More Democratic Messaging Fail: Only 28% Believe Repealing ObamaCare Will Increase Deficit, 39% Believe That Repeal Will Reduce It

Here’s more bad news for the Democrats:

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 39% believe repeal will reduce government spending, and another 21% say repeal will have no impact. Just 28% of Likely U.S. Voters believe repeal of the health care law will increase federal spending…

Similarly, 36% say repeal of the health care law will reduce the federal deficit, while 23% say repeal will have no impact. Only 29% predict that repeal will increase the federal budget deficit.

It is interesting to note a significant difference in perspective when asking about the impact of repeal compared to the impact of the law itself. While only 36% say repeal will reduce the deficit, most voters have consistently said that the implementation of the measure is likely to increase the deficit. That belief has ranged from 51% to 63%.

The most recent CBO report seems to support the beliefs of the majority of the American people.

Is this just more “bad messaging” from the Democrats, or is it really that most Americans just don’t believe them?

Obama to Congress: Let's Stop All of These "Symbolic Battles" & Focus On Jobs

In his weekly address (Transcript here), President Obama took a shot at Republicans for taking up “symbolic battles”, such as trying to repeal ObamaCare, even though Republicans admit that it will not get past an Obama veto:

President Barack Obama urged newly empowered Republicans on Saturday not to wage "symbolic battles" against him but to instead work together to help spur job growth and economic recovery.
Obama issued his appeal in his weekly radio address after Republicans took power in the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday, setting up potentially fierce fights with the president and his Democrats on spending, debt and healthcare.
"Our fundamental mission must be to accelerate hiring and growth," Obama said.
He touted as an example of bipartisan cooperation a massive compromise tax cut package approved by Congress last month that he said had contributed to "more optimistic economic forecasts for the year ahead."

Where was this faux concern over “symbolic battles” and jobs, when the Democratic House tackled and passed environmental legislation to curb carbon emission that would have killed jobs, even though there was no chance of it passing the Senate? Of course, he doesn’t really care about this kind of symbolism or political theater. He’s more concerned that he might have to take a stand on his key piece of legislation and stand behind his program, which is very unpopular with the American people.

The repeal will pass the House, and the Repblicans will only need to get four Democrats to cross over to pass it in the Senate. Considering that many of the red-state Democrats are up for re-election in 2012 and how unpopular the legislation is in those states, they won’t want to go on record in favor of the bill, again, and may end up voting for the repeal. The red-state Democrats will do that because they don’t want ObamaCare to be used as an albatross throughout the next election.

Getting everyone on the record being for or against repeal is the reason behind this “exercise in futility”. Voters need to know where their representatives stand on this issue, once and for all.

Just as the Senate Democrats don’t want to go on record voting for the bill. Obama doesn’t really want to, either. If he wants to get re-elected, he has to distance himself from the past two years, including ObamaCare, and move to the center. Forcing him to veto the repeal that is passed by a majority in both the House and the Senate will make Obama own it for good, and his Republican challenger will pelt him with the unpopular bill over and over and over in the general campaign.

Now, let’s get to Obama’s claim that this has nothing to do with growing jobs. To Republicans, the repeal is just as important to creating more jobs as anything else that they will do. Incoming Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI), Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) and other prominent Republicans have said that ObamaCare has and will continue to cost American jobs.

The Galen Institue, a conservative public policy research organization, has explains concisely just how ObamaCare is keeping employers from hiring new people and why they’re laying off workers:

Just as ridiculous, the administration is attributing the first glimmerings of an economic recovery and any jobs creation to the health law. This is outrageous! We all know that employers already are trying to figure out ways to either shed health insurance or employees -- or both -- to escape the mandates, higher costs, and potential penalties of ObamaCare. And they haven't even taken effect yet!

As a result of the new regulations, the costs of health care has skyrocketed. They haven’t fallen, as the Democrats claimed that it would, and as a result, businesses are having to spend their money on higher premiums, costs, and penalties that they would have ordinarily spent on salaries for new employees. All of this is a huge reason for the ongoing stalemate in job creation.

Repealing ObamaCare and replacing it with something that isn’t just a new huge entitlement program will go a long way to restoring confidence in the economy, and more confidence in the economy will lead to businesses feeling encouraged enough to start hiring again.

Surprise! New CBO Report: Repealing ObamaCare Will Reduce Spending By $540B, Taxes By $770B

Color me surprised. Just about every Democrat, lefty blog and media outlet was touting the report from the CBO, which said that repealing ObamaCare would raise the deficit $230 Billion. Of course, they failed to mention how they came up with that number.
To further clarify their findings, the CBO followed up the previous report with one that goes into more detail on how they reached that number. Wouldn’t you know? It said that repealing ObamaCare would result in a massive reduction in spending and taxes. In fact, the $230 Billion amount that they came up with were based off of the tax hikes and Medicare cuts that came with the bill, not because it actually will make healthcare cheaper:

The Congressional Budget Office, in an email to Capitol Hill staffers obtained by the Spectator, has said that repealing the national health care law would reduce net spending by $540 billion in the ten year period from 2012 through 2021. That number represents the cost of the new provisions, minus Medicare cuts. Repealing the bill would also eliminate $770 billion in taxes. It's the tax hikes in the health care law (along with the Medicare cuts) which accounts for the $230 billion in deficit reduction.

Again, we were proven right. This is a disasterous bill that creates a massive new program that requires huge tax hikes to even come close to funding. I tried to find a liberal, who had a comment on the new CBO report, but shockingly, it has been very quiet on the left, today.

Rasmussen: Majority of Americans Believe ObamaCare WILL BE Repealed For First Time Ever, Here's Why?

There has been a dramatic shift in ObamaCare debate over the past few weeks. According to a new Rasmussen poll, a majority of Americans believe that it is at least somewhat likely that the bill WILL BE repealed, for the first time ever. For months, a majority has felt it should be, but now, people are believing that it could actually happen:

For the first time since Democrats in Congress passed the health care bill in March, a majority of U.S. voters believe the measure is likely to be repealed.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 52% of Likely U.S. Voters think it is at least somewhat likely that the health care plan will be repealed. Thirty-three percent (33%) view repeal as unlikely. Those figures include 16% who believe repeal is Very Likely and 5% who believe it is Not at All Likely.

The number who view repeal as Likely is up from 47% last month  and from 38% in early April. Belief that the plan is likely to be repealed has been hovering in the 40% range in surveys since April but began to rise in late October. Last week, a federal judge found a key provision in the law to be unconstitutional.

Fifty-five percent (55%) of voters now favor repeal of the health care law, including 40% who Strongly Favor it. Forty-one percent (41%) are opposed to repeal, with 31% Strongly Opposed. Support for repeal has ranged from 50% to 63% in weekly tracking since the bill became law in late March. Last week, support for repeal was at 60%.

Why is this happening? The overall mood of the country really hasn't changed much. Just as many believe that it should be repealed as before. The reasons for this shift is two-fold.

One, the Republicans are taking over the House and gaining power in the Senate, although not total control.

Secondly, there are the court cases in Virginia and Florida that is deciding the constitutionality of the law. The judge in Virginia has already declared the individual mandate unconstitutional, and the Florida case doesn't seem to be breaking the administration's way, either.

As the new Speaker of the House, John Boehner has already said that a bill to reapeal ObamaCare will be one of the first things on his agenda, and with the Republicans in control of the House, it is almost a certainty that it'll pass the House.

On the other side of Congress, the Senate is much more tricky. The Democrats will still control the agenda on that side, and it'll need a significant amount of support from the Senate Democrats, in order for it to get passed.

If it does somehow pass both sides of Congress, there's 0% chance of it being signed by Obama, at this point. In a recent conversation with South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, the president said that ther was no way that he would sign anything that would repeal his key piece of legislation that was a core component of his dopmestic agenda.

However, if public opinion gets too bad, he may have to do it, in order to get re-elected. Also, if the Supreme Court declares part or all of it unconstitutional, he may have no choice.

So, a repeal is still a long shot, but the tide is turning in that direction.

ObamaCare, Individual Mandate Looks to be Facing Another Blow in Florida Court Case

There is more bad news for Obama and his key piece of legislation. In the Florida court, ObamaCare is looking to be facing another blow to the constitutionality of the individual mandate provision, based on comments by the judge that is presiding over the case. Judge Vinson has expressed his doubts about the provision in the new healthcare law:

A federal judge in a 20-state lawsuit against the Obama administration's health overhaul signaled Thursday he is sympathetic to the plaintiffs' argument that requiring Americans to carry health insurance violates the Constitution...........

The plaintiffs consist of governors and attorneys general led by Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum, all but one of them Republicans. They argue that the "individual mandate" requiring Americans to carry insurance is beyond the federal government's power under the Constitution's commerce clause. Failure to buy insurance is "inactivity," they argue, not "activity" that Congress can regulate.

Judge Vinson, who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan, signaled he saw the requirement as unprecedented and a potential imposition on Americans' individual liberties. The case is one of some two dozen federal lawsuits that are ultimately expected to be decided by the Supreme Court.

"It would be a giant leap for the Supreme Court to say that a decision to buy or not to buy is tantamount to activity," Judge Vinson told the court.............

"If they decide that everyone needs to eat broccoli," then the commerce clause could allow Congress to require everyone to buy a certain quantity of broccoli, the judge said.

Liberals are already trying to tell you what not to eat. It would not be a huge move for them to start telling people what to eat and mandating people that they do it. A lawyer for the administration tried to dismiss the judge’s broccoli comparison, but as Ed Morrissey points out, that comparison is more apt than he is willing to admit to:

The Department of Justice attorney representing the Obama administration argued that the food argument wasn’t relevant because at some point in time, everyone buys health care services. Everyone buys food, too, and this particular argument is not only relevant but also linked. Since diet is a part of health maintenance, setting this kind of precedent not only allows the federal government to issue a must-purchase order of broccoli (or vegetables in general), it will almost certainly result in the issuance of such mandates — followed by the inevitable subsidies. And as with the nanny-state ObamaCare bill, food-police advocates will insist that they are doing it to save public funds wasted on Americans who insist on
making occasional unhealthy choices in food.

That individual mandate is a slippery slope that the liberals will be more than willing to go down in the future, in order to turn this country into a full-blown nanny state. They feel like they know what is better for us and will make us behave, and if we don’t do what they want us to do, they will punish us with fines and/or jail time.

The other argument that ObamaCare will force states to expand their Medicaid programs seems to be a losing argument for the states, though. From what he has said, so far, he doubts that argument is valid because states can opt out of the Medicaid program.

Also, he has expressed his concern that once parts of this bill are implemented that it may be impossible to pull it all back:

Judge Vinson likened the law to a clock when taking one wheel away would prevent the whole from functioning. But he also acknowledged that peeling back certain pieces of the law would be tricky. Already in effect, he said, is a provision of that law that gives nursing mothers lactation areas inside the workplace. "How can you possibly undo some of these things?" he asked.

He’s exactly right, when he says that it would be very hard to pull back on some of these provisions in the bill, and that is exactly why we need to stop this monstrosity before it goes too far. It needs to be repealed and they need to start anew.

Boehner Pledges That Repeal of ObamaCare Will Be One of First Votes of New House

The future Speaker of the House John Boehner made a pledge in a tweet in response to the combination of the factors: the "individual mandate" provision being declared uncontitutional in a Virginia court and a new poll from ABC that shows an all-time low of support for ObamaCare and that 60% of those polled favored repealing, at least, part of the bill:

Republicans will fight to repeal this job-killing health care law, will be one of the first votes of new majority #pledge #hcrcostsjobs

He, later on, elaborated on that in a released statement:

“Today’s decision is an encouraging sign for families and small business owners who have revolted against President Obama’s job-killing health care law and called for its repeal.  Instead of appealing this decision, the Obama Administration should work with Congress to repeal this job-killing health care law so we can replace it with reforms that lower costs and protect jobs.  This would be the easiest way to keep ObamaCare from costing our economy more jobs.  Republicans have made a pledge to America to repeal this job-killing health care law, and that’s what we’re going to do.

“The individual mandate at the heart of ObamaCare puts the federal government in the business of forcing you to buy health insurance and taxing you if you don’t.  This is unwise, unaffordable, and as we have argued all along, unconstitutional.  If Washington thinks it can get away with this kind of power grab, it will think it can do anything.  Cash-strapped states should carefully weigh the benefits of investing time and resources in ObamaCare’s implementation now that its central mandate has been ruled unconstitutional.”

This would have some chance in the House with the new majority, but the Senate would be much tougher with the Democrats still being in control. However, it is all moot because there is no way that Obama would admit failure and repeal his most significant legislative victory to date. So, this would, ultimately, be an exercise in futility. He's just doing this to restate their official stance on the bill. What is more likely is that they'll focus more on defunding the bill rather than repealing it, for now.

Virginia Judge Declares "Individual Mandate" Clause of ObamaCare Unconstitutional

ObamaCare was dealt a huge blow today by a court ruling in Virginia that declared the provision that will make it mandatory for all Americans to get some sort of health insurance unconstitutional:

A federal judge in Virginia has ruled parts of the sweeping health care reform effort led by President Obama to be unconstitutional.

This is the first federal court to strike down the law, contradicting other recent rulings the law was permissible. The key issue of contention was the “individual mandate” requirement that most Americans purchase health insurance by 2014.

The case is Virginia v. Sebelius.

This could cut the legs off of ObamaCare. They are counting on the new taxes on health insurance that would be coming in to pay for the government insurance. Without those new taxes, then, insuring the uninsured would be unsustainable and would virtually take down the whole ObamaCare program in the process.

However, this is not even close to being over. The US District Court followed by the Supreme Court will have their say on the issue within the next few months.

More Unintended Consequences of ObamaCare: Children’s Hospitals Lose Drug Discounts, Will See Costs Skyrocket

ObamaCare strikes again, and once again, it is the children that is suffering the most:

Shockingly, The New York Times is, apparantly, perplexed as to the reason why this is happening (bold emphasis is mine):

In an unintended consequence of the new health care law, drug companies have begun notifying children’s hospitals around the country that they no longer qualify for large discounts on drugs used to treat rare medical conditions.
As a result, prices are going up for these specialized “orphan drugs,” some of which are also used to treat more common conditions.

Over the last 18 years, Congress has required drug manufacturers to provide discounts to a variety of health care providers, including community health centers, AIDS clinics and hospitals that care for large numbers of low-income people.

Several years ago, Congress broadened the program to include children’s hospitals. But this year Congress, in revising the drug discount program as part of the new health care law, blocked these hospitals from continuing to receive price cuts on orphan drugs intended for treatment of diseases affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the United States.

THE REASON BEHIND THE CHANGE IS MURKY, though some drug makers had opposed expansion of the drug discount program. The discounts typically range from 30 percent to 50 percent, and children’s hospitals say the change is costing them hundreds of millions of dollars.

Under the new law, hundreds of rural hospitals became eligible for discounts for the first time, but the discounts are not available on orphan drugs, which account for a surprisingly large share of their outpatient pharmacy costs. At the same time, children’s hospitals lost access to discounts on the drugs.

Officials at some of these children’s hospitals are worried about how this will affect their sickest and helpless patients:

Joshua D. Greenberg, vice president of Children’s Hospital Boston, said that loss of the discounts “jeopardizes our ability to care for some of the sickest children with the most complex health care needs.”

Towards the end of the article they let us peek behind the curtain to allow us to see what this is all really leading to:

Drug companies said that the discount program was intended to help hospitals care for the uninsured, and that this need would diminish as millions of the uninsured gained coverage under Mr. Obama’s health care overhaul.

So, they are going to take away these drugs in order for the taxpayers to pay for it, once ObamaCare starts. Won’t people be grateful that the government came through and saved us from all of these high drug prices? Whether this is what was inteded or not, It will make those that would be covered by ObamaCare feel more reliant on ObamaCare, in extension the federal government, than they really are.

Daily Caller: Is ObamaCare Biased Against Men?

Daily Caller has reported that it seems that ObamaCare favors the fairer sex, when it comes to the kind of health care that they cover. Say it ain’t so:

Of the many new boards, agencies, and programs the law creates, those implemented for the benefit of women are among the most common, a fact some say renders the law inherently unequal.

There are at least 7 new agencies and departments devoted solely to women while there is not one office for men or male specific ailments.

Men’s health advocates long have pushed for an Office of Men’s Health to act as a companion to the Office on Women’s Health, established in 1991. Instead of rectifying that disparity, the new health care law intensified it.

Diana Furchtgott-Roth, a senior fellow at Hudson Institute, has been critical of Obama’s gender policies, charging that his administration has pushed initiatives that favor women over men. According to Roth, the health care bill was no different.

I’m not a medical expert. So, I’m not sure what the ratio should be, but 7-0 seems to be a bit uneven. I believe that women should have more devoted to them because the medical issues that affect women only do outnumber men, but there are quite a few diseases and other medical issues that men have to worry about, too. So, the number should be far from zero.

Why would they be so blatent in their preference for women? Political expedience, of course:

“[The women’s] lobby is very well funded, active and vocal. It is really paradoxical because women in many ways are doing better than men, so for example, if you do a search in the health care bill there is not one mention of ‘prostate’ and are over 40 mentions of ‘breast’ and men are tax payers, they should get equal health treatment,” Roth told The Daily Caller.

Hadley Heath, health care policy analyst at the Independent Women’s Forum, said that women got more consideration because it was politically expedient.

“Women came out big in 2008, and they were a very big voting bloc for [Obama],” Heath told TheDC. “Women as voters really care about health care, health reform because we often make decisions for ourselves, our families and dependents about health care. So clearly this is an issue that is important to women, women are important as voters to any politician.

This disreprency would have a huge affect on the quality of care for men in this country:

Roth stressed that the high number of women’s agencies and lack of corresponding men’s offices was not just a symbolic display of inequality, but one that would have real world repercussions, namely in the distribution of research funding.

“What is interesting is that all these offices for women in the health care bill, that generates grants for research of women’s health issues,” Roth said. “So it is not just that they have those offices, but those offices are accompanied by pots of money for research. So it means that they are skewing the research in favor of women over men.”

The big research grants and the best scientists are most often going to go where the money is. As a result of all of the new agencies that will be created, much more money from the government will be funnelled into these programs that are for women only. Therefore, since these programs will have a huge budget to work with, more cures and new treatments will be discovered for women rather than men. In the short and long run, this would greatly diminish the quality of care for half of Americans.

Six "Gems" From Deficit Commission Including: ObamaCare Savings a Myth, Millions Government Workers Have Privatized Social Security, ETC

The deficit commission that was just released has quite a few goodies in it. AOL’s John Merline wrote about his six favorites in his op-ed, today:

1) The federal government is horribly managed. (I hope that this doesn’t come as a shock to anyone.)

2) Health reform's cost savings apparently were bogus.-(Imagine that.)

3) Millions of workers don't pay into Social Security.-(Apparently, certain government workers can opt-out of the federal social security and privatize it, but the rest of America can’t. What’s wrong with that picture?)

4) The tax code is a hopeless, loophole-riddled mess. (That is why the rich don’t pay as much into the system as they’re supposed to pay. If you can afford a legion of lawyers and accountants, you can pay very little taxes, too. The loopholes should be filled before we should even entertain the idea of raising the tax rate.)

5) Obama is a big spender.(Again, I hope that this doesn’t come as a shock to anyone.)

6) It's actually not that hard to cut the deficit.(Not hard, unless you consider getting the left admit that they were wrong all along and go with what’s ultimately necessary hard.)

Here’s what he had to say about those six “gems”:

1) The federal government is horribly managed. The commission report cites just a few examples, but they are doozies. Did you know, for example, that there are 44 separate federal job-training programs across nine federal agencies? Or that there are 20 different programs all studying invasive species? And 105 programs meant to encourage participation in science, technology and math? Or that few of them can show they are achieving their goals? There are thousands of examples like this, according to the report.

2) Health reform's cost savings apparently were bogus. Remember how Democrats boasted that health reform would cut the budget deficit by $170 billion over the next decade and far more after that? The deficit commission must not have gotten that memo. It says health spending projections under the new law "count on large phantom savings" and the reform law's new long-term care program that the report calls "unsustainable." As a result, Congress will still need to enact "a number of other reforms to reduce federal health spending and slow the growth of health care costs more broadly."

3) Millions of workers don't pay into Social Security. One of the reform ideas is to require newly hired state and local workers to start paying into Social Security. Wait? Isn't Social Security mandatory? Turns out, almost 10 percent of workers don't pay in, since "a small share of states and localities exclude their employees from Social Security" and instead operate their own retirement systems. (Given Social Security's dire financial forecast, one wonders how those workers would feel about that reform.)

4) The tax code is a hopeless, loophole-riddled mess. How else can you explain the fact that, according to the report, you can lower the top marginal rate by 20 percent and still collect an additional $112,533 from the richest 1 percent of taxpayers, simply by closing loopholes?

5) Obama is a big spender. Although President Barack Obama has talked about fiscal discipline -- and set up this deficit commission -- his own budget plan would spend $350 billion more on so-called discretionary programs over the next decade than if the government were just left on autopilot, according to the report.

6) It's actually not that hard to cut the deficit. The report talks loudly about the "painful" choices ahead and how there's "no easy way out." But what the report really shows is that a comprehensive package of relatively modest and reasonable policy changes can bring deficits under control.

This was an all-too rare moment from a government commission. Too bad that it confirms and brings to light all of the conservatives assertions about Obama and the Democrats’ ill-advised policies.

I, also, loved what Nick Gillespie had to say regarding the tax issue. He had some good insight into the debate:

It's a simple, plain, and nearly universally unacknowledged fact that the feds haven't been able to raise revenue much past the 19 percent of GDP bar for any period of time since World War II. Doesn't matter the the top marginal rate is, or the bottom, or nothing. The government is going to pull in just under 19 percent maximum. Some years it might be a bit higher and some a bit lower, but it ain't budging over the long haul (defined as the last 60 or so years). That is the limit of what we can spend if we want to have a balanced budget. Obama's own budget projections have the feds spending more than 22 percent of GDP each year over the next decade. You do the math….

We are in debt because we spend too much, not because we make too little as a country. Let's say it again, this time in bold (I have to unbold): We are in debt because we spend too much, not because we make too little as a country.

Fareed Zakaria, who surely makes well north of $250,000 a year, is welcome to give all his income to a government that has only managed a nominally balanced budget a handful of times since we beat the Axis powers.

But can he have the generosity not to include the rest of us who make far south of a quarter-mil a year in his delusion that higher taxes will mean smaller deficits?

Like Paul Ryan said, “We don’t have a revenue problem. We have a spending problem.” Our government has to learn to live within its means just like their constituents.



H/T to Ed Morrissey.

ObamaCare Claims Another Victim: SEIU Will Stop Covering Children of Over 30K Low-Income Workers

As a result of the passing of ObamaCare, new requirements on healthcare has claimed another victim. The SEIU, one of the largest unions in the US, said that it will stop covering the children of over 30,000 low-income workers:

One of the largest union-administered health-insurance funds in New York is dropping coverage for the children of more than 30,000 low-wage home attendants, union officials said. The union blamed financial problems it said were caused by the state’s health department and new national health-insurance requirements.

The fund is administered by 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union. Union officials said the state compelled the fund to start buying coverage from a third party, which increased premiums by 60%. State health officials denied forcing the union fund to make the switch, saying the fund had been struggling financially even before the switch to third-party coverage.

The fund informed its members late last month that their dependents will no longer be covered as of Jan. 1, 2011. Currently about 6,000 children are covered by the benefit fund, some until age 23..................

“In addition, new federal health-care reform legislation requires plans with dependent coverage to expand that coverage up to age 26,” Behroozi wrote in a letter to members Oct. 22. “Our limited resources are already stretched as far as possible, and meeting this new requirement would be financially impossible.”

Of course, the SEIU is asking more money from the government to bail them out of paying for the increase in health costs brought about by the ObamaCare plan that they champIoned and pushed on an unwilling public:

“We hope the state of New York will do the right thing and provide the funding necessary for this most vulnerable population of direct caregivers,” the union said in a statement.

Dear SEIU union boss and thugs,

Sorry, but the state of New York can't afford even more debt. If you want to lower costs to your childrens' healthcare, please join us in pushing for a repeal of the abomination of ObamaCare.

Love,
The Majority of American People

It Begins: Key Democrat Seeks to Repeal Part of ObamaCare

So it begins: Sen. Max Baucus is seeking to pass a bill that would take out a provision in ObamaCare that would force small businesses to report "payments to and purchases from any business totaling more than $600":

A key Senate Democrat announced Friday that he would introduce legislation to repeal a provision in the recently-passed health care reform law that would eliminate an overly-burdensome reporting requirement for small businesses that might have left many drowning in paperwork.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., released a statement saying, "I have heard small businesses loud and clear and I am responding to their concerns."

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) contains a provision designed to raise revenue without raising tax rates, that would, beginning in 2012, require all businesses to report payments to and purchases from any business totaling more than $600 in a calendar year, regardless of what the money was used to purchase.

The Baucus legislation would strip the requirement from the bill entirely, but it will also leave a major hole from the revenue lost. The nonpartisan Joint Tax Committee estimated that $19 billion could be expected over 10 years.

Small business owners and their advocate groups have canvassed Capitol Hill for months decrying the provision which was designed to reduce the sizable "tax gap" between what individuals and businesses owe the IRS and what they actually end up paying. The IRS estimates that the government loses more than $300 billion each year from noncompliance.

But Baucus said small businesses "need to focus their efforts on creating good-paying jobs - not filing paperwork."

I love the last line from Baucus. It hits straight to the heart of the problem with that provision.

It will be interesting to see if this gets passed. If it does, it'll open the door for the Republicans to pass similar legislation next year that will further gut out more provisions out of the bill, in an effort to neuter the bill.

AARP: Thank You For Your Support of Us and OCare & By The Way We're Raising Your Healthcare 8-13% Because of OCare

The AARP rewarded their employees for their support of them and Obamacare by raising their healthcare 8-13% due to a rise in medical costs due to…you guessed it…Obamacare:

WASHINGTON – AARP's endorsement helped secure passage of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul. Now the seniors' lobby is telling its employees their insurance costs will rise partly as a result of the law.

In an e-mail to employees, AARP says health care premiums will increase by 8 percent to 13 percent next year because of rapidly rising medical costs.

And AARP adds that it's changing copayments and deductibles to avoid a 40 percent tax on high-cost health plans that takes effect in 2018 under the law. Aerospace giant Boeing also has cited the tax in asking its workers to pay more. Shifting costs to employees lowers the value of a health care plan and acts like an escape hatch from the tax.

"Most plan co-pays and deductibles have been modified," Jennifer Hodges, AARP's director of compensation and benefits, wrote employees in an Oct. 25 e-mail. "Plan value changes were necessary not only from a cost management standpoint but also to ensure that AARP's plans fall below the threshold for high-cost group plans under health care reform."

AARP officials said medical inflation is the main reason employee costs will be going up. The health care law is "a small part," said David Certner, legislative affairs director.

Those in the AARP and seniors in general were very skeptical of the healthcare overhaul, especially regarding a potential rise in medical costs, when it was being debated earlier this year, but the AARP leaders told them not to worry. Now, just a few short months since it was passed, those skeptics have been proven right.
Here’s a link to a video where AARP reps were trying to convince their dues-paying members, at a convention in Dallas, that Obamacare is A-OK. As you can imagine, things did not go well.

Pelosi to College Graduates: Don't Worry About Healthcare Anymore Because We Passed ObamaCare

In an interview done in front of a graduating class of college students at a small women's college in California, yesterday, Pelosi doubled down on her previous statement that people should not have to worry about quitting their jobs to "pursue their passions" because Uncle Sam will take care of them, if they get sick. Now, she tells the Mills College's Class of 2010 that they don't have to worry about the cost of their family's healthcare because she's taking care of it:

(Healthcare reform)'s urgent for many reasons, one of which I said in the speech: it frees us up to be entrepreneurial, to take risks without worrying about the health of our children being affected by our personal decisions to pursue our passions. It's important in terms of our competitiveness internationally. If you're talking about competing with countries in the industrialized, developed world, they don't have healthcare costs. Their societies have that as a priority. Here, we won't have the same kind of healthcare availability because it's still a private sector initiative. But that's O.K. because it's facilitated to be made more affordable in a public way. So it is important now A): because it is long over due; B): it makes us more competitive; C): makes us a healthier and therefore stronger nation and it is specially important to women at this time because women are by and large the caregivers and they are going to inherit that role, it's important that healthcare be as accessible and affordable as possible. I'm very, very proud of it, it was very hard to do, it would not have happened without President Obama, but I never, never once thought that it wouldn't happen.

This comes off the heels of the story coming out Canada, the country who currently has a model of socialized healthcare that most closely resembles what ObamCare will look like, that the government is worried about how the current system will be able to pay for the increasing costs of taking care of their ever-aging population:

In some ways the Canadian debate is the mirror image of discussions going on in the United States.

Canada, fretting over budget strains, wants to prune its system, while the United States, worrying about an army of uninsured, aims to create a state-backed safety net.

Healthcare in Canada is delivered through a publicly funded system, which covers all "medically necessary" hospital and physician care and curbs the role of private medicine. It ate up about 40 percent of provincial budgets, or some C$183 billion ($174 billion) last year.

Spending has been rising 6 percent a year under a deal that added C$41.3 billion of federal funding over 10 years.

But that deal ends in 2013, and the federal government is unlikely to be as generous in future, especially for one-off projects.

"As Ottawa looks to repair its budget balance ... one could see these one-time allocations to specific health projects might be curtailed," said Mary Webb, senior economist at Scotia Capital.

Basically, the two main changes that they seem to be contemplating are new and/or raising taxes, of course, and "curtailing" their coverage of certain procedures that they don't deem "medically necessary" like leg, hip, and cataract surgeries. In fact, they're looking back to the private health industry to take care of those procedures. These don't seem like surgeries that anyone would feel is elective.

This is the road that we are about to embark on our way to socialized healthcare. It will only be a matter of time before our government will have to raise our taxes or cut corners on our healthcare, so they can attempt to make ObamaCare solvent.

So, don't worry about your healthcare, unless you have a broken hip, cataracts, or any other condition that Uncle Sam might possibly deem "medically unnecessary" in the future, because Aunt Pelosi's has you covered.

As a final insight, I'd like to point out that: it seems to me that the medical procedures that they are the most willing to call elective are most often the ones that are supposed to take care of ailments that plague our seniors, ie broken hips and cataracts. I'm just saying. Coincidence?!?

Pelosi to Artisans: Don't Worry About Working Ever. Taxpayers Will Take Care of Your Healthcare

I QUIT:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said this week that thanks to the new health-care reform law, musicians and other creative types could quit their jobs and focus on developing their talents because taxpayers would fund their health care coverage.

“We see it as an entrepreneurial bill,” Pelosi said, “a bill that says to someone, if you want to be creative and be a musician or whatever, you can leave your work, focus on your talent, your skill, your passion, your aspirations because you will have health care.”

That's great! Let us encourage all of our "artists" to quit their job and stop contributing to our economy. After all, it is those starving artists that make this economy go.

Hell, isn't blogging a form of art? Aren't I painting my masterpiece of the written word, right now? Maybe I should quit my job and blog all day long. I'll get food stamps and rent assistance. I won't have to work another day at that damn place ever again.

If people received this kind of assistance just because they claim to be an artist, there would be no stopping people who would not ordinarily care one hoot about painting, playing an instrument, or whatever to live off of the taxpayers just because they say that they are an artist. The potential for fraud would be enormous. Would potential recipients have to show some sort of proof of their status as an artisan? If so, what kind of proof would they have to give? Wouldn't any sort of "proof" be easily forged or manipulated to make them seem like they are something that they arenot??

This statement is so asinine that I cannot fathom why she said it. Does she actually believe that most Americans would agree with her? I guess her ultra-liberal, elitist base loved it, but the great majority of Americans wouldn't agree with it at all. I wish Rasmussen would poll people on whether they think that ObamaCare should be used for those "artists" who can work but quit their jobs in order to "focus on developing their talents". My guess is not too many.

Gibbs Does Alot of Assuming About Obamacare

The White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, made some very interesting assumptions about Obamacare:

“We're one vote away from getting health care reform,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said. “We think it's good policy…The President has said we should be realistic about what our assumptions are, but also assume -- if we're going to propose something, I don't think it makes much sense to not assume that it should be in the budget.”

The first problem with that is the legislation has stalled especially in the Senate. Harry Reid says that there's "no rush" to pass the bill. Why is there no rush? Well, it's probably because Democrats that are up for re-election this year, like Blanche Lincoln (AR), Russ Feingold (WI),and Reid himself, are getting walloped by their constituents at home, especially in traditionally red states. Even those not up for re-election this year, Mary Landrieu and Ben Nelson, are feeling the heat for their votes. Not to mention that people have lost faith in the bill.

Let's get to what he was main aspect of the budget that he was referring to in that statement:

President Obama’s budget projects $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction over the next decade – some of which comes from health care reform legislation.

“We took a very simple approach,” said Office of Management and Budget director Peter Orszag. “Since both the House and Senate had passed legislation, we took the average of the two” using numbers from the Congressional Budget Office.

That means the administration is counting on $150 billion in deficit reduction from a health care reform bill that is -- for now -- stalled in Congress with no clear path forward.

Basically, Obama is taking credit for an alleged reduction in the deficit that most likely won't happen. This type of misinformation is what has become all too typical from this Administration. In reality, he is a spendthrift not a deficit hawk. He trying perform a magic trick that David Copperfield wouldn't dare to try: making the American people believe that he's worried about the deficit.

Bad Timing or Another Cornhusker Kickback for Ben Nelson's Support for Obamacare

There has been another questionable money transfer given to Nebraska power structure. This time was received by Nebraska Democratic Party from the Democratic National Party only four days after Sen. Nelson's "yes" vote for the Senate's healthcare reform bill:

ABC News' Jonathan Karl reports: The timing doesn't look good. Four days after Sen. Ben Nelson voted in favor of the Senate health care reform bill, the Democratic National Committee cut a $459,000 check to the Nebraska Democratic Party, which was promptly used to tout Nelson’s "courageous" vote. Three days later, the DNC sent the Nebraska party another $20,000.


The transfer is noted in the last FEC filings and was first noticed by the left-leaning Americablog, which says the payment looks like a "payoff": “I'm sure a lot of Democratic candidates running in 2010 would appreciate that kind of spending on their behalf, too. Nelson, however, isn't up for reelection until 2012, so why get the money now, only four days after Nelson voted for the weakened health care bill?”

The DNC says this was not a payoff; it was an effort to defend Nelson in the face of unrelenting attacks by critics of health care reform.

“We, the Democratic Party, were defending a Democratic senator from attacks from the health insurance industry and other special interests for his support of reform. Senator Nelson is not the first Democrat we have defended from these attacks and he will not be the last. We've spent money directly in support of House Democrats who have supported reform in the form of TV and radio ads and we've also worked with state parties to defend Democrats like Senators Nelson, Lincoln and Dorgan who have stood up to the insurance industry in support of reform,” said DNC spokesman Hari Sevugan.

The DNC gives money to every state's parties at one time or another. So, having the national party give a state's party money is not odd. It is the timing that makes this very suspicious. This didn't happen a month after the vote or 6 months, or even a year. It was four freaking days. The only thing that might make it seem unrelated is the fact that Nelson is not up for re-election until 2012. Still, the coincidental timing is too much to ignore.

Most Transparent Congress Evah Strikes Again: Liberal Democrats Hold Secret Meetings to Negotiate HCR Compromise

Pelosi made the promise, after the Democrats won a heavy majority in the House, that this would be "the most transparent" Congress of all time. Since then, Congress has been everything but transparent or post-partisan. In fact, things seem to have become worse.

Now, Pelosi and other liberal Democrats aren't just keeping the Republicans in the dark. They are keeping the more fiscally and socially conservative members of their own party from the negotiating table:

Despite their claims to the contrary, the way that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have handled the healthcare bill has been anything but transparent. And, if the left-wing blogosphere is to be believed, the two congressional leaders intend to keep the deliberations secret as they try to merge the House and Senate versions of the legislation into something that will pass both chambers.

The Talking Points Memo website reported Monday that Democrats in both the House and Senate are saying the process will likely follow the path of the House taking up the Senate-passed legislation, amending it and sending it back to the Senate, which will have to pass it again. "This process cuts out the Republicans," a House Democratic aide told TPM, indicating the congressional majority intended to make sure the Republican minority would "not have a motion to recommit opportunity."

It also, say those who are following the issue, allows Pelosi to avoid having to cut deals with problematic House Democrats like Michigan's Bart Stupak, who has promised to do what he can to scuttle the final bill if it provides for federal funding of abortions.

Henry Waxman, the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, is saying much the same thing, according to David Dayen at FireDogLake, another prominent left-wing website.

Dayen reported that the powerful California Democrat told constituents he would be coming back to Washington Tuesday to begin negotiations with Senate leaders and the White House about what a final healthcare bill will look like—even though the House doesn't come back into session until January 12.

According to Waxman, the process for moving will not include the standard House/Senate conference committee, because the motions to select and instruct conferees in the Senate "would need 60 votes all over again." Instead, whatever agreements made could be packaged in an amendment to the bills passed by the House and Senate.

By blocking out the Republicans—not to mention House Democrats who object to what the Senate passed—Pelosi and Reid are setting up a protracted game of "ping-pong," in which the legislation goes back and forth from the Senate to the House and back to the Senate again. They may be able to prevail as far as the legislation goes, ultimately, but at enormous cost to their majorities. And that may be the biggest secret of all as far as the healthcare debate is concerned, or at least the one Pelosi and Reid are most concerned about.

Now, I don't really have any problem with this game of "ping-pong" that Pelosi and Reid are playing. It'll, hopefully, keep this monstrous bill from becoming law. Then, we can start over and create a bill that'll really make health care more affordable and available without having a negative effect on the quality of that care or "bankrupting" the country.

Shocker: Obama Administration's HHS Report: Senate HCR Bill Would Accelerate Rising Costs, Reduce Medicare

There is more bad news about the Senate's health care reform bill. This time it's coming out of Obama's own Department of Health and Human Services:

Dealing an unexpected blow to Senate Democrat's health care bill, administration economists on Friday predicted the overhaul would accelerate rising costs of health insurance and medical services, and that its proposed Medicare cuts could reduce care for senior citizens.

A report by analysts at the Health and Human Services Department said the bill would increase the nation's annual spending on health care beyond the current $2.5 trillion at a slightly faster rate than if Congress did nothing. It concluded that new taxes on drugs, medical devices and health insurance plans would trigger higher insurance premiums for consumers.

Don't worry. It gets worse:

The report also said the Democrats' plan to pay for about half of the $1 trillion bill with Medicare cuts "may be unrealistic" and could undermine the Medicare program, warning the bill could force out of business one in five hospitals, nursing homes and home care providers.

Great! In a time of over 10% unemployment and a fragile economy, the Democrats want to pass a bill that will kill one-fifth of one-sixth (3%) of the overall US economy.

The report was prepared by the chief actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which specializes in long-range cost evaluations for Medicare. It analyzed the total public and private cost of the health care bill over the next 10 years, in contrast to earlier studies by the Congressional Budget Office that said the measure would minimally lower the record-setting federal deficit over the decade.

The effects plan will have catastrophic consequences for our Medicare system and the quality of care for our senior citizens:

Perhaps the most startling revelation in the report, however, was an assessment that cuts to the Medicare program could undermine it.

"Providers for whom Medicare constitutes a substantive portion of their business could find it difficult to remain profitable," the report said. "Absent legislative intervention, [physicians] might end their participation in the program, possibly jeopardizing access to care for beneficiaries."

Of course, Republicans jumped all over this report:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, said the bill got a "failing grade." He said the report, coupled with a CNN poll on Friday that showed 61 percent of Americans oppose the health care bill, was a seminal moment in the debate.

"How much more do we need to hear before we stop this bill and start over?" Mr. McConnell said.

While the report claims that the bill will marginally reduce the deficit and insure many more Americans, it, also, concedes that it will cripple Medicare and kill one-fifth of one-sixth (3%) of the entire US economy by forcing many hospitals, clinics, etc to close. The closures will throw many doctors, nurses, pharmacists into the unemployment line and cause longer wait times as a result of a lack of qualified medical centers and professionals.

This doesn't seem like progress. We would just be exchanging one crisis with another. Then again, it is Rahmbo's motto to never waste a good crisis. Maybe, it is what they want.

McCain: What's In Senate HCR Bill?||Durbin (D): Your Guess Is As Good As Mine

According to Dick Durbin, the he's "in the dark" about what the Senate compromise entails just as much as the rest of America:

The 10 Democratic senators who crafted a healthcare compromise are keeping its details a secret, says Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said Friday.

Responding to a complaint by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) that Republicans haven't been told what's in the new bill, Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, responded that he's in the same position.

I would say to the senator from Arizona that I'm in the dark almost as much as he is. And I'm in the leadership, Durbin said on the Senate floor.

Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has submitted the bill to the CBO from scoring, but Durbin said no one involved in the compromise will spill the beans until the score is released.

It makes me wonder what Reid is so afraid of that he won't release it. It couldn't have anything to with his own tanking numbers in Nevada. Could it?