“Real” HealthCare Reform – Options to ObamaCare

Health Care Reform I Support – Rep John Campbell

There is no question that our health care system needs reform. Unfortunately, President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and Harry Reid have had no intention of working with Republicans towards health care reform we all can agree on. However, mycolleagues and I have put forth a proposal that we believe will effectively reform health care for all Americans. The reform measure that I think is best has been introduced by Congressmen Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Devin Nunes (R-CA) called the Patient's Choice Act. It is directionally opposite of the plan proposed by President Obama and his cohorts. Instead of putting government in charge of the system, this plan largely removes the failed portions of government involvement, and puts each individual in charge of their own health care plan and decisions. Here are some bullet points on this plan:

• The plan eliminates the employer deduction for health insurance and the system of direct payment of health costs under Medicare and Medicaid, and replaces them with a $2,300 refundable tax credit per individual which must be used for health care costs. Therefore, everyone, whether they are young, senior citizens, or indigent, will be covered under a private plan of their own choosing. And you no longer have to get the plan from your employer, but will have a number of options to keep the same plan as you move from job to job. Senior plans would be further subsidized by the Medicare system but still allowed to choose their own plan.

• Currently as a Californian, you can only buy a health insurance plan approved by the state of California. Under the Patient's Choice Act, you would be free to pick from any of the over 1,300 medical insurance plans offered around the country. State based insurance exchanges will make sure that you cannot be cancelled for illness, and that pre-existing conditions will not interfere with our choices, in the same way that fire insurance is available to those who live in high fire risk areas today.

• Basically this legislation will allow unlimited contributions to a health savings account so that Americans can save for their own health care costs on a pre-tax basis.

• Litigation costs are a huge driver of medical costs. This bill would replace the court system with state based dispute resolution mechanisms for most claims, thereby saving a great deal of money in the system.

• Creates transparency through a public/private partnership to disclose cost, quality, and outcomes of various plans and providers.

• It also instills accountability into existing federal wellness and prevention programs to encourage more disease prevention activities and thereby lower costs.

• This bill will cost a grand total of $0 and will increase taxes by $0. It is revenue and cost neutral to the current system.

Click Here for the text of the legislation

Below are some of my links regarding health care:

A Right to Health Care? - OCRegister Editorial

From Congressman John Campbell's Laptop to Yours - Monday July 20, 2009

President Obama has Mislead us on Healthcare - The Greeneyeshade Blog

From Congressman John Campbell's Laptop to Yours - Monday July 27, 2009

Community Commentary - Health Plan Won't Help Americans - Daily Pilot

Confounding America's Ideals - Washington Times Editorial

President Obama's Socialized Medicine Package

The proposals we have seen from President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and Harry Reid on healthcare reform represent some of the worst public policy I have seen in my entire public career. Socialized health care that raises taxes, rations care and increases costs isn't what most Americans have in mind. I stand in firm opposition to the current government-run healthcare proposal and will work diligently to ensure that Americans are not saddled with a system that will ultimately reduce the quality of your healthcare, raises taxes, and hamper the relationship between doctors and their patients.

On the whole, we will have government-only medicine with the compassion of the IRS and the efficiency of the DMV. Below I have included a graph which doesn't need any explanation, except for that this socialized health care plan will be a mess.

Here is a quick run-down of some of the most frightening provisions:

• It makes it illegal to purchase your own private health insurance after the bill is enacted and will in effect, transition virtually everyone to government care within 5 years. See Section 102, on Page 16 of H.R. 3200

• The bill raises taxes on "the rich" but also creates new taxes on small businesses and individuals who do not have health insurance. After the tax increase, the top tax rate for a resident of California will be over 57%, which makes it the highest income tax rate in the industrialized world (Sweden is 56%).

• It will increase the overall cost of health care in the country by trillions of dollars. Even the Democrat appointed head of the Congressional Budget Office had to admit that there is no evidence that the plan will lower the cost of health care as the President has asserted.

• Current estimates project that there will be nearly 5 million additional jobs that will disappear nationwide, as a result of the plan.

• As many as 114 million Americans could lose their current coverage under the bill, according to non-partisan actuaries at the Lewin Group.

• Doctors, hospitals, and other medical providers will be paid even less than they are currently being paid by Medicare or Medicaid, which will bankrupt many.

• A government bureaucracy will determine whether you are allowed to receive treatments or medicines, and sometimes, as happens in other socialized countries, whether you are allowed to live or die.

• It does not deal with the bankruptcy of the Medicare system or Social Security so those problems continue, but the taxes said to balance them will have been spent on this.

• And, it will not even cover everybody with insurance, so it won't even fix what it is supposed to fix.

Rep John Campbell

Additional Facts:

• We are being told over and over again by the administration that the GOP and moderate democrats have no alternative plans or input. If you watched the president’s joint session speech, at least half of the Republicans and Blue Dogs were holding up copies of alternate healthcare plans or at least needed amendments to HR 3200 that Nancy Pelosi and her liberal cronies are trying to push down our throats.
• Before the recess Obama said that he would glad to sit with anyone/group (Rep or Senator) who wanted to and go over the bills or portions of the bills being proposed, line by line. He said again during the joint session speech that his door was open to anyone with viable alternative suggestions and input to the plans being shoved down our throats. UNTRUE!!! He has not met with or invited a single Republican to the White House since last April and refuses to return their calls. (Congressmen Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Devin Nunes (R-CA & former physician) authors of the Patient's Choice Act have called and written the White House several times for a meeting (as well as many other Re;publicans) and the WH has not even acknowledged their request to meet with the president let alone set an appointment.)
• Universal Health = less docs - A new Investor’s Business Daily Poll revealed that if the healthcare bill passes, 45% of doctors will quit. Wow, what overwhelming support from the medical community. It's probably just because those greedy, evil doctors know the gig is up on their amputations for cash scheme. Another poll by Fox News/Health shows that 65% of all doctors oppose ObamaCare and another 15% are on the fence against or just not talking.
• Journalist and author T.R. Reid set out on a global tour of hospitals and doctors' offices, all in the hopes of understanding how other industrialized nations provide affordable, effective universal health care. The result: his book The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care. Reid is a foreign correspondent for The Washington Post — in whose pages he recently addressed five major myths about other countries' health-care systems — and the former chief of the paper's London and Tokyo bureaus. He was the lead correspondent for Frontline’s Sick Around the World.
  1. Germany offer’s healthcare to everyone for half our cost (approximately $770 per month and employers pay half), using “private insurance companies” of their choice that are heavily regulated… but no government-run healthcare, public option or co-ops. Their Healthcare is portable and they can change carriers at any time.
  2. Insurance companies in the U.S. charge more for services for less than in any other country in the world. 20% compared to an average of 5 to 5.5%, as low as 4% in some countries.
  3. In Switzerland, if you insurance company does not pay our bills within 5-days, your next month’s premium is free.
• The Baucus Bill is the same old same old…
  1. A government-run Co-op which is just another name for a Public Option
  2. Half a trillion in cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. Baby-boomers (born between 1946 to 1964) are retiring in record numbers. The need is going up; it won’t drop. No major provisions for clean up of fraud and waste within those systems. Medicaid costs will be pushed onto the states. And the results cannot end up any other way than rationing care for seniors.
  3. The 8 trillion dollar cost (average estimate) is a fantasy. Huge amounts of the cost estimates are just that: estimates of possible savings over the next 10-yrs. Again, estimates without a plan and a track record of just the opposite, while Medicaid costs will be transferred to broke states and Also, many of the programs in the Baucus bill and others won’t start until 2013. If they did the cost would be 1.5 Trillion+, and you know that everything the government runs costs twice their estimates.
  4. Everyone (people who can’t afford healthcare now) will be forced to purchase healthcare of pay the government a penalty of $3,800 to $4,000. Right now the average estimates of the monthly healthcare costs will be $1,300 (rent payment for many in the U.S.).
  5. Many employers will drop their employees’ HC, forcing them into the government-run co-op which will ultimately equal a strong public option and ultimately total government-run “sub-standard” healthcare (just look at Veteran’s Benefits, the Reservation System, the Financial state of Medicare and Medicaid… and everything else the government runs (Social Security, the Post Office, Fanny and Freddie, etc etc Employers will be fined if they do not offer their employees HC, but the fine will still be less than the cost or providing the coverage. Especially in an economic climate like we have today no good businessman or small business owner will be able to choose covering their employees for long.
  6. And the list goes on…
• CBO – Doug Holz-Eaken (former CBO Director) says that the Baucus Bill was written (engineered) in a way that is favorable to the parameters or method used to score bills. Also… does anyone wonder why after the White House invited the present CBO Director for a small group visit or chat that they have received favorable scorings after the original thumbs down on HR 3200.
• If there is not “serious” focus and specifics in the bill addressing “Tort Reform”, and there isn’t, this is not a legitimate offer… Charles Krauthammer.
• There are many hidden taxes in the bill which will be used to payoff insurance companies.

WE REALLY MUST BEGIN TO BE HONEST WITH OURSELVES BY LOOKING AT THE FACTS: THE GOAL OF OBAMACARE (ALL BILLS PRESENTLY BEING CONSIDERED) IS PUSHING THIS COUNTRY INTO A SYSTEM OF GOVERNMNT-RUN HEALTHCARE (SOCIALIZED MEDICINE) AND A POWER GRAB ON THE PART OF THE GOVERNMENT AND THE PEOPLE AND ORGANIZATIONS WHO ARE REALLY PULLING OBAMA’S STRINGS!!!!!

These fears (or realities) are starting to be voiced from all directions: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Doctors themselves,

Senator Orin Hatch said today... the only way we can pay for the Baucus Bill or HR 3200 is with huge tax increases!

Please keep up the pressure on Congress!!

Call, Write, Email and Fax your Congressman & Senators and all the lefties and teeterers….!!!! Consistently.

• From Rep John Campbell’s Laptop to Yours – Aug 12 & 25 2009 & Daniel Hannan – There Will Be No Going Back
• Catastrophe
• The Healing of America
• Stop Paying the Crooks - A Must Read

Source: Daily Thought Pad – Cross Posted: Knowledge Creates Power

Posted: True Health is True Wealth

Will 'Obamacare' Suffer a Carter Race Card Backlash? Will 'Obamacare' Suffer a Carter Race Card Backlash?

Could anti-Semitic leftist former President Carter’s ridiculous comments about racism be the final nail in the Coffin of ObamaCare??

The national debate over health care reform has careered into the bumpy terrain of race.

Former President Jimmy Carter, some black lawmakers and some newspaper columnists have begun to call President Obama's opponents racist -- or fueled by racism -- and they are asserting that race is the underlying cause of much of the criticism of the president.

Obama's opponents, in turn, are charging the president's supporters with playing the race card -- using the issue of race for political gain.

"What Democrats are trying to do is shame white independents, who voted for President Obama in 2008 but are now uneasy about his policies, into supporting these policies to prove they are not racist," said Republican pollster and strategist David E. Johnson, who worked on Bob Dole's 1988 presidential campaign. Read The Full Article

EXCLUSIVE: Wilson: Carter's racism claims a distraction – former President Carter is the only person that has authored two books on his “must read list” – a bit scary!!

Dems and Liberals – Stop with the Race Card and the Political Correctness Game!!

Heritage Foundation says: Flawed Baucus Bill Is Not the Roadmap - Baucus Plan is the same old same old… just calling things by different names. So they are still selling us!!

Dick Morris says: BEWARE THE PUBLIC OPTION TRAP

As any good Persian rug dealer knows, you have to hold back a bargaining chit so that you can whip it out at the very end to tie down the sale. That's how Obama is playing the so-called public option in his health care program. His plan seems to be to combine its abandonment with some form of tort reform and try to buy off some Republicans - maybe only Maine's Olympia Snowe - to give moderate Democrats enough confidence in the veneer of bi-partisanship to win their backing for his bill.
But it's a fraud and a trick.

Here's why:
(a) Whether or not there is a public option makes no difference in the fundamental objection most elderly have to the bill - that it guts Medicare and Medicaid. All of the bills now under consideration cut these two programs by one half of a trillion dollars. And all of them require the medical community to serve thirty to fifty million new patients without any concomitant growth in the number of doctors or nurses. These cuts and shortages will lead to draconian rationing of medical care for the elderly, whether under a public option or not.

(b) The most likely proposal is to replace the public option with some form of buyer's co-op. But since there is no currently existing co-op to serve as a vehicle for health insurance, it would have to be formed. By who? The government, of course. That would mean, as a practical matter, that the "co-op option" would be a government run plan for several years. In fact, they may not get around to setting up a co-op at all.

(c) The other alternative, mentioned by Senator Snowe herself, would be for a "trigger" mechanism. This provision would require the creation of a public alternative to private insurance plans if, after a specified period of time, they did not lower rates to a pre-determined level. Given the escalation of health care costs, it is almost inevitable that this provision would lead to a government plan. And, anyway, who says that the government insurance option would be more successful in reducing costs?

But Obama has to at least appear to be willing to compromise, so he has invented the idea of re-packaging the public option in order to seem to be flexible.

The key, here, is not to be distracted by the debate over the public option. It matters very much to private insurance companies whether the government becomes their competitor, but, for the elderly (and the near-elderly), the key concern is not the public option by the rationing and cuts projected under the program.
In the Clinton Administration, we worked hard to kill the proposed Medicare cuts and are no less committed to stopping them in the Obama presidency. That they were once proposed by the right and are now being pushed by the left makes no difference. A cut is a cut is a cut. And Medicare should not be cut.

Source: Knowledge Creates Power/the Daily Thought Pad

Posted: True Health Is True Wealth

Health Care Bill: Baucus Senate Legislation Finally Unveiled - Updated

The Baucus Plan is already under fire from all sides. Plan has no public option but has government-run co-ops. Plan has no GOP support and many Democrats have reservations as well.

Reporting from Washington and Pittsburgh - Senate Democrats' most concerted quest for a bipartisan compromise on healthcare collapsed Tuesday as finance committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) announced he would move ahead with his long-delayed proposals without any guarantee of Republican support.

Baucus also took a blow from his own party's left, as a senior Senate Democrat declared that too many concessions had been made and that he would not support the emerging bill because it did not include a public insurance option.

"I cannot agree with [Baucus] on this bill," said Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), a senior finance committee member who has been briefed on the proposal. "There is no way, in its present form, that I will vote for it."

The Baucus plan, which scales back President Obama's ambitious proposals both in scope and cost, is considered a likely template for the measure that will ultimately clear the Senate. It has been designed to allay the concerns of moderate Blue Dog Democrats as well as Republicans.

After the negotiations broke down, Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the senior Republican on the finance committee, accused Senate Democratic leaders of lacking a commitment to bipartisanship.

"I'm disappointed because it looks like we're being pushed aside by the Democratic leadership so the Senate can move forward on a bill that, up to this point, does not meet the shared goals for affordable, accessible health coverage that we set forth when this process began," said Grassley in a written statement.

Congressional Democrats and the White House had been doubting Grassley's commitment to negotiations after he sent a fundraising letter last month pledging to defeat "Obamacare."

The Finance Committee is scheduled to begin voting on its provisions next week. Baucus said he hoped that by the time the panel finishes amending and debating the bill, the measure will have gained some Republican backing.

But a last-minute session with his GOP counterparts -- the latest in a months-long string of such negotiations -- broke up late Tuesday with no commitment of Republican support.

At the same time, the White House was ramping up pressure on the Senate to act -- even if that meant scaling back Obama's expectations of the legislation.

David Axelrod, Obama's senior political advisor, met Tuesday with Senate Democrats to underscore the political risks of failing to revamp the healthcare system. According to Baucus, he cited polls showing public demand for changes -- and increasing support as people learn details of what Democrats are trying to do.

Rockefeller said after the meeting with Axelrod that he would find it "very distressing" if the White House reduced its strategy to "just a question of passing something so you can say you did healthcare reform."

To amplify his message outside Washington, Obama is scheduled to do five television interviews on Sunday -- with ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC and Univision -- to promote his healthcare initiative. He will also appear on David Letterman's show Monday.

The Baucus version of a healthcare overhaul would significantly scale back the cost and scope of legislation approved by two House committees and another in the Senate. And it would shun the public option preferred by many Democrats.

Baucus was still revising key provisions of the bill Tuesday, including curbs on funding for abortion and on benefits for illegal immigrants. But the broad outlines were clear.

Like the version pending in the House, the Baucus proposal would require all individuals to have health insurance, make Medicaid available to more poor people, provide subsidies to help middle- and lower-income people afford private coverage, and set up marketplaces for individuals and small businesses to buy insurance at competitive rates.

But the Baucus bill costs less than $880 billion over 10 years, compared with the $1-trillion measure in the House.

The cost-cutting changes Baucus made to win favor with deficit hawks in the Senate have fueled fresh complaints from liberals such as Rockefeller and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) who worry that, in the absence of a public option, there is no guarantee that affordable insurance will be available to people of modest means who do not qualify for subsidies.

At the same time, however, some of the most fervent supporters of the public option Tuesday signaled a willingness to compromise, and the president himself continued to show flexibility as he barnstormed for action.

Bill Samuel, director of government affairs for the AFL-CIO, said in an interview that the public option remained the preferred solution. But he also said, "If people bring forward an idea that they can credibly argue achieves the same results -- breaking the stranglehold of insurance companies -- we'll look at it."

Obama addressed an AFL-CIO convention in Pittsburgh on Tuesday and reiterated his support for the public option. But he continued to avoid making it nonnegotiable.

Setting up a government-run plan to compete with private health insurers and act as a brake on rising premiums is a good idea, Obama said, one that would "offer Americans more choices, and promote real competition, and put pressure on private insurers to make their policies affordable and treat their customers better."
Rallying the union audience, Obama described the healthcare system as a blight on the nation. He described it as "broken" and prone to "sucking up all the money."

"How many more workers have to lose their coverage?" he asked. "How many more families have to go into the red for a sick loved one? How much longer are we going to have to wait?

"It can't wait," he said.

janet.hook@latimes.com
peter.nicholas@latimes.com

Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times

More Updates later… We will get a better look at the actual bill and post updates then.

Posted: True Health Is True Wealth

Related Resources:

• Real Healthcare Reform: Options to ObamaCare