Medicare cuts approved by House may affect access to providers

A plan to slash more than $500 billion from future Medicare spending -- one of the biggest sources of funding for President Obama's proposed overhaul of the nation's health-care system -- would sharply reduce benefits for some senior citizens and could jeopardize access to care for millions of others, according to a government evaluation released Saturday.

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Defeat ObamaCare in detail

By Dick Morris and Eileen McGann

Harry Reid can pass a bill in the Senate that has no public option or an easy opt-out, shallow subsidies for the uninsured, a low total cost, weak penalties for not having insurance, no coverage for abortion and no general tax increase (except for the premium and medical device taxes).

And Nancy Pelosi can pass a bill in the House (on final passage) that has a public option with no opt-out, steep subsidies for the uninsured, harsh penalties if they don’t buy insurance, a higher cost, full abortion coverage and a surcharge income-tax increase.

The question is: Can either one’s bill pass the other’s chamber?

Probably not.

So here’s how all this is likely to unfold:

Pelosi’s bill is dead on arrival in the Senate. Reid is going to have to give up his insistence on the public option and pass a bill in the Senate very much like the Baucus bill that came out of the Senate Finance Committee. After extensive negotiations with his liberal wing on the one side and the moderates in the Senate on the other (led by Joe Lieberman) he will eventually strike a deal. He’ll let the bill pass with no public option or with a generous opt-out provision. Meanwhile, he will placate his liberals by telling them that the final version that the Conference Committee will report back to the Senate will have a robust public option, not to worry. (Just as Pelosi told her liberals that the final bill would not ban payments for abortions, not to worry.)

After weeks of negotiations, the Senate will probably pass its version of the bill as a Christmas present to America.

But … in the course of all these negotiations, Obama and the Democrats are going to look worse and worse, more divided and less focused on the ultimate objective. Public antipathy to the bills will mount and the worst-case scenario of each possible variation in the legislation will spark its own storm of opposition. By the time the Senate acts, the feminists will be angry, the uninsured will be angry, the senior citizens will be angry and the fiscal conservatives will be angry.

Support for the bill will drop week after week during November and December.

By the time Congress reconvenes in January to wrestle with the two competing versions, support for the bill will have dwindled to a perilous point. This reduced level of support will just serve to make senators and congressmen more intransigent in the negotiations. Since the bill will need 60 votes in the Senate after the conference report, Lieberman, Maine’s Snowe and Collins and a handful of other moderates will each have a veto. And, collectively, the liberals in each chamber will have one as well.

Weeks and months of wrangling will ensue. The result could be the defeat of the bill or its amendment in positive ways (for those opposed to it).

Our task is to reduce public support for the bill by publicizing its provisions, notably:

1. The $400 billion cut in Medicare

2. The inevitable scarcity that will result from the addition of 35 million new patients with no new doctors or nurses

3. The fine on the uninsured of 2.5 percent of their income if they don’t buy insurance

4. The high cost of these mandatory insurance policies ($15,000 per family)

5. The low level of subsidy available for the uninsured (only after they pay 8-12 percent of their incomes)

6. The likelihood of a $1,700 increase in the average family’s premiums

7. The possibility of up to five years in prison for failing to buy insurance or pay the fine

8. The taxation of medical devices like pacemakers, wheelchairs, prosthetic limbs, hearing aids, etc.

9. The tax on sick people (increasing the threshold for deducting medical expenses from 7.5 percent to 10 percent of income

10. The additional fiscal burden on the states of the increase in Medicaid eligibility

11. The 40 percent tax on health insurance premiums that will affect households earning more than $75,000 by the fifth year of the plan.

Please circulate this information widely — to friends, relatives, associates, etc. — and go online to dickmorris.com to fund ads we can run in swing states to influence senators.

We can still win this fight!

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/healthcare/67679-defeat-obamacare-in-detail

THE 20 BIG LIES IN THE HEALTHCARE REFORM DEBATE

From www.docs4patientcare.org/

1.You can keep your insurance if you like it.

2.You can keep your doctor if you wish.

3.US healthcare ranks near the bottom of the industrialized world.

4.Major cause of bankruptcies is related to medical expenses.

5.14,000 people per day are dying due to lack of medical insurance.

6.Most doctors support Obamacare as endorsed by organized medicine (AMA).

7.Senior citizens will not lose any Medicare benefits.

8.Insurance premiums will be reduced for most Americans.

9.This plan will only result in tax increases for the super wealthy.

10.Proposed HC bills are budget "neutral" and will not add to the federal deficit.

11.There are only 2 choices: the current system or Obamacare.

12.The Republicans say NO because they lack and alternative plan.

13.The public "strongly" supports Obamacare and public option.

14.There will not be any rationing in healthcare.

15.The government will not interfere between you and your doctor.

16.Most doctors oppose HCR legislation so they can preserve their income.

17.This is a "crisis" situation and needs to be passed into law immediately.

18.A public option will increase competition and not result in a single payer system.

19.Members of Congress will be subject to the same healthcare as the general public.

20.Contents of the bill will be available to read at least 72 hours prior to a vote.

Pelosi bill: Jail for no insurance

By Dick Morris and Eileen McGann

The nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation reported that the House version of the healthcare bill specifies that those who don’t buy health insurance and do not pay the fine of about 2.5 percent of their income for failing to do so can face a penalty of up to five years in prison!

The bill describes the penalties as follows:

• Section 7203 — misdemeanor willful failure to pay is punishable by a fine of up to $25,000 and/or imprisonment of up to one year.

• Section 7201 — felony willful evasion is punishable by a fine of up to $250,000 and/or imprisonment of up to five years.” [page 3]

That anyone should face prison for not buying health insurance is simply incredible.

And how much will the stay-out-of-jail insurance cost?

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Healthcare in America

Here are some excepts from piece on on Canadian Healthcare--a model on which much of the 2000-page bill that, with only 72-hours to read, the US House of Representatives PASSED yesterday! Even those that support Obamacare can't be in favor of giving the House (and the people) only 3 days to evaluate a TRILLION-DOLLAR bill that will have far reaching ramifications!

The piece was written by Dick Morris. Mr. Morris worked for President Bill Clinton during his 1st term and was on the cover of Time Magazine in the mid-90s.

Canadian doctors have left the practice and so many young people have entered other fields that Canada ranks 26th of 28 developed nations in its ratio of physicians to population.

This physician shortage leads to massive and never-ending waiting lists. In 1993, for example, there was an average wait of 9.3 weeks from the time a patient got a referral from a general practitioner to the time he could see a specialist. By 1997, the wait was up to 11.7 weeks. Now it's 17.3 weeks -- over four months just to see a specialist!

Because of these long waits for colonoscopies, there is now a 25 percent higher incidence of colon cancer in Canada than in the United States
Overall, the cancer death rate in Canada runs 16 percent higher than in the United States. Cancer does not wait for waiting lists to clear.

Now the Senate is our last hope to prevent the same fate in America.

Heartsick...for they know not what they do

U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, released the following statement regarding the passage of a 2,000-page health care bill in the House of Representatives:

“This 2,000-page bill goes in exactly the wrong direction: it means higher premiums, higher taxes, Medicare cuts, more debt & huge new health-care costs for state taxpayers. Instead we should start over and go step by step. Specifically, we could start with small business health care plans that would lower premiums, cover up to 1 million new small business employees, and reduce spending on Medicaid.”

God help us.

Dems PASS Nationalized Health Care Bill (Video)

ObamaCare Vs. The Hippocratic Oath

...The Hippocratic Oath written in 400 B.C., changed my life and the lives of the thousands of patients my classmates and I have touched over the past twenty-nine years.

Through my career, I have tried to add to that Oath my obligation “To PREVENT Harm”, through my work in Prevention and at The Institute For Preventative Sports Medicine. I keep this Oath as my foundation as I review the current proposals for Health Care Reform. Take all of the politics out of the latest versions authored by The Obama-Pelosi-Reid Administration, and it comes down to The Oath.

The sad fact is that the Obama-Pelosi-Reid Administration’s 1990 page health care reform bill (HR3962) and supplement(HR3961) violate The Oath by stripping freedom from every person, family and business in Our country . This 19 ½ pound pair of documents, entitled ”Affordable Health Care For Americans Act,” will cost taxpayers over $1.2 Trillion, will institute 13 tax increases totaling $740 Billion, will increase Medicare Premiums to Seniors by $70 Billion, will cost shift $34 Billion to State budgets, and will cut Medicare benefits to Seniors by $426 Billion over ten years.

Read the whole thing

Wall Street Journal on House Health-Care bill (Pelosi-Care)

What the Pelosi Health-Care Bill Really Says: Here are some important passages in the 2,000 page legislation

The Worst Bill Ever - Epic new spending and taxes, pricier insurance, rationed care, dishonest accounting: The Pelosi health bill has it all