http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3KDmEvNmJ0

AMERICAN THINKER

September 21, 2009

Rick Moran
President Obama appeared on television yesterday 5 times and it is interesting that very little, if any news, came out of any of them.

The guy is worse than a broken record. At least there, we can take the needle off the disc and make it stop. We are not so lucky with Obama. There’s nothing we can do but turn off the TV when he repeats the same things over and over again about health care reform the same things he has been saying for months. Every speech, every townhall, every interview he makes the same points, tells the same lies, and repeating the same mischaracterizations of what he is trying to do.

George Stephanopoulos bored in on one lie the president has been spreading; that people who don’t have mandated health insurance will be taxed. This exchange as reported by Carol Lee of Politico is indicative:

Obama spent much of his ABC interview denying that his health care plan breaks his campaign promise not to raise taxes on the middle class. He insisted that requiring everyone to have health insurance, or face a fine of up to $3,800 per family, is “absolutely not a tax increase.” Host George Stephanopoulos pressed Obama so much on the issue that, after Obama accused him of making things up, Stephanopoulos read the definition of “tax” from Merriam-Webster’s dictionary. “George, the fact that you looked up [in] Merriam’s dictionary the definition of ‘tax increase’ indicates to me that you’re stretching a little bit right now,” Obama replied.

We on the right are quite familiar with this tactic from the left; their bold as brass ability to simply change the definition of terms when they are losing an argument. Of course the “fine” is a tax – as are “fees,” and other ways that the Democrats are seeking to raise revenue. The liberals believe that simply because they call a tax something else, it is not a tax. Who they think they are trying to fool is a mystery – unless, it is perhaps themselves.

A Wall Street Journal editorial sums up this dishonesty:

If you can follow this reasoning, then you probably also think that a new entitlement is the best way to reduce entitlement spending. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the Senate’s individual mandate will result in new revenues of some $20 billion over 10 years because some people will choose to opt out of ObamaCare-or because they can’t afford to buy in, given that other taxes and regulation will make health care more expensive. If that $20 billion doesn’t count as tax revenue, then what is it?And for that matter, what doesn’t count as a nontax under Mr. Obama’s definition? All taxes can be justified in the name of providing some type of service, however wasteful. Mr. Obama complains that “My critics say everything is a tax increase,” as if that is his political problem. His real problem is that the individual mandate really is a tax, but the President doesn’t want voters to think of it that way, because taxes are unpopular.

Ordinary Americans are not fooled by this shell game with terms. They know a tax when they see one and Obama can gloss over the truth all he wants and it still won’t change the fact that his plan will raise taxes on the Middle Class for no other reason than they wish to opt out of his big government takeover of health insurance.

August 17, 2009

By Jack Kelly,

On March 23, 1943, an overconfident Afrika Korps ran into a well prepared ambush at El Guettar, Tunisia.  The lead German tanks were slowed by a minefield, then devastated by pre-registered artillery and anti-tank gun fire.

“Rommel, you magnificent bastard, I read your book!” gloated George C. Scott, playing Gen. George S. Patton, in the 1970 movie “Patton.”

And indeed, the real Gen. Patton had read the Afrika Korps commander’s 1937 book “Infanterie greift an” (“Infantry Attacks” – Patton could read German) and thus had a good idea of the tactics Gen. Erwin Rommel would employ.

The Obama administration has a playbook, too.  It’s “Rules for Radicals,” written in 1971 by Chicago Marxist Saul Alinsky, the godfather of community organizing.

Mr. Obama’s aides have faithfully followed those rules, in particular his rule number 13 under tactics:  “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it.  Don’t try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies.  Identify a responsible individual.  Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame.”

The main job of the community organizer, Mr. Alinsky said, is to bait an opponent into reacting.

“The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength,” Mr. Alinsky wrote.

Following Mr. Alinsky’s tactics has worked well for Mr. Obama.  But unfortunately for him, Sarah Palin — arguably the principal target of rule number 13 — has read the book, too.

Journalists who wrote off Ms. Palin as politically irrelevant after she resigned as Alaska‘s governor last month spent much of this past weekend discussing how she has shifted debate on President Obama’s health care reform plan.

“We are back to is she crazy or is she crazy like a fox,” said the Washington Post’s Anne Kornblutt in a panel discussion on ABC’s “This Week” program Sunday (8/16).  “We all wrote her off a month ago.  We said she would have no platform if she were not governor of Alaska.”

During the presidential election last year, journalists marveled at how the Obama campaign was running rings around the McCain campaign in the utilization of new communications technologies.

But, noted Stephanie Condon of CBS on Friday (8/14), it is Sarah Palin’s shrewd use of the new technologies that have shifted the health care debate.

All it took for Sarah to shift the focus was to post this paragraph on her Facebook page:

“The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,’ whether they are worthy of health care.”

Ms. Palin could count on an hysterical overreaction from Democrats and journalists to give her remark widespread publicity.  And so it came to pass. Even President Obama felt compelled to respond.

To describe the “end of life counseling” provisions in the health care bill as creating a “death panel” is an egregious overstatement, they said.

“Death panel” is a phrase which sticks in people’s minds, like Ronald Reagan’s description of the Soviet Union as an “evil empire,” a phrase which, noted Andrew McCarthy of National Review Online, also drove Democrats and journalists to hissy fits.

“‘Death panels’ caught on with the public just like ‘evil empire’ did because, for all their ‘heat rather than light’ tut-tutting, critics could never quite discredit it,” Mr. McCarthy said.

“Needless to say, the (end of life counseling) proposals themselves had been couched in ‘feelgood’ language, with public relations campaigns at the ready in case someone like Palin called a spade a spade,” wrote Canadian columnist David Warren.  “She did so in full knowledge of how that publicity machine would respond.”

“When I first saw that (death panel) phrase, I burst out laughing,” wrote Camille Paglia, an Obama supporter.  “It seemed so over the top. But on reflection, I realized Palin’s shrewdly timed metaphor spoke directly to the electorate’s unease with the prospect of shadowing, unelected government figures controlling our lives.”

The Senate Finance Committee has dropped the provision for end of life counseling from its version of the health care bill, because, according to one member, “it could be misinterpreted or implemented incorrectly.”

“That’s a very nice way of saying Sarah Palin had a point,” Mr. Warren said. Sarah Palin is playing her opponents with Saul Alinsky’s fiddle – and defeating them like Patton did Rommel.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

July 24, 2009

By Rory Cooper

Meet Gunner Hawkins. Gunner loves Disney cartoons. He loves to be read to, so long as there are pictures. Gunner loves his rock ‘n’ roll bunny. He has a Facebook page. And 6-month-old Gunner is loved very much by two caring parents, Kristan and Jonathan. In March of 2009, Gunner was diagnosed with the deadly genetic disease, cystic fibrosis (CF), just two months after being born.
Gunner’s story is not unique. 1 in 4,000 American children are born with cystic fibrosis. What makes Gunner unique is that his parents have been able to articulate in a very special way why President Obama’s health care plan would hurt baby Gunner. Their website, HealthCareforGunner.com, lays out in a way only a mother could how President Obama’s health care plan would limit Gunner’s access to cystic fibrosis specialists, drugs and much needed tests.
Kristan Hawkins says: “Jonathan, Gunner’s father, and I created this website because we want people to understand what we are talking about when we talk about health care reform. We hear politicians and policy makers reference rationing care but there is never a face to rationing. Gunner can be that face. We want people to know.”
And what is it they should they know? Currently, the Hawkins family is covered by insurance Jonathan receives from his job working as a public school teacher in West Virginia. When Gunner was diagnosed, they were first directed towards a specialty center over three hours from their house. When they asked their provider if they could instead bring Gunner to the Children’s National CF Center in Washington, DC since it was 90 minutes closer and had better data scores, the provider agreed, and covered under “in-network” costs.
If Gunner needs a specialist, he sees one. If he needs a test, he gets it. If he coughs, wheezes, or seems to be taking a turn, a 24-hour hotline to a specialist is available. They can quickly determine and act if he needs additional breathing treatments or blood tests.
Gunner has also visited the University of Minnesota CF Center for consultations which requires some additional “out-of-network” costs. A cost Kristan is willing to pay for Gunner to be seen by the best specialists in the country. Gunnar’s medical costs are only going to grow, and the Hawkins are already saving for that future.
As Kristan says: “While the financial costs of taking care of a CF child are high and dealing with the complexities and bureaucracy of the insurance industry is time consuming, it is worth it. We happily pay these costs to keep Gunner healthy, and we know that there are existing programs out there, public and private, that will help us when costs increase.”
The President often talks about the dire letters he receives, highlighting the crisis and the need to act quickly. Like on Wednesday, when during his new conference Obama said: “I’m rushed because I get letters every day from families that are being clobbered by health care costs. And they ask me, ‘Can you help?’ So I’ve got a middle-aged couple that will write me and they say, ‘Our daughter just found out she’s got leukemia and, if I don’t do something soon, we just either are going to go bankrupt or we’re not going to be able to provide our daughter with the care that she needs.’ And in a country like ours, that’s not right. So that’s part of my rush.”
So obviously, Gunner must be the subject of one of these letters asking Obama to pass his health reform, right? Not so fast. The President is either failing to mention, or completely ignoring the pleas of people like Kristan Hawkins who are begging the President to stop trying to build a health care system that will hurt children like Gunner.
According to Kristan, if President Obama were to get his way on health reform, Gunner’s quality of health care would be severely diminished. His easy access to CF specialists and doctors would be limited due to funding issues and long wait lines. His treatments, which expand the life of cystic fibrosis patients, would be delayed. His access to life-saving drugs would be limited and the government would control what he gets and when. In fact, a government-appointed committee would make decisions that affect Gunner’s life, based primarily on financial incentive.
In Britain, Canada, and Ireland, where similar systems to the President’s desired outcome exist, the quality of care for a child like Gunner is wholly inadequate and life expectancy is as much as ten years shorter. Specialist centers are underfunded, patients have a hard time getting drugs, and there is ample evidence of treatments being denied because of cost. In fact, there aren’t even enough trained specialist doctors and nurses available, even if the government would fully fund a CF center.
Gunner’s situation is not unique. Yes, there are families who have a more difficult time getting the proper care for the ones they love. Yes, there are uninsured Americans who don’t even have the limited luxuries the Hawkins family can afford. Yes, reform is needed. But to pass a bill that transforms the greatest health care system in the world into a mediocre level playing field is not the right track, for Gunner or for anyone. The President surely gets letters from families needing help. But he also gets letters from people begging him not to interrupt their care. A cautious, bipartisan approach to reform that takes all sides of this issue into account is clearly the approach necessary.
Mr. President, meet Gunner Hawkins. Gunner wants to grow old in a country that cares about the full value of his life, and not the bottom line. Gunner deserves this opportunity, and Gunner deserves to have a voice, even if for now it is simply heard through his rock ‘n’ roll bunny.

The New York Post

By BETSY MCCAUGHEY

July 24, 2009

The health bills coming out of Congress would put the decisions about your care in the hands of presidential appointees. They’d decide what plans cover, how much leeway your doctor will have and what seniors get under Medicare.

Yet at least two of President Obama’s top health advisers should never be trusted with that power.

Start with Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. He has already been appointed to two key positions: health-policy adviser at the Office of Management and Budget and a member of Federal Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research.

Emanuel bluntly admits that the cuts will not be pain-free. “Vague promises of savings from cutting waste, enhancing prevention and wellness, installing electronic medical records and improving quality are merely ‘lipstick’ cost control, more for show and public relations than for true change,” he wrote last year (Health Affairs Feb. 27, 2008).

Savings, he writes, will require changing how doctors think about their patients: Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath too seriously, “as an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of the cost or effects on others” (Journal of the American Medical Association, June 18, 2008).

Yes, that’s what patients want their doctors to do. But Emanuel wants doctors to look beyond the needs of their patients and consider social justice, such as whether the money could be better spent on somebody else.

Many doctors are horrified by this notion; they’ll tell you that a doctor’s job is to achieve social justice one patient at a time.

Emanuel, however, believes that “communitarianism” should guide decisions on who gets care. He says medical care should be reserved for the non-disabled, not given to those “who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens . . . An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia” (Hastings Center Report, Nov.-Dec. ’96).

Translation: Don’t give much care to a grandmother with Parkinson’s or a child with cerebral palsy.

He explicitly defends discrimination against older patients: “Unlike allocation by sex or race, allocation by age is not invidious discrimination; every person lives through different life stages rather than being a single age. Even if 25-year-olds receive priority over 65-year-olds, everyone who is 65 years now was previously 25 years” (Lancet, Jan. 31).
The bills being rushed through Congress will be paid for largely by a $500 billion-plus cut in Medicare over 10 years. Knowing how unpopular the cuts will be, the president’s budget director, Peter Orszag, urged Congress this week to delegate its own authority over Medicare to a new, presidentially-appointed bureaucracy that wouldn’t be accountable to the public.

Since Medicare was founded in 1965, seniors’ lives have been transformed by new medical treatments such as angioplasty, bypass surgery and hip and knee replacements. These innovations allow the elderly to lead active lives. But Emanuel criticizes Americans for being too “enamored with technology” and is determined to reduce access to it.

Dr. David Blumenthal, another key Obama adviser, agrees. He recommends slowing medical innovation to control health spending.

Blumenthal has long advocated government health-spending controls, though he concedes they’re “associated with longer waits” and “reduced availability of new and expensive treatments and devices” (New England Journal of Medicine, March 8, 2001). But he calls it “debatable” whether the timely care Americans get is worth the cost. (Ask a cancer patient, and you’ll get a different answer. Delay lowers your chances of survival.)

Obama appointed Blumenthal as national coordinator of health-information technology, a job that involves making sure doctors obey electronically deivered guidelines about what care the government deems appropriate and cost effective.

In the April 9 New England Journal of Medicine, Blumenthal predicted that many doctors would resist “embedded clinical decision support” — a euphemism for computers telling doctors what to do.

Americans need to know what the president’s health advisers have in mind for them. Emanuel sees even basic amenities as luxuries and says Americans expect too much: “Hospital rooms in the United States offer more privacy . . . physicians’ offices are typically more conveniently located and have parking nearby and more attractive waiting rooms” (JAMA, June 18, 2008).

No one has leveled with the public about these dangerous views. Nor have most people heard about the arm-twisting, Chicago-style tactics being used to force support. In a Nov. 16, 2008, Health Care Watch column, Emanuel explained how business should be done: “Every favor to a constituency should be linked to support for the health-care reform agenda. If the automakers want a bailout, then they and their suppliers have to agree to support and lobby for the administration’s health-reform effort.”

Do we want a “reform” that empowers people like this to decide for us?

Betsy McCaughey is founder of the Committee to Reduce Infec tion Deaths and a former New York lieutenant governor.

Monti Says: Remember my prediction about this issue in Monti’s Corner

FOXNews.com

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Senate and House lawmakers are putting the brakes on the health care reform bill.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for the first time Thursday said that the full Senate will not vote on the legislation until after the August recess. He told reporters it’s more important to get it right than to ram through an incomplete bill.

The decision means Congress will not meet President Obama’s ambitious deadline for legislation — the president wanted both chambers to pass out a bill by the August recess.

It’s unclear whether the House will be able to move legislation to the floor by the break, but delays continue.

The only House committee left to vote on the package was again expected to postpone a key session Thursday.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee had indefinitely postponed its markup of the health care bill Tuesday as fiscally conservative Democrats known as Blue Dogs raised concerns about cost and other issues. But while the chairman, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said he wanted to reconvene Thursday afternoon, a senior House source told FOX News that’s not going to happen.

At the same time, the chief Democratic vote-counter in the House said that lawmakers in his chamber should cancel or delay their August recess if there’s no deal on health care reform by that time.

“It is much better to cancel or postpone our August break and get this done. That’s the way I feel,” House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., said Thursday. “I think it will affect our standing with the American people if we don’t do this.”

While House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said this week he doesn’t think it’s necessary to work into the recess, Clyburn suggested time is of the essence.

“If everyone goes home, those regional disparities are not going to get worked out. They’re going to get worked out here in a conference room in this building,” he said.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi did not say whether the House should stay late, but said lawmakers are having a “strong conversation” about the schedule.

“I don’t even know if we would have to stay any longer (than) our regularly scheduled departure,” she said.

After saying there’s “no question” the bill has enough votes to pass on the House floor, she stood by the remark Thursday and said she’s “more confident than ever.” But at the same time, she suggested the bill was not quite ready for prime-time.

“We will take the bill to the floor when it is ready, and when it is ready we will have the votes to pass it,” she said.

Clyburn said he hasn’t started “counting noses” on the House floor, but that he has a “sense” of where the vote would go. He did not elaborate.

Meanwhile, the Blue Dogs are starting to draw the ire of their more liberal colleagues.

House Democrats on Thursday fired back at their claims that the bill on the table is too costly.

“We must reject these spurious claims that this is something the country cannot afford,” said Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus. “We are committed to seeing health care reform pass this month and signed by the president this year.”

Rep. Danny Davis, D-Ill., said the so-called “public option,” a government-run alternative to private insurance, is critical and must not be “eroded or negotiated away.”

FOX News’ Chad Pergram contributed to this report.

Assault on Seniors

OPINION
JULY 23, 2009, 12:09 A.M. ET

By Betsy McCaughey

Since Medicare was established in 1965, access to care has enabled older Americans to avoid becoming disabled and languishing in nursing homes. But legislation now being rushed through Congress—H.R. 3200 and the Senate Health Committee Bill—will reduce access to care, pressure the elderly to end their lives prematurely, and doom baby boomers to painful later years.

The Congressional majority wants to pay for its $1 trillion to $1.6 trillion health bills with new taxes and a $500 billion cut to Medicare. This cut will come just as baby boomers turn 65 and increase Medicare enrollment by 30%. Less money and more patients will necessitate rationing. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that only 1% of Medicare cuts will come from eliminating fraud, waste and abuse.

The assault against seniors began with the stimulus package in February. Slipped into the bill was substantial funding for comparative effectiveness research, which is generally code for limiting care based on the patient’s age. Economists are familiar with the formula, where the cost of a treatment is divided by the number of years (called QALYs, or quality-adjusted life years) that the patient is likely to benefit. In Britain, the formula leads to denying treatments for older patients who have fewer years to benefit from care than younger patients.

When comparative effectiveness research appeared in the stimulus bill, Rep. Charles Boustany Jr., (R., La.) a heart surgeon, warned that it would lead to “denying seniors and the disabled lifesaving care.” He and Sen. Jon Kyl (R., Ariz.) proposed amendments to no avail that would have barred the federal government from using the research to eliminate treatments for the elderly or deny care based on age.

In a letter this week to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, White House budget chief Peter Orszag urged Congress to delegate its authority over Medicare to a newly created body within the executive branch. This measure is designed to circumvent the democratic process and avoid accountability to the public for cuts in benefits.

Driving these cuts is the misconception that preventative care can eliminate sickness. As President Obama said in a speech to the American Medical Association: “We have to avoid illness and disease in the first place.” That would make sense if most diseases were preventable. But the two most prevalent diseases of aging—cancer and heart disease—are largely caused by genetics and their occurrence increases with age. Your risk of being diagnosed with cancer doubles from age 50 to 60, according to the National Cancer Institute.

The House bill shifts resources from specialty medicine to primary care based on the misconception that Americans overuse specialist care and drive up costs in the process (pp. 660-686). In fact, heart-disease patients treated by generalists instead of specialists are often misdiagnosed and treated incorrectly. They are readmitted to the hospital more frequently, and die sooner.

“Study after study shows that cardiologists adhere to guidelines better than primary care doctors,” according to Jeffrey Moses, a heart specialist at New York Presbyterian Hospital. Adds Jeffrey Borer, chairman of medicine at SUNY Downstate Medical Center: “Seldom do generalists have the knowledge to identify the symptoms of aortic valve disease, even though more than 10% of people over 75 have it. After valve surgery, patients who were too short of breath to walk can resume a normal life into their 80s or 90s.”

While the House bill being pushed by the president reduces access to such cures and specialists, it ensures that seniors are counseled on end-of-life options, including refusing nutrition where state law allows it (pp. 425-446). In Oregon, the state is denying some cancer patients care that could extend their lives and is offering them physician-assisted suicide instead.

The harshest misconception underlying the legislation is that living longer burdens society. Medicare data prove this is untrue. A patient who dies at 67 spends three times as much on health care at the end of life as a patient who lives to 90, according to Dr. Herbert Pardes, CEO of New York Presbyterian Medical Center.

What is costly is when seniors become disabled. In a 2007 Health Affairs article, researchers reported that surgeries to unclog arteries and replace worn out hips and knees have had a major impact on steadily reducing disability rates. And nondisabled seniors use only one-seventh as much health care as disabled seniors. As a result, the annual increase in per capita health spending on the elderly is less than for the rest of the population.

Nevertheless, Medicare is running out of money. The problem is the number of seniors compared with the smaller number of workers supporting the system with payroll taxes. To remedy the problem, the Congressional Budget Office has suggested inching up the eligibility age one month per year until it reaches age 70 in 2043, or asking wealthy seniors to pay more.

These are reasonable solutions—reducing access to treatments and counseling seniors about cutting life short are not. Medicare has made living to a ripe old age a good value. ObamaCare will undo that.

Dr. McCaughey is chairman of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths and a former lieutenant governor of New York State. To learn more about the status of health care legislation, visit www.defendyourhealthcare.us.

NATIONAL JOURNAL

 July 22, 2009

 
by Anna Edney, with Kasie Hunt and Peter Cohn contributing

A telling episode recounted by Senate Finance ranking member Charles Grassley reveals the Obama administration might be more worried than they are letting on that a Republican senator’s comparison of the healthcare overhaul to Waterloo might be dangerously close to the truth.

Grassley said he spoke with a Democratic House member last week who shared Obama’s bleak reaction during a private meeting to reports that some factions of House Democrats were lining up to stall or even take down the overhaul unless leaders made major changes.

“Let’s just lay everything on the table,” Grassley said. “A Democrat congressman last week told me after a conversation with the president that the president had trouble in the House of Representatives, and it wasn’t going to pass if there weren’t some changes made … and the president says, ‘You’re going to destroy my presidency.’ “

The White House did not respond to requests for comment.

Grassley did not name the member but said he was not from the senator’s home state of Iowa. He brought up the anecdote in response to a question about whether the president’s rebuke of the Waterloo remark Monday was affecting Finance Committee negotiations on a bipartisan overhaul bill. Grassley said the imbroglio was not taking a toll on the bipartisan effort.

President Obama and the Democratic National Committee pushed back hard this week against South Carolina Republican Sen. Jim DeMint‘s remark Friday that the healthcare overhaul could be Obama’s Waterloo. Obama went directly after the comment in a speech Monday and Democratic leaders and organizations have fired off countless e-mails to call out Republicans for attempting to bring down the effort rather than offer constructive alternatives.

Most of the Blue Dog Coalition opposes the House overhaul bill and have managed to delay the Energy and Commerce Committee markup. (See related story.) Rep. Mike Ross, D-Ark., the Blue Dogs’ Health Care Task Force chairman, said Tuesday he is not the member Grassley was referring to.

Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., defended Obama even though he is also opposed to House Democrats’ bill. “I can’t see him saying that,” Stupak said. “He’s got too much self-confidence.”

House Republicans Tuesday made hay of the issue, with Ways and Means minority staff sending out an e-mail asking, “Who’s really blocking health care reform?”

“Do not be fooled by the president’s repeated attempts to create a Republican straw man for his health care troubles,” the e-mail reads. The GOP pointed to ads the Democratic National Committee is running to pressure Democratic lawmakers.

Meanwhile, the Finance Committee continues to negotiate its bipartisan bill. Seven negotiators have been at the table, but Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus referred Tuesday to “all six in the room.” Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, has not been noticed attending the meetings for some time.

Senators discussed offsets for the $1 trillion measure Tuesday afternoon with Thomas Barthold, chief of staff for the Joint Committee on Taxation. An offset offered by Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., meant to be a compromise on taxing employer-based health benefits, is under discussion, Baucus said.

Kerry’s idea is similar to a proposal pushed in 1994 by former Sen. Bill Bradley, D-N.J., and approved by the Finance Committee that would tax the difference between the average health insurance premium in a region and insurers’ higher-cost plans.

Unions have come out heavily against that proposal because of the potential for higher costs to be passed down to workers. Most big companies offer their own insurance plans to employees, meaning the pain could be spread beyond the insurance industry.

An industry source expressed concern that “self-insured” company plans would be victimized, noting a 2008 Kaiser Family Foundation survey that found 77 percent of firms with more than 200 employees fund their own workers’ benefits, rather than contract with an outside insurer. That figure goes up for firms with 1,000 or more workers, where the vast majority are self-insured, said Marisa Milton, vice president for healthcare policy and government relations at the HR Policy Association.

Finance members are looking at the exclusion that protects employees from paying taxes on employer-based health benefits to try to reduce the growth of healthcare spending, but have run into pushback from Democratic leaders and Obama.

The bipartisan Finance group met earlier in the day with two actuaries to discuss potential penalties for individuals and businesses that do not acquire insurance.

Senate Majority Leader Reid insisted Tuesday that the Finance panel would produce a bill this week and begin a markup Saturday, but Finance members were skeptical. Baucus raised his hands and laughed when asked about Reid’s comment and Senate Budget Chairman Kent Conrad went just with a good laugh.

This health-care vote is similarly consequential; it will linger for years.

By BETSY MCCAUGHEY

July 17, 2009

PRESIDENT Obama promises that “if you like your health plan, you can keep it,” even after he reforms our health-care system. That’s untrue. The bills now before Congress would force you to switch to a managed-care plan with limits on your access to specialists and tests.

Two main bills are being rushed through Congress with the goal of combining them into a finished product by August. Under either, a new government bureaucracy will select health plans that it considers in your best interest, and you will have to enroll in one of these “qualified plans.” If you now get your plan through work, your employer has a five-year “grace period” to switch you into a qualified plan. If you buy your own insurance, you’ll have less time.

And as soon as anything changes in your contract — such as a change in copays or deductibles, which many insurers change every year — you’ll have to move into a qualified plan instead (House bill, p. 16-17).

When you file your taxes, if you can’t prove to the IRS that you are in a qualified plan, you’ll be fined thousands of dollars — as much as the average cost of a health plan for your family size — and then automatically enrolled in a randomly selected plan (House bill, p. 167-168).

It’s one thing to require that people getting government assistance tolerate managed care, but the legislation limits you to a managed-care plan even if you and your employer are footing the bill (Senate bill, p. 57-58). The goal is to reduce everyone’s consumption of health care and to ensure that people have the same health-care experience, regardless of ability to pay.

Nowhere does the legislation say how much health plans will cost, but a family of four is eligible for some government assistance until their household income reaches $88,000 (House bill, p. 137). If you earn more than that, you’ll have to pay the cost no matter how high it goes.

The price tag for this legislation is a whopping $1.04 trillion to $1.6 trillion (Congressional Budget Office estimates). Half of the tab comes from tax increases on individuals earning $280,000 or more, and these new taxes will double in 2012 unless savings exceed predicted costs (House bill, p. 199). The rest of the cost is paid for by cutting seniors’ health benefits under Medicare.

There’s plenty of waste in Medicare, but the Congressional Budget Office estimates only 1 percent of the savings under the legislation will be from curbing waste, fraud and abuse. That means the rest will likely come from reducing what patients get.

One troubling provision of the House bill compels seniors to submit to a counseling session every five years (and more often if they become sick or go into a nursing home) about alternatives for end-of-life care (House bill, p. 425-430). The sessions cover highly sensitive matters such as whether to receive antibiotics and “the use of artificially administered nutrition and hydration.”

This mandate invites abuse, and seniors could easily be pushed to refuse care. Do we really want government involved in such deeply personal issues?

Shockingly, only a portion of the money accumulated from slashing senior benefits and raising taxes goes to pay for covering the uninsured. The Senate bill allocates huge sums to “community transformation grants,” home visits for expectant families, services for migrant workers — and the creation of dozens of new government councils, programs and advisory boards slipped into the last 500 pages.

The most recent ABC News/Washington Post poll (June 21) finds that 83 percent of Americans are very satisfied or somewhat satisfied with the quality of their health care, and 81 percent are similarly satisfied with their health insurance.

They have good reason to be. If you’re diagnosed with cancer, you have a better chance of surviving it in the United States than anywhere else, according to the Concord Five Continent Study. And the World Health Organization ranked the United States No. 1 out of 191 countries for being responsive to patients’ needs, including providing timely treatments and a choice of doctors.

Congress should pursue less radical ways to cover the uninsured. We have too much to lose with this legislation.

By CHARLES HURT IN DC and DAVID SEIFMAN AND JENNIFER FERMINO IN NY, Post Wire Services

July 16, 2009

Congressional plans to fund a massive health-care overhaul could have a job-killing effect on New York, creating a tax rate of nearly 60 percent for the state’s top earners and possibly pressuring small-business owners to shed workers.

New York’s top income bracket could reach as high as 57 percent — rates not seen in three decades — to pay for the massive health coverage proposed by House Democrats this week.

The top rate in New York City, home to many of the state’s wealthiest people, would be 58.68 percent, the Washington-based Tax Foundation said in a report yesterday.

That means New York’s top earners, small-business owners and most dynamic entrepreneurs will be facing new fees and penalties.

The $544 billion tax hike would violate one of President Obama’s ironclad campaign promises: No family will pay higher tax rates than they would have paid in the 1990s.

Under the bill, three new tax brackets would be created for high earners, with a top rate of 45 percent for families making more than $1 million. That would be the highest income-tax rate since 1986, when the top rate was 50 percent.

The legislation is especially onerous for business owners, in part because it penalizes employers with a payroll bigger than $400,000 some 8 percent of wages if they don’t offer health care.

But the cost of the buy-in to the program may be so prohibitive that it will dissuade owners from growing their businesses — a scary prospect in the midst of a recession.

Obama took to the airwaves yesterday with ads and TV interviews promoting the need to reform health care.

As a Senate health committee passed a different version of a health-care reform bill – a milestone for the issue – Obama said on NBC, “The American people have to realize that there’s no such thing as a free lunch.”

And in a Rose Garden speech, he said the “status quo” on health care is “threatening the financial stability of families, of businesses, and of government. It’s unsustainable, and it has to change.”

Asked if Obama supports the surtax on wealthiest Americans even though it would break a campaign pledge, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said only, “It’s a process that we’re watching.”

Republicans in Washington and small-business defenders in New York said the House legislation would effectively place a stranglehold on businesses while running off top earners.
“Placing a big tax burden on the small-business community would rob them of the resources they need to create the jobs that will lead us out of the recession,” said Tom Donohue, president of the US Chamber of Commerce.

“If there’s one sure way to kill the goose that lays the golden egg, this is it.”

Richard Lipsky, a lobbyist for small stores and businesses in New York City, warned that “in the middle of a recession, it’s a very strange way to legislate.”

“According to what we’ve read, the House health-insurance plan would have a job-crippling impact on neighborhood stores and other small businesses because they put mandates on these businesses that would prevent them from hiring people because of the cost of the plan,” Lipsky said.

Under the House plan, businesses with payrolls of $400,000 or more would pay an 8 percent penalty for uninsured workers, while companies with payrolls between $250,000 and $400,000 would pay slightly smaller penalties.

Adding to this burden, said Michael Moran of the State Business Council of New York, is that New York is already a high-tax state.

“Any additional taxes make New York even less competitive,” he said.

New York would become the third-most-hostile place for top earners to live under the proposed new surtaxes supported by House Democrats and championed by Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY).

Also hit would be individuals earning $280,000 annually and families making $350,000 a year.

The profits from small businesses would also be taxed on the back end.

Kathryn Wylde, president of the Partnership for New York City, an umbrella organization representing the city’s major businesses, said that the estimated top marginal tax rate of 57 percent for New York actually underestimates the potential impact on businesses.

That’s because it doesn’t include the city’s burdensome unincorporated-business tax, which snares many entrepreneurs.

“It could be between 62 and 63 percent,” she said.

If the House plan passes, Wylde said, “There literally, at this point, is very strong reason to relocate your family and your business outside New York.”

A lot of small businesses would be hit with the penalties for not insuring workers and get hit with the surtaxes, Moran warned.

“Many small businesses file their business taxes under personal income,” he said. “That’s the way the tax law is written. Small business, which is really where most of the job creation takes place, could be hit hard.

According to the city’s Department for Small Business Services, there are some 220,000 small businesses in the five boroughs. The agency does not keep track of how many offer health insurance.

“It’s something that’s going to kill jobs. That’s the result,” said Stephanie Cathcart, spokeswoman for the National Federation of Independent Businesses.

Among the most egregious provisions of the House proposal, she said, is a requirement that businesses pay the cost of 72.4 percent of individual health plans and 65 percent of family plans.

Those that don’t hit the mark would face the payroll tax penalty.

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 Researchers in Japan have developed a brain-machine interface (BMI) system that allows for control of a wheelchair using thought.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

June 29, 2009

ATLANTA – For the first time, a case of swine flu has proven resistant to Tamiflu — the leading pharmaceutical weapon against the new virus, international health officials said Monday.

The resistance was seen in a patient in Denmark, who has recovered.

“The goods news is they just found one,” said Dr. Carolyn Bridges of the U.S. Centers for Disease control and Prevention.

It appears the strain developed in a patient who was taking the drug to prevent illness, and it has not spread to others. That’s a much better scenario than if the patient had not been taking Tamiflu and picked up a drug-resistant strain already spreading through the public, said Bridges, associate director for science in the CDC’s influenza division.

Also, it is not a mutation that includes pieces of both seasonal flu and the new pandemic form of the virus, according to Roche, the Switzerland-based pharmaceutical company that makes Tamiflu. Scientists have been worried about the new swine flu swapping genes with seasonal or other types of flu and perhaps mutating into a more dangerous or more infectious form.

Until an effective vaccine is developed, the drugs Tamiflu and Relenza have been considered the best available defense against the swine flu virus, which has caused nearly 28,000 reported illness in the United States, including more than 3,000 hospitalizations and 127 deaths.

Tamiflu resistance has not been seen in nearly 200 swine flu samples tested in the United States, Bridges said. But the resistance has been seen in other types of flu. Late last year, CDC officials reported that the most common flu bug circulating at the time was overwhelmingly resistant to Tamiflu. Health officials have believed it was probably a matter of time before a swine flu sample tested resistant, too.

The Danish case was isolated, however, and guidelines from the CDC and the World Health Organization continue to recommend Tamiflu as a treatment. No details were released on the patient’s age or gender, or on when the patient was sick.

“It is possible to see occasional reports of resistance while a drug remains largely effective,” said Terry Hurley, a Roche spokesman.

FOXNews.com
Sunday, June 28, 2009

The White House left open the possibility Sunday that President Obama could tax employer-provided health insurance to pay for his $1 trillion universal health care plan, a violation of the president’s campaign pledge to not raise taxes on middle-class families.

White House adviser David Axelrod said the administration wouldn’t rule out taxing some employees’ benefits to fund a health care agenda that has yet to take final form. The move would be a compromise with fellow Democrats, who are pushing the proposal as a way to pay for the massive undertaking without ballooning the federal deficit.

“There are a number of formulations and we’ll wait and see. The important thing at this point is to keep the process moving, to keep people at the table, to the keep the discussions going,” Axelrod said. “We’ve gotten a long way down the road and we want to finish that journey.”

Also an option is to have employers who don’t provide coverage to pay an 8 percent payroll tax. Health and Human Service Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said she believes the economy won’t be affected negatively by that cost.

“I think the issues of whether there’s going to be some kind of pay-or-play feature, again, is being discussed in both the House and the Senate. The House has one version, but they also have some firewalls to protect coverage that’s there in place right now,” Sebelius told “FOX News Sunday.”

“There’s a protection for small business owners, an exemption that they would not be subjected to the 8 percent payroll, and some encouragement, some tax incentives, to get them into the marketplace. Often they’re the ones who are squeezed by the cost of just not being able to afford the coverage,” she said.

If Obama compromises on taxing employee benefits, it would not only reverse his promise not to raise taxes on those earning less than $250,000, he would be borrowing directly from his campaign opponent, Sen. John McCain.

“I pledge that under my plan, no one making less than $250,000 a year will see any type of tax increase,” Obama told a crowd in Dover, N.H., last year. “Not income tax, not capital gains taxes, not any kind of tax.”

Obama spent millions on campaign commercials attacking McCain’s idea to tax employee benefits, running one ad that accused McCain of favoring “taxing health care instead of fixing it. We can’t afford John McCain.”

A second Obama ad called McCain’s approach “the largest middle-class tax increase in history.” Driving the point home, it contended the “McCain tax could cost your family thousands. Can you afford it?”

Asked about the reversal, Sebelius said, “He vigorously opposed Senator McCain’s idea to eliminate the benefits, the non-taxable benefits, because he figures that would really dismantle the employer marketplace. I think that he’s open to discussion but prefers, again, capping the itemized deduction, returning it to the days of Ronald Reagan.”

Sebelius said Obama’s plan foresees $660 billion over 10 years acquired through savings in the the current system that comes from people gaining insurance and therefore staying healthier because they will schedule doctor visits, as well as $330 billion in that same time from capping itemized deductions on wealthy Americans.

“He thinks that’s far preferable to the ideas currently being discussed about taxing employee benefits,” she said.

Under the current proposals, a tax on health benefits would affect only those with pricey health plans. The idea would be to tax as income the portion of health benefits worth more than a specified limit. Officials are considering several options, including one that would set the limit at $17,240 for family coverage and $6,800 for individuals.

Plans worth more than that would be taxed; those worth less would see no increase.

Obama has faced similar criticism before. When he increased taxes on tobacco to pay for a children’s health bill, his critics said he was raising taxes on those making less than $250,000 a year.

Obama left open the possibility of a tax during interviews last week, insisting he wasn’t taking any option off the table despite his personal opposition. But two of his high-profile advisers — budget chief Peter Orszag and economic adviser Jason Furman — both have indicated they support some taxes on health benefits to pay for the overhaul.

Sen. Chuck Grassley said that Obama should step in an oppose the tax if he’s truly against it. Otherwise, he faces a loss to his own Democratic Party and his own campaign credibility.

“I think it’s going to take presidential leadership to get people of his party to see that we shouldn’t be subsidizing high-end health insurance policies that drive up inflation in health insurance,” said Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee.

Grassley recalled Obama’s scathing criticism of their GOP presidential nominee in suggesting the caucus may hold out on taxing employee benefits.

“Since the president denigrated John McCain’s effort to move in this direction during the campaign, it’s going to take, in order to win over Republicans, presidential leadership in that direction,” Grassley said.

Axelrod insisted that the White House has made progress on a health care plan and is working with Congress. Even so, the emerging legislation is hardly the bipartisan collaboration Obama’s top advisers had sought.

“One of the problems we’ve had in this town is that people draw lines in the sand and they stop talking to each other,” Axelrod said. “And you don’t get anything done. That’s not the way the president approaches us.”

Axelrod appeared on ABC’s “This Week” and NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Grassley appeared on “This Week.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

June 26 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. Senate proposal to impose taxes for the first time on “gold-plated” health plans may bypass generous employee benefits negotiated by unions.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, the chief congressional advocate of taxing some employer-provided benefits to help pay for an overhaul of the U.S. health system, says any change should exempt perks secured in existing collective- bargaining agreements, which can be in place for as long as five years.

The exception, which could make the proposal more politically palatable to Democrats from heavily unionized states such as Michigan, is adding controversy to an already contentious debate. It would shield the 12.4 percent of American workers who belong to unions from being taxed while exposing some other middle-income workers to the levy.

“I can’t think of any other aspect of the individual income tax that treats benefits of different people differently because of who they work for,” said Chris Edwards, director of tax policy studies at the Cato Institute, a Washington research group that often criticizes Democrats’ economic proposals. Edwards said the carve-out “smacks of political favoritism.”

Baucus, a Montana Democrat, is proposing to tax Americans whose health insurance is valued at a higher rate than what is offered to federal employees. About 40 percent of insured Americans have costlier benefits, and Baucus has said he is trying to set the level at which taxes would be imposed high enough so fewer people are affected.

‘Gold-Plated’ Plans

The policy is aimed at so-called “gold-plated” plans such as the $40,543 in health benefits paid to Lloyd Blankfein, chief executive of New York-based Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the fifth largest U.S. bank by assets.

It can also affect companies such as Henderson, Nevada- based Zappos.com, where workers’ $11 per hour pay is supplemented by employer-paid health insurance plans worth about $7,500. Federal workers’ health benefits are worth about $4,200 for individuals and $13,000 for families.

Lawmakers are crafting legislation aimed at meeting Obama’s goal of bringing down the cost of health care and expanding coverage to the 46 million Americans who lack insurance. Obama wants Democratic congressional leaders to seek Republican support, and to send him legislation by mid-October.

Baucus said yesterday the cost of health-care options his panel is considering can be cut to $1 trillion over 10 years and won’t add to the deficit, citing the Congressional Budget Office.

Cost Estimates

The non-partisan budget office last week delivered an informal cost estimate of $1.6 trillion for the legislation to overhaul the health-care system, sparking protests from both Republicans and Democrats and prompting Baucus to say his panel may delay consideration of a bill until next month.

“CBO now tells us we have options that would enable us to write a $1 trillion bill, fully paid for,” Baucus, who set that amount as his goal, told reporters at the Capitol.

The panel’s legislation must be joined with competing proposals from other Senate and House committees and forged into a single bill subject to negotiation and approval by both chambers before it can be sent to Obama.

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, a North Dakota Democrat, said earlier this week that senators are coalescing around the idea of taxing some employer-provided benefits. Baucus said the details are still being negotiated, including how high to set the tax-free exclusion and when any changes would take effect, and whether to exempt union employees until their current contracts expire.

Cutting ‘Subsidy’

“It is hard for me to see how you can have a package that is paid for that does not reduce the subsidy” on employer-paid benefits, Conrad said.

Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, the top-ranking Republican in the chamber, said today he has “serious reservations about capping the exclusion, particularly if they have a carve-out for union members,” according to his communications director, Don Stewart. Stewart taped McConnell’s comments and provided excerpts to a reporter.

Stewart said McConnell, discussing the prospect of a tax on some employer-provided benefits, said “table-pounding opposition” would result “if it were to exclude union members.”

Gerald Shea, an AFL-CIO official lobbying for health-care reform, said grandfathering benefits negotiated in a collective bargaining agreement is a “common thing when there is a big change in federal law.”

‘Expectations Are Set’

“Once a collective bargaining agreement is set, employer’s budgets are set, workers expectations are set. It doesn’t make sense to go back in the middle of the contract and change it,” he said.

Union groups and workers said Congress shouldn’t target contractually negotiated benefits.

Anna Burger, secretary-treasurer of the Service Employees International Union, said in an interview that workers have often traded salary increases for better benefits in agreements.

Taxes “shouldn’t be taken from the backs of workers who have bargained away wages and other things for their benefits over the years,” Burger said.

Sandra Carter, a retired Pacific Bell Telephone Co. technician from Stockton, California, said her health benefits, worth about $12,000 per year, were negotiated by the Communications Workers of America. She is unmarried with no children, meaning her individual coverage exceeds benefits paid to federal workers by about $7,800. If that amount were taxed at the 15 percent marginal rate, she would owe $1,170.

“I can’t afford the taxes I pay now,” said Carter, who said she suffers from diabetes. “Why should I get taxed on a benefit that keeps me a functioning person?”

Union Opposition

Other unions say they’re opposed to a tax on some employer- provided benefits, regardless of whether collective bargaining agreements are exempt.

“Either way, we are against a tax on health-care benefits in whatever form it takes,” said Jacob Hay, spokesman for the Laborers’ International Union of North America. The union represents 500,000 workers, largely in the construction industry.

Because of a recession-related drop in state revenues and a surge in enrollment by the recently unemployed, the truth is emerging at an inconvenient time. Massachusetts doesn’t have enough money to pay for the coverage envisioned by the law.

In June, state officials announced they are cutting $100 million from Commonwealth Care, which subsidizes premiums for needy residents. The poorest residents, along with the newest – legal immigrants – will take the hit.

This outcome is not surprising, but it is instructive as President Obama pushes for a national healthcare plan.

On the day that Republican Governor Mitt Romney, for once, made Bay State Democrats happy, by signing the sweeping new healthcare bill into law, the Globe headline said it all: “Joy, worries on healthcare. As Romney signs bill, doubts arise about revenues.’’

In Massachusetts, the numbers never added up, as everyone involved in crafting the new law understood. But for a variety of reasons, ranging from Romney’s presidential aspirations to Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s longstanding commitment to healthcare reform, everyone smiled for the cameras and hoped for the best out of this noble experiment.

Today, the current governor, Deval Patrick, a Democrat, is skeptical about the end product. Asked during a televised town hall meeting in March if he believes national healthcare legislation should be patterned after the Massachusetts plan, he said, “I don’t know. I had real misgivings about it as a candidate. . . . I’m proud of it, but I don’t know if it’s a model for the nation.’’

The foundation of the Massachusetts law is the so-called individual mandate. That means everyone must have health insurance. From that perspective, the Massachusetts experiment is a success. The percentage of residents without insurance was down to 2.6 after two years.

But, the law never provided an absolute way to pay for the expanded coverage, and it never addressed how to reduce costs.

“They decoupled the access issue from the cost issue,’’ said Philip Johnston, chairman of the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation, which played a key role in expanding healthcare coverage here. “The lesson is, there needs to be a dedicated revenue source to support health reform.’’

An even bigger lesson is that to make health reform happen, all the players must be invested from the start – and must stay invested. “Getting it done is politics. That means dealing with all the elements that are necessary for near-universal access and cost management, but not overreaching in any one area, so that major stakeholders turn from supporting the effort to opposing it,’’ said John Sasso, who represented Partners Healthcare, the largest healthcare provider in Massachusetts, and Blue Cross Blue Shield, the state’s largest insurer, during the reform process.

The stakeholders are still at the table, trying to make the numbers work better, he points out.

It’s true that Massachusetts built a dream house of a healthcare plan, without knowing the exact cost or how to pay for it. But that doesn’t mean it should be dramatically downsized, as state Treasurer Timothy P. Cahill proposes as he positions himself for a gubernatorial run.

A recent report by the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, a business-funded group that advocated for the healthcare law, found that state spending increased by about $88 million annually since it was implemented. Is that too much to absorb, within the context of a $28 billion state budget?

As Patrick also said about the state’s healthcare law at that town hall meeting, “The great story about Massachusetts is instead of waiting for the perfect solution . . . or doing nothing . . . we tried something.’’

Washington can’t be as adventurous. Costing out a national healthcare plan, and figuring out how to fund it, is the current fault line for Obama. The president insists he can overhaul the healthcare system without adding to the deficit.

He should take this final lesson out of Massachusetts: Be honest about cost in the good times and make sure you can cover it in the bad.