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November 03, 2009
The Price of Pelosi Bill is Now Up to $1.2 Trillion and Threatens U.S. Medical Education System
The Price of Pelosi Bill is Now Up to $1.2 Trillion
The health care bill headed for a vote in the House this week costs $1.2 trillion or more over a decade, according to numerous Democratic officials and figures contained in an analysis by congressional budget experts, far higher than the $900 billion cited by President Obama as a price tag for his reform plan.
While the Congressional Budget Office has put the cost of expanding coverage in the legislation at roughly $1 trillion, Democrats added billions more on higher spending for public health, a reinsurance program to hold down retiree health costs, payments for preventive services and more.
Many of the additions are designed to improve benefits or ease access to coverage in government programs. The officials who provided overall cost estimates did so on condition of anonymity, saying they were not authorized to discuss them.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has referred repeatedly to the bill's net cost of $894 billion over a decade for coverage.
Asked about the higher estimate, Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly said the measure not only insures 36 million more Americans, it provides critical health insurance reform in a way that is fiscally sound.
"It will not add one dime to the deficit. In fact, the CBO said last week that it will reduce the deficit both in the first 10 years and in the second 10 years," Daly said.
Republicans put the cost of the bill at nearly $1.3 trillion.
"Our goal is to make it as difficult as possible for" Democrats to pass it, House Republican leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said at a news conference. "We believe it is the wrong prescription."
One day after announcing Republicans would have an alternative measure, Boehner offered few details. He said it would omit one of the central provisions in Democratic bills — a ban on the insurance industry's practice of denying coverage on the basis of pre-existing medical conditions. Instead, he said the Republicans would encourage creation of insurance pools for high-risk individuals and take other steps to ease their access to coverage.
Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., the third-ranking leader, said that Democrats looked at their bill as a way to advance universal coverage. In contrast, he said, Republicans "believe the real issue back home is cost" of insurance, and said their alternative would be designed to tackle it.
In House bill, tax hits rich
The typical family would be spared higher taxes from the House Democratic plan to overhaul health care, and their low-income neighbors could come out ahead.
Their wealthy counterparts, however, face big tax increases that could eventually hit future generations of taxpayers who are less wealthy.
The bill is funded largely from a 5.4% tax on individuals making more than $500,000 a year and couples making more than $1 million, starting in 2011. The tax increase would hit only 0.3% of tax filers, raising $460.5 billion over the next 10 years, according to congressional estimates.
But unlike other income tax rates, the new tax would not be indexed for inflation. As incomes rise over time because of inflation, more families — and more small business owners — would be hit by the tax.
"Twenty years from now, we're going to see more and more small businesses ensnared into paying higher taxes," said Rep. Dave Camp of Michigan, the top Republican on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee.
The tax would hit only 1.2% of taxpayers who claim business income on their returns, according to the estimates by the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation. But that percentage would grow as business owners' nominal incomes rise with inflation.
In 2011, a family of four with an income of $800,000 a year would get a $24,000 tax increase, when the new tax is combined with an increase in the top two tax brackets proposed by President Obama and other scheduled tax changes, according to an analysis by Deloitte Tax. That's a 12.5% increase in federal income taxes.
A family of four making $5 million a year would see a $434,500 tax increase, about a 32% increase, according to the analysis.
"These are very big numbers and very high effective tax rates," said Clint Stretch, a tax policy expert at Deloitte Tax.
The new health care tax would come on top of other tax increases for the wealthy proposed by Obama. The top marginal income tax rate now is 35%, on income above $372,950. Obama wants to boost the top rate to 39.6% in 2011 by allowing some of the tax cuts enacted under former President George W. Bush to expire.
House Democrats said they are proud that they found a way to finance the health care package largely from a tax on the wealthy. There is, however, little appetite for a millionaire's tax in the Senate, where some hope to eventually use tax increases on the wealthy to help close the growing federal budget deficit. Also, some tax experts think it is a mistake to tap only rich people to pay for services used by all.
"If health care is a benefit that is worth having, then it's worth paying for," said William Gale, who was an adviser to President George H. W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers and is now co-director of the Tax Policy Center. "This gives the impression that it's only worth having if someone else pays for it."
Obama promised during the presidential campaign that he would not increase taxes on couples making less than $250,000. However, the health care bill would impose new taxes on people who don't buy qualified health insurance, including those making less than $250,000 a year.
Under the bill, individuals are required to obtain health insurance coverage or pay penalties, which are described as taxes in the legislation. The penalty would be equal to the cost of an average insurance plan or a 2.5% tax on incomes above the standard threshold for filing a tax return, whichever is less. There would be waivers for financial hardships.
To help afford insurance, families with incomes up to four times the federal poverty level would qualify for subsidies. The poverty level for a family of four is $22,050 this year.
Republicans argue that the penalties violate Obama's tax pledge, and they liken the millionaire's tax to the Alternative Minimum Tax, which Congress enacted in 1969 to ensure that wealthy Americans cannot use loopholes to avoid paying any income taxes.
The AMT was never indexed for inflation, so Congress must enact a fix each year to spare about 25 million middle-income families from being hit with big tax increases.
"They're going down the same road by not indexing this tax," said the Republican lawmaker Camp.
Obamacare Threatens U.S. Medical Education System
The federal government will expand its role in training new doctors and nurses under the Democrats' healthcare reform proposals to the point that one prominent surgeon is warning of a federal "takeover" of medical education.
The HR 3962 reform bill that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi unveiled last week would provide billions in medical-education grants.
Some of those grants would help future doctors and nurses pay for their degrees in return for their participation in specific disciplines or programs.
Other grants would pay organizations to create educational and training programs under the auspices of the Department of Health and Human Services.
Democrats say the programs are a necessary aspect of bringing another 36 million individuals into the U.S. healthcare system.
The Association of American Medical Programs projects a shortage of between 124,000 and 159,000 physicians by 2025. Reform will aggravate that shortfall by an additional 25 percent, the association states.
"There is mounting evidence that a physician workforce shortage exists in primary care as well as in a number of other specialties," according to the association's report.
Opponents of healthcare reform warn that universal coverage under these circumstances can only lead to one thing: rationing of healthcare.
Fox News contributor and Newsmax pundit Dick Morris, for example, writes: "Because there will not be enough doctors, nurses, and medical equipment for the massive influx of patients under the Obama plan, there will be rationing, more draconian year after year."
Spending federal dollars to bolster training and education, and directing it toward fields in short supply, would seem one way to address that problem. But some medical experts see a darker intent behind the extensive, medical-education provisions in the reform bills that are now under consideration in the House and Senate.
Dr. Russell Blaylock, a board-certified neurosurgeon and author who is editor of the Blaylock Wellness Report published by Newsmax Media Inc., warns that reform proposals portend a "takeover of the entire medical-education system."
Blaylock told Newsmax he foresees the day when medical schools "will have to get federal approval, that they will appoint professors and set curriculum for the schools and they will direct residence and intern-training programs and set curriculum for these training programs."
He added, "Now, that means. . . federalization of medical education in the United States, which is the open door for federal medical license."
Among provisions in the House bill that suggest a bulked-up federal role in medical education:
~snipet~
Increased federal involvement in medical education indicates that proponents of reform "are lying," and intend to socialize the healthcare sector, Blaylock told Newsmax. Healthcare accounts for approximately one-sixth of the nation's economy.
"If you look at the history of the socialization of medicine in every country in the world it all started the same way," he said. "It's piecemeal, where there's a group of people who are not covered, and all we are trying to do is cover them. Well, then there is another group that needs to be covered, so now we cover them. And then you say, 'Well, if those two groups are getting it, why should we do it for everybody else.'"
North Carolina Rep. Virginia Foxx speaking from the House Floor today, where she said her constituents tell her they "fear" what is happening in America today - fear the loss of freedom and what the future holds. Rep. Foxx said they should be afraid. In fact, Foxx said:
“I believe we have more to fear from the potential of that bill passing than we do from any terrorist right now in any country."
Saying the Democrats' Health Care Bill, which she said is a "tax increase bill masquerading as a Health Care Bill."
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Wild Thing's comment.........
And that’s in addition to all the costs they are pushing out to the States, Individuals, health care providers, and pharmaceuticals.
On the second article, I get the Blaylock Wellness Report that Dr. Baylock does and it is awesome. It always has tons of good infomration on supplements and vitamins and how to stay healthy and good thing to do to make ones heart healthy.
Can you imagine too not enough doctors and nurses etc. once this all goes into effect. Very scary.
Fox News contributor and Newsmax pundit Dick Morris, for example, writes: "Because there will not be enough doctors, nurses, and medical equipment for the massive influx of patients under the Obama plan, there will be rationing, more draconian year after year."
....Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67
Posted by Wild Thing at November 3, 2009 05:45 AM
Comments
A cadaver's eyes have more signs of life than Pelosi's. Botox or embalming fluid? FDR was the cadaver in '45 who signed away Europe's freedom under what politcal party?
Posted by: Jack at November 3, 2009 10:06 AM
Ultimate and total control. That is the basis of these Democrat healthcare reform bills. They want the government to control all aspects of life in America. They will gladly destroy institutions such as American medicine to get that control.
And of course, the Dems practice bias by taxing "the Rich" which is unfair. But by not indexing for the coming inflation, those rich begin to include the middle income people. So medical costs will sky rocket while availibilty of medical care becomes more and more rationed. There will be fewer doctors. What is forgotten is that many, many physicians come from abroad to practice medicine in America. These foreign born doctors will not have incentive under these healthcare plans to come to America to practice open medicine So, they will stay in their own countries further declining the numbers of MDs availible.
Posted by: TomR at November 3, 2009 12:34 PM
When the 'Rich' squirrel all their money away to foreign accounts and off shore or have no more money, where will these geniuses get the money to redistribute?
Anyone with a job, will be hit and hit hard with extra taxes, in order obama can replenish his 'Stash' to give to the Lazy, indolent and non producers. Hopefully by that time we have changed the complexion of congress and this nonsense will come to a screeching halt.
Posted by: Mark at November 3, 2009 04:40 PM
MOST blue state 'PUB LICK SCKOOOLE CESSTUMS' are a joke so we had to PAY for our childrens elementary and high school educations via parochial schools. WE got RESULTS and our children smoked the SAT tests and are now in college. Yeah, we had to fork out our hard EARNED money so they could benefit. Imagine that?
Posted by: darthcrUSAderworldtour07 at November 3, 2009 05:26 PM
