -- you may be shocked to learn that you could lose all of those good things under the rules proposed in the two bills that herald a health-care revolution.
In short, the Obama platform would mandate extremely full, expensive, and highly subsidized coverage -- including a lot of benefits people would never pay for with their own money -- but deliver it through a highly restrictive, HMO-style plan that will determine what care and tests you can and can't have. It's a revolution, all right, but in the wrong direction.
Let's explore the five freedoms that Americans would lose under Obamacare:
1. Freedom to choose what's in your plan
The bills in both houses require that Americans purchase insurance through "qualified" plans offered by health-care "exchanges" that would be set up in each state. The rub is that the plans can't really compete based on what they offer. The reason: The federal government will impose a minimum list of benefits that each plan is required to offer.
Today, many states require these "standard benefits packages" -- and they're a major cause for the rise in health-care costs. Every group, from chiropractors to alcohol-abuse counselors, do lobbying to get included. Connecticut, for example, requires reimbursement for hair transplants, hearing aids, and in vitro fertilization.
The Senate bill would require coverage for prescription drugs, mental-health benefits, and substance-abuse services. It also requires policies to insure "children" until the age of 26. That's just the starting list. The bills would allow the Department of Health and Human Services to add to the list of required benefits, based on recommendations from a committee of experts. Americans, therefore, wouldn't even know what's in their plans and what they're required to pay for, directly or indirectly, until after the bills become law.
2. Freedom to be rewarded for healthy living, or pay your real costs
As with the previous example, the Obama plan enshrines into federal law one of the worst features of state legislation: community rating. Eleven states, ranging from New York to Oregon, have some form of community rating. In its purest form, community rating requires that all patients pay the same rates for their level of coverage regardless of their age or medical condition.
Americans with pre-existing conditions need subsidies under any plan, but community rating is a dubious way to bring fairness to health care. The reason is twofold: First, it forces young people, who typically have lower incomes than older workers, to pay far more than their actual cost, and gives older workers, who can afford to pay more, a big discount. The state laws gouging the young are a major reason so many of them have joined the ranks of uninsured.
Under the Senate plan, insurers would be barred from charging any more than twice as much for one patient vs. any other patient with the same coverage. So if a 20-year-old who costs just $800 a year to insure is forced to pay $2,500, a 62-year-old who costs $7,500 would pay no more than $5,000.
Second, the bills would ban insurers from charging differing premiums based on the health of their customers. Again, that's understandable for folks with diabetes or cancer. But the bills would bar rewarding people who pursue a healthy lifestyle of exercise or a cholesterol-conscious diet. That's hardly a formula for lower costs. It's as if car insurers had to charge the same rates to safe drivers as to chronic speeders with a history of accidents.
3. Freedom to choose high-deductible coverage
The bills threaten to eliminate the one part of the market truly driven by consumers spending their own money. That's what makes a market, and health care needs more of it, not less.
Hundreds of companies now offer Health Savings Accounts to about 5 million employees. Those workers deposit tax-free money in the accounts and get a matching contribution from their employer. They can use the funds to buy a high-deductible plan -- say for major medical costs over $12,000. Preventive care is reimbursed, but patients pay all other routine doctor visits and tests with their own money from the HSA account. As a result, HSA users are far more cost-conscious than customers who are reimbursed for the majority of their care.
The bills seriously endanger the trend toward consumer-driven care in general. By requiring minimum packages, they would prevent patients from choosing stripped-down plans that cover only major medical expenses. "The government could set extremely low deductibles that would eliminate HSAs," says John Goodman of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a free-market research group. "And they could do it after the bills are passed."
4. Freedom to keep your existing plan
This is the freedom that the President keeps emphasizing. Yet the bills appear to say otherwise. It's worth diving into the weeds -- the territory where most pundits and politicians don't seem to have ventured.
The legislation divides the insured into two main groups, and those two groups are treated differently with respect to their current plans. The first are employees covered by the Employee Retirement Security Act of 1974. ERISA regulates companies that are self-insured, meaning they pay claims out of their cash flow, and don't have real insurance. Those are the GEs (GE, Fortune 500) and Time Warners (TWX, Fortune 500) and most other big companies.
The House bill states that employees covered by ERISA plans are "grandfathered." Under ERISA, the plans can do pretty much what they want -- they're exempt from standard packages and community rating and can reward employees for healthy lifestyles even in restrictive states.
But read on.
The bill gives ERISA employers a five-year grace period when they can keep offering plans free from the restrictions of the "qualified" policies offered on the exchanges. But after five years, they would have to offer only approved plans, with the myriad rules we've already discussed. So for Americans in large corporations, "keeping your own plan" has a strict deadline. In five years, like it or not, you'll get dumped into the exchange. As we'll see, it could happen a lot earlier.
The outlook is worse for the second group. It encompasses employees who aren't under ERISA but get actual insurance either on their own or through small businesses. After the legislation passes, all insurers that offer a wide range of plans to these employees will be forced to offer only "qualified" plans to new customers, via the exchanges.
The employees who got their coverage before the law goes into effect can keep their plans, but once again, there's a catch. If the plan changes in any way -- by altering co-pays, deductibles, or even switching coverage for this or that drug -- the employee must drop out and shop through the exchange. Since these plans generally change their policies every year, it's likely that millions of employees will lose their plans in 12 months.
5. Freedom to choose your doctors
The Senate bill requires that Americans buying through the exchanges -- and as we've seen, that will soon be most Americans -- must get their care through something called "medical home." Medical home is similar to an HMO. You're assigned a primary care doctor, and the doctor controls your access to specialists. The primary care physicians will decide which services, like MRIs and other diagnostic scans, are best for you, and will decide when you really need to see a cardiologists or orthopedists.
Under the proposals, the gatekeepers would theoretically guide patients to tests and treatments that have proved most cost-effective. The danger is that doctors will be financially rewarded for denying care, as were HMO physicians more than a decade ago. It was consumer outrage over despotic gatekeepers that made the HMOs so unpopular, and killed what was billed as the solution to America's health-care cost explosion.
The bills do not specifically rule out fee-for-service plans as options to be offered through the exchanges. But remember, those plans -- if they exist -- would be barred from charging sick or elderly patients more than young and healthy ones. So patients would be inclined to game the system, staying in the HMO while they're healthy and switching to fee-for-service when they become seriously ill. "That would kill fee-for-service in a hurry," says Goodman.
In reality, the flexible, employer-based plans that now dominate the landscape, and that Americans so cherish, could disappear far faster than the 5 year "grace period" that's barely being discussed.
Companies would have the option of paying an 8% payroll tax into a fund that pays for coverage for Americans who aren't covered by their employers. It won't happen right away -- large companies must wait a couple of years before they opt out. But it will happen, since it's likely that the tax will rise a lot more slowly than corporate health-care costs, especially since they'll be lobbying Washington to keep the tax under control in the righteous name of job creation.
The best solution is to move to a let-freedom-ring regime of high deductibles, no community rating, no standard benefits, and cross-state shopping for bargains (another market-based reform that's strictly taboo in the bills). I'll propose my own solution in another piece soon on Fortune.com. For now, we suffer with a flawed health-care system, but we still have our Five Freedoms. Call them the Five Endangered Freedoms.
Friday, July 31, 2009
Health care chart
This is the chart that House Democrats don't want you to see. They have prevented House Republicans from sending a mailer to their constituents that contains an image of the chart or even uses the words "government health care". The only approved terminology is "public option". This abuse of power is shameful but instructive, the Democrats are terrified of the public learning what health care in America will look like if they get their way.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Taxpayer funded abortion
From House Minority leader John Boehner:
In his campaign for the presidency, President Obama said health-care legislation should include expanded access to abortion. He hasn't said much on the matter since taking office last January. But now, over the objections of some in his own party, President Obama is demanding that Congress pass health-care legislation before August, and the House is slated to vote next week on a bill that will fulfill the president’s vow if signed into law.The Obama administration contends the urgent deadline is necessitated by the suffering of American families who have waited too long for Congress to act to address the high cost of health care. But according to the independent Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the bill the president supports won't lower health-care costs; it will increase them. And as the veteran political operatives in the Obama White House well know, the frantic timetable conveniently leaves precious little time for the American people to know what's actually in the bill.The legislation's abortion-related language stands as Exhibit A. How many Americans currently realize the House bill contains provisions that will result in federally mandated coverage of abortion on demand in virtually all of America's health plans?Fact: The bill as currently written will allow the federal government to classify abortion as an "essential benefit" — a health-care right that would be guaranteed to all Americans. This will make it illegal for health-care providers nationwide — even Catholic and religious-based hospitals with missions that reflect a fundamental moral objection to the killing of the unborn — to provide anything less than abortion on demand for anyone who seeks it. As a result, the bill will repeal laws in many states that currently require commonsense limitations on abortion-on-demand, such as mandatory parental notification and waiting periods.Fact: The bill would also establish a taxpayer-funded "public" health-care plan to "compete" with private-sector plans. This public plan, like all plans, will be required to classify abortion as an "essential benefit," forcing American citizens to directly subsidize abortion-on-demand with their tax dollars. And in addition to the public plan, individuals with incomes of up to 400% of the poverty level will receive subsidies to buy insurance to pay for abortion-on-demand.Reps. Eric Cantor (R. Va.), Sam Johnson (R., Texas), and Mark Souder (R., Ind.) offered amendments this month in three different House committees to strike the provisions from the Democratic bill that force American taxpayers to subsidize abortion. All three amendments, sadly, were defeated by the Democratic majority in committee. And it remains to be seen whether Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.), who champions the House bill and its abortion-related provisions, will allow such an amendment to be considered and debated on the House floor.Indeed, Congress may vote on this issue and send a bill to the president before most Americans even have a chance to weigh in on it. And once the bill reaches his desk, there's little doubt that the president will sign it.Peter Orszag, President Obama’s budget director, was asked July 19 whether the president would pledge that "no taxpayer money will go to pay for abortions" under the health-care bill he signs.“I am not prepared to say explicitly that right now," Mr. Orszag said. "It’s obviously a controversial issue, and it’s one of the questions that is playing out in this debate.”Controversial, indeed. And given its controversial nature, it deserves a full and open public debate — the sort of debate that is impossible when major bills are rammed through Congress based on politically driven timetables.If a health-care bill doesn't lower costs for middle-class families, but does require them to subsidize abortion-on-demand with their hard-earned tax dollars, one has to ask a fundamental question: For whom was this bill actually written? Was it written for the millions of Americans who were promised a health-care bill that lowers costs? Or is it really for the radical special-interest and lobbying groups that invested millions to elect a cooperative president and Congress?Health care is too important to get wrong. Too much is at stake. For the sake of American families struggling with health-care costs — most of whom don’t want their hard-earned money being used by the federal government to subsidize abortion — President Obama should scrap the current health-care bill, and work in a bipartisan way for true reforms.
Is it any wonder that President Obama insists that Congress pass this bill before they go home for a month?
In his campaign for the presidency, President Obama said health-care legislation should include expanded access to abortion. He hasn't said much on the matter since taking office last January. But now, over the objections of some in his own party, President Obama is demanding that Congress pass health-care legislation before August, and the House is slated to vote next week on a bill that will fulfill the president’s vow if signed into law.The Obama administration contends the urgent deadline is necessitated by the suffering of American families who have waited too long for Congress to act to address the high cost of health care. But according to the independent Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the bill the president supports won't lower health-care costs; it will increase them. And as the veteran political operatives in the Obama White House well know, the frantic timetable conveniently leaves precious little time for the American people to know what's actually in the bill.The legislation's abortion-related language stands as Exhibit A. How many Americans currently realize the House bill contains provisions that will result in federally mandated coverage of abortion on demand in virtually all of America's health plans?Fact: The bill as currently written will allow the federal government to classify abortion as an "essential benefit" — a health-care right that would be guaranteed to all Americans. This will make it illegal for health-care providers nationwide — even Catholic and religious-based hospitals with missions that reflect a fundamental moral objection to the killing of the unborn — to provide anything less than abortion on demand for anyone who seeks it. As a result, the bill will repeal laws in many states that currently require commonsense limitations on abortion-on-demand, such as mandatory parental notification and waiting periods.Fact: The bill would also establish a taxpayer-funded "public" health-care plan to "compete" with private-sector plans. This public plan, like all plans, will be required to classify abortion as an "essential benefit," forcing American citizens to directly subsidize abortion-on-demand with their tax dollars. And in addition to the public plan, individuals with incomes of up to 400% of the poverty level will receive subsidies to buy insurance to pay for abortion-on-demand.Reps. Eric Cantor (R. Va.), Sam Johnson (R., Texas), and Mark Souder (R., Ind.) offered amendments this month in three different House committees to strike the provisions from the Democratic bill that force American taxpayers to subsidize abortion. All three amendments, sadly, were defeated by the Democratic majority in committee. And it remains to be seen whether Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.), who champions the House bill and its abortion-related provisions, will allow such an amendment to be considered and debated on the House floor.Indeed, Congress may vote on this issue and send a bill to the president before most Americans even have a chance to weigh in on it. And once the bill reaches his desk, there's little doubt that the president will sign it.Peter Orszag, President Obama’s budget director, was asked July 19 whether the president would pledge that "no taxpayer money will go to pay for abortions" under the health-care bill he signs.“I am not prepared to say explicitly that right now," Mr. Orszag said. "It’s obviously a controversial issue, and it’s one of the questions that is playing out in this debate.”Controversial, indeed. And given its controversial nature, it deserves a full and open public debate — the sort of debate that is impossible when major bills are rammed through Congress based on politically driven timetables.If a health-care bill doesn't lower costs for middle-class families, but does require them to subsidize abortion-on-demand with their hard-earned tax dollars, one has to ask a fundamental question: For whom was this bill actually written? Was it written for the millions of Americans who were promised a health-care bill that lowers costs? Or is it really for the radical special-interest and lobbying groups that invested millions to elect a cooperative president and Congress?Health care is too important to get wrong. Too much is at stake. For the sake of American families struggling with health-care costs — most of whom don’t want their hard-earned money being used by the federal government to subsidize abortion — President Obama should scrap the current health-care bill, and work in a bipartisan way for true reforms.
Is it any wonder that President Obama insists that Congress pass this bill before they go home for a month?
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
The President's neverending show
If you have the stomach to watch the presidents' umpteenth press conference tonight keep this fact in mind. The Lewin Group has done a study on the effects the "public option" that the president wants enacted and they determine that 118 million Americans will lose their private health insurance and will be shunted onto the government plan. When the president promises, which I'm sure he will tonight that if you like your plan nothing changes, he's lying. It's not that private plans can't contain costs. The Pacific Research Group clocks Medicare's costs increasing 34% and Medicaid's 35% more than private insurance since 1970 on a per patient basis. The public plan will drive private plans from the market because it can run huge deficits and the politicians' will never let it fail. The president is on record as an advocate of a single payer health plan like Canada's or Britain's. The "public option" is his way of getting us there. Yes, the heath care system needs reform, but let's actually give a free market approach a shot before we go down the path of rationing and dependence.
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