Monty,
I was wondering when you would rise to take the latest bait… Welcome back, it’s been a while…
I think you’ll find a lot of Constitutional scholars who disagree with the way the bankruptcy proceedings came out… In particular the inequitable awards to the UAW at the expense of the actual bond holders… We all want to see GM survive but look what’s happened… GM will go the way of AMTRAK... And, with idiot political hacks running the company with no experience in the auto industry… this is going to be a tax liability until the Federal government gets out of GM… Just watch what they’ll do to Ford…
So… how’s that “hopey – changey” thing working out for ya? Did ya have a good time at the ACORN birthday party last week?
And how about the latest from ACORN… Did you notice how they’ve changed their name from ACORN to Community Organizers International to the US or (COITUS)… That’s what they’re doing to the US Taxpayers when they end run the legal system and the ballot box with our tax dollars so they can register fraudulent voters…
I’d think the COITUS folks would jump at the opportunity to learn them Uranium leaders the finer art of community organization... Chicago style… I’ll bet that would go over like a pig in a punch bowl.
How about Letterman’s Palin jokes? Did you get a good laugh?
Got yer popcorn ready for the ABC, the All Barak Channel infomercial from the White House bully pulpit on Obamacare tonight?
Even the left wing media are reporting there a bunch of Dem’s running around the House and Senate with something warm sliding down their legs over the cost of Obamacare…
And how about the latest plan from the social progressives to cover a fraction of the real costs by taxing existing employer provided health care benefits, except they’ve cleverly built in a carve out exclusion for unions… Now that’s real slick political theater and a very transparent first class example of PANDERING FOR VOTES…
But lets not dwell on that stinky bolus just yet…
How about we talk about the really big numbers… I mean really obscene numbers like the National Debt… It’s – $ 11.443 Trillion as of 11:00 EST today.
Then there’s Fiscal Year 2008 (FY08) Federal Budget that shows the U. S. Government spent $412 Billion of your money on interest payments to the holders of the National Debt (Japan and China own a lot). Interest payments on the National Debt for FY09 looks like they’ll total $550 Billion… and possibly more and the FY 2010 budget will be nothing short of a financial Chernobyl for people who really pay income tax.
By all estimates if the rogue Congress and White House continue at their preset pace, we’ll have a $2 Trillion deficit this year alone and a projection of a continued deficit of $2 Trillion a year for the next 8 years…
And now the idiots in Congress want to saddle us with Obamacare that will increase the National Debt by anywhere from $1 Trillion to $4 Trillion over the next 10 years (depending on which of the 5 versions of “Affordable Health Care” legislation you’re looking at) just to ensure 47 million uninsured [b}residents[/b] of the United States. And, as pointed out earlier, just so you can wait in line for rationed medical care…
Let’s take a look at how our government takes in revenue… I downloaded the 2008 IRS files… That year there were 156 million returns filed. Over 60% (that’s a very conservative number) paid no income tax and 40% of those who filed a federal income tax return paid no income tax but received money from the government. If you do the math, 63 million folks out of a total population estimated at 307 million paid all the federal income tax in 2008.
Estimated receipts for fiscal year 2008 were $2.66 trillion (The actual figures are at lease 35% lower than estimated) from the following sources.
• $1.25 trillion - Individual income tax
• $927.2 billion - Social Security and other payroll tax
• $314.9 billion - Corporate income tax
• $68.1 billion - Excise tax
• $29.2 billion - Customs duties
• $25.7 billion - Estate and gift taxes
• $50.7 billion - Other
Total Spending for fiscal year 2008 was $2.902 Trillion.
Will Government run medical insurance result in rationing ? Oh yes… It’s already started for Medicare recipients… and if you don’t think Obamacare isn’t going to ration your medical care you gotta be smoking them funny cigarettes all the liberal progressives and pot heads want to legalize… The other dirty little secret is very obvious… If you have private medical insurance now… You are already paying for people without health insurance with increased premiums to cover the expenses created the uninsured. Another factoid… 80% of the medical expenses we will incur in our life will come after the age of 55… Old folks cost more… Just a fact.
Consider this… Medicare is already rationing oxygen therapy to COPD sufferers… Medicare estimates they’ll pay out $1.69 Billion to 1.6 million senior citizens currently receiving coverage for home oxygen therapy, but they expect to cut that figure down to $735 Million by 2011 to over 1.8 million senior citizens in need of oxygen therapy. So what do they do when that happens? Taking half as many breaths with oxygen supplement is going to be real tough for COPD sufferers. And yet…
Medicare WILL NOT COVER THE EXPENSE OF MEDICAL OXYGEN AS AN ABORTIVE FOR CLUSTER HEADACHES !!!Can you hear it coming? You should… If you don’t… BOHICA! Cause here come BIG NEW TAAAAAAAAXES… On everyone!
Don’t get me wrong…
We do need reform in medical care, but there are so many ways to do this without the chosen one and the idiots in congress nationalizing yet another industry with no real plan on how to pay for it. We need a real panel of experts made up of all the stakeholders from each State to address potential legislative solutions to our heath care problems free of polarized political interference… read politicians in general and Congress and the Administration in particular, then send it to the Supreme Court to adjudicate…
Congress has the power to do this but they do not want to give up the power and control they have over you… After all, you can’t be trusted to spend your money wisely and “THEY” know better…
Lets take a look at the problems that will make National Health Care a Nightmare as proposed in any of its present instantiations in no less than five different House and Senate committees. You need to understand that most of these problems were caused by legislation written by special interest groups not necessarily directly related to medical care and big government trying to “fix” other problems they caused years earlier on both sides of the isle.
Medical Tort Reform. We’ve become a litigious society willing to sue over coffee from McDonald's we spill in our laps thanks to Congress (mostly lawyers) and their failure to pass meaningful tort reform and in particular, medical tort reform. This is another bi-partisan screw up of GIHUGIC proportions… You heard the chosen one tell the AMA he was not in favor of medical tort reform… (That got a lot of groans) That’s simply because he gets more campaign donations from slip and fall lawyers and their heavily financed national associations… than he does from medical providers and payers.
No Government health care reform will be possible without meaningful medical tort reform… That should be the first step in the critical path of generating meaningful health care reform… before there are any further related pieces of legislation passed! A change in Medical Tort Laws would cost taxpayers nothing in new taxes and may even reduce other insurance costs.
Existing shortage of primary care physicians. There are not enough primary care physicians today. Primary care physicians who refuse to compromise quality are either driven out of business or to cash-only concierge practices, further contributing to primary care's decline.
Medical students are not blind to this scenario. They see how heavily the reimbursement deck is stacked against primary care. Whether they opt to become a specialist or a primary care physician, they graduate with the same $140,000 of medical school debt. The recent numbers show that since 1997, newly graduated U.S. medical students who choose primary care as a career have declined by 50%. This trend results in emergency rooms being overwhelmed with patients without regular doctors.
Furthermore, if the Democrats' universal health care proposals come to fruition, the primary care system will be inundated with at least 45 million newly insured patients. As Massachusetts is finding out in its pioneering attempt to provide universal coverage, our system is not ready for this burden.
Universal coverage is useless without primary care access.Even the local far left fish wrap here in DC, the Washington Post, ran a front-page article below the fold on the present shortage of primary care physicians. Have you seen any of the Porkulus funding stimulate a response to this shortage? I think not.
Inequitable taxing of health care insurance costs. The present employer provided health care benefits are tax-exempt (for the moment). However, if you work for a small company that can’t compete for institutional medical insurance or you’re self employed, your medical insurance costs are fully taxable.
This is another egregious tax law that’s screwed up as Hogan’s goat that could be fixed at no cost to us in new taxes.Late payments to Providers Treating patients with Medicare & Medicaid. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) at HHS don’t actually make payments to medical providers. They use Medicare Administrative Contractors (MAC) selected in low-ball contract solicitations. Many of these regional MACs are not equipped to handle the volume of claims from medical providers treating Medicare and Medicaid recipients. Moreover, the prevailing attitude is delay payments rather than pay on time if there are any questions over the Healthcare Common Procedure Coding System (HCPCS) billing codes. These delays are often so long that some providers must take out loans to meet their expenses. The bureaucratic nature of the way HCPCS billing codes are administered and changed by CMS. This is another example of Federal Laws and bureaucratic impediments that could be fixed with common sense legislation without the need for increased taxes.
Shortage of physician’s assistants (PA). We desperately need more PAs. Most states require at least 2 years of college and some health care experience prior to admission to an accredited PA course of study. All States require that PAs complete an accredited, formal education program, usually 2 years in length, and pass a National exam to obtain a license. Salaries run around $70,000/year. Have you seen any of the Porkulus funding stimulate a response to this shortage? I think not.
Enforce Existing Laws and Deport Illegal Aliens. The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, has said that welfare costs for illegal immigrants in LA County were over $37 million in September 2007 and that they had increased $2 million over the previous two months. He also said that 25% of all welfare and food stamp benefits go directly to children of illegal aliens and that the projected annual cost in welfare and food stamps for illegal aliens would be $444 million - including public safety and healthcare, the total cost for illegal immigrants to the County exceeded $1 billion a year - not including the millions of dollars for education.
A RAND study concluded that the total federal cost of providing medical expenses for the 78% illegal immigrants without health insurance coverage was $1.1 billion, with immigrants paying $321 million of health care costs out-of-pocket. The study found that undocumented immigrants tend to visit physicians less frequently than U.S. citizens because they are younger and because people with chronic health problems are less likely to immigrate.
Here is where Congress could fix the “Anchor Baby” problem at no additional tax and save hundreds of millions a year in reduced costs to State and Federal budgets in the process. That would help reduce our medical insurance premiums.There are other common sense solution that wouldn’t increase our tax for another massive entitlement. The Safeway Plan. The Safeway plan for medical health insurance is well liked by non-union employees because their premiums are reduced significantly if they demonstrate common sense life-style changes like reduce weight if they are obese, lower blood pressure, lower cholesterol levels, and quit smoking. This is an excellent model for Medicare Part B and Part C.
Use existing sources of revenue to cover the uninsured. If the idiots in Congress were really concerned about the health care problems caused by the uninsured, they could take payments accruing from all the Bail-Outs to the financial and auto industries and apply them to a fund to cover the uninsured. Instead they’ll send that money to COITUS and other unfunded programs on their socialist agenda. This is another example of how Congress could reform health care without any new tax.
The really big, really obscene problem is like the 900 lb gorilla in the room that neither party will acknowledge… Medicare and Medicaid. Both are broken and so is Social Security. In 2004, Senior Fellow and Social Security and Medicare Trustee Thomas R. Saving reported that:
- Social Security faces an unfunded liability of $10.4 trillion.
- Medicare's unfunded liability is $61.6 trillion - six times greater than Social Security's.
- The prescription drug benefit alone faces a funding gap of $16.6 trillion - more than 50 percent greater than Social Security's.
- By 2020, the combined deficits in these programs will consume more than one-fourth of all federal income taxes.
- By 2030, about the midpoint of the baby boomer retirement years, deficits in the two programs will consume more than half of all federal incomes taxes.
- By 2050, when today's college students will reach retirement age, Social Security and Medicare will require more than three- fourths of all income taxes just to pay benefits currently promised.
Congress has no plan to pay for these promises, and the budget rules actually hide the total cost from Congress and the voters. This fact alone should give you a spastic colon and give you cause to seek out candidates with common sense come election time.
Now for any of you who think medical care will be better under communism… You’ve every right to that opinion. There are hundreds of thousands of American war fighters who’ve died to preserve your right to say that and millions more that support your rights to say that but disagree vehemently. I’m one of them…
Just as you have the right to say you want communist medical care, I have the same right to state my opinion… and here it is…
Demand a refund on your education and if that doesn’t work get a lawyer and sue the schools. You either received a very poor public education devoid of any US Government, US and World History, or you had Marxist trained community organizers masquerading as teachers using revisionist texts. If you’re really serious about wanting communist healthcare… Try Cuba… It’s real close.
Finally… Forget all the numbers being thrown around for a minute and look at the numbers that will affect you, your children, and their children for the rest of their lives. The questions you should be asking yourself and your congressmen follow. They’re rhetorical… so I’ll take the liberty of answering them now:
If I already have private health care insurance, will my premiums for that coverage go up if the present heath care legislation passes?
YesWill Congress add more Federal mandates to the existing list of required coverage items that will make my private insurance more costly than government run health care insurance/exchanges?
More than likely If I already have private health care insurance, will my taxes go up to pay for the estimated 47 million uninsured?
Yes, for you and for generations to come. Are there provisions to prevent undocumented and illegal aliens from receiving coverage in the present legislation working its way through Congress?
Illegal aliens already qualify for free health care in emergency rooms across the US… You’ve been paying for them all the way along in higher medical costs… Moreover, they qualify for Medicaid now and if Obamacare passes, they’ll get amnesty and be made US citizens with the stroke of a pen… [b] The answer is Yes.Phone the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121.
A switchboard operator will connect you directly with the Representative or Senate office you request. Ask for some common sense and advise them to seek employment elsewhere come election time if they fail to show any.
My conclusion after doing this research and analysis:
In passing the affordable health care legislation presently metastasizing its way through halls of Congress without taking a common sense approach to fix existing problems first, we will end up with Government run health care looking like the existing Medicare and Medicaid on steroids…
If you think I’m off the mark… Do your own research and draw your own conclusions… Then come back and tell us what they are… Take care… and BOHICA!
V/R, Batch
Home
Pages: 
