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POPSThe US House of Presumptive Meddlers Advocates of government control want you to believe that the serious shortcomings of our medical and insurance system are failures of the free market. But that's impossible because our market is not free. Each state operates a cozy medical and insurance cartel that restricts competition through licensing and keeps prices higher than they would be in a genuine free market. But the planners won't talk about that. After all, if government is the problem in the first place, how can they justify a government takeover?
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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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POPSObamaCare: A Bad Deal for Young Adults Massachusetts benefits from another type of subsidy that props up its regime of mandates and price controls: large subsidies from the federal government. In contrast, the United States as a whole has no external party it can exploit to subsidize a nationwide Massachusetts-style health care overhaul"unless Congress finances that overhaul through additional deficit spending, which is really just another way of taxing the young to subsidize the old. by Aaron Yelowitz Aaron Yelowitz is an associate professor of economics at the University of Kentucky and an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute. This paper is based on a lecture delivered to the Undergraduate Economics Society at the University of Kentucky on October 1, 2009.
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POPSPages, Costs, and Agencies Added To The Obama/Pelosi Health Care Behemoth
“Additionally, this bill cuts critical Medicare and Medicaid funding by $628 billion, accounts for nearly $1.2 trillion in tax and fee increases and will explode the scope of government by putting the nation’s health care system in the hands of Washington bureaucrats. The $3 trillion price tag defies common sense " we simply cannot add all this new spending to the government rolls and claim to control the deficit. “If we continue to pile more and more debt on the next generation, they will never be able to get out from under it. The health care system needs reform, but this massive expansion of government, financed by our children and grandchildren, is the wrong way to proceed.” And listen…this is what our government believes will be the cost. But look at programs our government has run historically and you find decades of added costs and overruns that our forced onto the taxpayer. Insanity http://www.bizzyblog.com/2009/11/07/how-to-go-from-1200-to-2000-pages/
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POPSHealth Care Takeover Roll Call Vote — and What GOP Rep. Joseph Cao Got from Obama Well, since he was elected, Cao has backed the S-CHIP expansion, the $108 billion IMF bailout, and the omni-waste spending bill. And he voted to rebuke GOP Rep. Joe Wilson for calling out President Obama on his health care lies. That is a steep price to pay for Rep. William Jefferson’s removal. Can’t the GOP do better? For what it is worth, here is the cheap price the Democrats paid for Cao’s vote: Louisiana Congressman Anh “Joseph” Cao on Sunday morning released a statement after he voted as the only Republican in favor of the Democratic health care reform bill. The health care reform bill, dubbed the “Affordable Health Care for America Act” (H.R. 3962), passed the U.S. House of Representatives in a 220 " 215 vote. “Tonight, I voted to keep taxpayer dollars from funding abortion and to deliver access to affordable health care to the people of Louisiana,” Cao said in a statement released by his office. “I read the versions of the House
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POPSWill The Left Do a Kamikazi on Obamacare? Mob-O-Care is still the big banana. The Democrats can still carry it over the top and then take their losses in elections to come with the faith that no Republican Congress will dare to infuriate all the Victim Groups of the Left by repealing free medical care for forty percent of the population. Or whatever they settle on. Remember that the actual dollar figures have never been believable, and Medicare and Social Security are operating as accounting fictions even now. So this has all been media drivel from top to bottom. All they have to do is pass a shell of a bill, set up the bureaucracies, and expand them in future Democrat-dominated Congresses.
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POPS Uncle Sam’s Collections Continue Their Steep Drop It is ironic to say the least that Congress and the Obama administration are glorifying the idea of a “public option” that would ultimately lead to government-run health care while Treasury receipts continue to shrink. If the private health insurance market disappears, so will its taxes. To name just one example, Aetna’s recorded income tax expense on its financial statements for 2005-2008 (including state and local taxes) averaged roughly $900 million per year. Put the company’s health insurance segment out of business, and a large portion of those taxes would stop coming in, digging the country’s and various states’ debt holes that much deeper. The establishment press has paid very little attention to fiscal 2009’s drop of 19.5% in receipts from economic activity, so I expect similar treatment of October’s continuation of the trend. It would appear that they don’t want any unsettling news getting in the way of the statist agenda.
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POPSAnother Republican says health care reform will destroy America. Rep. Broun, that is. Right -- if a liberal like Grayson calls out Republicans (who have no health care plan), they get their freak on. But I guess they have already been immunized to conservative insanity. Oh, and we have Rep. Gohmert saying this: Dems Would Allow Seniors To "Die Off More Quickly" This is standard conservative behavior that never gets mentioned by the media. It only comes up when a liberal is attacked and then they spend 24-48 hours to defend themselves and are forced to use these outrageous statement made by Republicans. And of course they have no traction, because of the defensive position the media puts liberals in.
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POPSThe ‘Costs’ of Medical Care by Thomas Sowell NRO countries where the medical training may not be the best. In short, reducing doctors’ income is not reducing the cost of medical care, it is refusing to pay those costs. Like other ways of refusing to pay costs, it has consequences. Any one of us can reduce medical costs by refusing to pay them. In our own lives, we recognize the consequences. But when someone with a gift for rhetoric tells us that the government can reduce the costs without consequences, we are ready to believe in such political miracles. There are some ways in which the real costs of medical care can be reduced, but the people who are leading the charge for a government takeover of medical care are not the least bit interested in actually reducing those costs, as distinguished from shifting the costs around or just refusing to pay them. The high costs of “defensive medicine” " expensive tests, medications, and procedures required to protect doctors and hospitals from ruinous lawsuits, rather than
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POPSSeeing Through The Lies: The Worst Bill Ever It "pays for" about six years of program with a decade of revenue, with the heaviest costs concentrated in the second five years. The House also pretends Medicare payments to doctors will be cut by 21.5% next year and deeper after that, "saving" about $250 billion. ObamaCare will be lucky to cost under $2 trillion over 10 years; it will grow more after that. • Expanding Medicaid, gutting private Medicare. All this is particularly reckless given the unfunded liabilities of Medicare"now north of $37 trillion over 75 years. Mrs. Pelosi wants to steal $426 billion from future Medicare spending to "pay for" universal coverage. While Medicare's price controls on doctors and hospitals are certain to be tightened, the only cut that is a sure thing in practice is gutting Medicare Advantage to the tune of $170 billion. Democrats loathe this program because it gives one of out five seniors private insurance options.
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POPSThe First 500 Pages of Obamacare • Page 91: Government mandates linguistic infrastructure for services; translation: illegal aliens • Page 95: The Government will pay ACORN and Americorps to sign up individuals for Government-run Health Care plan. • Page 102: Those eligible for Medicaid will be automatically enrolled: you have no choice in the matter. • Page 124: No company can sue the government for price-fixing. No "judicial review" is permitted against the government monopoly. Put simply, private insurers will be crushed. • Page 127: The AMA sold doctors out: the government will set wages. • Page 145: An employer MUST auto-enroll employees into the government-run public plan. No alternatives. • Page 126: Employers MUST pay healthcare bills for part-time employees AND their families. • Page 149: Any employer with a payroll of $400K or more, who does not offer the public option, pays an 8% tax on payroll • Page 150: Any employer with a payroll of $250K-400K or more, who does not offer the public option,
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POPSThe internal contradictions of ObamaCare Another major difference is that medical school is free in places like France. Here, doctors go to work with truly crushing med school debt that take years to pay down. Its hardly fair that they invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in their education and could now be told they can’t expect the ‘doctor’ type compensation we’re used to seeing.
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POPSUsing The Children To Pass Health Care Reform, Video From the 20 Finalists House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Unveils The Affordable Health Care for America Act posted October 29 11:00:04 AM Speaker Pelosi unveiled the House’s GARBAGE final version of health insurance reform legislation " The Affordable Health Care For America Act - in front of the U.S. Capitol this morning, marking another historic step in the on-going effort to pass reform this year. The bill delivers on President Obama’s goals for reform: increased security and stability for those who have insurance; quality, affordable choices for those who don’t; and… CONTINUE READING http://www.barackobama.com/index.php
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POPSSecret Obamacare Negotiations Behind Closed Doors Democracy does not begin and end on Election Day for the American people. Whether you are for or against Obamacare, we the people deserve an opportunity to read, digest and understand the most important health care legislation to be debated in the United States Senate in our lifetime. The American people relied upon the promise of the Obama Administration and the leadership in Congress to be open and transparent, therefore it is time to stop the closed door negotiations and allow the American people to participate in the democratic process. Author: Brian Darling http://blog.heritage.org/2009/10/19/secret-obamacare-negotiations-enter-day-6/
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POPSHealthcare Applied to AIDS in DC.....Theft & Fraud More than $500,000 was earmarked for a housing program whose executive director had a string of convictions for theft, drugs and forgery. After the D.C. Inspector General’s Office could find no evidence that he was operating an AIDS nonprofit group, the city terminated the grant but never sought repayment. All told, the Health Department’s HIV/AIDS Administration awarded more than $25 million from 2004 to 2008 to nonprofit agencies marked by questionable spending, a lack of clients, or lapses in record-keeping and care, a 10-month Washington Post investigation found. The conservative solution to AIDS would be to stop spreading it by indulging in degenerate behavior. The liberal solution is to shovel mountains of other people’s money at corrupt ACORN types. Guess which approach will be used under ObamaCare. On a tip from Puffdaddy. Cross-posted at Moonbattery.
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POPSHow Much Obamacare Costs the Average Family That Obama is charging premiums to those living at or on the border of poverty is absolutely incredible! And this from a candidate who pledged that he would not tax the middle class! If you have insurance, you will get hit by his proposed 40 percent tax on insurance premiums. When the tax -- and the legislation -- takes effect in 2013, all families making about $120,000 or more in combined household income (14 percent of all families or one in seven) will have to pay the tax. By the next year, 2014, the tax will hit every family making more than $100,000 (about 18 percent of all families or one in six). By 2019, 10 years hence, the tax will reach down to affect every family making more than $75,000 a year (31 percent of families or one in three). The tax will take 40 percent of all premiums above $21,000. So if you don’t have insurance, you will be socked with a mandate to buy coverage and pay a hefty proportion of your income to do it; and if you have insurance . . .
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POPSObamaCare To Thwack Middle Class With Up To 70% Marginal Tax Rate Jim Capretta, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, calculates that when combined with other policies like the Earned Income Tax Credit that also phase out, the effective marginal rate would rise to nearly 70% at twice the poverty level. (HT: hot air Handcrafted by Flip
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POPSThe Chicago Way: Bribe Seniors With $250 To Pass Obamacare That said, there is a quote often attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville; “The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.” But, that is actually a variant of Alexander Francis Tytler misattributed to de Tocqueville: A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship , then a monarchy There are many folks in modern America that will testify to the lax fiscal policy of the last 20 years, and the unbounded fiscal policy of Obama.
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POPS All-Aboard America: ObamaCare's Big Balloon Ride Hullabaloo: “We were working on an experimental craft. I call it the 3D-LAV, a low altitude-vehicle for people to pull out of their garages and hover over traffic for about 50 to 100 feet. It’s in the very early stages of the invention. But this little guy decided to kept going inside the utility compartment underneath. So anyway, this little guy got inside of it. I thought he did, anyway … “ OK, that’s not exactly how Digby put it. (With a nod to Fausta, who suggested in an email that Obama may want to pump some helium into his own ratings. She notes the Weather Channel is the only one he doesn’t dominate . Maybe, but it looks like some of the gas is coming out.)
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POPSObamacare and the Tampon Tax And, all the rest of the more expensive, higher-class medical devices used by both men and women -- such as pacemakers, ventilators, X-ray machines, powered wheelchairs and surgical needles -- will be taxed, too. Wanda Moebius, vice president of policy communications at the Advanced Medical Technology Association said, “There was an effort to protect consumers from a tax on a $6.95 box of tampons, but what about the patients who will pay taxes on devices in surgical situations? Health care reform is supposed to make it more affordable, not raising costs, through taxes on the end user.”
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POPSObamacare Means $1,700 More in Insurance Premiums for a Typical Family And, with a government subsidy, you gain nothing by paying for all those years when you don't need insurance. So Obama's program turns out not to be one to spread insurance and thus spread the risk of costly illness, but one to make people pay 7.5 percent of their incomes once they get sick, with the government picking up their remaining premium and the health insurance customers paying for the medical expenses. Some deal! So tote up the cost of this bill on the middle class: -- $1,700 more in insurance premiums for the average family. -- Medical devices like wheelchairs and hearing aids get taxed. -- Those who are sick must pay an average of about $600 more a year in income taxes because the bill raises the threshold for deducting medical expenses from 7.5 percent of income to 10 percent. -- A $404 billion cut in Medicare. -- Ending the subsidized Medicare Advantage insurance for costs over and above Medicare. Without Medicare Advantage, the elderly can only .
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POPSAn Obama speechwriter moves to Massachusetts...she can't afford health insurance An Obama speechwriter moves to Massachusetts, a state with "universal health care," and finds out she can't afford insurance. Turns out that individual mandates and the requirement that insurance cover everything for everybody make insurance super-expensive (exactly what some are warning will happen with ObamaCare.) It's like the saying goes, "If you think health care is expensive now, wait until it's free."
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POPS "None Of Our Business" … CNSnews.com has confirmed that “the actual final text of the legislation will be determined by Reid himself , who will consolidate the legislation approved by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee and the still-unapproved legislation from the Senate Finance Committee. Reid will be able to draft and insert textual language that was not expressly approved by either committee.” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will write the final version of Obamacare to be considered in the Senate with no input from the American people.. Then the House rubber stamps the Senate bill and rushes it into the President’s hands: The final step in this plan is for the House to take up Obama care, without amending the legislation, and then sending that bill directly to the President for his signature.
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POPSMad Max Mandates: Mother Of All Unfunded Mandates State budgets would explode"by $37 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office"because they would no longer be allowed to set eligibility in line with their own decisions about taxes and spending. This is the mother"and father and crazy uncle"of unfunded mandates… Governors are not on board: The National Governors Association is furious about Mr. Baucus’s Medicaid expansion, and rightly so, given that governors and their legislatures will get stuck with the bill while losing the leeway to manage or reform their budget-busters. NGA President Jim Douglas of Vermont recently said at the National Press Club that the Baucus plan poses a “tremendous financial liability” and doesn’t “respect that no one size fits all at the state level.” He added: “Unlike the federal government, states can’t print money.”… What do the “beneficiaries” of this government largesse end up with?
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POPSShip of Fools: Obama's Intimates and Advisors A sampling of President Barack Hussein Obama's morally bankrupt White House "Brain Trust" 1. Valerie Jarrett - Jarrett served in the administration of Chicago Mayor Harold Washington (who, prior to his election, failed to file income tax returns for 19 years and during it maintained dubious Socialist ties) as well as in the scandal-ridden, current Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley. 2. Patrick Gaspard - Prior to coming on board as President Obama's right-hand man, Mr. Gaspard was a registered federal lobbyist for the SEIU - the union members (thugs?) called-in by the Administration to run interference (sometimes violent) between Democrat members of Congress who support ObamaCare and their own constituents. Prior to that, Gaspard worked for ACORN - 3. Eric Holder- "In 1999, over the objections of the FBI, the Bureau of Prisons, and prosecuting attorneys, Holder supported Clinton's commutation of the sentences of 16 FALN conspirators.
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POPSHave you seen the ObamaCare bill? Mikulski blocks "Read the Bill" rule Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) used procedural tactics this week to block an amendment offered by Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) to require all bills to be posted on the Internet 72 hours before they are considered by the Senate. It is outrageous -- but perhaps not surprising -- that a U.S. Senator would oppose such a modest proposal for transparency. Watch the video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwZz7h6tmFY&feature=channel TAKE ACTION! Contact Sen. Mikulski and tell her you're not happy she opposed the 72-hour "Read the Bill" rule. And please don't let her office tell you the amendment was not germane. The Senate adopts amendments every day that aren't germane and this one was no different. Mikulski's number is (202) 224-4654 and you can email her here. http://mikulski.senate.gov/Contact/contact.cfm
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POPSA terminally ill girl is back with family and friends - thanks to FedEx
I don’t mean to use a human tragedy for political message purposes, but this had me crying with pride and sympathy – it is just touching. Sadly, it fits all too well with the current debate over government control vs individual choice (and responsibility). This giving part of America is poised to be snuffed out by Obamacare. Companies can decide on their own when it is time to just fill the need and forget the bottom line, as Fed Ex did in this case. I have no doubt a US Post Office manager or worker would jump into the breach and do the same if they could. But the difference here is a government run entity is bound by libraries full of regulations. They cannot make an exception, they cannot redirect resources. They cannot perform the simple act of human charity without permission. This little girl’s family did not have time for a waiting list like the long one in Canada. And the evil private company (for profit) stepped in and made it happen. Waaaahhhhhh corporations....wahhh
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