In the past several weeks the dirty secrets and fiscal malfeasance the socialist ruling class elite’s (that we call our elected officials) used creating this legislation is being exposed to the light of truth. The lie upon lie and the 2700 + pages used to obfuscate the facts of this legislation are being dissected and analyzed at the microscopic level and the analysis is clear. Socialized Medicine! The legislators that created this mess are being exposed more and more for the real hidden agenda behind the public presentation given by this fascist socialist occupying our highest office and his corrupt cronies who wrote this bill.

Here is one of the many arrogant socialist elite’s admitting it: John Conyers D Mi.14th District.

And for the learning impaired also known as the liberal elitist more proof from your savior that it was always meant to be socialized medicine:

The first real effective national union was private employee unions and they were a true necessity when they were first formed back in the early days of this countries industrial revolution to help stop the extreme exploitation of workers in several key sector industries in this country.

The labor history of the United States describes the history of organized labor, as well as the more general history of working people, in the United States. Pressures dictating the nature and power of organized labor have included the evolution and power of the corporation, efforts by employers and private agencies to limit or control unions, and U.S. labor law. As a response, organized unions and labor federations have competed, evolved, merged, and split against a backdrop of changing social philosophies and periodic federal intervention. As commentator E. J. Dionne has noted, the union movement has traditionally espoused a set of values—solidarity being the most important, the sense that each should look out for the interests of all. From this followed commitments to mutual assistance, to a rough-and-ready sense of equality, to a disdain for elitism, and to a belief that democracy and individual rights did not stop at the plant gate or the office reception room. Dionne notes that these values are "increasingly foreign to American culture."  read more »

Well the first phase of Obamacare has left its mark on the American people and the results are horrendous. It has created 20% to 50% rate increases both individual and group health plans and forced business’ to change the types of plan coverage and participation from employees. I have talked to seniors in the Florida state group health plan facing $850.00 per month premiums next year, this is a direct result of Obamacare and not out of the norm. Below is the latest results of rate increases and their effects from the Society of Human Resource Managers a very progressive group!

http://www.shrm.org/hrdisciplines/benefits/Articles/Pages/CostShifting2011.aspx

The real effects are now just being felt and the biggest causal factor is the Minimum Loss Ratio requirement of 80%  for large group and 85% for small group and individual plans. This requirement forces all health insurance companies to spend 80 to 85 cents out of every dollar on the health care of the policy holder or group member and if they do not, they must reimburse these funds back to the consumer.

 So lets extrapolate that concept:

1. You own auto insurance or homeowners insurance and did not get into an accident or have a claim on the policies,  so you should get back 15% to 20% of your premium $$$.                                                                                                                                                                                    2. You own life insurance or disability insurance and did not die or become disabled this year so the insurance company should give you back part of your premiums. ( they do have Return Of Premium policies that are 125% more expensive than their non ROP policies)                                                                                                                                                                          3.  You have a cable or satellite subscription and you only watch broadcast stations so you don’t miss Dancing with the Stars, so the company should give you back your monthly fee because you can get that station with an antenna.
4.   You buy groceries and before you eat them they spoil because you decided to eat out every day this week or you went out of town, so the grocery store should  reimburse you for the spoilage even after an obvious consume by date.  read more »

Ella Ann: My name is Keith C. Westbrook or to you in the start of your life poppa or grandpa. When your mom and dad told us that you were going to be our first grandchild everything in our lives, in my life changed from that moment on. We love your mom and dad, but there is something about knowing that a part of me and your grandmother will live on through you, not just the DNA but the essence of what our lives have been, has changed us forever. You are the embodiment of all our hopes and dreams f0r a brighter future than ours and our chance to live on, past what our mortal existence allows.

But what will that future bring to you and those that will share it with you I cannot foresee, all I can do is tell you that I am fighting today so you can have the tomorrow I would want for myself. To be FREE to experience all that life has to offer, to love with all of your heart and to grow and become the best you, in the greatest most free nation on earth. It is a very tumultuous time in the history of this country, we have for many years let ourselves believe that the things we cherish the most: freedom, honor, family were sacred and could never be taken from us: WE WERE WRONG!

When I was born many years ago in the middle of the last century in 1953 it was a very different time than the one you will experience. We were very naive about many things and happy to be so, there was an innocence and a belief that our great Republic with its foundation in the Constitution was always going to be the shining star of this little blue marble spinning in space. We had problems: I remember things that (if they write history as it really happened) we faced every day that were scary, we sat on the brink of technology that some were willing to use to destroy this planet. ( Mutually Assured Destruction)  read more »

Well its been an interesting month, as I started to write this months blog entry I was recreating the theme every other day. First there was the latest CBO report on the revised numbers that are frightening and as usual here it is from the CBO Directors own words. http://cboblog.cbo.gov/ http://cboblog.cbo.gov/?m=201007 The Outlook for Major Health Care Programs and Social Security Growth in spending on health care programs remains the central fiscal challenge facing the nation. CBO projects that if current laws do not change, federal spending on major mandatory health care programs will grow from roughly 5 percent of GDP today to about 10 percent in 2035 and will continue to increase thereafter. (Mandatory programs are those that do not require annual appropriations; the major mandatory health care programs include Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and the subsidies that will be provided through the insurance exchanges that will be established as a result of the new health care legislation.) That estimate includes all of the effects of the recently enacted health care legislation. Although, CBO expects the legislation to reduce federal budget deficits over the first 10 years and in subsequent decades (through its effects on both revenues and spending), it is expected to increase federal spending in the next 10 years and for most of the following decade; by 2030, however, that legislation will slightly reduce federal spending for health care if all of its provisions are fully implemented, CBO projects. (The estimates for the health care legislation that are used in this report are unchanged from the ones that CBO and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation published in March, when the legislation was being considered.) Under current law, spending on Social Security is also projected to rise over time as a share of GDP, albeit much less dramatically—from 5 percent to 6 percent of GDP.  read more »

 read more »

The lie above was re-iterated by Shifty aka. POTUS in 57 Speeches and more than 150 remarks: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHQ3YWcCxHA&feature=related Here is the lie from Shifty himself from several of those speeches: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXqKp5B0ZLE&feature=related Now unless you are living on another planet or oxygen deprived like the liberal elitists that rammed this legislation down America's collective throats, the bill is going to raise the costs and raise the premiums:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AocglzP9kM The news every day is now showing the backlash from Americans rejecting Liberal Fascism and the Socialist programs they are in love with. Every day more politicians are "retiring" before facing the firing squad of this November's election's! (And in my opinion as well as with many other conservative Americans, they are showing their true cowardice in their inability to face the people they screwed with this bill.) Here are the facts that WILL change Individual and Group plans: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h111-3590 Timeline for Changes: Get a free copy of the timeline here: http://www.insnewsnet.com/HealthCareReform.asp?ccd=647 2010: Under the new law, individuals and employers/employees have the right to keep the coverage they had as of March 23, 2010 and are exempt from many reforms. These individual and group health plans are considered “grandfathered plans.” Collectively bargained plans that were ratified before the date of enactment are grandfathered until the date that the last collective bargaining agreement related to coverage ends. This also applies to changes made by your employer to group coverage. make one change and you lose "grandfather status." The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will establish a process for federal review of fully insured premium rate increases. By July 1, an Internet portal will be created for consumers and small businesses to shop for health Insurance. Starting July 1, 2010, imposes a 10 percent tax on tanning services. $5 billion has been appropriated to create a temporary high-risk insurance pool to help adults with pre-existing conditions get coverage if they have been uninsured for six months. The program will be effective through 2013. A temporary reinsurance program will be established for employers providing coverage to early retirees over age 55 who are not eligible for Medicare. The federal government will provide $5 billion to fund the program. Plans may not impose lifetime limits on the dollar value of essential benefits. Annual limits will be restricted (to be determined by HHS). Restricted annual limits do not apply to grandfathered individual plans. No rescission's are permitted, except in cases of fraud or intentional misrepresentation. Children may stay on their parents’ policies until age 26 if coverage isn’t available through their work, regardless of their marital status. Any employer contribution toward the premium is a tax-deductible business expense for the employer and not taxable income for the member. Plans may no longer impose pre-existing condition exclusions for children under 19(does not apply to grandfathered individual plans). Effective for new plans and plans renewed six months after the law’s enactment date (does not include “grandfathered plans”): New policies must cover the full cost of preventive care as recommended by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, recommended immunizations, preventive care for infants, children and adolescents, and additional preventive care for women. New minimum requirements for internal and external claims appeals processes. Plans that require or provide for a primary care provider (PCP) designation must allow each member to designate any in-network PCP, or pediatrician for children, accepting new patients. Plans may no longer require an authorization or referral to an Ob-Gyn. Prior authorization or increased cost-sharing for emergency services is also prohibited. Nondiscrimination rules that apply to self-funded health plans are expanded to group fully insured health plans. Plans cannot base an employee’s eligibility or continued eligibility on hourly or annual salary. Beginning in 2010, small businesses with fewer than 25 employees and average wages of less than $50,000 get a tax credit for their contributions to buying health insurance for employees. The tax credit starts at up to 35 percent and increases to 50 percent in 2014 when the exchange is operational. A full tax credit may be available to small businesses with fewer than 10 employees and average wages of less than $25,000 2011: Beginning in 2011, employers will be required to disclose the value of health care benefits on an employee’s annual W-2. Employers will be required to notify employees: About the availability of the exchange, for new employees, at the time of hiring; for current employees, by March 1, 2013; They may be eligible for a subsidy under the exchange if the employer’s contribution to the plan is less than 60 percent of total allowed costs of the benefits; If the employee purchases coverage in the exchange, he or she will lose the employer’s coverage contribution. Beginning in 2011, the pharmaceutical industry will pay annual industry fees. The fee will be phased in and will hold steady at $2.8 billion a year after 2019. An insurer must publicly report on its MLR and spend at least 85 percent of large group premiums and 80 percent of individual and small group premiums on medical services, or provide rebate payments to enrollees. Health savings accounts (HSAs) and flexible spending accounts (FSAs) may no longer be used to purchase over-the-counter drugs unless prescribed by a doctor. Increases tax for non qualified HSA withdrawals from 10 percent to 20 percent, and for Archer MSA withdrawals from 15 percent to 20 percent. HHS is required to study the group health plan markets to compare employer characteristics and determine whether the new insurance market reforms are likely to cause adverse selection in the large group market or to encourage small and midsized employers to self-insure. HHS and the Department of Labor must also collect information on self-funded plans. These studies could lead to additional employer reporting requirements. Within 12 months of the law’s enactment, HHS, in consultation with the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, will develop uniform standards and definitions for summaries of benefits and coverage explanations. Within 24 months of enactment, group health plans must provide enrollees and applicants with coverage documents that meet these standards. 2012: A new fee is imposed on individual and group health plans to fund comparative effectiveness research ($1 per participant through 2013; $2 per participant through 2019). The private sector may purchase standardized data extracts of Medicare Parts A, B and D claims data to combine with their own claims data to evaluate provider performance measures on quality, efficiency, and the effectiveness of care. 2013: Beginning in 2013, manufacturers of medical devices will pay a 2.3 percent excise tax on sales of medical devices. Beginning in 2013, the Medicare payroll tax rate will increase by 0.9 percent for individuals who make more than $200,000 and couples that make more than $250,000. A new 3.8 percent tax will be added on income from interest, dividends, annuities, royalties and rents for those at the same income threshold. Contributions to flexible spending accounts are limited to $2,500 a year. 2014: Beginning in 2014, a non-deductible premium tax will be imposed on insurers ($8 billion in 2014, $11.3 billion in 2015 and 2016, $13.9 billion in 2017 and $14.3 billion in 2018. After that, it will increase in an amount proportional to overall premium growth). Everyone must have coverage or pay a penalty, which will be enforced by the Internal Revenue Service. The penalties will be phased in over time: an individual without insurance must pay whichever amount is greater: $95 or 1 percent of income. Employers don’t have to offer their employees health insurance coverage, but most of them with more than 50 employees will pay an assessment if they don’t, or if they offer coverage that isn’t affordable. Full-time and part-time employees are included when determining whether an employer has 50 employees (based on current full-time employee equivalency rules). http://www.dol.gov/dol/topic/workhours/parttimeemployment.htm Employers with 50 or more employees that do not offer “minimum essential coverage” will pay $2,000 for each employee over the first 30 employees if one of their employees gets a tax subsidy to buy insurance under an exchange. Everyone must be in the plan or the employer pays a penalty! Employers with 50 or more employees that do offer minimum essential coverage but have at least one full-time employee receiving subsidized coverage under an exchange, will pay whichever is less: $3,000 for each employee receiving a premium credit, or $2,000 for each full-time employee. Again if 1 person opts out the employer is penalizedfor every employee. Employers must provide “free choice” vouchers to employees with incomes below 400 percent of the federal poverty level if the employee’s contribution to coverage is between 8 percent and 9.8 percent of income and the employee chooses to purchase coverage in the exchange. No penalties will be imposed on employers with respect to employees who receive these vouchers. Employers with more than 200 employees that offer coverage must automatically enroll new full-time employees in coverage. Employees may opt out. Large employers will be subject to expanded 5500 reporting requirements to include information on the health insurance coverage of their employees. Individual and group health plans can no longer impose pre-existing condition exclusions for any person of any age (does not apply to grandfathered individual plans). Annual limits on essential health benefits are prohibited (does not apply to grandfathered individual plans). Health insurers must accept every individual and employer who applies for coverage. Rating restrictions go into effect for new fully insured small group plans. Insurance companies cannot base premiums on health status, claims experience or gender. Premiums can only vary by: – Age (no more than 3:1) – Geography – Family size – Tobacco use (no more than 1.5:1) States are allowed to merge the individual and small group markets. Coverage of routine patient care costs is mandated for participation in approved clinical trials (does not apply to grandfathered plans). State health insurance exchanges are up and running for small businesses and individuals to buy insurance. States can allow large employers to participate beginning in 2017. HHS will establish procedures, which may include rate schedules for broker commissions, for a state to allow brokers to: Enroll individuals in any qualified health plans in the individual or small group market as soon as the plan is offered through an exchange in the state; assist individuals in applying for premium tax credits and cost-sharing assistance for plans sold through an exchange. Essential benefit plan is created, which mandates the level of benefits that must be included in plans offered in the exchange, as well as in the individual and small group markets outside the exchange. Deductibles are limited to $2,000 for individuals and $4,000 for families in the small group market (self-funded plans and grandfathered plans are exempt from this requirement). There will now be a Cafeteria plan system offering 4 plans: Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum with coverage for the co-insurance amount ranging from a 80-20 to 100-0 and limits for Maximum Out Of Pocket or MOOP to individual 0f $5,000 and family $10,000. Currently the fewest amount of health plans I can offer anyone from any of the 8 companies I broker is 12 and the most 1100. If you currently have a plan you like through your employer and you leave, your coverage ends and you are now subject to the new rules. If you own your own coverage it must conform to the new plan guidelines or it WILL BE CHANGED as mandated by the bill. HSA's & FSA's contribution's are to be frozen and they are now examining and redefining what a "qualified expense" will be. Current contribution limits for HSA's are individual $3,000 & family $6150 and FSA is $2500 per person. Waiting periods cannot exceed 90 days. Expands health plan wellness incentives up to 30 percent of total coverage costs(up to 50 percent with HHS approval). A temporary reinsurance program will be established for the individual market and funded by individual and group health plan assessments ($25 billion in 2014-2016). (If you are not in the insurance or financial industry, a re-insurer is a company or entity that insures a primary insurance companies exposure to loss by owning the rights to that portfolio should it financially default). This is where the Single Payer System becomes FACT! Nowhere in the bill have they idetified that this will be a privatized program, it will be the Government! ANOTHER LIE: I will not raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 per year! Every tax on any product or service is passed on to the consumer, economics 101! In Summary: If you have individual coverage in force before the bill was signed and you NEVER make any changes to that coverage then you may be allowed to maintain that policy if the review boards and your insurance company DEEM it credible (and you can afford the premium hikes coming). The insurance reviews that will be permanently created to "study" insurance plans effectiveness have the authority to force a carrier to adapt plan coverage to meet its guidelines. This means that existing policies now such as High Deductible Health Plans for catastrophic coverage or Limited Benefit Plans, must be changed to meet new requirements of the bill! If you have group health coverage in place before the bill was signed and the plan administrators or your employer NEVER makes any coverage changes to the plan, then it too may stay in force. But those plans are also subject to the same governement oversight as individual plans and both will be combined into the "exchanges" when they are approved and this will force many group plans to go into them to find cost effective coverage. This was the case in Massachusetts when they enacted this legislation in 2006 and within 1 year only 4 insurance companies were still writing policies in that state. Lets look at Massachusetts for a snapshot of how this legislation is working there: Mark S. Gaunya, president of the Massachusetts Association of Health Underwriters, explains how Massachusetts’s system is in danger of collapsing because it did little to control costs. “Initially, MassCare was expected to cost $88 million a year — but today the Massachusetts health care budget exceeds $4 billion, and our fiscal budget for 2011 is underfunded by $294 million because of this law,” Gaunya says. “Simply put, Massachusetts can’t afford it.” The system’s weak individual mandate is also forcing insurance companies to take the sickest and most expensive residents while healthy people go without insurance until they absolutely need it, driving up costs for all the other residents who buy health insurance. To see why Massachusetts’s system is self-destructing and what lessons we should all be learning, click here:http://www.masstaxpayers.org/files/Health%20care-NT.pdfOr click here for Mass. HC timeline:http://www.masstaxpayers.org/files/Health%20law%20costs%20aren.pdf The same legislative loopholes exist in this bill with one indisputable result: higher premiums for those people who need coverage and can afford the skyrocketing premiums or Medicaid style health care for those who cannot. This plan even received a negative rating from Medicare's Chief Actuary Richard S. Foster on 04/22/2010, he stated that premiums could see annual rate increases of 12-17% or higher due to the bill. Also in their assessment they acknowledged that the resulting compensation cuts in Medicare and Medicaid would result in a 15% drop in providers and hospitals and that number was conservative. Also what most people are not privy to is that most insurance companies use the Medicare Fee For Service Schedule as the base line for negotiating reimbursement rates with doctors and hospitals. With the drastic cuts necessary, the health care system will become two tiered, those that can afford private care and the other 90% of us using public care. Yes that is what this bill creates a public care system or one step closer to their real goal: Socialized Medicine! So will you be allowed to keep your doctor or plan if you want to, that depends on if your doctor is willing or able to accept a 30% cut in pay and if your plan meets federal guidelines for coverage, you NEVER change it, you can afford to pay 100% more for it in 4 years or your employer is willing to provide health insurance instead of saving the money and just paying the penalties which would save them 150%! Sure Why Not? In Freedom to all Americans, Dr. Keith C. Westbrook Phd.

I am not going to try and list all of the lies and misinformation that Shifty & Gang have been espousing to the populace through their propaganda machine aka. the "main stream media".
As always the facts speak much louder than the regurgitated rhetoric of the mindless minions that they represent.

The first lie we will bust is the most important of them all!

1. The Changes to Medicare this bill creates and their timeline: http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/113xx/doc11379/Manager
This is directly from HR#3590

Calendar 2010 changes:
Medicare cuts to inpatient psych hospitals. (7/1/10)

Calendar 2011 changes:
Medicare Advantage cuts begin.
Medicare cuts to home health begin.
Wealthier seniors ($85k/$170k) begin paying higher part D premiums.
Medicare reimbursement cuts when seniors use diagnostic imaging like MRIs, CT scans etc.
Medicare cuts to ambulance services, ASCs, diagnostic labs, and durable medical equipment.
Health plans required to spend a minimum of 80% of premiums on medical claims. (Eventually driving them out of business)
Prohibition on Medicare payments to new physician-owned hospitals.
Seniors prohibited from purchasing power wheelchairs unless they rent for 13 months.
New Medicare cuts to long-term care hospitals begin. (7/1/11)
New tax on all private health insurance policies to pay for government subsidized option and to research its competitive effectiveness.(plans become effective in 2012) The 3.8% Medicare surtax would hit average, middle-class investors who happen to sell real estate for a significant gain in any particular year. Also being taxed are IRA’s, Annuities, and pension plans.

Calendar 2012 changes:
Medicare cuts to dialysis treatment begins.
Medicare to reduce spending by using an HMO -like coordinated care model.
New Medicare cuts to inpatient psych hospitals. (7/1/12)
Medicare cuts to hospitals with high readmission rates begins.
Additional Medicare cuts to hospitals and cuts to nursing homes and inpatient rehab facilities begin.
Medicare cuts to hospice begins

Calendar 2013 changes:
Eliminate deduction for part D retiree drug subsidy employers receive.
Medicare cuts to hospitals who treat low-income seniors begins.

Calendar 2014 changes:
More Medicare cuts to home health begin.
Medicare payment cuts for hospital-acquired infections begins.

Calendar 2015 changes:
More Medicare cuts to home health begin.

One other note, with the loss of Medicare Advantage where will the early enrollees into Medicare ie: the disabled get affordable coverage? While only 27% of seniors use Medicare Advantage plans the utilization rate with early enrollees is 97%!

What all this means is that if you are a senior and will be forced to purchase another supplemental health insurance plan in lieu of Medicare Advantage you will not only have to pay a higher premium on the policy but in addition will be taxed on that plan. The limits being placed on reimbursement for seniors using advanced diagnostic methods will result in higher out of pocket costs or being denied the service.

Regardless of what Obama says you will be limited in your choice of physicians and hospitals as a result of prohibitions contained in the bill. Should you be fortunate enough to be considered a “Wealthy Senior” you will be penalized for your Medicare Part D coverage. Just another attempt by the socialists to redistribute what little wealth our seniors have accumulated through hard work all their lives.

Reading between the lines the message is loud and clear; “seniors no longer contribute, so their value to society should be proportionate to the health care they receive under Medicare”. This Law creates for seniors equals higher costs, limited access to services and ultimately rationed care.

As a health insurance agency owner that has helped hundreds of people through the decision making process of what Medicare coverage and plan fits best I have tried to provide planning and guidance. The federal government will provide neither!

Now what are the real costs for the above changes to Medicare well here is the Director of the CBO in his own words!
http://cboblog.cbo.gov/

I began by reviewing the budget estimates done by CBO and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT):
In combination, the initial legislation and the subsequent reconciliation act that modified it will generate changes in direct spending and revenue that will reduce federal deficits by $143 billion during the 2010-2019 period.

The legislation will increase the size of the federal budget by increasing outlays by $411 billion and revenues by $525 billion over the next 10 years (excluding the provisions of the reconciliation act related to education, which will reduce spending by about $19 billion over that period).

The legislation will increase the federal budgetary commitment to health care (the sum of net federal outlays for health programs and tax preferences for health care) by $390 billion over the next 10 years.
The legislation will reduce federal deficits during the decade beyond the 10-year budget window relative to those projected under current law—with a total effect in a broad range around one-half percent of GDP.

Then I discussed a number of challenges to those estimates:

Some observers have asserted that CBO and JCT have mis-estimated the effects of the changes in law. Concerns have been expressed in different directions—for example, some believe that subsidies will be more expensive than we project, while others maintain that Medicare reforms will save more money than we project.

o Our estimates reflect the middle of the distribution of possible outcomes based on our careful analysis and professional judgment, drawing upon relevant research by other experts. Nevertheless, estimates of the effects of comprehensive reforms are clearly very uncertain, and the actual outcomes will surely differ from our estimates in one direction or another.
Some observers have asserted that budget conventions hide or misrepresent certain effects of the law, such as its impact on future discretionary spending, its effect on the government’s ability to pay Medicare benefits, and its effects on the economy.

o The estimates I discussed above focus on direct spending and revenues because those are the figures that are relevant for the pay-as-you-go rules and those effects will occur without any additional legislative action. As CBO’s estimate noted, the legislation will lead to some increases in discretionary spending (that is, spending subject to future appropriation action) that are not included in the deficit figures cited above.

o The legislation will improve the cash flow in the Hospital Insurance trust fund (that is, Part A of Medicare) by more than $400 billion over 10 years. Higher balances in the fund will give the government legal authority to pay Medicare benefits longer, but most of the money will pay for new programs rather than reduce future budget deficits and therefore will not enhance the government’s economic ability to pay Medicare benefits.

o Following standard procedures for the Congressional budget process, the estimates do not include any effects of the legislation on overall economic output, although CBO wrote last summer about possible effects of health reform proposals on output.
Some observers have asserted that the law will be changed in the future in ways that will make deficits worse.

o CBO estimates the effects of proposals as written and does not forecast future policy changes. As is the case for many pieces of legislation, the budgetary impact of the health reform legislation could indeed be quite different if key provisions are ultimately changed.

o In fact, CBO’s cost estimate noted that the legislation maintains and puts into effect a number of policies that might be difficult to sustain over a long period of time. For example, the legislation reduces the growth rate of Medicare spending (per beneficiary, adjusting for overall inflation) from about 4 percent per year for the past two decades to about 2 percent per year for the next two decades.

It is unclear whether such a reduction can be achieved, and, if so, whether it would be through greater efficiencies in the delivery of health care or through reductions in access to care or the quality of care. The legislation also indexes exchange subsidies at a lower rate after 2018, and it establishes a tax on insurance plans with relatively high premiums in 2018 and (beginning in 2020) indexes the tax thresholds to general inflation.

In addition, some observers believe that, whether CBO and JCT’s estimates of the effects of the health reform legislation are accurate or not, the law misses critical opportunities to reduce future deficits. For example, some say that the legislation will hamper future deficit reduction by using spending cuts and extra revenues to pay for a new entitlement rather than existing entitlements, or that the legislation should have reformed health care delivery more significantly.

Of course, CBO does not make policy judgments or recommendations. However, we have frequently noted the long-run unsustainability of the nation’s current budgetary policies and indicated that using savings in existing programs to finance new programs would necessitate even stronger policy actions in other areas.

In December 2008, CBO released a report that included a wide range of options for changes in health policy, and in 2009, we published a volume presenting a variety of options for policy changes in other areas.
Posted in Budget Projections, Health Comments Off


Now here are facts about how they are going to pay for this atrocity or " How no one who earns under 200K will be taxed" is a LIE!

This is directly copied from the Joint Committee on Taxations evaluation of the bill's effect on all taxpayers: http://www.jct.gov/publications.html?func=startdown&id=3672

With the enactment of an enhanced federal role in medical care comes the need for revenue enhancement. The age of the Obama tax hikes has officially begun. The big news for high-income folks is a new 3.8% "Medicare" tax on investment income and an additional 0.9% Medicare tax on wages, both of which are to take effect in 2013.
But workers at all income levels could be squeezed by new limits on medical flexible spending accounts and medical deductions.

The 3.8% investment tax, combined with the expected (and Obama- favored) Jan. 1, 2011 expiration of the Bush tax cuts for high-income taxpayers, would produce a 2013 top federal income tax rate of 23.8% on long-term capital gains from the sale of securities, up from 15% now. The top rate on interest, rents, royalties and certain "passive income" would rise to 43.4% from 35%. (Neither 2013 rate includes the return next year of the phaseout of itemized deductions for the better off, which can add one percentage point to both rates.)

Even more significantly, beginning in 2013, the amount you can shelter pretax in an FSA will be restricted to $2,500 a year, an amount that will then be indexed for inflation. (Currently there's no legal limit, and 78% of large employers set it at $5,000 or higher, according to Hewitt Associates ( HEW - news - people ).) That means you should plan to put aside pretax money in 2011 or 2012 for such big-ticket items as orthodontia and Lasik surgery. You must have the procedure done that same year, since any pretax money not used each year is forfeited.

Note that it will also become more difficult as of 2013 to write off out-of-pocket medical costs on your 1040--taxpayers under 65 will be able to deduct such costs only to the extent they exceed 10% of adjusted gross income, up from 7.5% now. (Older taxpayers can still use the 7.5% threshold through 2016.)


But the above taxes alone will not achieve the needed funds to pay the real costs for the additional 157 new bureaucratic office and oversight committees created in this bill and we will address that in a later posting:

On numerous occasions I've pointed out how President Shifty's pledge not to raise taxes on person's earning under $250,000 was, to use a subtle and technical term, a total, absolute, and utter, lie.
Saturday Obama said that he kept his promise not to tax families making less than $250,000 per year. So it was nice to see the Joint Committee on Taxation say yesterday that this was... how do I put it... a lie.
As The Hill reports:
Taxpayers earning less than $200,000 a year will pay roughly $3.9 billion more in taxes — in 2019 alone — due to health care reform, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, Congress's official scorekeeper...Once the law is fully implemented in 2019, the JCT estimates the deduction limitation will affect 14.8 million taxpayers — 14.7 million of them will earn less than $200,000 a year. These taxpayers are single and joint filers, as well as heads of households.
Working families will suffer, the economy will continue to stagnate, and this President will continue to say the exact opposite of what he is doing.
I have stated this over and over and will continue until everyone gets it. They have stolen all of your tax monies paid into SSI and Medicare for social programs and it is now broke! They will continue to destroy the free market in order to capture any and all revenue they can to recreate these funds!

In the fight for Constitutional Rights,

Dr. Keith C. Westbrook PhD.