Bust the Health Care Trusts

[sois]

[quote name='Tigers Johnson' date='25 March 2010 - 02:34 PM' timestamp='1269552860' post='873097']
That is the plan.....

The real referendum on how the society as a whole views this bill will be in November...

My gut tells me the democratic party will pay severely.
[/quote]

It's possible surely. Who knows, maybe you will like the new options available to you. This idea is not even in it's infancy and you are ready to abort. Aren't you pro life, brother?

[hocuspocus]

[quote name='Tigers Johnson' date='25 March 2010 - 05:34 PM' timestamp='1269552860' post='873097']
That is the plan.....

The real referendum on how the society as a whole views this bill will be in November...

My gut tells me the democratic party will pay severely.
[/quote]

Tigers - a correction - they are the DemoCRAT party not democratic. If they were democratic... oh nevermind.

[hocuspocus]

[quote name='hocuspocus' date='25 March 2010 - 05:36 PM' timestamp='1269552998' post='873099']
Tigers - a correction - they are the DemoCRAT party not democratic. If they were democratic... oh nevermind.
[/quote]

Tigers - sorry - I'll correct myself. You're right - Democratic. Oh well they should not get that name. I'm Audi 5000 - Word

[|Lucid|]

[quote name='hocuspocus' date='25 March 2010 - 05:28 PM' timestamp='1269552487' post='873092']
Wow - you better read all the CBO reports on this... and these are not presumptions they are facts. We still have serious concerns over the cost of the bill AND it is a fact that the exchange IS NOT funded. I'll have to take some time and compile or perhaps just do some searches on your own. Here is a piece with some stats too... I like that you have so much faith in this being the one time the gov't and by the way the most complex and expensive program ever will run exactly as implied. If SMART people think there will be a savings then they are lying or they might have a political reason to deny.... nah!

The Real Cost of Health Care Legislation
BY Fred Barnes
March 23, 2010 3:43 PM

When White House chief of staff Rahm Emanual lobbied Democratic Representative Jason Altmire of Pennsylvania last week to vote for the health care bill, he argued it would cut the deficit. “You ran because you care about the deficit,” he told Altmire, according to the Washington Post. “This is north of $1 trillion in deficit reduction.” Shortly after the bill passed, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi offered the exact number, claiming the bill would save “the taxpayers $1.3 trillion.”

Are these folks disingenuous or just dreaming? It has to be one or the other. Why? Because the evidence of spending projections for health care legislation passes tell a simple and unchanging story. The projections never come close to capturing the magnitude of spending that actually occurs. They prove to be wildly off the mark compared to real-life expenditures.

Take Medicare, enacted in 1965. The initial projection was it would cost $9 billion a year by 1990. The actual figure for 1990 turned out to be $67 billion. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the baseline for Medicare in 2010 is $521.3 billion, which includes $55.3 billion for the prescription drug benefit approved in 2003.

Or take one part of Medicare, the End Stage Renal Disease program (ESRD) that entitles every sufferer, regardless of age, access to dialysis. It was created in 1972 and its spending for 1974 was projected at $100 million. The real cost was $229 million. In 2007, ESRD cost $23.9 billion, nearly 6 percent of Medicare’s overall spending that year.

Or take Medicaid’s program of “disproportionate share hospital” payments. Passed on 1987, it was projected to cost less than $1 billion in 1992. Its actual cost in 1992: $17 billion. The program’s cost would still be ballooning if it hadn’t been brought under control by the Balanced Budget Act of 1997.

These faulty projections are not exceptions to the rule. They are the rule. The projection for the first year (1948) of the National Health Service in Britain was 260 pounds, far below the real cost of 359 pounds. The under-projections have continued to miss the actual demand for health services.

In Massachusetts, the universal coverage plan was predicted to cost $472 million in 2008, but the price tag turned out to be $628 million. Now Governor Deval Patrick wants to cap insurance rate increases to less than 5 percent annually, which would force insurance companies to cut payments to providers or quit the program. In 1994, Tennessee sought to control Medicaid spending with a new program called TennCare. By 2004, costs had more than tripled.

One thread that runs through all these breathtakingly erroneous projections is the lowballing of volume, which is always far greater than expected. This shouldn’t be a surprise. When offered a free good or a good that’s highly subsidized and thus cheaper than its real cost, people act in a fairly rational way. They demand more of the good than they would if they had to pay for it out of pocket. Not only that, there are invariably more people who are demanding more of that good.

The new health care program, assuming it’s implemented in 2014, is not likely to escape this phenomenon. Besides, its cost is under-estimated by the Congressional Budget Office in other ways due to assumptions imposed by the bill’s sponsors, congressional Democrats.

To make matters worse, the cost is also affected by the practice in Congress of minimizing a measure’s spending to enhance its chance of approval.

Adding all this up, the unavoidable conclusion is the newly enacted health care bill – Obamacare -- has approximately zero chance of cutting the deficit. History says it will drive up the deficit, and history doesn’t lie.
[/quote]


I'm sure I could cut and paste as well, some argument by somebody else that would refute everything in that article.. I can't argue it on my own of course, because like you, I actually don't know this stuff enough personally to do that.

We both have to rely on the homework of others. One immediate flaw I can see in his argument is the projected costs of these programs as to their actual cost. I think the main problem that we have with health care in this country is the skyrocketing costs.. The aim of health care reform is to provide marketplace mechanics to reduce that cost. Much of which is due to the fact that we are already treating these uninsured people in emergency rooms.

It's not hard to see how the cost of programs that run inside of this model (medicare medicaid) would see cost explosions running along the lines of the general cost of health care in this country (thus sending them far over budget). I can argue that health care reform can target the very mechanisms which caused those programs to be so massively over budget.

[|Tigers Johnson|]

[quote name='Lucid' date='25 March 2010 - 05:39 PM' timestamp='1269553180' post='873102']
I'm sure I could cut and paste as well, some argument by somebody else that would refute everything in that article.. I can't argue it on my own of course, because like you, I actually don't know this stuff enough personally to do that.

We both have to rely on the homework of others. One immediate flaw I can see in his argument is the projected costs of these programs as to their actual cost. I think the main problem that we have with health care in this country is the skyrocketing costs.. The aim of health care reform is to provide marketplace mechanics to reduce that cost. Much of which is due to the fact that we are already treating these uninsured people in emergency rooms.

It's not hard to see how the cost of programs that run inside of this model (medicare medicaid) would see cost explosions running along the lines of the general cost of health care in this country (thus sending them far over budget). I can argue that health care reform can target the very mechanisms which caused those programs to be so massively over budget.
[/quote]

If all those ARE facts......


Thread shattered.

Only in America can people be convinced that adding social programs can be used as a way to lower national debt...

[|Tigers Johnson|]

[b]Congressional Staffers Complain About Double Standard in Health Care Law[/b]

By Jana Winter

- FOXNews.com

Select congressional leadership staffers -- some of whom wrote the health insurance act -- are not governed by new rules governing millions of Americans and the rest of their colleagues on how they buy insurance -- and the special exemption has the Hill hopping mad.


Come 2014, all 100 U.S. senators, all 435 representatives in the House and every one of their personal aides will have to go to the newly formed state exchanges for health insurance -- just like everyone else in the country who isn't covered by their employer.

But select congressional leadership staffers -- some of whom wrote the health insurance act -- won't. And neither will White House staffers and Cabinet members -- nor the president himself. They will be allowed to keep their current plans, which are offered to all other federal employees.

And now many congressional aides who like their current health insurance policies and will be forced to switch are asking: Why?

They want to know: If an exchange is good enough for them, why isn't it good enough for the people who wrote the plan? Why isn't it good enough for the president and his Cabinet?

Mass e-mails have been circulating among congressional aides on both sides of the aisle as they voice their objections to what they are calling a double standard in the health care law President Obama signed on Tuesday.

[b]"If it's such a good bill, why did the people who wrote the bill exempt themselves from it?" asked a Republican aide who requested anonymity. "With this administration it's always, 'Do as I say, not as I do,' just like paying your taxes!"

"If we're forced on the exchange, then everyone should be," a Democratic staffer said.

"If this health care bill is so great, then why are Obama's staff exempt?" a GOP aide scoffed. "If we have to give up our health care, then so should every federal employee."[/b]

Members of Congress and their staffers currently select their health insurance plan from the pool of health care policy options that are available to all federal employees. But under the new law, unlike other federal employees, they will be required to purchase their insurance from the state-run exchanges when that part of the law goes into effect in 2014.

But the provision appears to exclude leadership and committee staff, giving the appearance that those who wrote the bill wrote themselves out of this requirement.

The White House is also exempt from moving from the current federal employee plan to state-run exchanges, although the White House said Wednesday that Obama will participate in the exchanges if he is still president in 2014.

It remains unclear why the law was written this way. Efforts to understand the reasoning behind the carving out of leadership staff from this part of the new law were unsuccessful. Phone and e-mail requests for comment from the committees involved in the drafting of the Senate bill were either directed elsewhere or not returned.

A Congressional Research Service report stated that the definition of the law as it stands now would likely be interpreted as applying only to congressional members' personal staff, and exempting both leadership and committee staff.

The definition of "congressional staff," according to the CRS report, could be interpreted narrowly to refer only to staff members directly affiliated with a member's individual or personal office. As an example, that would mean that staffers who work with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's constituents out of her California office would be classified as "congressional staffers" and have to switch over to the exchanges -- but the staffers who work in association with her role as speaker of the House would be allowed to keep their current policies.

It is still unclear if congressional offices will get subsidies to pay for their employees or if staffers with income below the pay threshold will get subsidies to buy insurance for themselves. Calls to about a dozen different offices yielded the same response: No one seems to know yet exactly how to interpret the law.

A spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid acknowledged that some committee staffers are exempt, but said leadership staff will have to buy into the exchanges like other Capitol Hill employees.

But Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said he believes the current wording means that committee and leadership staff in Congress, as well as the president, vice president, the Cabinet and White House staff, will continue to access the Federal Employees Health Benefit Program, while all other congressional staffers will have to find their insurance policies on the exchange.

A Democratic aide said he thought it would be difficult enough under the new law to figure out how to navigate his insurance, but he wouldn't mind as much if everyone else had to do the same.
[b]
"It appears that some of my colleagues will not have to make these changes, which is annoying to say the least," he said.

"The president continues to say if you like the health care coverage you have, you can keep it, and it's simply not true," said Michael Steel, spokesman for House Minority Leader John Boehner. "This is just one example of the bad consequences of this law."

"Large parts of this bill were thrown together hastily and behind closed doors, I'm afraid this is not going to be the only surprise going forward," he said.
[/b]
[b][b]Grassley and Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., are heading the charge to introduce legislation that would require all federal employees to have the same health care requirements and options. Both made efforts to close this loophole last year, but the Senate rejected Grassley's amendment in December.[/b]

"If this amendment isn't passed, then President Obama will not live under the Obama health care reforms, and neither will the congressional staff who were most responsible for helping to write the overhaul," Grassley said in a statement to FoxNews.com on Wednesday. "That sends a message to the people at the grassroots that the health reforms are good enough for you, but not for us."[/b]

But a spokesman for Reid said Coburn's objection to the law was disingenuous, charging that Coburn himself had created the "two-tiered" status.

"In his rush to make political statements instead of policy achievements, Senator Coburn clearly wasn't paying attention to what he was doing," Jim Manley said.

"The amendment that created this committee and personal office distinction was authored by Senator Coburn. It's WORD for WORD what Coburn proposed in Committee.

"If he wonders why committee staff aren't in the exchange, perhaps he should ask himself," Manley said. "Senator Coburn's newest complaints on health reform are too little, too late."

But Coburn said Reid's spokesman has it all wrong.

"This special deal for unelected staff underscores everything the public detests about the arrogance of power in Washington," he said. "I tried to fix this inequity along with Senators Grassley, Burr and Vitter, but Majority Leader Reid obstructed our effort."




Why isn't whats good for the gander good for the goose?

[Homer_Rice]

Sometimes Change is No-Change.

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qq8Uc5BFogE[/media]

[|Tigers Johnson|]

[b]AT&T Joins Growing List of Firms That Say Health Care Law Will Cut Into Their Profits[/b]

FOXNews.com

AT&T is the latest and biggest company to announce the costly impact that the health care overhaul will have on its bottom line.


AT&T said Friday that it is preparing for President Obama's health care overhaul to cost the telecommunications giant an additional $1 billion in expenses in the first quarter, possibly forcing the company to cut benefits it offers to current and retired workers.

AT&T is the latest and biggest company to account for the financial impact that the health care overhaul will have on its bottom line. It said the tax ramifications related to the legislation that Obama signed Tuesday will force it to take a non-cash charge -- an expense that does not require cash to be paid out but has to be charged against the company's earnings.

Earlier this week, AK Steel Corp., Caterpillar, Deere and Valero Energy announced similar accounting charges, saying the health care law will raise their expenses. On Friday, 3M said it will also take a charge of $85 million to $90 million.

But AT&T's charge is the largest disclosed so far. The other five's combined charges are less than half of the $1 billion that AT&T is planning. And the $1 billion is a third of AT&T's most recent quarterly profit. In the fourth quarter of 2009, the company earned $3 billion on revenue of $30.9 billion.

The sweeping health care legislation that Obama signed into law Tuesday requires companies of a certain size to provide health care coverage to their workers in an effort to expand insurance to some 32 million Americans.

Taxes on some companies are being raised to help defray the cost of the legislation.

AT&T said Friday that the charge reflects changes to how Medicare subsidies are taxed. Companies say the health care overhaul will require them to start paying taxes next year on a subsidy they receive for retiree drug coverage.

[b]Business organizations, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, have slammed the new law, arguing it will hurt companies by adding new costs and additional tax burdens.

Chamber spokesman Blair Latoff said Friday in an e-mail that altering the tax law "will have a negative impact" on companies' cash flows, particularly in the first year of the law's enactment.[/b]

[b]Latoff added, "the government will quickly find out that by raising the costs for employers to provide retiree drug plans, they are incenting employers to drop these plans and send their employees to the Medicare program; in other words, the government will no longer pay a portion of their costs…it will pay all of their costs."[/b]
[b]
Karl Rove, a senior aide to former President Bush and a Fox News contributor, also predicted that more companies will drop their retiree drug plans and "put the entire cost on the federal taxpayer."

"There's no incentive any longer for them to continue to have a cordial relationship with their retirees by continuing to pay most of the cost of their drugs," he told Fox News.[/b]

An Obama administration official did not respond to a request for comment on AT&T's announcement but the White House in the past has suggested that companies are exaggerating the impact of the loss because they oppose the new law.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Thursday that the tax law closed a loophole.

Under the 2003 Medicare prescription drug program, companies that provide prescription drug benefits for retirees have been able to receive subsidies covering 28 percent of eligible costs. But they could deduct the entire amount they spent on these drug benefits -- including the subsidies -- from their taxable income.

The new law allows companies to only deduct the 72 percent they spent.

The White House and Democratic leaders in Congress argue that under the old law, companies were in effect getting two deductions, not one, because they were able to deduct from the taxes they pay each year the amount of the subsidy the government was giving these companies to help them out.

AT&T also said Friday that it is looking into changing the health care benefits it offers because of the new law. Analysts say retirees could lose the prescription drug coverage provided by their former employers as a result of the overhaul.

Changes to benefits are unlikely to take effect immediately. Rather, the issue would most likely come up as part of contract negotiations between the company and unions representing its employees and retirees. AT&T is the largest private employer of union workers in the U.S.

Candice Johnson, spokeswoman for the Communications Workers of America, which represents more than 160,000 AT&T workers, said these employees have contracts in place until 2012. An agreement covering retirees also runs through 2012.

AT&T rival Verizon Communications Inc. was among 10 companies that sent a letter to congressional leaders in December warning that their costs would increase with the health care changes. Verizon spokesman Peter Thonis said the company had no comment.

Fox Business' Dunstan Prial, Fox News' James Rosen and The Associated Press contributed to this repot.





What is going to stop more companies from leaving the U.S. so they do not have to deal with this?

[sois]

Haha ATT. That's what you get for charging for text messages, which should be free.

PS: Could you find a less slanted report please? Is there even a such thing as bias free reporting these days?

I wish all of these fucking people that can tell the future would've helped me fill out my bracket.