For Those Still Counting...

The number of ObamaCare waivers has reached 1,471, about a third of which are unions.

"The Obama administration granted 39 waivers from part of the President’s health care law last month, bringing the total to 1,471, an announcement which is prompting one Republican Senator to introduce legislation that would allow all Americans to apply for a waiver.

Wyoming Republican John Barrasso said today that he plans to introduce a bill next week that “will deliver choice to Americans who want to get the care they need, from the doctor they want, at a price they can afford” by allowing all Americans to apply for a waiver from the president’s health care law.

“If the law worked well, companies and unions would not demand a way out of its expensive mandates. Each waiver demonstrates that the President’s health care law is a complete failure. The law continues to crush jobs, increase premiums and encourage government controlled health care,” Barrasso said in a written statement. “It’s not fair that a particular group of Americans, including union employees, don’t have to abide by the law. Millions of other Americans across the country deserve the same freedom,” he said."

ObamaCare Will Cost US 800,000 Jobs Says CBO

Testifying today before the House Budget Committee, Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Director Doug Elmendorf confirmed that Obamacare is expected to reduce the number of jobs in the labor market by an estimated 800,000. Here are excerpts from the exchange:

Chairman [Paul] Ryan: “[I]t’s been argued...that the new health care law will create jobs and increase labor force participation. But if I recall from your analysis, it was quite the opposite. Is that not the case?”

Director [Douglas] Elmendorf : “Yes.”...

[…]

Rep. [John] Campbell: "Thank you, Mr. Chairman, we'll -- and Dr. Elmendorf -- and we'll continue this conversation right now. First on health care, before I get to -- before I get to broader issues, you just mentioned that you believe -- or that in your estimate, that the health care law would reduce the labor used in the economy by about 1/2 of 1 percent, given that, I believe you say, there's 160 million full-time people working in '20-'21. That means that, in your estimation, the health care law would reduce employment by 800,000 in '20-'21. Is that correct? "

Director Elmendorf: "Yes. The way I would put it is that we do estimate, as you said, that...employment will be about 160 million by the end of the decade. Half a percent of that is 800,000."

Thanks to Pelosi ramming the bill through, now we get to learn what's in it.

Calling Captain Obvious...

"Republican congressman leading the investigation into the Obama administration’s decision to grant more than 700 waivers to the new health care law is questioning whether the law could be effective if so many waivers are needed.

Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) also noted the high percentage of Obama-supporting labor unions that received waivers -- which exempt them from a provision in the new health care law that bans annual limits on what insurance plans will pay for medical coverage."

ObamaCare is Great for ALMOST everyone

The number of ObamaCare wavers has jumped sharply from 222 to 733.



Just saying...

The Great American Health Care Waver Scam

Republican Senator Pat Roberts comments from the floor last week:

"…I have been shocked by the number of Obamacare waivers that have been coming out of the Department of Health and Human Services. According to the New York Times, one hundred and eleven waivers have been granted to employers to allow them to avoid the new health insurance mandates.

The only thing more shocking than the number of waivers is who is getting them. Would you believe that they are some of the most ardent supporters of health care reform?

Unions like the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the United Federation of Teachers, and the Transport Workers Union have all applied for and been granted waivers from the rules.

The fact is, Obamacare is bad for business, bad for workers, bad for seniors, and bad for taxpayers."

Rush Limbaugh hits on some of the low water marks coming from the Obama Administration regarding it's health care 'reform':

And here is Michelle Malkin discussing the topic:

I'd be interested to learn of the total number of waver requests, how many are unions compared to the percentage the unions made up of those approved.

Unintended Consiquenses of ObamaCare

Reimbursement to doctors and hospitals are cut 26%, placing additional burden on country owned local hospitals across the country.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Faced with mounting debt and looming costs from the new federal health-care law, many local governments are leaving the hospital business, shedding public facilities that can be the caregiver of last resort.

...

The county has raised property taxes in recent years to bolster the hospital, which spends more than $1 million just to pay emergency-room physicians

...

In the first half of 2010, there were 25 deals involving 53 hospitals that were bought or merged, for a total of $3.1 billion, according to Levin Associates.

Lower reimbursements lead to fewer public owned hospitals, a reduction in health care access in many rural communities. and fewer places that will accept government health insurance.

Maybe now that Democrats have passed their bill 'so the public can find out what's in it', polls show a continued slide in support for Obama/Pelosi health care "reform".

A new poll shows that public support for health care reform dropped sharply in August — a dagger in Democrats’ hopes that their landmark legislation will help them in November’s midterm.

The Kaiser Health Tracking Poll has support for the bill dropping 7 percentage points in August — down to 43 percent — while opposition rose 10 points to 45 percent. That’s the weakest showing since May — and a far cry from the bump proponents had hoped to see as some of the law’s more consumer-friendly provisions kick in.

ABC News: Reid Buys Obamacare Vote for $100 million

How desperate are the Democrats to secure the necessary votes for their massive Government Health Insurance plan?

This desperate

Pelosi Health Care Increases Deficit $89 Billion - CBO

From the Congressional Budget Office:

The Budgetary Impact of Enacting Both H.R. 3961 and H.R. 3962

Under current law, including the new rule, Medicare’s payment rates for physicians’ services will be reduced by about 21 percent in January 2010, and CBO estimates those payment rates will be reduced by about 2 percent annually for several subsequent years. H.R. 3961 would increase those payment rates by 1.2 percent in 2010 and restructure the SGR beginning in 2011. Those changes would result in significantly higher payment rates for physicians than those that would result under current law. CBO estimates that enacting H.R. 3961, by itself, would cost $210 billion over the 2010–2019 period.

H.R. 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act, would establish a mandate for most legal residents of the United States to obtain health insurance, set up insurance “exchanges” through which certain individuals could receive federal subsidies toward the purchase of such insurance, and make numerous other changes in the health insurance system, in federal health care programs, and in the federal tax code. CBO and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation estimate that enacting H.R. 3962, by itself, would reduce federal budget deficits by $109 billion over the 2010–2019 period through its effects on direct spending and revenues.

CBO estimates that enacting both H.R. 3961 and H.R. 3962 would add $89 billion to budget deficits over the 2010–2019 period. That amount is about $12 billion less than the sum of the effects of enacting the bills separately. The $12 billion difference results from two types of interactions. The higher payment rates for physicians’ services under H.R. 3961 would increase the net cost of provisions in H.R. 3962 by about $3 billion. However, that difference would be more than offset by the effect of a change under H.R. 3962 in how payment rates for Medicare Advantage plans are set. That change would reduce the effect of the changes made by H.R. 3961 to Medicare’s payments for physicians’ services in the fee-for-service sector on payment rates for Medicare Advantage plans. As a result, the estimated increase in payments to Medicare Advantage plans would be $15 billion smaller if both bills were enacted than under H.R. 3961 alone.

The agency estimates that the two bills together would cost about $32 billion more in 2019 than H.R. 3962 alone and that the combination of the two bills would increase the budget deficit in 2019 by $23 billion relative to current law.Those increments would grow during the following decade. As stated in its October 29, 2009, letter to Congressman Charles B. Rangel, “CBO expects that [H.R. 3962] would slightly reduce federal budget deficits in that decade relative to those projected under current law—with a total effect during that decade that is in a broad range between zero and one-quarter percent of GDP [gross domestic product].” If both H.R. 3961 and H.R. 3962 were enacted, CBO expects that federal budget deficits during the decade following the 10-year budget window would increase relative to those projected under current law— with a total effect during that decade that is in a broad range between zero and one-quarter percent of GDP.

Is it possible that Reid and and Pelosi "mis-stated" the facts in order to get health care approved?

The Truth War

I received an e-mail in favor of the Democrat's health care bill. In it, the sender stated that medical bills directly contributed to 70% of bankruptcy filings. This claim was too good not to check out.

In 2005 Harvard University published a consumer finance study of bankruptcies filed in 2001. It found illness and medical bills caused about 50% of personal bankruptcies. The best part is that 75% of those people had health insurance at the start of their illness. Read the entire study HERE.

38% lost their insurance during the illness. Because COBRA insurance is available for 18 months in the event they lost their job due to the illness (by the current federal law), either their insurance was canceled, hit their lifetime cap, or they had to make the hard choice of food Vs insurance premium. I didn't go to Harvard and there is no way to confirm, but my best guess is that lack of income because of the illness created an inability to work. Lack of income was a far greater cause leading to bankruptcy rather then just a lack of health insurance. However it is safe to assume that loss of insurance during the illness due to inability to pay the premium is an contributing issue. Which brings us to the health care plan. Even with the public option of government supported insurance, I don't believe any government program will move fast enough in moving someone from the public option to a Medicare type plan to have any real chance of avoiding bankruptcy. There is no reason to believe that the addition of a government supported Universal Health Insurance option, or any of the other proposed changes in the health care system will have any real financial impact of a catastrophic illness to the point of keeping a consumer out of bankruptcy.

EXIT QUESTION: Which issue is a greater threat to our economy and in greater need of reform: our health care system, or our financial system?

Et tu, Brute?

Even members of the left are beginning to question the methods of the Obama administration. What is NOT mentioned in this clip from the left leaning Air America, is the part of the deal where pharma agrees to spend $150 million in marketing support of the Obama health care plan.




Bob Herbert of The New York Times asks:

"The president has not made it clear to the general public why health care reform is his top domestic priority when the biggest issue on the minds of most Americans is the economy. Men and women who once felt themselves to be securely rooted in the middle or upper middle classes are now struggling with pay cuts, job losses and home foreclosures — and they don’t feel, despite the rhetoric about the recession winding down, that their prospects are good." Entire article HERE

Even the Orange County Register is beginning to doubt whether the President's wardrobe has any actually cloth:

"...the president retains his formidable political skills, artfully distracting attention from his stimulus debacle with his health care debacle. But there are diminishing returns to his serial thousand-page, trillion-dollar boondoggles. They may be too long for your representatives to bother reading before passing into law, but, whatever the intricacies of Section 417(a) xii on page 938, people are beginning to spot what all this stuff has in common: He's spending your future. And by "future" I don't mean 2070, 2060, 2040, but the day after tomorrow." Article HERE

In the words of the late, great Hunter S. Thompson, "How long, o Lord, how long?"

Does Your Opinion Count?

Best quote heard from a recent town hall meeting:  If it takes 6 months for Obama to pick out a new dog for his kids, why the hurry to ram Universal Health Insurance through in 3 weeks?

Obama Healthcare: Is There a Long Term Agenda?

There has been much speculation that liberals have a long term agenda regarding moving our healthcare insurance reimbursement system to a "single payor" system, of course with that single payor being the US government.  To use another term: Socialized Healthcare.   

The hard social economic reality is that people without health insurance are in the minority.  Depending on whose study you which to believe, in 2007 18% of our population under the age of 65 were without health insurance.  Of course that doesn't mean they were without health care.  We have all seen the media stories about the number of people who use the community hospital emergency room for treatment of non-emergency healthcare.  Of course the public pays the bill for this through increased costs (hospitals much charge more for profitable health care cases to offset the financial losses in the ER), and increased taxes in their community to support the hospital.  This is the current status quo.  What has been stated by the Congressional Budget Office is that nothing being considered in the proposed health care "reform" will actually reduce the cost of any specific medical procedure.   So the trillion dollars the Democrats are proposing to spend over the next 10 years is to provide some type of medical insurance to that 18% minority.   The media has been very willing to point out that taking a sick baby to the ER is not an ideal use of resources, but I have seen very little mention of what the effect of adding 46 million people to our system of family practice doctors.   Many doctors limit the amount of Medicare/Medicaid patients in their practice, or simply refuse to accept those patients.  This is because the negative financial impact those patients have on their practice.   Any new plan would require doctors to accept the government's new Universal Health Insurance, requiring them to adjust the ratio of support staff to patient.   This would clearly lower the service levels a doctor could provide.   Lower reimbursement levels would also affect staffing levels at hospitals, and my force to provide the lowest cost options when it comes to medication and medical device options.   So rather then receiving the best antibiotic, instruments, heart monitor, implant, and surgical instruments for your knee replacement, yours will now be from the lowest bidder.   And there will be few people in the room during surgery, and in the recovery room to monitor your progress.   The trickle down effect of all this could be taken down to how much R&D will drug and implant companies be able/willing to fund once they are forced into competing purely on price rather then the doctors choosing what works best in their practice/patients.  

On yesterday's talking head programs, the Obama messengers were not willing to rule out tax hikes on the middle class in order to pay for his single payor (with the government being that single payor) plan.   So far, no one appears able to disclose final details on whether this new Universal Health Insurance will fund voluntary abortions (a hot topic), or what coverage and benefit (if any) will be provided to those individuals who are not US citizens.   The bottom line is that our taxes will need to increase in order to pay for all this "change".   Another broken promise by another politician.   So 82% of the US population will pay more and receive less in order to provide a better system for the 18%.    

It seems the folks who appeared in Austin Texas for Representative Lloyd Doggett's town hall meeting were from that 82% group. 

The US health care system is massive and complex.  And it is far from perfect.  But now that Obama is in office the Democrats have all the answers and are (again) in a hurry to push this through.  Why?   I would challenge that our tax system is more in need of reform then our health care system.   I don't see anyone rushing to reform that, not that Universal Health Insurance is real reform of  system.  It just expands the government control of that system.  And Universal Health Insurance will force insurance companies out of the health market.  No for-profit insurance company can compete with Uncle Sam.   How many jobs will that cost?   Of course we can just shift those jobs into the giant government bureaucracy we create.   We already know that once we go down the path of creating bureaucracy there is no going back. 

This video is a bit shaky, but you get the impression there are some in the crowd who object to his comment "...this must be done very fast".   

And with the government running your health care insurance, what could go wrong?

Again I ask "why".   What is our risk we do not do this RIGHT NOW?  Some accuse President Obama of having some sort of long term 'socialist agenda'.   Personally, I prefer to believe he's just mis-guided.  Over time the things that sounded good as a community organizer don't actually make much sense when all the facts, effects, and projections of a capitalistic, free market economy are considered by the President of the United States.    Of course the proof is in the fruit provided by the tree, and I am reserving my right to change my opinion based upon the actions of the next few months.   

An Opportunity, or a right to entitlement?

Personally, I find Bill O'Reily to be a pompous blowhard most of the time.   But here, he says this about as well as anyone.