Posted on 01/19/2011 6:32:05 PM PST by Still Thinking
As Republicans seek to repeal health care reform, they have assaulted "Obamacare" as a job-killing, freedom-crushing behemoth that's pushed the country onto the path to socialism. In order to defend their landmark legislative achievement, Democrats, meanwhile, have tried to highlight the bill's most popular provisions, ones that have already gone into effect. "We can either talk about abstraction, or we can talk about real people," said Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), at a hearing on Tuesday, where Democrats invited ordinary citizens to testify about how health reform has helped them personally. "None of us did a good enough job" explaining the legislation the first time around, Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) admitted to reporters. And so the party has scrambled to play catch-up as the GOP has launched their all-out war against reform.
Though most of the major changes under the Affordable Care Act won't take effect until 2014, Democrats deliberately frontloaded the law with key reforms early on, in hopes of building political support for the measure. They've now trotted out those benefits as the Republicans have made health care repeal the first priority of their new House majorityeven creating a map that details the benefits of reform by each congressional district. Here's a by-the-numbers rundown* of how the Democrats' health care legislation has affected Americans so farand what the GOP is threatening to take away with Wednesday's scheduled vote on a repeal bill:
Four million Medicare beneficiaries are expected to receive a $250 rebate check for their 2010 prescription drug costs since the "donut hole" that exempted some seniors from drug discounts was closed on January 1, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.
More than four million small businesses are eligible to receive a tax credit for purchasing employee health insurance in 2010, according to a July 2010 study by Families USA and Small Business Majority (both are pro-reform advocacy groups). About 1.2 million small businesses are eligible to receive the maximum 35 percent tax credit.
About 2 million uninsured children with preexisting conditions cannot be denied coverage under the current law. By 2014, everyone with a preexisting condition (as many as 129 million Americans) would receive the same insurance protections.
Nearly 2.4 million young adults can now receive coverage through their parents' health plans, under a provision that extends coverage to dependents up to age 26, according to the Obama administration. That number includes 1.8 million young adults who weren't insured previously, as well as some 600,000 who had to buy insurance on their own.
This year, about 10,700 people will keep their insurance coverage due to a provision in the bill that prohibits an industry practice known as "rescission," which entailed stripping people of their coverage when payouts grew too costly.
Pre-reform, about 18,600 to 20,400 people hit a lifetime limit in insurance coverage each year and were denied coverage for claims above this ceiling. The reform bill prohibits insurers from setting these coverage caps.
Finally, repealing the legislation would also increase the deficit by an estimated $230 billion over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
To be sure, not all who are eligible for these benefits will end up receiving themeither because they choose not to or because they aren't aware that they can claim them. To that end, one of the Democrats' biggest challenges in both protecting the law and improving its political appeal will be to educate the potential beneficiaries about the specific aspects of reform that help them. And the Republicans can still do significant damage to health reform by impeding this effort and obfuscating the real numbers behind the law.
*Clarification: There are 12.4 million ways in which Americans have already benefitted from reform (the aggregate of the numbers cited above). But there are less than 12.4 million people in total, as some qualify for more than one kind of benefite.g. young people under 26 who can qualify for their parents' insurance who also have pre-existing conditions.
ACTUAL reform would leave me with all decisions and information about my health care, insurance nonexistant except for catastrophic care, and no one in the government in possession of any INFORMATION about any health care decision I'd ever made, much less have the legal right to make it for me.
Blue Shield of California seeks rate hikes of as much as 59% for individuals
Insurer says the increases result from fast-rising healthcare costs and other expenses resulting from new healthcare laws. The move comes less than a year after Anthem Blue Cross tried and failed to raise rates as much as 39%.
San Francisco-based Blue Shield said the increases were the result of fast-rising healthcare costs and other expenses resulting from new healthcare laws.
“We raise rates only when absolutely necessary to pay the accelerating cost of medical care for our members,” the nonprofit insurer told customers last month.
In all, Blue Shield said, 193,000 policyholders would see increases averaging 30% to 35%, the result of three separate rate hikes since October.
Nearly 1 in 4 of the affected customers will see cumulative increases of more than 50% over five months.
YOU ARE NOT GOING TO LIKE THIS:
ObamaCare Highlighted by Page Number
THE CARE BILL HB3200
THIS IS THE 2ND OFFICIAL WHO HAS OUTLINED THESE PARTS OF THE CARE BILL
Judge Kithil of Marble Falls , TX - HB3200 highlighted pages most egregious
Please read this........ especially the reference to pages 58 & 59
JUDGE KITHIL wrote:
** Page 50/section 152: The bill will provide insurance to all non-U.S. residents, even if they are here illegally.
** Page 58 and 59: The government will have real-time access to an individual’s bank account and will have the authority to make electronic fund transfers from those accounts..
** Page 65/section 164: The plan will be subsidized (by the government) for all union members, union retirees and for community organizations (such as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now - ACORN).
** Page 203/line 14-15: The tax imposed under this section will not be treated as a tax. (How could anybody in their right mind come up with that?)
** Page 241 and 253: Doctors will all be paid the same regardless of specialty, and the government will set all doctors’ fees.
** Page 272. section 1145: Cancer hospital will ration care according to the patient’s age.
** Page 317 and 321: The government will impose a prohibition on hospital expansion; however, communities may petition for an exception.
** Page 425, line 4-12: The government mandates advance-care planning consultations.. Those on Social Security will be required to attend an “end-of-life planning” seminar every five years. (Death counseling..)
** Page 429, line 13-25: The government will specify which doctors can write an end-of-life order.
HAD ENOUGH???? Judge Kithil then goes on:
“Finally, it is specifically stated that this bill will not apply to members of Congress. Members of Congress are already exempt from the Social Security system, and have a well-funded private plan that covers their retirement needs. If they were on our Social Security plan, I believe they would find a very quick ‘fix’ to make the plan financially sound for their future.”
Honorable David Kithil
Marble Falls, Texas
All of the above should give you the point blank ammo you need to support your opposition to Obamacare. Please send this information on to all of your email contacts.
Then they should admit their business is based upon a failed model, close up shop and everyone can be on HSA's.
check out this link: http://www.atr.org/comprehensive-list-tax-hikes-obamacare-a5758
Hey dimwit go to Canada or England and ask them how is their health care programs working...If you love the idea of Socialized Medicine move to Cuba and leave the rest of us the hell alone...
I was reading somewhere today (can’t seem to find the article) that even the UK is backing away from the NHS model.
Toll-Free number to the Congressional Switchboard
(866) 338-1015
This is the 15 MEMBER UNELECTED DEATH PANEL IN THE STIMULUS BILL!
Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research Membership Recovery Act Allocates $1.1 Billion for Comparative Effectiveness Research LINK
Obamacare and Taxes: The Final Tab (ATR.org)
link
Dr. David Janda explains rationing and why
Link
Obamacare Endgame: Doctors Will be Fined or Jailed if they Put Patients First by Dr. Elaina George
LINK
Ruin Your Health With the Obama Stimulus Plan
LINK
How ObamaCare Guts Medicare$8 TRILLION over 20 yrs
VIDEO: GOP Rep. Paul Ryan Tears Down the ObamaCare Fiscal House of Cards
It might be a good idea to have proof of Citizenship to acquire the services, too, or, in the case of emergencies, make certain that upon release, the individual MUST SHOW PROOF OF CITIZENSHIP, OR, sent back to their native land.....
Most of the “popular” things are just government giving money to people — why wouldn’t they be popular. Give me $250, I’ll be happy.
Of course, you could have passed a bill that did those things in about a page of legislation.
Other things are basically false. They didn’t guarantee children could get insurance without preconditions — they simply guaranteed that any company offering child insurance would have to sell without preconditions. So most insurers stopped selling child-only policies; the ones that didn’t will be saddled with such high costs that their premiums will go up to where the healthy children won’t pay for coverage anymore, it will be too expensive.
While 2.4 million young adults COULD now get coverage from their parent’s insurance, I want to know how many have done so — for most it’s more expensive than they care to pay. I will note that only regulation was keeping insurance companies from doing this before anyway — it’s absurd to think insurance companies wouldn’t LOVE to add adult children to their parents coverage for a fee that is appropriate to cover them — those young adults are the cheapest to insure.
My insurance costs went up because my insurnace now covers me for infinite amounts of medical bills.
Republicans supported recission reform, and they could have easily passed a 2-page bill that would have given us that.
In fact, I would recommend the republicans put together the 6 popular non-cost items that would reduce regulatory pressure against common-sense insurance actions, and send it through.
Anything thats 2,000 pages long, undebated, not subject to amendment, and rammed thru without any public comment period is inexplicable to anyone.
Start over and do it right. We don't need 2,000 pages and government takeover of healthcare to fix pre-existing conditions clauses and college student coverage on ma-n-pa's policy.
Why do we even need “policies”? Medicine worked better before insurance was common and before it was a sweet spot tax-wise (deductible to the company, non-taxed to the employee). The insurer just ends up acting like a mini government. After you give them money you worked hard for, they think THEY get to dictate to YOU and give you crap. Insurance for catastrophic care only. Routine stuff people pay for out-of-pocket. And eliminate the tax advantage (while reducing the tax RATE so they don’t end up with more of OUR money).
To make my last point by example. Compare price and quality trends in procedures covered by third party payers (insurance and government) vs. those free of the involvement of such freedom thieves. LASIK for example. Costs trending down and quality up, just because people are spending their own money and there are no third parties to screw up the incentives or poke their nose in where it doesn’t belong. Do people want insurance/government style bureaucracies to run their supermarkets? If not, why would you trust your health care to one?
How could they have been expected to explain the result of a back room full of chimpanzees, er make that junior staffers, typing out a document whose meaning would puzzle the code breakers in the very CIA itself? I can hardly blame Steny (what a nickname) for that.
The problem remains government regulation.
In many states, you can't buy catastrophic insurance. You can only buy low deductible -- because that's all the state will allow the insurers to sell.
Insurance companies don't necessarily want to sell policies which cover drug addiction, AIDs and other STDs, even sex change operations. But some states mandate that is the only policy they can sell.
If we reformed government regulations regarding healthcare -- rather than reformed healthcare -- we'd all end up with less expensive and more appropriate policies.
Directly or indirectly, yes. But I think one of the indirect ways they've fscked stuff up has resulted in the EXISTENCE of insurance companies. If people were paying out of their own pocket with after-tax dollars, care costs wouldn't be going through the roof, while still maintaining plenty of incentive for innovation.
Again, I don't think if we get it all worked out right, we'll even have "policies" except for catastrophic. If we don't need grocery insurance, we don't need insurance for routine medical costs.
Well, to be fair, they were kind of handicapped as far as explaining what it was all about prior to passing because they had to pass it to find out what was in it.
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