To me, that means that if you go uninsured and take those chances, then you’re on charity, and it’s going to be basic – it’s going to get you breathing again, get the bullet out of you, get you stitched up, remove the malignant tumor, whatever. However, forget about cradle-to-grave, premium healthcare. Forget about living in hospitals for days and weeks. Forget about emergency room visits for sniffles and aches. You don’t get that, it’s not a right. To those who question the compassion here, Paul fielded some questions the following day, making the point that while no system can achieve perfection, a free market system is most compassionate system there is. History sustains him.

The status quo, on the other hand, is acting like health care is somewhat of a right and the uninsured get similar coverage and treatment as the insured. You can’t turn anybody away for a sniffle. You can’t send them home without a mountain of paperwork. You have to cover your butt or get sued by somebody that does not even have insurance and ought to be begging instead of demanding.

Now, with these things in mind, consider that we have Obama pushing to limit charitable contributions to non-profit organizations.

Some of these non-profits are feeding or providing health care assistance to those in need. Now, let’s try to make sense of this.

So, on one hand we have these needs in society – the needs of the uninsured, the downtrodden, disaster victims, etc. We also have people willing to volunteer time and effort and willing to donate money to assist those in need. Until now we’ve had a government willing to give a tax break to those willing to donate money. So, those in need are able to get it, while only costing the government the tax on the donations. This is getting help to those in need for a small percentage of the actual cost of delivering the service. Does this not make sense? Does this not encourage us to be compassionate toward our fellow man? Is this not a great way for the government to support delivering essential services to those in need at a minimal cost? Does this not also, effectively, allow the rich to voluntarily tax themselves and redistribute their wealth, so that even liberals should love it?

So, why does Obama want to curtail this? Doing so will certainly reduce funding to charities and reduce their ability to deliver essential services. One logical conclusion is that he does not want non-profits delivering these services. He wants to put them out of business. He wants the government delivering these services, whereby the government can more easily make the rules about how the services are delivered, who  gets the services, whom they hire to deliver them, what wages and benefits they pay, whose palms they grease along the way, etc.

So, put soup kitchens, churches, and other charitable organizations out of business and strengthen the argument that government is needed to supply the services. Can there be any doubt that this is by design?

Results from a report released a month after the health care vote were troubling. The report released by Medicare and Medicaid actuaries showed that medical costs will skyrocket rising $389 billion 10 years. 14 million will lose their employer-based coverage. Millions of Americans will be left without insurance. And, millions more may be dumped into the already overwhelmed Medicaid system. 4 million American families will be hit with tax penalties under this new law.

Of course, these were ALL things that President Obama and Democratic leaders assured us would not happen.

Via Special Report:

Six months after democrats voted to take over the nation’s health care industry and force Americans to purchase their government plan the administration has already missed several deadlines. Here are a few stats on this awful bill:

–4,103 – Pages of regulations issued on the health care law through Sept. 17, 2010
–12 – Number of final regulations not subjected to public scrutiny before taking effect
–5 – Missed implementation deadlines to date.

Rep. Michael Burgess M.D. (R-TX), the ranking member of the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Regulations called for Secretary Sebelius to come before the committee and explain some of her troubling comments and the flawed bill.

Burgess, Barton Call For Secretary Sebelius To Update Committee On Health Care Implementation
Lewisville, TX

“It has now been six months since the passage of the PPACA, and this Committee has yet to hear from Secretary Sebelius on her efforts to administer the law. Secretary Sebelius is the head of the department now responsible for overseeing a dramatic change to one-fifth of the American economy, and Members of Congress should have the opportunity to discuss the PPACA with her,” the lawmakers wrote.

The letter emphasized the committee and subcommittee’s important oversight responsibilities, noting that, “In the months leading up to the passage of the PPACA, the Subcommittee on Health and the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations held a number of hearings in order to build support for the passage of a new health care law. Since its passage, however, these committees have not held one hearing specifically on the PPACA. As the Ranking Members of the Full Committee and the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, we believe this is unacceptable.”

The lawmakers first made the request to Waxman for Secretary Sebelius to testify before the committee in a letter dated July 30, 2010, but have received no response.

“Since we sent that letter, Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said during an interview with ABC News Radio on August 30, 2010, ‘[T]here is still a great deal of confusion about what is in [the health care law] and what isn’t.’ The Secretary concluded that the administration had ‘a lot of reeducation to do.’”

“Inviting Secretary Sebelius to testify before this Committee, so that we may understand her ‘reeducation’ of the American public, would be a good start to a public conversation about the new health care law,” Burgess and Barton continued.

To view the letter, click here.

—Congressman Michael Burgess, R-Texas, ranking member of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, and Congressman Joe Barton, R-Texas, ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, today wrote to Committee Chairman Henry Waxman requesting that the Secretary of Health and Human Services testify before the committee on implementation of the health care law.

Let’s hope we see much more of this when the GOP takes back the House from these radicals in 2011.

More… House Republicans also released their “Top 6 Reasons to Repeal Obamacare” today.

We have learned that universal coverage does not mean universal access to a doctor.  The Massachusetts Medical Society reports that there is a critical shortage of family physicians and severe shortage of internal medicine doctors.  Seven physician specialties are also operating in critical or severe physician labor markets.

A recent study by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation showed that 75% of non-emergency ER visits occurred because a regular physician was not available after hours, and half of these visits occurred because a timely appointment was unavailable.  With more than half of all the doctors trained in Massachusetts leaving the state, citing the practice environment and low salary levels, and one out of every four currently practicing doctors considering a career change, it does not appear that access issues are going to improve soon.

We have also learned that mandating coverage does not decrease costs.  In fact, health insurance premiums have gone up and health care expenditures have not gone down since universal coverage was mandated in Massachusetts.  The cost for Commonwealth Care (the state’s low or no-cost insurance program) is five times its initial budget.  Defensive medicine (medical practice aimed at reducing a physician’s likelihood of being sued),  was not affected by the mandate, and is estimated to cost $1.5 billion annually in Massachusetts – actually, more than enough to pay for Commonwealth Care.  Massachusetts is now looking to cut health care costs, in a collaborative fashion between hospitals, physicians and lawmakers.

Our Massachusetts health care reform is said to be the model for national  reform.  The health care reform bill in Congress calls for an “Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality” which will disseminate research findings to help inform the decisions of patients and providers regarding the clinical effectiveness of different medical treatments.  Yet our experience in Massachusetts does not appear to be “informing” the decisions of those in Congress.  There are laudable and necessary elements to the health care reform proposed, but it is far from a finished product.   Our legislators know politics, but most do not know economics, few have studied medicine, and only your personal physician understands your medical needs.

It is time for the citizens of Massachusetts to inform Washington that they must look at the results – the evidence – of health care reform in the Commonwealth.  We alone have a vote in the health care reform debate.   You can vote for Martha Coakley, who has said she will pass the Senate bill in its current state or you can vote for Scott Brown who has said that he will take the experience of Massachusetts to Washington to help craft a better bill.   Please choose wisely, and vote in the special election today.  The country is watching.

The poll most often cited by conservative talk show hosts is that of CNN/Opinion Research. This is the poll that shows the widest gap between those in favor and those opposed—25 points. Rasmussen reports a milder ratio of 16% between those opposed and those in favor. Gallup shows it a near-tossup: 46% in favor, 48% opposed.

What all these polls fail to show, however, is intensity. Intensity in politics is everything.

Those who know the most, who tell pollsters they are following the debate most closely—especially seniors—tend to be most opposed.

Younger people’s ranks include millions who are uninsured. They will be forced to become insured if these bills pass. And their relatively good health makes them cash cows waiting to be milked by the federal government. They are paying less attention to the debate. That’s because they pay less attention to all political debates. That may end soon.

Senate liberals, like Harry Reid, like to compare this health care debate to those other great debates—like ending slavery in the 1860s, like Civil Rights in the 1960s. There are some problems with those historical analogies, however.

Yes, it is true that if President Lincoln had submitted his Emancipation Proclamation to a popular referendum of the American people when he issued it in 1863, it might well have been rejected. But events on the battlefield, especially the bravery of black troops at Fort Wagner, literally revolutionized the views of Union soldiers and their families back home.

On Civil Rights, Southerners white as well as black, quickly came to view the passage of the 1964 act as “an idea whose time has come.” For the rest of the country, support among the majority was always strong.

What we have here is a major piece of legislation about which the most informed and the most attentive have formed strong, negative impressions. They are the majority and they feel it. They reject these bills and they are frustrated that Congress seems not to care.

Perhaps the worst thing that could happen to the Democratic Majority is for these deeply flawed bills to pass. The only way Capitol Hill managers have been able to achieve anything like deficit neutrality is through the transparent maneuver of taxing now for services four years off. Are they serious?

This is just another version of the slogan of J. Wellington Wimpy, the great pal of Popeye the Sailor Man. Older readers will remember Wimpy saying: “I would surely pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.” Was he Senator J. Wellington Wimpy? I would surely give you health care in `14 for your tax revenues today. Hold the mustard!

The deliberate setup for the White House power grab is built into the each of the health care bills and, if they fail, little-known twin bills called “MedPAC Reform of 2009” are waiting in the wings.  The bills, S.B. 1110 and H.R. 2718, craftily amend the Social Security Act and transfer the Medicare guideline and rule setting processes, from the legislative branch to the executive branch.  These bills offer cover to one another in case one doesn’t pass the House or Senate, respectively.  Remember, Democrats need to gain executive branch authority by amending the Social Security Act over Medicare regulations and physician fee schedules to transform the health care system in a single-payer, socialized system.

More importantly, Medicare’s regulations and physician fee schedules are the keystone to developing payer systems and reimbursement models across the entire health care industry.  And where Medicare goes, insurers follow.

To underscore the far-reaching power, a bulk of the states already reference or utilize the Medicare guidelines and fee schedules in determining policy, coverage, and payment, which impacts certain state-specific plans, including, but not limited to, self-funded plans, automobile insurance payers, and state workers’ compensation funds and plans – affecting even Big Labor.   For the executive branch to have such authority over Medicare regulations with little oversight is alarming.  This raises further issues of the powerful impact these federal mandates could potentially have on the states in stripping them of their own management of their respective insurance industries.

Specifically, the language in the Reid bill intentionally places unlimited power directly in the hands of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, including the ability to designate covered services, or rationing.  The Pelosi bill creates a Health Choices Commission and its “commissioner” is empowered to make the same decisions.  More alarming, both will have to take direction from the White House–and its unconfirmed czars–due to their executive branch affiliation.

In retrospect, Obama’s pick of Sebelius as HHS Secretary is obvious.  Aside from being a governor, Sebelius is the former Kansas insurance commissioner and has the ability to identify the strongest and weakest links–navigating her way quite expeditiously throughout the health care system.  And she’ll never disavow one of her first career choices — executive director and chief lobbyist for the Kansas Trial Lawyers Association.  That explains the blatant omission of tort reform, in addition to the fact that the trial lawyers are the biggest Democrat donors.

Another disturbing Obama appointee is health care czar Nancy Ann DeParle, who remains unconfirmed, and was the administrator of the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA), now known as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.  In short, she “owns” Medicare.  And if you put Sebelius and DeParle together in a room for a few hours, you’ll get a formula for a single-payer government-run health care system – with Obama’s wish list met.

These designed appointees make sense of the intentions at hand to frame a universal or single-payer health care system.  Everything in this administration makes sense when you look at the overall agenda.  Even the branding makes sense.  The urgency, caring for the uninsured, taking advantage of the uninsurable, proclaiming it’s paid for,  packaging it as deficit-neutral, and amplifying that people are ‘dying’ in the streets.

The aforementioned MedPAC Reform of 2009 bills give the executive branch power it so dearly covets to devise the single-payer system.  Currently, MedPAC–the Medicare Payment and Advisory Committee (MedPAC)–is a Clinton-era independent Congressional agency established by the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 that advises the Congress on issues affecting the Medicare program, including payments to private health plans participating in Medicare and providers in Medicare’s traditional fee-for-service program.  MedPAC also analyzes access to, quality of, and cost of health care.

The MedPAC bill designer, progressive Senator John Rockefeller (D-WV), has strategically branded the need for the bill by calling Congress “inefficient” and “inconsistent” –and who wouldn’t agree with that?

Therefore, the MedPAC Reform bill creates a new MedPAC–the Medicare Payment and Access Commission–and gives the Obama White House and its advisors over-reaching control of several factors governing the economy of the health care system.  The new MedPAC, which is exempted from judicial review, would have the authority to rewrite physician fee schedules, redefine medical necessity, evaluate coverage of treatment options, rewrite beneficiary definitions and coverage, and redesign diagnostic definitions and coverage.

The new MedPAC’s mission would also be to inform new research in health services to adequately address deficiencies in the evidence. However, in reality, this would apparently cripple new treatments and technologies by overshadowing progressive research and treatment algorithms by apparently emphasizing the deficiencies, not the benefits, equaling a denial of care and arresting development of burgeoning technologies.

Rockefeller also confirms that the new MedPAC will evaluate and test new and innovative payment models for provider reimbursement.  The MedPAC reform is being packaged under the guise of efficiency; however, by maximizing the volume of care delivered at the lowest possible cost, it appears that the payment and utilization schedule is a mechanism to control the pressure that would build when the health care system is overloaded with millions of new patients.

Finally, Rockefeller highlights another intention of MedPAC, which is to expand the capacity to evaluate basic and health services research for reimbursement.  This is the pinnacle power grab because this gives the new MedPAC and the executive branch the power to ration or deny care and decide what treatment options are available or acceptable as a whole.

Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, commented, “As a congressional support agency, MedPAC’s mission is to advise Congress on Medicare payment issues.  If MedPAC were to become part of the executive branch as contemplated in the Rockefeller bill, then Congress would no longer have this support agency to provide technical support when making policy decisions.”  Senator Grassley also confirmed that he is not willing to abdicate congressional responsibilities for Medicare payment policymaking to a body that does not hold certificates of election.   He is correct that Congress wouldn’t have the support agency’s advice, but misses that it wouldn’t be Congress’s responsibility anymore—the policy decisions would be the responsibility of the new MedPAC—under the direction of the Obama White House.

What’s inherently disturbing is the fact that Rockefeller has been very outspoken in support of the public option and knows that this transfer of power must take place via the Social Security Act—in any form.  He even confirms that health care reform will not be successful, unless all authority is shifted to the executive branch.  He also rightly chooses his words–the “healthcare delivery system,” which is code for the public option.

Additionally, Rockefeller confirms the overall task at hand by stating, “Establishing MedPAC as an independent executive branch agency – which can only change through an act of Congress – is the cornerstone of improving our delivery system reform.  Health care reform will only be successful if we craft transformative changes.”  Transformative, as in a government-run health care system.

If there are any questions if the White House would flex its executive branch authority over an agency, just look the way of the EPA.  Congress stalled on cap and trade and Climategate has proven to be a problem, so the White House and EPA took matters into their own hands to keep moving on the agenda—to intentionally put regulations in place that further strangle American businesses, create unemployment, and further destabilize the economy.

Furthermore, with most of the Obama administration graduates of the Saul Alinsky school of thought, of course the main goal of all legislation and policies would be to support the overall intention of Alinsky, which is for the “have-nots on how to take it away.”

In any of these legislative scenarios–Pelosi, Reid or MedPAC bills–the White House gets the power it seeks–and needs–in order to accomplish the task at hand–a single payer, government-run health system.

These bills must be defeated; the power grab thwarted because after the Social Security Act is amended in any form these bills present and the rule changes take effect, it is not likely for the Act to be reopened and amended again.  The problem is Congress doesn’t even comprehend what’s at stake in either of the health care bills or MedPAC Reform–and you can’t stop something you don’t see.

Let’s take a quick look at numbers behind the Senate health care bill introduced by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Reid claims his bill will cover 94 percent of the population at a cost of $849 billion over 10 years.

The population of the country is roughly 300 million.

At this point you need to understand one thing – there are two vastly different numbers used for the uninsured. The first number consists of all the people uninsured at some point in a given year, whether they are citizens or here illegally. The second number is the chronically uninsured, those who have spent an extended period of time (years) without insurance. The number for the former, the one I like to call the “kitchen sink” number, is one with which you are undoubtedly familiar: 47-49 million. The number for the latter, the chronically uninsured, is one you may not have heard before: 12-15 million.

How these differing numbers come to be is a story for another day, but let’s analyze both of them for the sake of argument.

Accepting Reid’s statements at face value, his plan will cover 94 percent of the 300 million US population, or 282 million Americans.

Currently, using the chronically uninsured number, there are 285-288 million Americans with health insurance. Using Reid’s own estimate, his plan would mean between 3 and 6 million more people with health insurance.

Using the larger kitchen sink number, Reid’s plan would cover roughly 30 million more people than are covered right now. But at what cost?

Insuring 30 million people at a 10 year cost of $849 billion would mean a per person cost of $28,300. Over 10 years that would be $2,830 a year, but this isn’t a 10 year plan. The bill before the Senate doesn’t take effect until 2013, well after the next Presidential election. And while the Congressional Budget Office score covers the years 2010 through 2019, only in the years 2013-2019 is anyone actually insured. So we’re looking at a window of 7 years, which give us an average cost of $4042.85 per person, per year people are actually being insured. The average person could find a cheaper health insurance plan.

However, if we assume all the money numbers are correct and the government is ready to spend $4042 per person, per year to cover just the chronically uninsured, and we multiply that number by the 12-15 million chronically uninsured, this plan would only cost between $339 billion to $424 billion, less than half the price of the Reid bill.

Since we can see there is a huge discrepancy between what they’ve said they want to do (help people get insurance) and what they’ve actually proposed (massively expand government at a great cost to you and all future generations), do you think maybe Reid’s 2074 page health care “reform” bill might be about something more than simply insuring people? Might it be about control?

Just a thought.

*NOTE: Bear in mind that CBO cost estimates on health care have never been correct, 5 years after its inception Medicare ended up costing what CBO said it would cost in 25 years. And these are just basic math calculations that don’t take into account the massive bureaucracy that will eat up a large percentage of these costs while inserting itself in your medical decision. Anyway…

-“Total national health expenditures under this bill would increase by an estimated 2.7 percent in 2019…”

 -“The additional demand for health services could be difficult to meet initially with existing health provider resources and could lead to price increases, cost-shifting, and/or changes in providers’ willingness to treat patients with low-reimbursement health coverage.”

-More than half of the expansion in coverage (18 million out of 34 million) would be from increased Medicaid coverage.

-12 million people would lose employer-sponsored coverage.

-The productivity adjustments to Medicare are “unrealistic” and providers “might end their participation” because the cuts would make serving Medicare beneficiaries unprofitable.

-Medicare Advantage enrollment would decrease by 64 percent (from a projected level of 13.2 million to 4.7 million under the proposal).

As of today, HHS still hadn’t published the analysis on their website, even though it was written by its own staff. We have a feeling it may never find a home there. So, we’ve brought it to you directly. Full financial analysis below.  

CMS OACT – Memo on Financial Impact of H R 3200 09-10-21 –