Wake up America: What you can expect from Obamacare
by Letter to the Editor · November 24, 2009

The House of Representatives has passed its 1,990 page version of health care reform. I have been researching a number of sources and have been able to glean the following provisions of the House Bill:

Medicare will be cut by $400 billion. And, Medicare Advantage, which has over 10 million seniors enrolled, will be gutted as the administration made a deal with AARP to favor its MORE EXPENSIVE Medi-Gap Medicare supplement plan in order to get AARP’s endorsement.

There will be a scarcity of health care providers with the addition of 35 million new patients. Couple this with the fact that 45 percent of doctors have stated that they may leave their jobs if the plan is passed. This will lead to health care rationing. President Obama went after the endorsement of the American Medical Association to think that America’s doctors are supporting his plan. However, only 18 percent of our country’s doctors belong to the AMA. And, some of them, as well as many non-AMA doctors, have been protesting this plan.

The uninsured will be fined 2.5 percent of their income if they don’t buy insurance, and there is the possibility of five years in prison for not buying insurance or paying the fine.

The plan offers subsidies to low income participants. However, the subsidy only kicks in after they have paid 8-12 percent of their incomes. This will be very hard on low income people who are already having trouble paying their bills.

Medical devices like pacemakers, wheelchairs, prosthetic limbs, hearing aids, etc. will be taxed. This cost will be passed on to the patient as additional cost or passed on by the insurance companies as an increase in premiums.

Under this bill, medical expenses will have to equal 10 percent of your income, instead of the present 7.5 percent, before you can deduct them on your federal tax return.

Many of the uninsured will be added to state Medicaid rolls, thereby increasing the cost to the state, which will also increase state taxes.

By the fifth year of the plan, a 40 percent tax on health insurance premiums will effect households earning over $75,000 per year.

By 2013, the average family’s health care premium will increase by $1,700 more with Obamacare than if it had been defeated.

One hundred and ten new boards, bureaucracies, commissions and programs employing an estimated 150,000 new government employees will be created by this bill. They will make decisions about your health care — what care you can have, what it will cost, how it will be paid for and adding layers of bureaucracy between you and your doctor. One person, the commissioner of health care, will have major powers in defining what is in the government plan AND IN YOUR PRIVATE INSURANCE.

The government will start collecting taxes to pay for the plan immediately, but the plan doesn’t go into effect until 2013. This is similar to making car payments for three years before you can take possession of the car and drive it. They did this to front-load three years of revenue so they can afford to run their plan for seven years and bring the bill in under the president’s dollar limit for 10 years. At the end of 10 years, this plan will always be in RED — just like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security!

Is this the type of health care reform you wanted? Or, were you more interested in dealing with issues like tort reform, which could reduce premiums by 40 percent and federal deductibility of premiums, which could effectively reduce premiums by 10-25 percent for incomes of $131,000 or less through your federal tax return? Would you like to be able to purchase health insurance across state lines — increasing competition and reducing premiums? These are all parts of the conservative health care reform bill that the liberals will not let come to the floor.

Why aren’t these important issues dealt with in the proposed House health care reform bill? As I have written before, extreme liberal health care reform is more about growing government and government jobs than it is about reducing health care costs. It is also about control, power and paying back union bosses who gave huge donations to the president’s campaign. This bill includes huge concessions to the unions (that we will all pay for) to help pay their immense legacy health care costs for retirees. And, these liberals will not address tort reform because trial lawyers gave substantial donations to their campaigns.

As of Thursday, Nov. 19, the Senate is planning a vote to bring its version of the bill to the floor on Saturday. However, as it is over 2,000 pages long and was just released, people are still trying to determine what it contains.

If you care about what the extreme liberal versions of health care reform will do to your health care and your constitutional rights, please start researching it on the internet, watch Fox News and listen to conservative talk radio. This is the only way you will find out what is in the bills. The liberals and the liberal television networks will not let you, and they don’t think the American people care enough to read bills averaging 2,000 pages in length.

Extreme liberal health care reform may be the financial straw that breaks the camel’s back. Even China, who is bankrolling a large part of our rapidly expanding national debt (now at $12 trillion) with treasury bills, and knows that we are printing paper money that has less and less value every day, is concerned if health care reform passes in its current form. Will these health care bills bankrupt our country when China refuses to loan us any more money? Is this the “hope” and “change” Obama promised in his campaign? WE HAVE TO STOP THIS OUT OF CONTROL GOVERNMENT SPENDING!

Call, e-mail, fax or write your senators and representatives TODAY and tell them to scrap the current House and Senate health care bills.

This is about common sense, not political philosophy. WE, AND OUR COUNTRY, DESERVE AND MUST HAVE BETTER. President Obama, Rep. Pelosi and Sen. Reid want to pass Obamacare by Christmas, or even before. WE HAVE TO ACT NOW — TOMORROW MAY BE TOO LATE!

Sincerely,

Dianne Glenney

Muscatine