Obama Gets Busted on Mythbusters!

Here's where ReasonTV got their sources

New study shows ObamaCare subsidies potentially five times higher in first year than predicted

(Via Ed Morrissey)

In passing ObamaCare, Democrats argued that it would provide a net relief to the budget deficit in its balance of new taxes and fees, drastic cuts to Medicare Advantage, and the subsidies it would provide to Americans making $88,000 a year or less.  A new study commissioned by Families USA, a group that supports ObamaCare, shows that the Democrats and the CBO badly miscalculated the level of subsidies provided.  In the first year (2014), 28 million Americans would have eligibility for more than $110 billion, outstripping the Congressional/CBO estimate by almost 600%:

Families USA commissioned The Lewin Group to use its economic models to estimate how many individuals would benefit from the new premium tax credits in 2014 and the value of the dollars going to help pay for insurance (see the Methodology on page 12 for more details). We found that an estimated 28.6 million Americans will be eligible for the tax credits in 2014, and that the total value of the tax credits that year will be $110.1 billion.


The new tax credits will provide much-needed assistance to insured individuals and families who struggle harder each year to pay rising premiums, as well as to uninsured individuals and families who need help purchasing coverage that otherwise would be completely out of reach financially. Most of the families who will be eligible for the tax credits will be employed, many for small businesses, and will have incomes between two and four times poverty (between $44,100 and $88,200 for a family of four based on 2010 poverty guidelines). However, because the size of the tax credits will be determined on a sliding scale based on income, those with the lowest incomes will receive the largest tax credit, which will ensure that the assistance is targeted to those who need it the most.

That conflicts with the final CBO estimate that Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats used to argue for ObamaCare.  In his presentation to Congress, CBO director Douglas Elmendorf predicted a cost of only $20 billion on health-exchange subsidies and associated costs.  The Lewin Group, which conducted the study for Families USA, shows that four times as many people will become eligible for subsidies in 2014 than the CBO predicted in March and that the cost will be 550% higher as a result (page 4 of the linked study):
 
•„„ Nationally, approximately 28.6 million Americans will be eligible for these new premium tax credits in 2014 (see Table 1).„

•„ People in working families—those with annual incomes at or above 200 percent of the federal poverty level ($44,100 for a family of four in 2010)—will constitute nearly twothirds(65.6 percent) of the people who will be eligible for a premium tax credit (seeTable 1a).

Morgen at Verum Serum discovered the wide discrepancy and notes that the study wasn’t intended to argue against ObamaCare:
 
The Lewin Group study was commissioned by Families USA, a healthcare reform advocacy group based out of Washington D.C. which is closely allied with the White House and leading Democrats in Congress. Then Senator Obama was a keynote speaker at their annual Health Action conference in 2005 and 2007, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi opened the 2008 event. Other leading Democrats who have participated at Families USA events in recent years include Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and Ted Kennedy.

The study appears to be the centerpiece of a major media campaign initiated last month by Families USA to promote the benefits of the health reform legislation. A September 14 press release touts the projected $110 billion in federal subsidies as “one of the largest middle-income tax cuts in history”, but makes no mention of the discrepancy with the CBO’s earlier estimate.
Families USA also published state-by-state estimates by the Lewin Group of the number of people eligible to receive these subsidies and the associated costs. Numerous local media outlets around the country have reported on these figures over the past few weeks.
The CBO’s projection that the healthcare reform bill would reduce the deficit by an estimated $143 billion over 10 years was a critical factor in the enactment of the bill. Democrats lost their super-majority in the Senate in January 2010 when Scott Brown was elected in Massachusetts, and ultimately passed the bill in March only through the use of procedural tactics, and without a single Republican vote in the House or Senate.
The claim that the bill will reduce the deficit continues to be a leading selling point for proponents of reform. Just last month Families USA repeated this claim in a press release criticizing opponents of the legislation. But if the latest Lewin Group estimate is correct the initial 10-year cost of the bill will be significantly higher than what was forecast by the CBO, and would begin adding to the federal deficit as early as 2015.

Morgen also contacted Families USA to get an explanation of the difference, and was told that he made an “apples to oranges” comparison. Why? This survey, they explained, showed how many people would be eligible, while the CBO predicted how many people would actually take advantage of their eligibility for tax credits. This is an odd distinction to make, since the entire idea of the subsidies is to encourage uninsured Americans to buy health insurance through both mandates and generous subsidies. How likely will it be that people will pass on the notion of getting big tax credits to subsidize must-issue health insurance? And if the success rate in applying mandates, higher taxes, and more government authority to the 270 million Americans who are already insured is only 20-25% in getting the other 30 million insured, how is that at all successful?


The deficit projection given by Democrats was apparently based on 75% failure rates to get people into the system; their advocates are busy touting the massive amounts of subsidies in the program that will tip ObamaCare into a deficit exploder in Year 2. Either way this goes, it’s a massive failure.

Another "Surprise": The cost curve bends UPWARDS due to Healthcare Reform

Recall the time when President Obama and many Democrats promised that Healthcare Reform would "bend the cost curve downward" and cease the rapid increases in costs?  The Wall Street Journal has an advance look at a report from the federal government that shows no slowing in costs to the government as a result of the Healthcare Reform bill. In fact, the analysis will show that the bill’s passage actually results in an increase in future costs over what had been projected for the next decade:

The health-care overhaul enacted last spring won’t significantly change national health spending over the next decade compared with projections before the law was passed, according to government figures set to be released Thursday.

The report by federal number-crunchers casts fresh doubt on Democrats’ argument that the health-care law would curb the sharp increase in costs over the long term, the second setback this week for one of the party’s biggest legislative achievements. …
Regardless of the health law, national health spending has been rising in recent years and economists expect that to continue. In February, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services projected that overall national health spending would increase an average of 6.1% a year over the next decade.
The center’s economists recalculated the numbers in light of the health bill and now project that the increase will average 6.3% a year, according to a report in the journal Health Affairs. Total U.S. health spending will reach $4.6 trillion by 2019, accounting for nearly one of every five U.S. dollars spent, the report says.
“The overall net impact is moderate,” said lead author Andrea Sisko, an economist at the Medicare agency. “The underlying impacts on coverage and financing are more pronounced.”

I present to you a chart directly from the Centers for Medicare &Medicaid Services; Health Affairs:
 

 
Earlier in the week, the Journal reported that insurers have already begun raising premiums in response to the front-loading of Healthcare Reform benefit mandates by the White House. That report sent Democrats into fits of anger, threatening to “ratchet up pressure” on insurers. Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA) blamed “greed” for price increases instead of the higher costs imposed by the mandates — all of which was the predicted consequence of adding more mandates and bureaucracy to insurance coverage.
 
I would like to hear the same Democrats attempt to explain once again how the higher costs in Healthcare Reform meets their promise of bending the cost curve downward. In addtion to this bit of news, it also consistently pushes the curve upwards for private insurance, and especially Medicaid. It only bends downward for Medicare and slightly downward for out-of-pocket costs for consumers. (Figures are on WSJ link above)
 
Medicare does look slightly better under Healthcare Reform due to the lower reimbursement rates for Medicare services, which means it comes out of the pockets of doctors. The predictable result will be fewer participating providers in Medicare, which will mean longer wait times, more difficulty in getting treatments, and most likely higher out-of-pocket payments as those consumers pay retail for their medical care more often.

Bye Bye Student Health Insurance, another victim in the wake of Healthcare Reform

After the University of North Carolina issues with health insurance, you'd think that colleges would be set with health coverage for their students. Well, due to a surprise in the new Healthcare bill: (via QandO)

Colleges and universities say that some rules in the new health law could keep them from offering low-cost, limited-benefit student insurance policies, and they’re seeking federal authority to continue offering them.

Their request drew immediate fire from critics, however, who say that student health plans should be held to the same standards that other insurance is.
Among other things, the colleges want clarification that they won’t have to offer the policies to non-students.
Without a number of changes, it may be impossible to continue to offer student health plans, says a letter that the American Council on Education sent Aug. 12 to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, signed by 12 other trade associations that represent colleges.
Additionally, the colleges say that some provisions of the law don’t apply to their policies, including those that require insurers to spend at least 80 percent of their revenue on medical care and that bar them from setting annual coverage caps.

Universities usually offer some form of health insurance to students, but those policies fit the needs of young adults, who generally don’t access the health care system nearly as much as older adults. They have smaller networks, as students generally stay within a small geographic area. Premiums are lower because of the low risk, but also because some comprehensive services don’t get fully covered, usually those accessed by people in middle age or older. In short, the policies are tailored to the clientele, which is why pricing can be more efficient.
 
With the new Healthcare Bill, policies can no longer be tailored to clientele, nor can consumers make choices that best fit their lives. All policies must look mainly alike, thanks to the top-down command “reforms” in Healthcare, which mandate coverages regardless of risk or need. So, a comprehensive policy designed to cover Americans in their 50s would be useless for just about anyone who attends college in their youth, and would be more expensive than they are likely to afford.
 
Universities can either offer policies that are so expensive that only a few can afford to buy them, which creates all sorts of problems in managing a risk pool, or they can simply get out of the health-insurance business altogether. Businesses have chosen to opt out thus far, so there's no reason to believe that the Universities wouldn't do the same.

Keeping up with the Promises From the Healthcare Debate

Not posting anything today, so I'll leave you something from the page of one of my trusted sources

Via (Ed Morrissey at Hotair)

Today, we welcome a guest post from Mary Katharine Ham of the Weekly Standard and Townhall’s political editor Guy Benson, bringing us up to date on the status of promises made in connection with ObamaCare.

Two years ago, Ed Morrissey and Allahpundit were kind enough to allow us to write here on “The Comprehensive Case Against Barack Obama” —a lengthy analysis pitting candidate Obama’s rhetoric against his actual record, past statements and long-time associations. We felt certain at the time, and still do, that his campaign was at its core a savvy marketing machine designed, in part, to deliberately mislead voters about the candidate’s true beliefs and experience. Revisiting our presentation two years later, we take no joy in saying that the administration has largely vindicated our concerns.

One of those concerns is health care reform. On March 21, after more than a year of contentious debate, Congressional Democrats finally passed their health care reform bill without a single Republican vote in either house. The president has challenged Republicans to run against his unpopular health care law—implying that they don’t have the political courage to do so. He may be right on that point; he may not—but the facts show that (a) many of the highest-profile selling points employed by the Left to drag Obamacare across the finish line were either incorrect or intentional distortions, (b) the consequences of not repealing this law are dire, and (c) the public’s enduring hostility toward Obamacare demonstrates a political appetite for repeal.

Recent polls reflect America’s zeal for repeal, as does an August ballot referendum in Missouri rebuking the individual mandate, which succeeded by a margin of 71-29. Throughout the lengthy public debate, President Obama and his surrogates consistently ridiculed and denounced critics of the bill as bad-faith, fear-mongering propaganda merchants.

The facts now prove there was plenty to fear in good faith.

Promise #1: If you are satisfied with your existing health care arrangement, you can keep it.

Over and over again, the president and his ideological allies assured Americans satisfied with their current plan/doctor/coverage that nothing would change if the bill became law:



He told the AMA: “If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period. If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what.”

Critics of the bill predicted this pledge would expire almost immediately. They were right. As government mandates for plans— “important consumer protections” as Obama called them— pile up, premiums will rise and the composition of even allegedly “grandfathered” plans will change.

A former Medicare/Medicaid official wrote that insurers and doctors are already shifting business models in anticipation of dramatic changes. CBS News featured a small business in Pennsylvania to demonstrate how provisions within Obamacare incentivize employers to drop their employee’s health coverage, and how other elements of the law discourage hiring—thus undermining the nation’s employment recovery. Companies with 25-49 workers are relatively unscathed by the new law, whereas businesses with 50 or more employees face stringent new mandates. Under this system, employers with, say 48 workers, would have compelling reasons to avoid hiring any more full-time workers.

Even more devastating, draft regulation guidelines issued by the federal government itself predict that between half and two-thirds of Americans’ current private plans will lose grandfathered (i.e., “protected”) status by 2013. As the Daily Caller reports, “for plans that do not fall under the grandfathered status, employers would have to find a plan that complies with the health care bill.” More than one million part-time and lower-wage workers are already feeling the squeeze, as popular “mini-med” affordable limited-benefit plans will be banned by the feds starting this fall.

And, if none of this worries you, keep in mind that the same Congress assuring you that no matter how much changes, your personal health care will remain the same may have accidentally stripped themselves of their own health care.

Bottom line: Despite what the president told us repeatedly, it’s quite possible you will not be permitted to keep your health care plan– no matter how much you may like it. Supporters of health care reform argue that government mandates for certain kinds of coverage will only change health care plans for the better, making them more comprehensive, so no one will be negatively impacted. This argument ignores the loss of both choice and money inflicted by government mandates, but even if it were true, that wasn’t the promise, was it?

Promise #2: Reform will lower America’s health care spending.

Remember all that talk about “bending the cost curve down”? Obamacare supporters often spoke about the urgent need to lower the country’s out-of-control spending on health care. They often cited statistics suggesting that the U.S. spent exorbitant amounts of money on care; far more than other industrialized nations. Obamacare, they told us, would finally bring spiraling costs under control.

On March 4, 2010, President Obama committed to the premise that, “My proposal will bring down the cost of health care for millions: Families, businesses, and the federal government.” Conservatives weren’t so sure. Hadn’t Congressional Budget Director Doug Elmendorf warned Congress that, if anything, the legislation would actually bend the cost curve up?

Approximately a month after the vote went through, a damning report prepared by the government’s very own Medicare Actuary exposed the truth: Obamacare will actually increase the nation’s health care tab. In the first ten years of the program, spending will increase about 1 percent or roughly $310 billion.

Bottom line: Obamacare supporters were wrong when they told the country the legislation would lower the nation’s health care costs. Ten years after its passage, health care will represent a larger percentage of GDP than the current projection.

Obamacare proponents like Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic argued that the uptick in spending over 10 years didn’t matter because the long-term trend does bend the curve down. But the Actuary’s report says the savings liberals are counting on in part to cause this long-term bend “may be unrealistic.”

Promise #3: Reform will lower Americans’ health care premiums.

People on all sides of the debate seemed to agree on one thing: Higher premiums were a major bummer. So, President Obama announced his plan would reduce them. The new health care market “will lower rates,” he said, “it’s estimated by up to 14 to 20 percent over what you’re currently getting.” During a stump speech in Cleveland, he went even further, claiming that premiums could fall by as much as 3,000 percent (a spokesman later clarified he meant $3,000). Gaffes aside, the message was rates would head south under Obamacare. But CBS, the Washington Post, and the CBO argued in 2009 that kind of reduction was unlikely.

Even early on in the public debate, opponents of the plan harbored serious doubts about this claim. Could the government really force insurance companies to lower premiums without risking a collapse of the private market? Federally mandated bargain-basement premium rates would inevitably lead to insurance companies cutting costs through layoffs, offering lower quality care, going bankrupt, or all the above. President Obama insisted that the demise of private insurance was no longer his or the Left’s long-term goal, going so far as to claim that his bill would actually strengthen the private market by opening it up to millions of new consumers. But the question remained: How would the government add patients, add mandates to health plans, and not raise costs to average Americans?

Were Congressional Democrats convinced by their own party’s talking point? Nope. Less than a month after their March triumph, Senate Democrats were so concerned over the prospect of dramatic premium hikes, they began scrambling to regulate premium rates. (Video of Harkin’s committee hearing is unavailable on CSPAN or YouTube, but it can be seen here, on the committee’s website.)

Democrats’ price-control bluster has only intensified as reality sets in. The original bill did not use explicit price-control mechanisms because, of course, premiums were supposed to fall because of the original bill. But the CBO and media fact-checkers agreed that higher premiums were likely on their way.

Obama himself conceded people might be paying more for health insurance before his bill passed, during a Blair House exchange with Sen. Lamar Alexander, but that it was only because they’d be getting better insurance. Politifact awarded the president a generous “Half-True” in this exchange, but added, “Bottom line, people won’t be paying more for the same thing. They’ll be paying more for better plans.” One can argue that paying more for more product is something worth doing, but one can’t argue it satisfies Obama’s promise.

In their defense, if only some real-life scenario had been available to Democrats to help them envision how top-down health insurance price controls would play out, may have made more responsible decisions. Oh, wait. If only there had been some trusted, liberal source who could have delivered the message— like an Edwards and Clinton speechwriter who can’t afford health care in a state with allegedly “universal” health care.

Bottom Line: Contrary to the president’s commitments, your premiums could increase under Obamacare. Why? Just count the reasons. Or ask Dick Durbin.



Promise #4: Obamacare will not lead to a doctor shortage, or escalate the primary-care physician shortfall.

Implicit in the president’s if-you-like-your-doctor-you-can-keep-him schitck was the assumption that his plan certainly wouldn’t negatively impact Americans’ access to doctors. The administration dismissed admonitions of the impending doctor shortage their bill would exacerbate. No worries, they cooed, primary care physicans would come out of the woodwork once all of the bill’s wonderful elements were implemented. After all, Obama had secured the backing of the AMA for his endeavor, right? What could go wrong? Quite a lot, actually.

As a result of the new law, the Associated Press advises Americans to “beat the crowd and find a doctor” because the “landmark health care overhaul…promises extra strain” on the already-dwindling ranks of primary care physicians. Inauspiciously, the Association of American Medical Colleges’ Center for Workforce Studies estimates a shortage of 160,000 doctors within 15 years. America’s medical schools “can’t keep up,” the Wall Street Journal reports. “A nurse may soon be your doctor” because of the shortage, explains USA Today.

Obamacare proponent Ezra Klein conceded this point in a post arguing against fears of a doctor shortage. He euphemized such a possibility as a “hiccup” in a growing system and predicted, “Increased need for basic care could lead to more use of nurse practitioners, physician’s assistants, and things like Minute Clinics.”

There’s also considerable evidence that Obamacare will overwhelm cramped emergency rooms and slammed hospitals. How might this deepening shortage affect Americans? Just ask a Canadian.

Bottom Line: Thanks to Obamacare, America’s doctor shortfall will accelerate and it will become more difficult to get quality, timely care from a doctor.

Promise #5: There will be no government rationing of medical care.

Democrats’ most furious pushback against anti-Obamacare arguments resulted from predictions of government-mandated rationing. The White House website’s “reality check” feature devotes two full pages to “debunking” so-called right-wing smears about rationing. The president himself assailed his opponents on this point.

Speaking in New Hampshire, he dismissed concerns over rationing, “that somehow some government bureaucrat out there will be saying, well, you can’t have this test or you can’t have this procedure because some bean-counter decides that this is not a good way to use our health care dollars.” Those fears, he said, were unfounded. “So I just want to be very clear about this. I recognize there is an underlying fear here that people somehow won’t get the care they need. You will have not only the care you need, but also the care that right now is being denied to you.”

What worried many skeptics was the equal clarity expressed by liberal Democrat and former cabinet secretary Robert Reich, who in 2007 candidly laid out the underlying need for government rationing within any government-run health care framework:



Does Secretary Reich fall under into the category of smear merchant? What about Obama’s own Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Peter Orszag? After his boss’ plan was signed into law, Orzag publicly marveled at the government’s new powers to hit “aggressive” health care cost-cutting goals—largely without the inconvenience of Congressional oversight. His unedited remarks belie the president’s words in New Hampshire:



In addition to Orszag’s remarks, consider President Obama’s appointment to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicare Services, arguably one of the most influential health care posts in the entire new federal bureaucracy. The president has selected Harvard professor Donald Berwick, who the American Spectator’s Philip Klein nicknamed “Obama’s rationing man.” Berwick is an unapologetic fan of Britain’s National Health Services, notorious for cutting effective (but expensive) medical treatments, and subjecting patients to sub-standard care and neglect.

“I am a romantic about the [British system]; I love it,” Berwick told a British audience in 2008. He also co-authored an academic paper urging “rational collective action overriding some individual self-interest” to “reduce per capita costs.”

The Obama administration gave Berwick a recess appointment in July, which means he will get no public hearing. The disingenuous rationale for this appointment was that Republicans were holding the nomination up, but as ABC News reported at the time, “Republicans were not delaying or stalling Berwick’s nomination. Indeed, they were eager for his hearing, hoping to assail Berwick’s past statements about health care rationing and his praise for the British health care system.”

It is precisely because the administration no longer wants to address what Obama once called a “legitimate concern” that Berwick will not have to face the Senate.

There was also that whole Guide to Death pamphlet issued by the VA— a joint venture of sorts with the Hemlock Society—which might have led to “legitimate concern” about bean-counters meddling in personal medical decisions.

Bottom Line: Whether dressed up as “comparative effectiveness research” or described bluntly by Mr. Reich or Berwick, government rationing is a frightening and unavoidable byproduct of government-administered and –regulated health care.

Promise #6: “The firm pledge” – Ninety-five percent of Americans will not see any form of tax increase because of Obamacare (or anything else).

It doesn’t get any less ambiguous than this Obama promise: “I can make a firm pledge,” he said in Dover, N.H., on Sept. 12, 2009. “Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.”



Candidate Obama repeated this vow so often on the campaign trail, anyone who even loosely followed the 2008 presidential campaign could likely repeat it in his sleep. Once a behemoth new entitlement was on the table, some dishonest, rumor-peddling cynics began to wonder if the president would be forced to abandon his central campaign pledge to pay for it. Such an admission, naturally, might have caused some angst among voters and fomented more opposition to the bill. “But of course we’ll honor our tax pledge!” the White House insisted.

Appearing on CBS’ Face the Nation, the president was adamant: “I can still keep [the $250,000 tax] promise because as I’ve said, about two-thirds of what we’ve proposed would be from money that’s already in the health care system but just being spent badly. And as I said before, this is not me making wild assertions.”

He was even more frank speaking with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos.



Now the federal government itself is arguing in court challenges to its constitutionality that the individual mandate is a tax after all, to which all Americans will be subject. The New York Times:

When Congress required most Americans to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty, Democrats denied that they were creating a new tax. But in court, the Obama administration and its allies now defend the requirement as an exercise of the government’s “power to lay and collect taxes.”

We also now know that in its current and future attempts to pay for Obamacare, the federal government will raise taxes on millions of Americans, violate “the firm pledge” repeatedly, and force the American public to become even more intimately acquainted with the Internal Revenue Service.

There are at least 18 new taxes embedded into the new law, many of which don’t detonate until after the president’s 2012 re-election campaign. All of those taxes must just target the rich, right? Wrong. The non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation breaks the bad news: Millions of middle class families will get “socked” with a $3.9 billion tax hike in the years ahead thanks to Obamacare.

There are also some “costly” new IRS mandates. The head of the IRS has warned taxpayers failure to comply with the government’s new universal mandate to purchase approved coverage may result in the confiscation of tax refunds. If that sounds like a lot of bureaucratic work, you’re right: The feds are contemplating hiring thousands of new IRS agents to track and enforce compliance on a national scale.

The federal government’s own National Taxpayer Advocate Service argued in July that Obamacare has it doing work it’s not remotely trained, qualified, or funded for and that the health care law “may impose significant burdens on businesses, charities, and government agencies.”

So, how’s that ‘firm pledge’ holding up, Mr. Outgoing White House budget director? It’s been downgraded to a presidential “preference,” eh? It was fun while it lasted.

Bottom Line: Hold on to your wallets.

Promise #7: Health care reform won’t add “a single dime” to the deficit—and will actually cut it.

Remember that unambiguous, crystal-clear presidential promise from item number six? Here’s another one, delivered to a joint session of Congress and a nationally televised audience: “I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits — either now or in the future. (Applause.) I will not sign it if it adds one dime to the deficit, now or in the future, period.”

Right-wing paranoiacs really didn’t believe this one, but the Democrats had an ace in the hole. Leading up the vote—voila!—Pelosi & Co engineered a final CBO score that magically validated the president’s famous words. Go crazy, America! Your massive new entitlement program will reduce the deficit by $130 Billion over ten years!

A number of Debbie Downers made valiant attempts to expose the folly. Former CBO director Douglas Holtz-Eakin crunched the un-manipulated numbers for the New York Times and found that the “real arithmetic” was nowhere near deficit-reducing or –neutral. The truth: Obamacare would bloat the deficit by $563 Billion. The advertised ten-year price tag of $900+ Billion was risible. In reality it sat much closer to $2.5 Trillion, as the Democratic Chairman of the Senate Financial Services Committee inadvertently admitted.



So how did Democrats manage to gerry-rig the CBO’s scoring system to produce superficially solvent math? Rep. Paul Ryan meticulously decimated their “smoke and mirrors” gimmickry at the Blair House summit, thoroughly explaining to the president’s face precisely how his administration and party were misleading the country. The clip is worth your time, and informative to the last drop:



In fairness, here’s Obamacare proponent Ezra Klein’s rebuttal to Ryan, which is worth a read for a pretty frank but ultimately unconvincing defense of tricky government accounting. But even in rebutting Ryan, Klein concedes, “The 10-year cost of the bill is really only counting six years of operation. This was a deceptive effort to keep the bill’s price tag under $1 trillion, even as the bill’s price tag was really quite a bit more.”

In short, the Democrats’ bogus score relied on:

(a) Double-counting unrealistic, never-gonna-happen Medicare cuts to the tune of $500 Billion.
(b) Pretending the $200B+ “Doc Fix” was a separate, unrelated issue—it has since passed the Senate. For those who think treating “doc fix” as an unrelated issue was fair, they may want to ponder why the expensive measure was included in an early version of the House bill until Democrats needed a better CBO score, at which point it was removed.
(c) Shoehorning 10 years’ of tax revenues into just six years of “benefits.”
(d) Double-counting social security tax revenue.
(e) Totally ignoring billions in requisite “discretionary” spending for Obamacare’s implementation.

On the eve of the health care vote, a CBO letter to Rep. Paul Ryan confirmed that, without such gimmickry, the health care bill would add $260 billion over 10 years to instead of reducing it by $138. Both the CMS and the CBO have objected to the double-counting of Medicare savings as paying for Obamacare and shoring up Medicare, but the administration continues to use the misleading metric, even this week.

Passage of the “Doc Fix” alone, coupled with this little wrinkle, has already driven Obamacare into the red. Finally, the current director of CBO has decisively torpedoed the entire “cost savings” charade. Revisiting a previous devastating critique that nearly derailed the process in 2009, Elmendorf has concluded that Obamacare will not “bend the cost curve” of health care spending down.

Putting the federal budget on a sustainable path would almost certainly require a significant reduction in the growth of federal health spending relative to current law (including this year’s health legislation).

Too little, too late. It’s now the law of the land.

Bottom Line: The president’s bill won’t add a single dime to the deficit. It will pile trillions upon trillions of dimes atop an already mountainous debt.

Promise #8: Health care reform will help businesses—employers and employees, alike.

The conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation offers a good list of concerns conservatives had about the effect the health care reform bill might have on businesses. Here’s the story of just one, wholesome Midwestern company rethinking its employer-provided health insurance in the wake of Obamacare. White Castle, maker of the nation’s beloved fast-food sliders, provides employees with health care coverage that covers 70-89 percent of their costs. This would seem to make the company one of the good actors, according to the administration’s standards. But health care reform is discouraging this good behavior instead of encouraging it. They will consider dropping their health care and leaving employees to government exchanges.

They’re not the only ones. That’s why the International Franchise Association opposed the law, saying it will “impose tremendous burdens on America’s restaurants and hurt our industry’s ability to create and sustain jobs.”

Small business owners and the self-employed get hit again with a new, onerous tax burden meant to close a tax reporting “loophole” to pay for the health care that’s allegedly going to do nothing but help them. The federal government’s IRS ombudsman took issue with a new requirement that every business and non-profit file a 1099 form for anyone from whom they buy $600 or more in goods or services annually. This would require that each business owner keep a tally of goods he bought from Staples to make sure his ink cartridges don’t hit $600, and would affect up to 40 million businesses, many of them sole proprietorships.

Some House Democrats have since realized the folly of this anti-business imposition, and have offered a bill to repeal this part of Obamacare, but are balking at the loss of revenue. They say realizing you have a problem is the first step to recovery. Let’s hope they’re right, as even Democrats begin to relinquish the farce that this bill can be all things to all people and all paid for, all at the same time.

Promise #9: Obamacare will not allow for funding of abortions with taxpayer money.

At his address to the joint session of Congress in September 2009, President Obama attempted to “clear up” what he called a “misunderstanding.”

“Under our plan,” he said. “No federal dollars will be used to fund abortions, and federal conscience laws will remain in place.

Pro-life activists were accused of lying for pointing out that a “segregation of funds” would not prevent funding of abortions through federally subsidized plans because money is fungible. Pro-life Democrats balked at the idea of the federal government funding abortions on Indian reservations and in community health centers, endangering the passage of the bill. A last-minute Executive Order allegedly preventing federal funding of abortion only affirmed the inadequate language in the original bill, but garnered enough pro-life Democrats to win bill passage.

In July 2010, the Congressional Research Service found that Obamacare did indeed allow federal funding for abortions through high-risk pools created and entirely funded by the federal government. The Executive Order doesn’t prevent abortion funding through high-risk pools.

When New Mexico’s high-risk pool made it possible to get an abortion on demand, the public outcry caused the federal government to set stricter guidelines, allowing abortions only in the case of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother. The rules in Pennsylvania also seem to allow for federally funded abortions, though the administration and the state claim the problematic language is just a “placeholder.” Pro-life activists also have concerns about Maryland.

Bottom Line: Were it not for watchful pro-life activists and the wide unpopularity of federally funding abortions, the bill would already be paying for them in at least one state.

Promise #10: Obamacare will not only satisfy each of the promises above, but satisfy all of them at the same time with virtually no downsides.

In defense of the administration, it did start lowering expectations shortly after passage. On Obama’s post-passage p.r. push, he gave a speech in Iowa that included this decidedly un-lofty section:

“Now, it’s going to take about four years to implement this entire plan — because we’ve got to do it responsibly and we need to do it right. So I just want to be clear: that means that health care costs won’t go down overnight; not all the changes are going to be in place; there are still going to be aspects of the health care system that are very frustrating over the next several years.”

With all due respect to the president, we weren’t pitched “This’ll take four years of frustration but it won’t be as bad as Republicans say it is” for $2.5 trillion. We were pitched perfection. Every substantive criticism was met with charges of “fear-mongering.” We were pitched a bill that expanded coverage and increased subsidies without increasing the deficit, mandated new levels of coverage without taxing citizens, that changed everything unless you didn’t want anything to change, that cut costs without rationing, and that enacted 2,500 pages of law without any unintended negative consequences.

Instead we have a bill that’s already been uncertain on whether it covers Congress, is missing deadlines and confusing doctors and patients, is threatening to throw the sickest off its high-risk rolls to save money, raises questions about covering children with and without preexisting conditions, and may take decades for the federal government to figure out. No wonder proponents got a little testy, right after passage, about actually providing verifiable results of all they’d promised.

At the risk of using the “overheated rhetoric” and “fear-mongering” I know the president hates, it’d be fitting if Americans exercised their Berwickian right to comparative research and subjected Obamacare to its own death panel. All Obama’s promises have expiration dates. Why not his policies?

Thanks to Ed and Allah for letting us hang out with Hot Air readers once again, and special thanks to Phil Klein of the American Spectator, whose extensive health care reporting and knowledge (cited throughout) added so much to this effort.

Missouri Taking the Mandate to a Vote

Time takes notice as the first state takes the Healthcare mandate head on:

Opponents of Prop C — those who support the insurance mandate — have been frustrated by the lack of a vigorous campaign to defeat it. Apart from a mass mailing by the Missouri Hospital Association, no organized effort existed until a few weeks ago when three 19-year-olds started a Facebook campaign. “I’ve had to spend about $500 out of my own pocket making signs,” lamented Caleb-Michael Files, the Subway sandwich-shop manager and full-time college student who launched the Facebook effort. He wonders why Missouri is spending money on a referendum likely to stir up an expensive court case. “The law is the law,” he says. Missouri lieutenant governor Peter Kinder is one of several state officials across the country who have already filed suit challenging the federal law. (Another of those, Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli, gained a small victory in his fight against the law on Monday, when a federal judge ruled that the state does indeed have standing to bring the suit.)

Prop C is a gimme for the GOP base. In polls, Republicans strongly oppose Obamacare — and Tuesday’s primaries are far more interesting on the GOP side, practically guaranteeing a turnout heavily skewed against health care reform. Republicans barely need to raise more money to get out the vote.

Here’s the actual text of the proposition together with real-time polling results.  This is more of a political message, denying the government of Missouri the power to penalize citizens for failing to buy health insurance, but that’ll be irrelevant if/when a federal court decides that the mandate in Healthcare is constitutional.  In my opinion, the commerce clause doesn't hold for an individual choosing not to become active in the market.  The clause only covers voluntary activity and shouldn't punish you for opting not to participate. 
 
We'll know by morning the exact percentages on Prop C.

Update:  With all districts reported in the Amendment passes at 71.1%

Chart of the Day

The Joint Economic Committee went through the trouble of depicting the infinite number of bureaucracies and agencies as a result of Healthcare Reform:

No one can figure out exactly how many new agencies ObamaCare will spawn once it comes into effect. In fact, the Congressional Research Office can’t figure it out either. The language of the bill leaves open the possibility of an infinite string of new agencies and bureaucracies. (From Politico):

Don’t bother trying to count up the number of agencies, boards and commissions created under the new health care law. Estimating the number is “impossible,” a recent Congressional Research Service report says, and a true count “unknowable.”

The reasons for the uncertainty are many, according to CRS’s Curtis W. Copeland, the author of the report “New Entities Created Pursuant to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.”
The provisions of the law that create the new entities vary dramatically in specificity.
The law says a lot about some of them and a little about many, and merely mentions a few. Some have been authorized without any instructions on who is to appoint whom, when that might happen and who will pay.
Those agencies created without specific appointment or appropriations procedures will have to wait indefinitely for staff and funding before they can function, according to Copeland’s report.

Like Nancy Pelosi once argued, the CRS report says that we can’t know what’s in ObamaCare until the government rolls it out.

That should be a big, big problem. Congress just authorized a self-perpetuating bureaucracy, one that can expand on its own and make determinations far outside of the boundaries Democrats promised during the Healthcare reform debate. It is equally true that the claims made on the cost of administering Healthcare reform had no real basis in fact. Who could possibly guess how much this would cost if we have no idea on how big it's going to get?

Oh, from what I understand, the graphic shows only a chunk of the bureaucracy....

Britain's dropping Government Healthcare....while we move forward (UPDATE)

After many opponents in the US have pointed out the problems with burdening taxpayers, complicating the system, and red tape slowing down service and choices.  Or that the IRS announced that they did not have the resources to enforce the Healthcare mandate, or the Government dumping high risk patients due to the limited budget in the healthcare bill who would've seen this coming:

Even as the new coalition government said it would make enormous cuts in the public sector, it initially promised to leave health care alone. But in one of its most surprising moves so far, it has done the opposite, proposing what would be the most radical reorganization of the National Health Service, as the system is called, since its inception in 1948.

Practical details of the plan are still sketchy. But its aim is clear: to shift control of England’s $160 billion annual health budget from a centralized bureaucracy to doctors at the local level. Under the plan, $100 billion to $125 billion a year would be meted out to general practitioners, who would use the money to buy services from hospitals and other health care providers.
The plan would also shrink the bureaucratic apparatus, in keeping with the government’s goal to effect $30 billion in “efficiency savings” in the health budget by 2014 and to reduce administrative costs by 45 percent. Tens of thousands of jobs would be lost because layers of bureaucracy would be abolished.
In a document, or white paper, outlining the plan, the government admitted that the changes would “cause significant disruption and loss of jobs.” But it said: “The current architecture of the health system has developed piecemeal, involves duplication and is unwieldy. Liberating the N.H.S., and putting power in the hands of patients and clinicians, means we will be able to effect a radical simplification, and remove layers of management.” (emphasis mine)

It's been said that the centralization of any private industry results in less choice, bureaucratic red tape and wasteful spending.  The private sector does provide choices and at competitive rates.  The UK seems to realize that very simple thing when their government realizes that it has to make difficult cuts in their budget as a result of the downturn in the economy. 

That's the UK.  The real question is if the Democrats here realize that before we go through another crisis in the future.

(Update) I was a bit premature in my assessment.  via Ed from Hotair

This plan does not transform the NHS into anything else but a single-payer system. English citizens still have to get their health care from the government. However, the plan removes the rationing boards that have clogged the decision-making process and allows GPs and their patients to decide on the best course of treatment.

While that sounds great, it’s a recipe for disaster. In a closed system like single-payer, the resources are necessarily limited. This will increase demand while doing nothing to increase resources, which will create a deficit bomb bigger than anything already at NHS. That’s probably why another shoe dropped yesterday at NHS:

An investigation by The Sunday Telegraph has uncovered widespread cuts planned across the NHS, many of which have already been agreed by senior health service officials. They include:

* Restrictions on some of the most basic and common operations, including hip and knee replacements, cataract surgery and orthodontic procedures.
* Plans to cut hundreds of thousands of pounds from budgets for the terminally ill, with dying cancer patients to be told to manage their own symptoms if their condition worsens at evenings or weekends.
* The closure of nursing homes for the elderly.
* A reduction in acute hospital beds, including those for the mentally ill, with targets to discourage GPs from sending patients to hospitals and reduce the number of people using accident and emergency departments.
* Tighter rationing of NHS funding for IVF treatment, and for surgery for obesity.
* Thousands of job losses at NHS hospitals, including 500 staff to go at a trust where cancer patients recently suffered delays in diagnosis and treatment because of staff shortages.
* Cost-cutting programmes in paediatric and maternity services, care of the elderly and services that provide respite breaks to long-term carers.

Dr. Donald Berwick proclaimed NHS a “treasure,” a comment that Republicans in Congress wanted to explore in Berwick’s confirmation hearing. What would Berwick do under the pressures at NHS today, if such a crisis hit Medicare and Medicaid? It’s no secret that both are facing these kinds of cost and resource issues. Simply demanding more money won’t work, as the UK has discovered after sixty years of single-payer health care.

The best way to get pricing and cost equilibrium in the health-care market is to use competition and free-market economics. That doesn’t mean the status quo ante ObamaCare, but an elimination of tax credits that favor third-party payers for routine care and the promotion of HSAs and full retail clinic pricing. Until that happens, the governmental burdens will continue to create artificial shortages, and will mean higher costs, more government intrusion in our lives, and less accountability.

Another Healthcare Surprise...has nothing to do with your health

You're a business. If you make a payment to someone in the course of conducting your trade or business you are supposed to report that payment to the IRS on a 1099 form, with a copy to the person or business to whom you made the payment. The old law was that you didn't have to report payments to a corporation or payments for such things as merchandise, utilities, shipping or other similar transactions.

Now things are different thanks to a little addition from the Senate Finance Committe into the new Healthcare Bill. Starting in 2012 you'll have to file a 1099 with the IRS for any business, person or entity to whom you make payments in excess of $600 during any taxable year. This, of course, would include anyone you hire to do some minor labor during the year ... but would also include any corporation, no matter how big, to whom you make payments in excess of $600.

The average small business prepares less than 1099 forms a year under the current law. Estimates are that these same businesses will have to prepare more than 100 under the new Healthcare. What's more .. the demand for accuracy, and the punishment for incorrect filings will probably send many of these smaller businesses out there to hire accounting professionals. Just what we need; more tax compliance costs.

There is a move afoot to repeal this hideous 1099 mandate. Rep. Dan Lungren, a Republican from California, has introduced legislation that would repeal the new 1099 requirements.


For those of you who want more details on this. This is a good summary of the changes we are facing.

Keeping Up with the Unemployment Rate

Here we go..

The light blue line represents what unemployment would be had nothing been done to stimulate the economy.  Notice, we stay around 9%.
The dark blue line represents what unemployment would be after the stimulus passed. You know the promise that unemployment would be under 8%, yada, yada....
We went past that percentage.  The maroon dots represent the ACTUAL unemployment data, peaking above 10%.  A lot of factors led to this happening. Geithner's prediction (March 2010) to Congress is that unemployment will not drop to 8% until the 4th quarter of 2012.
Just prepare.  Starting next year, a range of tax cuts expire, new taxes begin and government spending increases.  The IRS reported that they do not have the manpower or resources to enforce the mandate for the new Healthcare bill, new tax to pay for that (via Hotair).  The President has now changed his stance on the mandate and is admitting that it's a tax.  A very hostile environment for economic growth and the unemployment situation.  Numbers are my thing, and I'm tired of being right

My Rant about the Healtcare Debate (August 2009)

I'm all for reform but based on the crap they've tried to pass thus far, they may end up making things worse rather than better. By no means am I advocating that healthcare is a human right. I believe that everyone, who is able, should be responsible for the choices they’ve made especially regarding their well-being. That being said I’m going to attempt to explain how health insurance works before tackling the Public and Private solutions (Took me all day to write this up. Missing quite a bit so far, but its worth a look/discussion. It is a bit long, so bear with me….):


We know the basics of what insurance is. Whether it is for your car/home/health/etc. it is coverage “in case” something bad happens. Obtaining coverage, you must go through a screening in order for the insurance investor (lets be real, they are investing that nothing will happen to you while you are paying them, that’s how businesses make money). Your rate is determined by “pre-existing” factors. For cars: your driving history, tickets, accidents, etc. For homes: environmental factors (flood, earthquakes, etc), condition of home, etc. For health: lifestyle habits (smoking, eating, drinking), family history, etc. Let’s be clear, you can be denied access to coverage for any type of insurance if you present that you will cost the investor. You can be denied auto insurance. You can be denied home insurance. You can be denied life insurance. You can be denied health insurance. That being said if you ARE covered, you are essentially in a pool with other individuals being covered. The cost you pay for covered is based on the information you’ve given plus the cost of the goods and services required for keeping you healthy. When someone in your pool becomes sick, the cost for covering that person is spread amongst the other members of the pool. There are ways to drive costs down, and all it takes is volunteering to adjust your lifestyle by living healthier. That means: exercise, eating habits, smoking, drinking, sexual habits, etc would have to lean towards improving your personal health. If we each take a little more care in how we take care of OURSELVES and instill those habits into our children, prices are more than likely to drop. There are other factors (prescription costs, inflation, etc), but I’ll try to cover them ahead.

We do have a public (Government) plan in place. Medicare and Medicaid. Medicaid and Medicare have its shortcomings. There are cases of the government rationing benefits in order to save money but at the cost of your health. It should not be that way. Imagine cases like this on a national scale and you can see why the opponents to the Healthcare Bill are worried. (Hint: it isn’t about color of the skin of our President) For this government system to work, EVERYONE who works and collects a paycheck has to pay into the system (which you already do for Medicaid, Medicare & Social Security by the way and are set to increase for everyone for the program to work. No taxes on the middle class my ass…). Similar to how the insurance system works, everyone is a part of the pool. This program should work as a “safety net” for the public. It should cover those people who could not be covered by the private system, which it does, but it LIMITS COVERAGE to keep costs down. The more people in the pool needing coverage, the more costly it is to cover them, which means the more money will be needed to cover the people needing help. A board looks at your case and determines if you should have that operation. They don’t care if you pay them back, but they care if this operation will affect the national deficit. Another credible reason why opposition to the Government plan fears it: increasing the deficit. Ways to keep the costs down are similar to the private option. Changing your personal lifestyle is the first step. The difference is, the Government can “force” you to change your habits by influencing you. The cigarette and sugar taxes aren’t just for revenue people. It is just the beginning of controlling lifestyle habits through taxation. Also, it is one of the ways that the middle and poor classes will be affected. The second, of which we covered earlier, is by limiting coverage. (You should wonder why some hospitals don’t accept Medicaid as a form of coverage: it doesn’t cover costly procedures)

The private plans are your “evil” insurance companies. Let’s get this straight; businesses are in it for making profit. Similar to the Government plan, the private companies are trying to save money anyway they can by rationing coverage (yes, we already have a system where coverage is rationed…lets be real Republicans). A board looks at your case and determines if you should have that operation. They look at the type of career you have and determine if you have the ability to pay them back if the procedure has been approved. (I’m going to get chewed out for this next one) The business has a right to deny coverage because they are investing in you NOT to get sick. The empathic part of me understands the anger towards the private market because a lot of the problems stem from greed, plain and simple. The bad kind. (There is such thing as good greed) This is where decisions are made to make the company profit, but at the cost the service it supplies to its customers. Companies should follow suit as we should as individuals, stated in our Bill of Rights and our Constitution: you have the freedom to do whatever you like, with the exception that it does not infringe upon the welfare of others.

Another negative aspect of the private system falls upon private practices run by doctors whose duty it is to help their patients, have been clouded by "bad greed". There are cases in which certain doctors will authorize unnecessary procedures/test because of the finacial gain it brings to the practice. The motives could range from personal debts, cost of supplies, malpractice insurance rates, etc. So how do we control this? The options are being floated around: lowering the inflated cost of the supplies, doing away with the no-limit malpractice suits, subsidizing/lowering the costs for medical school, etc. (Quick way: FairTax baby...) Of course there will be some that will seek to take advantage, even if these problems didn't exist, but we shouldn't need the Government to step in to find a solution on how to deal with criminals, or do we?

Washington has recently pulled the public option from their draft of the Healthcare Bill. The Democrats control all three branches of government and have removed the public option the day before our President said he’d sign what ever they bring him a week ago. The Republicans were not responsible for the defeat of the Healthcare Bill back in 1994, despite what the President said last night. The people in this country read the bill the Democrats (they ran ALL three branches of Government in 1994) attempted to pass during that time and called their representatives to demand that it doesn’t pass. the people then knew the danger and so should you here in 2009. Democratic Senators have said in the last few weeks that they don’t even know what’s in this bill because it’s too confusing. Do you feel safe that they AREN'T READING/COMPREHENDING THE BILLS THEY PASS?! You think this is about helping you? You aren’t worried of the future implications?

We need real discussion before passage of ANY bill of this magnitude. Plowing forward and making “bold” moves can shackle future generations to a possible mistake that we know NOTHING about because our leaders know less about it than we do.

Alternative Healthcare Plan (The One You Don't Hear About) (April 2009)

Took some time to write this one out, bear with me. Feel free to add your opinions.

Health Care should be readily available to everyone
Health Insurance should not be available to everyone. It is Unconstitutional to force others to pay for the choices one makes in life concerning their life and health.It's important that you review how a business works. Here's a refresher course on the subject


The Baucus Health Plan

• Mandated coverage across the board
  
  • Unconstitutional as it forces individuals to be responsible for the life decisions of others
• Tax on Medical Items/Procedures beginning in 2011
  
  • On Class II and above Items/Procedures (priced at $100+) Link here
  • Tax will be applied for each time used
  • Results in higher Employer Contributions on Insurance Premiums
    
    1. Has negative impact on wages and employment
    2. May cause employer to drop private insurance for an affordable plan with less benefits (or pay the government fines if less expensive)
  • Results in higher Consumer Insurance Premiums
    
    1. Has negative impact on Middle Class buying power
    2. Less buying power results in slower moving economy
• Should the Public Option be Included
  
  • Due to tax, Employers and Consumers will drop Private Insurance to either pay the fines for lack of coverage, or join the public option in 2013
  • Private Insurers go under if they can’t force premiums down to compete against government subsidies in 2013
  • Public option becomes the only option unless it’s found that the fines cost less than paying the public option fees. We now have a single-payer system.

Alternative Health Plan

• Allow Tax Credits for Consumers
  
  • Consumers may deduct the annual cost of their insurance from their taxes just as their employers do now
  • This removes the disparity for cost of coverage as an individual compared to being covered through the Employer
  • Resulting with employers no longer needing to provide coverage, freeing up capital to go towards increasing wages, hiring more employees, improving the business
• Remove State Mandates
  
  • Will avoid confusion due to state differences in coverage eligibility
  • Will push Private Insurers to compete with others in states that have better coverage and lower premiums
• Consumers may shop for nationwide options
  
  • Will force competitiveness among insurers, drive down costs and improve benefits as a result
  • Gives the individual authority over what plan they are looking for and the price they are willing to pay for it, no bureaucracy
• TORT Reform
  
  • Will lower the number of frivolous malpractice claims once claims are capped
  • Will lower Malpractice Insurance Premiums for doctors, which will drive down fees for service especially with private practices
  • Lower service fees results in lower medical costs, which results in lower Insurance Premiums across the board
• Create pool for the un-insurable
  
  • Fix Medicare first and foremost
  • Subsidize the uninsurable through the government and allow them access to Medicare
  • Should Private Insurers be forced to lower their standards in order to cover high risk cases, the system will be unsustainable. (Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, Federal Housing authority are prime examples of the predictable result, a bubble system)
• Consumer access to health history
  
  • Companies like Keas, Inc. (run by Adam Bosworth) are working on a system built to store medical data/history of patients which is inputted on a voluntary basis
  • Doctors will have access to medical records from anywhere in the nation, quicker response due to readily available information on patient
  • Individuals will have unlimited access to their own records, which allows them to make decisions to improve their health
  • Long term effect: Consumers make better health decisions, which will drive down health costs

The result of the Alternative Health Plan:

• The average individual will have the freedom to choose their own health plan and not be limited by employer choice, state/federal limitations and lack of competition.
• The ultimate goal of healthcare for a majority of the population, with little to no impact on the federal deficit due to a minor government presence
• Lower competitive rates based upon economic principles as the system reaches equilibrium
• Will not require a tax increase on any citizen to pay for it, besides the current tax on Medicare and Medicade