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POPS“A History lesson….Cry for Me, Argentina” 12.9.2009
Among Irigoyen’s changes: mandatory pension insurance, mandatory health insurance, and support for low-income housing construction to stimulate the economy. Simply put, the state assumed economic control of a vast swath of the country’s operations and began assessing new payroll taxes to fund its efforts. With an increasing flow of funds into these entitlement programs, the government’s payouts soon became overly generous. Before long its outlays surpassed the value of the taxpayers’ contributions. Put simply, it quickly became under-funded, much like the United States Social Security and Medicare programs. The death knell for the Argentine economy, however,came with the election of Juan Perón. Perón had a fascist and corporatist upbringing ; he and his charismatic wife aimed their populist rhetoric at the nation’s rich. This targeted group “swiftly expanded to cover most of the propertied middle classes, who became an enemy to be defeated and humiliated.”
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POPSAARP...Read This ...Even If You Are Not A Senior Presto! Obama solved their problem. He eliminates subsidies for Medicare Advantage. The elderly will have to pay more for coverage under Medigap, but the AARP -- which supposedly represents them -- will make more money. If you are a senior ..SHOULD YOU PUT THEM OUT OF BUSINESS.? ALso an alternate source for insurance. American Seniors Association the alternative group; contact sbarton@americanseniors.org. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .) sodahead.com http://bit.ly/7gnwj4
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POPS The Senate Postmortem other Republican moderates or deal-makers who earlier this year were prepared to compromise. Some 18 Senate Republicans voted to more than double the size of the children's health insurance program in 2007 over the opposition of President Bush, and Mrs. Snowe and Messrs. Grassley and Hatch and others have long joined with Democrats for health-care subsidy expansions that most Republicans dislike. The GOP had no choice but to oppose this plan or completely abandon its principles. Read full WSJ post @ http://bit.ly/7lW0QL
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POPS Cash for Cloture: Demcare Bribe List, Pt. II 1. The Hill reports that while Nelson credited Nebraska’s governor for giving him the idea to lobby for the government preference, Nebraska’s governor assailed the payoff: “Nebraskans did not ask for a special deal, only a fair deal,” Heineman said in a statement Sunday. In response, Nelson fired off a letter Sunday to Heineman saying he’s prepared to ask that the provision covering Nebraska’s Medicaid share “be removed from the amendment in conference, if it is your desire.” 2, Vermont and Massachusetts will get similar (though less generous) special treatment by the feds in covering Medicaid expansion costs. Combined with Nebraska’s tab, the exclusive clique’s payoffs will cost taxpayers $1.2 billion over 10 years. At least. 3, He’s plunging in the polls and in need of a little bacon to bring home. A $100 million item for construction of a university hospital was inserted in the Senate health care bill at the request of Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn ......
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POPSDirty Harry Reid’s "ABORTION FIX" IS NOT FIXED ~ “Manager’s Amendment" that cover elective abortions. The new language does include a “state opt-out” provision if a state passes a law to prohibit insurance coverage of abortion, but it’s a sham because it does nothing to prevent one state’s tax dollars from paying for elective abortions in other states. A majority of Americans believe that health care plans should not be mandated to provide elective abortion coverage, and a majority of Americans do not believe government health care plans should include abortion coverage. Currently, federal appropriations bills include language known as the Hyde Amendment that prohibits the use of federal funds to pay for elective abortions under the Medicare and Medicaid programs, while another provision, known as the Smith Amendment, prohibits federal funding of abortion under the federal employees’ health benefits plan .
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POPS Does Anyone Believe Obama? Obama told Gibson that anybody who says they are concerned about the rising deficit or worried about tax increases in the future has to support this health care bill. ABC NEWS http://bit.ly/4Xi39G “Because if we don't do this, nobody argues with the fact that health care costs are going to consume the entire federal budget,” the president said. Most Americans realize by now that he'll say anything to advance his agenda. I doubt they're even listening. Propaganda is inherently boring. I'd like to see a poll that measures his credibility. He's lost the independents and there's a real sense of betrayal on the left, along with fear that January will be just as wee-weed up as August.
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POPSSenate GOP Does “Masterful” Job in Derailing ObamaCare! On the same day that President Obama gathered a handful of business leaders at the White House for a phony “jobs summit” (how many jobs were created? ZERO!) Senate GOP leaders held their own jobs meeting to highlight the negative employment aspects of Obamacare. Big News: Top Medicare Official Declares Dem Plan Will RAISE Costs! Obama and the Democrats have long insisted that their plan would lower the “cost curve” for health costs and insurance. In November the Congressional Budget Office said that individual insurance premiums will rise an additional 10% under the Democrat plan . Last week, the chief actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, part of the Health and Human Services Dept., declared that under the Dem plan health care costs would increase by $234 billion more than if no plan were enacted. Plus, many hospitals which are already on a financial knife’s edge would be pushed firmly into the red.
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POPSThis is what happens when politicians go from idealism to survivalism ftp - Openness and honesty were killing their health-care plans, so Democrats took it entirely behind closed doors. The only way to provide health care for all Americans, they promised us, was if the government went into the insurance business. Now they say states can opt out or opt in. Or you can join Medicare. Or, some people can join Medicare. "Anything!" they are saying. "We just need a victory!" This is what happens when politicians go from idealism to survivalism. They no longer care what they promised voters. They don't care what the public wants. And they don't care about what is right. All they care about is a victory so that they can claim to have accomplished something.
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POPS0bamaCare (The Mother of Public Options) Draws Nearer The latest Senate compromise formed a new “Medicare buy-in” to allow people aged 55-64 to buy the healthcare coverage currently available only to senior citizens. It came at the expense of the public option. Some liberals would fight to the finish to retain the public option, a watered-down version of which was passed in the House bill. But most Democrats are falling in line with the thinking of Rahm Emanuel, Mr Obama’s pugilistic chief-of-staff, who said: “The only non-negotiable principle here is success.” Washington insiders bel ieve a historic healthcare act would give Mr Obama and the Democratic party a boost ahead of next year’s mid-term elections. But polls, which show mixed support for healthcare reform, suggest the reality may not be so simple.
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POPSEssential Questions On Health Reform Americans Should Be Asking Now to start going bankrupt in 2017, it makes no fiscal sense to use the savings to pay for yet another new entitlement instead of shoring up the main program. These congressional prescriptions will only produce more deficit spending. If health reform does generate a surplus, will this money be used to pay down the debt " or fund new government spending? How will adding a new, government-run insurance program increase competition in private insurance markets? Investors.com Read full article at http://bit.ly/4KyM9X
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POPSPublic option out A healthcare reform bill may come at the expense of the public option that many regarded as its most satisfactory feature.
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POPSWendell Potter: The Insurance Industry's Lethal Bottom Line When publicly held insurance companies spend most of their premium income on medical claims, their value on Wall Street plummets. Amendments have been introduced to require them to raise the percentage of our premium payments that actually goes into health care instead of executive salaries and lobbying Congress.
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POPS Taxation With Representation a windfall profits tax on health insurance companies, a value-added tax (VAT), and an increase in the Medicare portion of the payroll tax, among others. The Heritage analysis further notes, “The full list of taxes proposed to pay for health care reform is provided because taxes currently left out of the Senate or House bills could reappear at any point. For instance, the tax on cosmetic surgery listed above (sometimes called the “Botox tax”) was written off long ago as a laughable way to pay for health care reform. Nevertheless, it somehow found its way into the current version of the Senate bill…As the legislative process continues and Congress’s desperation to pass a bill increases, it could propose even more tax hikes to pay for its massive expansion of government size and power…” This appalling example of the excess of legislative zeal to impose taxes further illustrates that the reason our taxes have been increasing exponentially over the years is because the .....
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POPSWill You Still Need Me, Will You Still Feed Me, When I’m Sixty-Four? …No! Democrats today voted to cut nearly half a trillion dollars from Medicare. The AP reported: Casting its first votes on revamping the nation’s health care system, the Senate rejected a Republican bid Thursday to stave off Medicare cuts and approved safeguards for coverage of mammograms and other preventive tests for women. The first round of votes ended with a fragile Democratic coalition hanging together. Senators voted 58-42 to reject an amendment by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., that would have stripped more than $400 billion in Medicare cuts from the nearly $1 trillion measure. It would have sent the entire 2,074-page bill back to the Senate Finance Committee for a redo. Republicans said the proposed cuts to health insurance plans and medical providers mean seniors in the popular Medicare Advantage program will lose benefits. And they predicted lawmakers will ultimately back away from the cuts, once seniors start feeling the brunt.
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POPSSenate Health Care Bill Creates New Marriage Penalty Ryan Ellis, tax policy director at Americans for Tax Reform, said the new marriage penalty comes on top of an existing one that's always been part of the payroll tax, which funds Social Security and Medicare. He said when the payroll tax was created to fund Social Security during the New Deal, lawmakers didn't anticipate the freelance of two-income families, so there's always been a sort of marriage penalty for couples whose incomes topped the single-earner income taxation level. Washington Times read full article: http://tr.im/FoGt
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POPS Health Bill Hoax ... But that's what Majority Leader Harry Reid, citing Congressional Budget Office estimates, tells us the 2,074-page bill " said to cost only $849 billion over a decade " would do. Like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, he seems to be following Vice President Joe Biden's admonition at an AARP town hall meeting that "we've got to spend money to keep from going bankrupt." Part of the "profit" in this bill will be achieved through several hundred billion in Medicare cuts. There are also fees on insurance companies, drugmakers and medical device manufacturers " sure to discourage innovation with costs passed on to health care consumers. "Higher premiums, tax increases and Medicare cuts to pay for more government " the American people know that is not reform," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Let's hope he's right. It's easy to achieve savings when you front-end the taxes and phase in the supposed benefits later. This bill, if passed, will have to be merged .....
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POPSReid’s Health Bill Requires Abortion Fee Section 1303(a)(2)(C) describes the process in which the Health Benefits Commissioner is to assess the monthly premiums that will be used to pay for elective abortions under the government-run health plan and for those who are given an affordability credit to purchase insurance coverage that includes abortion through the Exchange. The Commissioner must charge at a minimum $1 per enrollee per month. A majority of Americans believe that health care plans should not be mandated to provide elective abortion coverage, and a majority of Americans do not believe government health care plans should include abortion coverage. Currently, federal appropriations bills include language known as the Hyde Amendment that prohibits the use of federal funds to pay for elective abortions under the Medicare and Medicaid programs, while another provision, known as the Smith Amendment, prohibits federal funding of abortion under the federal employees’ health benefits plan.
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POPSConrad on the Senate Health Care Bill Not sure what to think. I want to know how it will affect my Mother's Medicare Advantage. I'm glad to see it prohibits illegals and the paid abortion option. However, when he said Reid did a good job....well, that makes me nervous.
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POPSHealth 'Reform' Gets a Failing Grade From someone who should know. I wonder if he was consulted. The article is a clear presentation of the pitfalls and consequences. This Health Care Bill MUST be defeated. Then they need to start over and this time include those who actually deal with patients and the insurance issues. As I heard someone say today, it's hard to phantom that America's government cares so little for the well-being of it's citizens.
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POPSObamaCare endorsements: What the bribe was The AARP got a financial windfall in return for its support of the healthcare bill. Over the past decade, the AARP has morphed from an advocacy group to an insurance company (through its subsidiary company). It is one of the main suppliers of Medi-gap insurance, a high-cost, privately purchased coverage that picks up where Medicare leaves off. But President Bush-43 passed the Medicare Advantage program, which offered a subsidized, lower-cost alternative to Medi-gap. Under Medicare Advantage, the elderly get all the extra coverage they need plus coordinated, well-managed care, usually by the same physician. So more than 10 million seniors went with Medicare Advantage, cutting into AARP Medi-gap revenues. Presto! Obama solved their problem. He eliminates subsidies for Medicare Advantage. The elderly will have to pay more for coverage under Medigap, but the AARP — which supposedly represents them — will make more money
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POPSThe Lords of Entitlement They WILL subjugate us. They do not represent us; they have, indeed, become our "lords". We work for Washington. The American people have entered a new era of serfdom and slavery. The action in the Senate on this bill and the 2010 elections are our last hopes.
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