Thread: Do you support Obama Care ?

The Obama/Ryan Medicare Cuts Debacle Explained
Bert Atkinson Jr. August 15, 2012 11:50 am

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=l4gPvToKTWU



Okay, so maybe you have heard Republicans say that ObamaCare makes $716 billion in cuts to Medicare, and that Democrats flatly deny that. Maybe you have also heard that Ryan’s budget proposal makes the same cuts to Medicare. Here is the real deal…

According to a letter to Speaker Boehner from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office report from July 24, 2012, enacting H.R. 6079, or repealing ObamaCare, would absolutely affect the amount of funding the Medicare program would receive.

Many of the other provisions that would be repealed by enacting H.R. 6079 affect spending for Medicare, Medicaid, and other federal programs. The ACA made numerous changes to payment rates and payment rules in those programs, established a voluntary federal program for long-term care insurance through the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) provisions, and made certain other changes to federal health programs. In total, CBO estimates that repealing those provisions would increase net federal spending by $711 billion over the 2013–2022 period. (Those budgetary effects are summarized in Table 1.)

Spending for Medicare would increase by an estimated $716 billion over that 2013–2022 period.”

You can call it cuts, you can call it reductions, you can call it reductions in expenditure growth, but at the end of the day, if ObamaCare is not repealed, Medicare will have ended up with $716 billion less from 2013-2022 than it would have if ObamaCare never existed.

As Forbes’s Avik Roy points out, ObamaCare “expands health coverage at a ten-year cost of $1.9 trillion, which it funds by raising taxes by $1.2 trillion and cutting Medicare by $0.7 trillion,” and he is citing the latest estimates from the CBO in this explanation.

http://youtu.be/t5Ha7RNpn24

What many conservatives are glossing over is that the Ryan budget includes the same cuts to the Medicare program. As Washington Post’s Ezra Klein points out:

Here’s what everyone agrees on: Ryan and Obama include the same cuts to the Medicare program itself. So if you’re an insurance company participating in the Medicare Advantage program, you’re getting the same cut no matter who wins the election. So the answer to [How much money are you cutting from Medicare?] is, “the same amount as the Obama administration.”

Again, Klein continues:

What Romney/Ryan are saying is that they then take the money saved from their cuts to Medicare and put it toward deficit reduction while Obama takes that money and spends it on health care for poor people. The argument here is that by using the money to cut the deficit, Romney/Ryan make future cuts to Medicare less likely.”

So, for all the loudmouth debates you may have seen on a variety of questionable news channels, the real gist of the matter comes down to your political beliefs.

Team Obama is arguing that they want to cut defense spending and raise taxes to put that new revenue towards deficit reduction, which will in turn help to make future cuts to Medicare less likely.

Romney and Ryan want to make cuts to spending, and they plan on raising revenues to reduce the deficit by lowering taxes, but closing tax loopholes.

My personal opinion:

The Romney/Ryan budget will be more successful IF they can detail a plan in which the closing of many loopholes, which is long overdue, can prove to produce higher tax revenues to complement their reductions in spending. This would, in theory, avoid a tax hike on the middle class.

As of right now, the middle class can’t take advantage of the loopholes, and raising taxes on the rich, as Obama wants to do, will not have as much of an effect as he imagines because the loopholes will still remain to be taken advantage of. Therefore, the tax-revenue-producing burden would have to shift to those that don’t use the loopholes and shelters if the President wishes to produce as much tax-revenue as he desires.

A substantial amount of ‘what-if’s’ remain in both of these scenarios, but I still maintain the belief that less spending towards bloated and inefficient governmental programs will only help to drive down future health care prices produced through free market competition.

And who wants taxes raised anyway?

Anyways…the point of this article was to point out that, yes – Medicare will be cut, slashed, reduced, have its growth slowed, or whatever you want to call it by $716 billion if the Affordable Care Act stands. The ridiculous debating between liberals and conservatives alike has become a childlike spinning of vocabulary terms as far as this author is concerned.

Both ObamaCare and Ryan’s budget proposal cut Medicare. Period.

Here is Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s take on Ryan’s budget…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_f20...layer_embedded

http://www.ijreview.com/2012/08/1305...cle-explained/

I don't understand why ANYONE would believe ANYTHING from this administration : "no taxes on people below a certain income" "it's a mandate, not a tax" "it's a fee, not a tax", "No... it's a tax" "it's not really a tax... but the IRS is going to enforce it" --> and that is just on ONE subject.

The Death Panels begin in another form…. BRILLIANT! Chairman Seborrhea on the move! http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012...-readmissions/

More than 2,200 hospitals face penalties under ObamaCare rules
By Jonathan Serrie

A provision of ObamaCare is set to punish roughly two-thirds of U.S. hospitals evaluated by Medicare starting this fall over high readmission rates, according to an analysis by Kaiser Health News.

Starting in October, Medicare will reduce reimbursements to hospitals with high 30-day readmission rates — which refers to patients who return within a month — by as much as 1 percent. The maximum penalty increases to 2 percent the following year and 3 percent in 2014.

Doctors are concerned the penalty is unfair, since sometimes they have to accept patients more than once in a brief period of time but could be penalized for doing so — even for accepting seniors who are sick.

“Among patients with heart failure, hospitals that have higher readmission rates actually have lower mortality rates,” said Sunil Kripalani, MD, a professor with Vanderbilt University Medical Center who studies hospital readmissions. “So, which would we rather have — a hospital readmission or a death?”

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Vigilate vestri tergum

Credo quia absurdum est

The expanding catalogue of Obamacare fables
by Michelle Malkin September 4, 2012

Is there a health insurance horror story disseminated by the White House and its allies that ever turned out to be true? Obamacare advocates have exercised more artistic license than a convention of Photoshoppers. Now, a prominent sob story shilled by President Obama himself about his own mother is in doubt. It’s high past time to call their bluffs.

The tall-tale-teller-in-chief cited mom Stanley Ann Dunham’s deathbed fight with her insurer several times over the years to support his successful push to ban pre-existing condition exclusions by insurers. In a typical recounting, Obama shared his personalized trauma during a 2008 debate: “For my mother to die of cancer at the age of 53 and have to spend the last months of her life in the hospital room arguing with insurance companies because they’re saying that this may be a pre-existing condition and they don’t have to pay her treatment, there’s something fundamentally wrong about that.”

But there was something fundamentally wrong with Obama’s story. In a recently published biography of Obama’s mother, author and New York Times reporter Janny Scott discovered that Dunham’s health insurer had in fact reimbursed her medical expenses with nary an objection. The actual coverage dispute centered on a separate disability insurance policy.

Channeling document forger Dan Rather’s “fake, but accurate” defense, a White House spokesman insisted to the Times that the anecdote somehow still “speaks powerfully to the impact of pre-existing condition limits on insurance protection from health care costs” — even though Dunham’s primary health insurer did everything it was supposed to do and met all its contractual obligations.

No matter. Expanding government control over health care means never having to say you’re sorry for impugning private insurers. Democrats have dragged every available human shield into the contentious debate over Obama’s federal takeover of health care. Personal anecdotes of dying family members battling evil insurance execs deflect attention from the cost, constitutionality and liberty-curtailing consequences of the law. The president’s Dunham sham-ecdote is just the latest entry in an ever-expanding catalogue of Obamacare fables:

– Otto Raddatz. In 2009, Obama publicized the plight of this Illinois cancer patient, who supposedly died after he was dropped from his Fortis/Assurant Health insurance plan when his insurer discovered an unreported gallstone the patient hadn’t known about. The truth? He got the treatment he needed in 2005 and lived for nearly four more years.

– Robin Beaton. Also in 2009, Obama claimed Beaton — a breast cancer patient — lost her insurance after “she forgot to declare a case of acne.” In fact, she failed to disclose a previous heart condition and did not list her weight accurately, but had her insurance restored anyway after intense public lobbying.

– John Brodniak. A 23-year-old unemployed Oregon sawmill worker, Brodniak’s health woes were spotlighted by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof as a textbook argument for Obamacare. Brodniak was reportedly diagnosed with cavernous hemangioma, a neurological condition, and was allegedly turned away by emergency room doctors. Kristof called the case “monstrous” and decried opponents of Democrats’ health care proposals as heartless murderers. The truth? Brodniak not only had coverage through Oregon’s Medicaid program, but was also a neurology patient at the prestigious Oregon Health and Science University in Portland (a safety-net institution that accepts all Medicaid patients). Kristof never retracted the legend.

– Marcelas Owens. An 11-year-old boy from Seattle, Owens took a coveted spot next to the president in March 2010 when Obamacare was signed into law. Owens’ 27-year-old mother, Tiffany, died of pulmonary hypertension. The family said the single mother of three lost her job as a fast-food manager and lost her insurance. She died in 2007 after receiving emergency care and treatment throughout her illness. Progressive groups (for whom Marcelas’ relatives worked) dubbed Marcelas an “insurance abuse survivor.” But there wasn’t a shred of evidence that any insurer had “abused” the boy or his mom. Further, Washington State already offered a plethora of existing government assistance programs to laid-off and unemployed workers like Marcelas’ mom. The family and its p.r. agents never explained why she didn’t enroll.

– Natoma Canfield. The White House made the Ohio cancer patient a poster child for Obamacare in 2010 after she wrote a letter complaining about skyrocketing premiums and the prospect of losing her home. After Obama gave Canfield a shout-out at a health care rally in Strongsville, Ohio, and promised to control costs, officials at the renowned Cleveland Clinic, which is treating her, made clear that they would “not put a lien on her home” and that she was eligible for a wide variety of state aid and private charity care.

Since Obamacare passed, the amount workers pay in health care premiums has soared an average of nearly 14 percent; thousands of businesses have sought waivers in search of relief from the law’s onerous mandates; medical device makers have slashed jobs and research; and the private individual health insurance market is in critical condition.

Post-Obamacare truth is bloodier than pro-Obamacare fiction.

http://michellemalkin.com/2011/07/15...macare-fables/

Feds need 18 pages to define 'full-time' for Obamacare
September 10, 2012 | 5:28 pm

One of the most-anticipated new federal regulations governing which companies will be required to provide health insurance under Obamacare has finally landed--with a thud.

In the latest indication of how complicated putting the Affordable Care Act into action will be, the Department of Health and Human Services and Internal Revenue Service issued 18-pages of regulations just to describe what a "full-time employee" is. Of note, to the Feds a full-time employee works an average of just 30 hours a week, not the normally accepted 40 hours.

The IRS rule is key because companies with more than 50 full-time employees must provide health insurance under Obamacare, or be fined. Business groups have been warning that small companies might try to replace full-time workers with part-time help to avoid being forced to offer health insurance in 2014, but the 30-hour full-time definition is likely to undermine those plans.

The lengthy 18-page definition caught some in the business world by surprise. "It's scary," said Randy Johnson, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce senior vice president for labor, immigration, and employee benefits. "It's just a small example of two words under our healthcare law of 2,700-pages," he said, adding: "It says to me things are awfully complicated."

Johnson noted the new Obamacare ruling to demonstrate how oppressive federal regulations have become on American business. At a press conference to discuss the costs of regulations and state of the economy, Johnson said that Obama has added 11,327 new pages of federal rules and regulations.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/feds-n...8#.UE8YII1lSVE

comments

30 hours is now full time eh? I can just imagine how this affects union contracts.. I so cannot wait to vote this idiot out in November.

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Ahhh the unintended consequences of messing with business.

but the 30-hour full-time definition is likely to undermine those plans

No it won't. Businesses will only give 20-29 hours to people so now they'll have even less money to pay taxes, bills and to advance.

Thanks folks we appreciate the efforts to protect us BUT STOP HELPING ALREADY!

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First they do not need to include themselves because they exempted themselves from this fantastic bill. Next, business will get two 20 hour employees to do one 40 hour job so they do not have to qualify. Wonderful I see the federal government has our backs again. Great job!

Then Obama an his ilk will crow about how they "created" "new jobs"
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I saw a Reuters report yesterday declaring this Congress as the "most unpopular and most unproductive."

I don't really care about unpopular - that's the pols' problem - but, I DO care about the "unproductive" part.

An unproductive Congress is a Congress that isn't passing laws. Could someone point out the downside of that?

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What do we need Congress for when we have an executive branch that makes up the law as they go.... and passes them by "Executive Order"

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Have a 25 hour work week and no more than 50 of employee's, otherwise the cost of insurance will make the company close down and then we will have 25% unemployment. I cant wait to see what this does. Meaning when business's are closing and people are having to get more money from the government who will pay for it all.... NO ONE!

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This should be a bigger story. The gov't has re-written the rule that a 30 hour employee is now full time. This will negatively effect a lot of small business and may not be legal since it is retroactive.