Merry X'mas but it will Cost ya

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Using the Obama phrase “change” and saying that “change is never easy but change is what’s necessary in America,” Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska got back in the good graces of President Obama. He was holding out for his little piece of the quid pro quo on the Health-Care Plan and he gave the President as well as the private Insurance industry one big X’mas present. His vote, in favor of the plan after concessions, means that it will probably pass on X’mas Eve.

As more and more polls indicate, 80% of American citizens who say that they are happy with their present health-care are against this health-care overhaul with only 38% approving it according to the Rasmussen Poll taken at the end of November. They say that it is not affordable and that they will get less coverage than they presently have.

Health-care lobbyists spent $486 million last year and so far this year they have spent $396 million but the entire tab is not in. The average citizen can not get fair representation when this much money is at stake and a President who is not listening to those very same citizens who will pick up the tab. But government always knows better than the very citizens it governs.

What will Obama get for Xmas?
A health-care plan and a government insurance option dropped...
Lowering the age from 65 for Medicare to those 55 or older was dropped...
His legacy for the history books...
36 million more people insured...
Possible defeat at the polls

What will the American people get?
$400 billion in new taxes over the next 10 years...
$500 billion in reductions to older (and the majority of whom are poor) people already on Medicare...
Every American would be required to obtain insurance or be fined $750 a year or 2% of their income which ever is greater...cost uncertain...
The loss of Freedom to choose what is in your plan...
The loss of Freedom of being rewarded for healthy living...
The loss of Freedom to choose high deductible coverage...
The loss of Freedom to keep your existing plan

What did Senator Ben Nelson get?
Full federal funding for Nebraska to expand Medicaid at no cost to its citizens...
Exemption for the insurance tax for Mutual of Omaha...
Concessions on Abortion option

What do the insurance companies get?
30-36 million new customers...
No competition from a government insured plan

What do the Drug companies get?
No competition from drugs from foreign countries--they are banned from the Plan

What does AARP get?
35 million unhappy members

What do the Supreme Court Justices get?
An entire plan that is unconstitutional.

Dick Morris on Obama's Healthcare Plan

As the bill now stands, it doesn't have any teeth.

* Without the public option, the government does not have the financial clout to enforce the decisions of the new secretary of Health about the protocols of care to be followed. The left had hoped that the federal public option insurance company would put the private firms out of business and leave a single governmental payer in place. This single payer could slice reimbursements to providers at will and bring them into line offering low costs, long waiting lists and rationed medical care. But with no expansion of Medicare to those over 55 and no federal public option, the secretary of Health won't have the power to force bad medical care down the throats of the American people.

* Relatively few new people will get health insurance. The costs of coverage are too high, the subsidies too shallow and the punitive fines too low to force people to buy policies they don't want and think they don't need. What young, childless couple is going to pay 8 to 12 percent of their income for Insurance rather than just pay the $1,000 fine for not having coverage? Oddly, this bill is really just a tax on the uninsured.

* Without the feared flood of new patients into the system, the rationing that threatened may not be as bad as it once seemed. With only a few newly insured people, the long waiting lists and shortages of medical personnel Massachusetts is experiencing under Romney-Care may not happen nationally.

* The Medicare cuts are to be proposed by a special commission in the executive branch akin to the federal commission that decides which military bases to shutter. But then they will have to be approved each year by Congress. A former secretary of Health and Human Services under a Republican president told me recently he expects the cuts will be vetoed by Congress each year and never really take effect. He says that the savings won't materialize and the additional costs of Obama's program will just be financed through even more deficit spending. He cites, for example, Congress's refusal for each of the past five years to approve the automatic 6 percent cut in physicians' fees.

What's left is a bill that expands Medicaid to cover more of the poor and working poor. It requires that all states cover everyone making 150 percent or less of the poverty level. This will end the practice of many states of restricting Medicaid, in effect, to the elderly in nursing homes.

Arkansas, for example, only covers up to 17 percent of the poverty level (about $4,000 of income). Under the new law, anyone in the state whose income is less than about $27,000 will have to be covered. This provision will, of course, mean much higher state taxes throughout the South and in Texas, California, Pennsylvania and Florida, states with low Medicaid thresholds.

The rest of the bill is essentially a consumer-protection statute that bars insurers from denying coverage to anyone and stops them from charging more for those who are sick. Both the expansion of Medicaid and this reform of insurance-company practices could have been achieved in considerably less than the 2,000 pages of dead trees this bill consumed.

There are still bad parts of the legislation:

* Medicare Advantage, an important program for 10 million elderly, will be gutted and replaced by Medigap insurance, which is more limited in coverage, higher in cost and more profitable to the AARP.

* Medical devices -- from pacemakers to automated wheelchairs -- will still be taxed, and sick people will be forced to pay higher taxes and deduct fewer of their medical costs.

* Reimbursements under Medicare are likely to continue to drop, forcing more and more providers to refuse to treat patients under the program.

Obama is left with the symbol of a victory but not much substance. He will still sign the bill -- if it ever passes -- with great fanfare, but its substance will be painfully thin.

We haven't dodged the bullet yet. The left is still to be heard from. But the momentum against the bill and the focus on its worst provisions is paying off. Keep up the pressure!

AARP and You

A friend sent me this link and it is a must read especially for all of you who are members of
AARP.

Read the article just published in World Net Daily, Dark Secrets of AARP finally exposed to Light.

I have written about AARP before and this article confirms my doubts about AARP, a chilling rendition about one of the biggest and wealthiest advocacy groups whose mission of protecting Seniors is called to question by the author, Chelsea Schilling.

AARP, Obama Care and me

I remember when I got my first notice in the mail asking me to become a member of AARP. I had just turned 50 and it sort of amused me at first because I thought it was for seniors, you know, OLD people. Am I that old already? Good grief. I fought the thought and delayed membership for several years and then decided why not join…afterall, it is an organization that fights for Seniors’ rights and I am all for that. Big mistake.

I dropped the membership like a hot potato because I did not feel that this organization was helping or representing Seniors in the manner it should. It was just another group out to get my money and influenced by politics. It was just a part of the system hoping to profit from it and I felt no loyalty from it or any sincerity towards the very members that kept it alive—all those people they have taken dues from all of these years…the Seniors.

It’s always about the money. AARP wants to become one of the vendors for Obama Care and the organization is speaking out in favor of it even though they know Seniors will pay more and get less. It did the exact same thing when it came to the prescription Drug Plan. It was all about what it would make from the deal, not if the Seniors would be better off.

Since July of this year, it is estimated that about 60,000 Seniors have dropped their membership with AARP and the numbers are growing. More and more of them do not believe that this healthcare plan of Obama’s will be beneficial to them or affordable. Only 35% of seniors over 65 still believe that the President is on track. What we do know right now is that it will cost $900 BILLION in the first 10 years; Obama will raid Medicare for some of the money; and tax the healthcare and insurance industries.

65% of the people who took a recent Poll in September by CBS wanted a public option. There is widespread confusion in the Obama Health care proposal.

Being a cultural conservative and among those who are considered elderly, I am among the only group that Obama lost in the last election. We are also concerned about the rising national debt that has increased by 1/3rd since Obama took office, the corporate bailouts, and the overall "stimulus." The more I read, the more I am worried, that I will no longer be able to afford or have the same quality of healthcare that I enjoy now.