RX FOR DISASTER: 83 MILLION OF US WON'T KEEP OUR INSURANCE

For those who do manage to keep their current insurance -- well, it won't cost $2,500 less, as Obama promised. Lewin estimates it will cost $460 a year more because of new cost-shifting from the government-run plan to private health plans.

That's right. The $1.3 trillion House health-care bill would cause millions of Americans to lose the insurance they have now -- while the rest of us would pay even more than we do now.

Faced with onerous new regulations and the possibility of heavy fines, employers might choose the simpler -- and legally safer -- route of dropping their health plans entirely and simply paying the new 8 percent payroll tax, which will be levied on employers who don't provide the government-approved health insurance.

Jam the phone lines TODAY! Call the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at (202)224-3121 and ask for your Representative to STOP the criminal forced health"care" legislation that will rob everyone of us blind!!

RX FOR DISASTER

83 MILLION OF US WON'T KEEP OUR INSURANCE

By ROBERT A. BOOK & ROBERT E. MOFFIT

July 22, 2009 
Posted: 1:00 am
July 22, 2009

AT tonight's press conference, someone should ask President Obama why he's endorsing, and not threatening to veto, the 1,018-page House health-care reform bill now being rushed to passage: It breaks nearly all his core promises about health-care reform.

"If you have health insurance, then you don't have to do anything," Obama said on Oct. 15, 2008. "If you've got health insurance through your employer, you can keep your health insurance, keep your choice of doctor, keep your plan. . . 

And we estimate we can cut the average family's premium by about $2,500 per year."

Both these solemn pledges, repeated often ever since and as recently as yesterday, are violated in the House bill. Its perverse incentives, plus the onerous regulations Congress plans to impose on employer-provided insurance, would cause more than half of those with employer-provided insurance to lose it -- 83.4 million Americans, according to The Lewin Group, a prominent, politically neutral health-care analysis firm.

And for those who do manage to keep their current insurance -- well, it won't cost $2,500 less, as Obama promised. Lewin estimates it will cost $460 a year more because of new cost-shifting from the government-run plan to private health plans.That's right. The $1.3 trillion House health-care bill would cause millions of Americans to lose the insurance they have now -- while the rest of us would pay even more than we do now.

Most of those who lose their current insurance would be enrolled in Congress' newly created government-run health plan. The health benefits these Americans get would be decided by the Secretary of Health and Human Services, based on the recommendations of a newly created Health Benefits Advisory Committee. The HHS team would decide, year by year, what health-care benefits you would and would not get in the government-approved package.

Change we can believe in, huh?

Congress would authorize the HHS secretary to pay doctors and hospitals who participate in its health plan on the basis of Medicare rates, plus 5 percent.

But Medicare rates are much lower than those in private insurance -- 19 percent lower for doctors and 32 percent lower for hospitals. So the plan means big cuts in payments to health-care providers. They'd try to cover part of their losses by charging more to the private plans still left.

Doctors would lose -- big time. Based on the projected number of people forced out of private insurance and into the public plan, the Lewin Group estimates that physicians will lose $13.4 billion in net income -- equivalent to an average pay cut of 6.3 percent.

Hospitals would be hit even harder, losing $67 billion in revenue. That's more than the total net cash flow of all the hospitals in the country. Facing bankruptcy, a lot of hospitals might have to close their doors.

It could get worse. The Lewin Group's estimate of the rise in premiums only accounts for the possibility that doctors and hospitals would try to raise prices on the privately insured to make up for their losses from patients in the new public plan.

But there's another reason why private insurance premiums might increase even more: The House bill also creates a new office with the Orwellian title "Health Choices Commissioner." After a five-year "grace" period, employer-sponsored private health plans would be subject to approval by this commissioner.

The commissioner would be empowered to set benefit levels, decide what services will be covered regardless of the preferences of patients and otherwise set standards for private health plans. These mandates are all likely to increase health-care costs and therefore private insurance premiums.

Those standards aren't specified in the bill and may never be debated in Congress. They are up to the discretion of the "Choices" commissioner -- who will, of course, limit your choices to "acceptable" plans only.

Your employer's health plan might not be deemed "qualified." In that case, your employer could be fined, and even prohibited from enrolling new employees until the commissioner is satisfied that the violation "has been corrected and is not likely to recur." More change you can believe in . . .

Faced with onerous new regulations and the possibility of heavy fines, employers might choose the simpler -- and legally safer -- route of dropping their health plans entirely and simply paying the new 8 percent payroll tax, which will be levied on employers who don't provide the government-approved health insurance.

In fact, for most employers, paying this tax will be cheaper than paying for the company-based insurance even at today's prices. If the Health "Choices" Commissioner's yet unspecified standards turn out to be sufficiently onerous, Americans could end up with single-payer health care -- universal government health insurance -- by default.

Perhaps that's the idea?

Faced with payments that don't cover their expenses, and fewer and fewer private insurers to shoulder the costs, expect even more hospitals to close and more doctors to choose early retirement or another profession.

But at least if they could find a doctor, the House bill would cover every American with something, right? No -- according to Lewin, 16.5 million Americans would still be left uninsured.

This is bad medicine, that will take an already ailing health-care system and render it severely dysfunctional.

Robert A. Book is the senior research fellow in Health Economics at The Heritage Foundation (heritage.org), where Robert E. Moffit directs the Center for Health Policy Studies.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/07222009/postopinion/opedcolumnists/rx_for_disaster_180586.htm?&page=0

Does OBAMA and the House really want to raise taxes on eight million uninsured people? YES!!!

Jam the phone lines TODAY! Call the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at (202)224-3121 and ask for your Representative to STOP the criminal forced health"care" legislation that will rob everyone of us blind!!

As expected, the House bill would MANDATE that individuals and families have or buy health insurance. And for those who do manage to keep their current insurance -- it will cost you...A LOT MORE!

Posted on July 14th, 2009 by kbh in featured, health, taxes 

The President has said he would not allow taxes to be raised on anyone with less than $250,000 of income.

Today for the first time we see the legislative language for and a summary of the health care reform bill that House Democrats intend to try to pass before the August recess.  The following is based on an initial quick scan of the bill and studying a few key sections.  I have been wondering how the drafters were going to solve the problem I am about to describe.  As best I can tell, they didn’t solve it.

---

As expected, the House bill would mandate that individuals and families have or buy health insurance.

But what if they don’t buy it?

Then Section 401 kicks in.  Any individual (or family) that does not have health insurance would have to pay a new tax, roughly equal to the smaller of 2.5% of your income or the cost of a health insurance plan.

[ Technical note:  From the legislative language, it appears the tax = min( 2.5% * (modified AGI – personal exemption), average premium cost).  In the examples below, for simplicity I assume modified AGI = AGI. ]

I assume the bill authors would respond, “But why wouldn’t you want insurance?  After all, we’re subsidizing it for everyone up to 400% of the poverty line.”

That is true.  But if you’re a single person with income of $44,000 or higher, then you’re above 400% of the poverty line.  You would not be subsidized, but would face the punitive tax if you didn’t get health insurance.  This bill leaves an important gap between the subsidies and the cost of health insurance.  CBO says that for about eight million people, that gap is too big to close, and they would get stuck paying higher taxes and still without health insurance.

---

Example 1:

Bob is single and earns $50K per year.  He earns more than four times the federal poverty level, so he does not qualify for subsidies under the House bill.

Bob works for a five-person small business that does not provide him with health insurance.  His $50K wage is average for this company, which therefore does not qualify for the new small business tax credits.

This company is small enough that they do not have to pay the IRS any fee for not providing Bob with health insurance.  (See the table on page 184.)

With only $50K of income, Bob cannot afford to buy health insurance.  Under the House bill, he would then have to pay about $1,150 per year in higher taxes to the government.  That’s 2.5% of (his income minus a $3,650 personal exemption).

I went shopping for Bob on eHealthInsurance.com.  He is 50 years old and a non-smoker, living where I do in Virginia.  The cheapest bare bones policy he can get is $1,620 per year.  Most plans are in the $3K – $5K range.  That $470 difference between the tax and the cheapest premium is more than Bob can afford on a $50K pre-tax annual wage.

To summarize, under the House bill:

Bob is a single 50-year old non-smoking small business employee who makes $50K per year before taxes and does not have health insurance.
Bob cannot afford a $1,600 bare bones health insurance policy, much less a $3K — $5K policy.
Bob would get no subsidies under this bill, and his employer would face no penalty for not providing him with health insurance.
Bob would end up without health insurance and would have to pay $1,150 more in taxes.

---

Example 2:

Freddy and Kelsey are married with two kids.  They earn $90K per year.  They earn more than four times the federal poverty level, and therefore do not qualify for subsidies under the House bill.

Freddy and Kelsey own and run a small tourist shop in Orlando, Florida.  They are the only two employees.  Their wages exceed the amounts that would qualify them for small business tax credits under the House bill.

Because their business is so small, the House bill would impose no financial penalty for not complying with the employer mandate.  Even if they did, the tax penalty would come out of their own bottom line, since the two of them are the business.

Freddy and Kelsey are both 40 years old.  They have a 15-year old son and a 12-year old daughter.  None of them smoke.

Shopping on eHealthInsurance, the cheapest plan I could find for them is a high-deductible PPO plan with a $6,000 annual deductible.  That would cost them more than $3,800 per year.  And it’s a bare-bones plan.

They can’t afford that.  Maybe they are recovering from a hurricane, or dealing with the real estate collapse in Florida.  They are also saving for their kids’ college, which is only a few years away.  Even with $90K of income, money is tight for a family of four.

If they cannot afford the (at least) $3,800 in health insurance premiums, then the House bill would make them pay more than $2,050 in higher taxes.

To summarize, under the House bill:

Freddy and Kelsey are a 40-year old couple with two kids.  They own and run a small tourist shop in Orlando, Florida.
They are the only employees, and earn a combined $90K per year.
They cannot afford even an inexpensive health insurance plan, and so the House bill would make them pay $2,050 in higher taxes.

---

These two examples show the difficulty of making an individual mandate work.  To get people to comply with the mandate, you have to impose a significant tax penalty on those who don’t comply.  This will change the calculation for many who were previously uninsured – they will buy health insurance, because the delta between the cost of having insurance and the tax penalty cost of not having it has shrunk, so they might as well buy it.

The bigger this gap, the fewer people will switch.  And for those who do not or cannot comply with the mandate, they end up in the worst of all worlds – uninsured and paying higher taxes.

From CBO’s new tables, it appears that about eight million U.S. citizens would fall into this category.  I expect that very few of these people would have more than $250,000 of income, the no-tax-increase line defined by the President.

I expect the House Democrats will emphasize that their bill would result in 97 percent of U.S. citizens having coverage.  Those other three percent, however, really get shafted, and that’s about eight million people.

If the President were to sign such a bill into law, I cannot figure out how his team could reconcile this consequence with his pledge not to raise taxes on the middle class.

But without the tax penalty, the mandate isn’t effective, and the number of resulting uninsured goes way up.

The House bill drafters have made a hard policy choice.  It is important that Members of Congress and the public understand the benefits and the costs of the approach they have chosen.

---

Update

Thanks to a friend for pointing this out: We know the President understands this point.  Here is then-Senator Obama in a debate with then-Senator Clinton on February 21, 2008, opposing her proposal for a universal individual mandate to purchase health insurance (emphasis added):

SENATOR OBAMA:  Number one, understand that when Senator Clinton says a mandate, it’s not a mandate on government to provide health insurance, it’s a mandate on individuals to purchase it. And Senator Clinton is right; we have to find out what works.

Now, Massachusetts has a mandate right now. They have exempted 20 percent of the uninsured because they have concluded that that 20 percent can’t afford it.

In some cases, there are people who are paying fines and still can’t afford it, so now they’re worse off than they were. They don’t have health insurance and they’re paying a fine.

(APPLAUSE)

In order for you to force people to get health insurance, you’ve got to have a very harsh penalty, and Senator Clinton has said that we won’t go after their wages. Now, this is a substantive difference. But understand that both of us seek to get universal health care. I have a substantive difference with Senator Clinton on how to get there.

http://keithhennessey.com/2009/07/14/house-taxes-the-uninsured/

Feds Prepare To Tax Toilet Paper In Name Of Climate Change

The government wants to shake us down for our visits to the lavatory

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Tuesday, July 21, 2009

The vampiric and gluttonous feeding frenzy currently being enjoyed by the federal government under the pretext of climate change is set to be expanded with a range of new taxes on products disposed of via waste water, including cosmetics, toothpaste and toilet paper.

The “Water Protection and Reinvestment Act,” H.R.3202, introduced last week by Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore), will be “financed broadly by small fees on such things as bottled beverages, products disposed of in wastewater, corporate profits, and the pharmaceutical industry,” according to Blumenauer’s fact sheet.

Though the taxes are “designed to be collected at the manufacturer level,” only the most naive would doubt that multinational corporations would just pass the cost on to the consumer in the form of higher prices, as is routine.

Items disposed of in wastewater, such as toothpaste, cosmetics, toilet paper and cooking oil will be subject to a 3% excise tax, while water beverages will be hit with a 4% tax, “because these products wind up in the water stream and require clean up by sewage treatment plants,” according to the bill.

The legislation also cites “climate change mitigation” as a justification for imposing the taxes. The Feds’ new feeding frenzy will rake in around $10 billion dollars a year.

The bill even defines “toilet tissue” in section 4172. “The rulemaking to define what rises to the level of a bottom-wipe is in the name of a good cause: to tax the stuff,” writes Chris Horner. “The current band of feds don’t think you’ve paid enough tax — this has been established ad nauseam — and now want a dedicated revenue, er, stream, to pay to replace corroded pipes and overburdened sewer systems nationwide.”

The necessity of cleaning up a water supply poisoned with the toxic soup of human disposals seems like a reasonable proposal, especially in light of evidence that antiandrogens in our rivers and lakes are contributing to global sperm reduction and essentially chemically sterilizing men, and yet when the filters are ready to be installed at water treatment facilities that would remove this junk, the government steps in and blocks them under the justification that they contribute to CO2 emissions.

The fact that the global warming feeding frenzy has now reached a level of insanity to the point where the federal government is essentially preparing to tax us to defecate and urinate shows how far down the line we really are. What’s next? A tax on breathing? After all, we humans exhale that evil life-giving poisonous gas carbon dioxide. The New York Times actually introduced the idea of the government imposing a tax on breathing in a March 2007 editorial.

As we are lectured about the necessity of why we must have every aspect of our lives regulated and taxed in order to save the earth, we learn that the government’s last efforts to do so, during the ozone layer scare of the 80’s and 90’s, actually harmed the environment.

The Washington Post reported on Monday that hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), introduced in the 90’s to replace ozone-depleting gases in deodorants, fridges and air conditioners, actually “act like “super” greenhouse gases, with a heat-trapping power that can be 4,470 times that of carbon dioxide.” So while the government was brow-beating us about the evils of emitting CO2 because it apparently caused global warming, they were actually mandating that we use a gas which contributed to global warming to an substantially greater degree.

http://www.prisonplanet.com/feds-prepare-to-tax-toilet-paper-in-name-of-climate-change.html

The Forgotten Truth About the Original Boston Tea Party - and Why We Desperately Need It Today

Written by Carla Howell and Michael Cloud

http://centerforsmallgovernment.com/

Carla Howell delivered this speech on April 15, 2009 at the TEA Party Event in Boston:

"I did NOT come here to Protest.
 
"I did NOT come here to try to change the minds of Democratic or Republican officeholders in Washington - or on Beacon Hill.
 
"I came here to change politics in America - just like the American Patriots who gave us the first Boston Tea Party.
 
"The Original Boston Tea Party was NOT a Protest.
 
"Let me say that again: the Original Boston Tea Party was NOT a Protest.
 
"The Patriots did NOT just hold up signs, give speeches, and complain.
 
"The Patriots stopped British ships from unloading Monopoly British Tea - their version of AIG.
 
"The American Patriots blocked the collection of taxes.
 
"That is why the Boston Tea Party mattered - and why we remember it today.
 
"Because it was direct political action, not just protest.
 
"And it was action that made government smaller.
 
"Those great American Patriots realized that
what they said and what they wrote - changed nothing.
 
"But action changes everything.
 
"Not just any action. Action that shrinks Big Government.
 
"They were right!
 
"Deeds, NOT just words.
 
"Direct political action, NOT just protest.
 
"Action that moves us forward, that moves us closer to small government - NOT the no-win strategy of  holding the line, or  just opposing more Big Government.
 
"This is the lesson of the first Boston Tea Party.
 
"Now it is our turn to live the lesson.
 
"Let me ask you a few questions.
 
"Do you believe that the Wall Street bailout is insane?
 
"Do you believe that the massive federal government borrowing is hurting your business and your family?
 
"Do you believe that government is too big?
 
"Do you believe government debt is too high?
 
"Do you believe government spending is too high?
 
"Do you believe taxes are too high?
 
"Now let me ask you the questions inspired by the Original Boston Tea Party:
 
"Are YOU willing to take political action?
 
"Are YOU willing to END the Big Government Insanity - and start voting to make government smaller than it is today?
 
"Are YOU willing to vote against every Big Government candidate - in every election?
 
"Now here's the really hard question: Are you willing to vote against them even when you hate the other Big Government candidate more?
 
"Are you willing to vote FOR small government candidates and FOR small government ballot initiatives?
 
"Most political candidates who tell you they're against Big Government, who tell you they are for 'smaller government' talk your way -- and vote the opposite. They vote for tax increases, debt increases, spending increases, and more Big Government programs. They vote for each year's higher government spending. Their votes raise your taxes.
 
"The only way we can protect ourselves against these phonies and fakers is to ASSUME THAT EVERY ELECTED OFFICIAL IN AMERICA IS GUILTY OF VOTING BIG GOVERNMENT - UNTIL OR UNLESS HE PROVES HIMSELF INNOCENT by showing you his voting record. By proving to you that he voted small government while in office.
 
"Are you willing to vote against every officeholder who refuses to show you their voting record?
 
"To reclaim the American Dream, we must vote out every Big Government officeholder in our federal, state, and local governments. Every one. Democrat AND Republican.
 
"But we must NOT stop there.
 
"We must vote FOR candidates who campaign for, promise, and vote to reduce and remove today's Big Government social and economic programs - and GIVE BACK EVERY DOLLAR SAVED TO THE TAXPAYERS.
 
"We must vote for candidates who campaign for, promise, and vote to reduce and END government borrowing, reduce and remove government overspending and waste. Starting now. Small government candidates who will give back every dollar saved to the taxpayers.
 
"We must vote for small government candidates.
 
"We must vote FOR ballot initiatives that shrink Big Government.
 
"Candidates and ballot initiatives that cut or end taxes.
 
"Candidates and ballot initiatives that drive down today's Big Government spending.
 
"Just protesting Big Government will never give us what we want. Voting against Big Government will. Voting FOR Small Government will.
 
"Every Election. Every time. No exceptions. No excuses.
 
"This is the ONLY way we can fulfill the promise of the Original Boston Tea Party.
 
"I'm Carla Howell. I head the Center For Small Government. We're on your side. Please join us.
 
"Because 'small government is possible'."

Source

2009 Copyright Carla Howell and Michael Cloud
Small government is possible, small government is beautiful, Small Government Pledge and Small Government News are Service Marks (SM) of Carla Howell and Michael Cloud.