Posted on 06/18/2009 8:54:59 PM PDT by St. Louis Conservative
Last September Sen. Barack Obama promised that under his health-care proposal "you'll be able to get the same kind of coverage that members of Congress give themselves." On Monday, President Obama repeated that promise in a speech to the American Medical Association. It's not true.
The president is barnstorming the nation, urging swift approval of legislation that is taking shape in Congress. This legislation -- the Affordable Health Choices Act that's being drafted by Sen. Edward Kennedy's staff and the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee -- will push Americans into stingy insurance plans with tight, HMO-style controls. It specifically exempts members of Congress (along with federal employees; the exemptions are in section 3116).
Members of Congress "enjoy the widest selection of health plans in the country," according to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. They "can choose from among consumer-driven and high deductible plans that offer catastrophic risk protection with higher deductibles, health saving/reimbursable accounts and lower premiums, or fee-for-service (FFS) plans, and their preferred provider organizations (PPO), or health maintenance organizations (HMO)." These choices would be nice for all of us, but they're not in the offing. Instead, if you don't enroll in a "qualified" health plan and submit proof of enrollment to the federal government, you'll be tracked down and fined (sections 3101 and 6055).
For a health plan to count as "qualified," it has to meet all the restrictions listed in the legislation and whatever criteria the Secretary of Health and Human Services imposes after the bill becomes law. You may think you're in a "qualified" plan, but the language suggests that only plans with managed-care controls such as the "medical home" will meet the definition (sections 3101 and 2707).
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Not to worry, really. You will all become government employees due to Obama’s takeover of every single business in American. As for Congress continuing to have a choice of plans, sorry, but O will put Aetna, Blue Shield out of business. Blue Cross will continue to administer Medicare and the public plan, but they will have layoffs in the thousands as well. It will increase unemployment so I am not sure just where they are going to get the money to pay for so many who are not working or working for an entity (the government) that produces not one dime of it’s own.
Dear Democrats, don’t tell Obama what comes after a trillion.
As with Chrysler, not all MDs will be invited to participate with approved provider groups. Many solo and small group surgical specialists will be left out and will experience draconian drops in income, stimulating a reduction of their numbers in practice.
The Kennedy Health Care bill does not need dissection. It needs burial.
Call your U.S. senators, and write a letter to the editor explaining the lies. We must stop this.
Kennedy health care plan:
A poke in the eye with a sharp stick
For federal employees, the government pays 60% of the premium for Blue Cross,-Blue Shield. and I pay 40%, family option. Since I turned 65, Medicare is now primary and the private plan is secondary. Before there was a “deductble for each family member that had to be paid before benefits kicked in. My wife and I keep close records, but we can’t figure out what deal the medical providers have with either the government or Blue Cross-Blue Shield. We have major procedures that are above what Medicare and Blue-Cross-Blue Shield allow (on paper), but then we owe nothing. We figure that it is a bit like charges for clothing: Huge mark-ups, big discounts, and fictious loses applied against taxes. But who knows. Nothing like it was in 1965, where we paid $20 a night for a private room in a community hospital, and after weeks in hospital, a small ins policy paid for his hospital and our only expense was $300 to our family dollar. That would be about $2000 in todays dollars.
Somewhere along the line things got out of hand. Our family doctor was strongly against medicare, and he correctly prodicted thatthe numbers that Kennedy and others were throwing around were impossibly low. he predicted—accurately—that when government started pumping money into the system that prices would go sky-high, and that a British style system would take the place of the once we knew. He was wrong only in that he said it would happen in 20 years. It has taken 40.
When I think of Kennedy work on this, I just have to laugh. Just think, we have someone making life altering decisions for generations of Americans, who's brain is being destroyed by cancer and who's treatment, most likely, includes mind altering drugs. Strange how I have to undergo drug testing for my job, and Teddy, with far more effect on the lives of others, doesn't. The world has turned upside down.
In. Your. Face.
and, the unions are already insisting that only non-union members be taxed on said ‘benefits’.
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