Brazen lies on health care – Part 2

More “inconvenient” facts on the coming health care bill…straight from the just released draft of the Senate version being pushed by Ted Kennedy and the Messiah Himself:

• This bill establishes “Shared Responsibility Payments” — surely the greatest euphemism ever for a far uglier word: “Tax.” Pages 104 and 105 amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, such that anyone lacking “qualifying coverage” for any month in any tax year will face “tax liability” of “an amount equal to an amount” that the HHS secretary decrees is “the minimum practicable amount that can accomplish the goal of enhancing participation in qualifying coverage.” Oddly enough, these new taxes would not apply to anyone “who is an enrolled member of a federally recognized Indian tribe (as defined in section 4 of the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act).”

• While touting health-care reform as a vital measure to which every American has a God-given right, Kennedy’s elaborate new medical scheme includes a trap door through which members of Congress may slither away after dark. On page 114, it defines “qualified individuals” who must obey this law. Among them are those ineligible for the generous and choice-rich Federal Employee Health Benefits Program. This excludes current and retired members of Congress. How convenient!

Self-important Democrats handle Americans the way dog owners treat their pets — steak for Daddy and Alpo for Duke — only without the underlying love.

• Page 118 targets $33.95 billion to treat the “special medically underserved population,” including the homeless, public-housing residents, and “migratory and seasonal agricultural workers.” How much of this money will wind up treating illegal aliens?

• Page 353 calls for a new Prevention and Public Health Investment Fund budgeted at $10 billion per year through “fiscal year 2020, and each fiscal year thereafter.” Moreover, these sums “shall not be taken into account for purposes of any budget enforcement procedures including allocations under section 302(a) and (b) of the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act and budget resolutions for fiscal years during which appropriations are made from the Investment Fund.” In short, this creates yet another off-budget item that cannot be cut, and with no attendant revenue source. The proposed Retiree Reserve Trust Fund and CLASS Independence Fund also would sit “off budget” as brand-new, untouchable, unfunded liabilities. Fiscal responsibility be damned!

exerpted from Deroy Murdock

Yes, this is what we are told is going to solve all the current problems with health care coverage. Giving more and more power to federal bureaucrats to dictate how your health care will be run… and exempting themselves from it all – natch… This is going to “fix” everything?? If you believe this, I got some land south of Miami to sell you!

Brazen lies on health care

Now that the dust has settled a little bit from the week long full court press which the White House and it’s sycophants at ABC have subjected us all to, perhaps it’s time to step back and examine the facts behind the rhetoric. Despite the Messiah’s repeated assertions that “if you like your healthcare, the government will not force you to switch”, this is a distinction without a difference and the One has to know it:

This is exceptionally brazen sophistry. Private insurers are at a disadvantage vis-à-vis the federal government because they don’t have the power of the government to dictate prices to doctors and hospitals. That’s what Medicare does, and why it pays less for health services than private insurers.

Surely Obama understands the competitive advantage that this confers on the government. If the public option in ObamaCare underpays providers in a similar fashion, it will charge cheaper premiums than private insurance. Employers will dump their employees into the public plan, and a massive “crowding out” will occur. The respected health-care research firm The Lewin Group estimates as many as 119 million people could migrate from private insurance to the government plan, whether Obama considers it logical or not.

Since Medicare doesn’t pay hospitals enough to cover costs, they have to make up the expense by charging more to private insurers. According to Lewin, as Medicare hospital payments declined from 95 percent of costs in 2003 to 91 percent of costs in 2007, private-payer rates steadily increased. A massive new government plan that doesn’t pay its own way will augment this cost shift, making private insurance more expensive still and sending ever more people into the arms of the government plan.

ObamaCare, then, could unravel the entire private system very quickly. And in Obama’s telling, it all would have been a strange accident of fate. All he wanted to do was reduce health-care costs, and lo and behold, he ended up with the Canada-style system no one thought politically possible. What dumb luck.                       Rich Lowry

Ah, yes… the Canadian system… the progressive Left’s 30 year wet dream!  The one that results in 3 month waits to see general practicioner, 6 months or more to see a specialist… not too bad if you have severe acne but a bit more of a problem if you have cancer or a heart condition.   The system that hasn’t collapsed under its own weight yet for one single reason: it has the US as a readily available safety valve.  Can’t get treated in Toronto? No problem… just drive an hour or so to top specialists in Buffalo or Syracuse.   Even a 4 hour drive to Detroit or Cleveland is better than a 6 month wait to see an oncologist!

No, the government isn’t going to force you into such a system.  It will just set up the conditions so that your employer will find it cheaper to dump you into the system than to continue to provide coverage at an ever increasing cost.  The end result will be exactly the same…. the Messiah will just have your company do the dirty work for him.   As I said, a distinction without a difference!

Follow the diagram

How to create the progressive utopia

As told in pictures by Andrew Thomas.

From The American Thinker