Americans are beginning to realize that the Affordable Care Act is not as what it was originally presented. An affordable health care system, which would provide health care to those who required it, it is not. It has developed, as those who assembled it knew it would, into a scheme for a tax revenue stream. Tax the young, who will probably not need or use it and fine anyone who does not sign up for it, while at the same time denying care to older Americans. As has been stated by the person occupying the White House, those older or elderly in need of care should just endure the pain, until the end.
The administration of this system will be carried out by non-medically trained people operating under guide lines that echo the eugenics ideals put forward by Nazi Germany. As Sarah Palin correctly pointed out more than a year ago,
"Government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's "death panel" so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their "level of productivity in society," whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil."
"Oregon rations healthcare to Medicaid recipients. Terminal cancer patients are denied chemotherapy to extend life and now the Oregon rationing board wants to go deeper into the weeds.
From Hope Landsem’s Wall Street Journal blog:
Liberal states often preview health-care central planning before the same regulations go national, which ought to make an Oregon cost-control commission especially scary. On Thursday a state board could change Oregon’s Medicaid program to deny costly care to poor patients who need it most.
Like most such panels, including the Affordable Care Act’s Independent Payment Advisory Board, the Oregon Health Evidence Review Commission, or HERC, claims to be merely concerned with what supposedly works and what doesn’t. Their real targets are usually advanced, costly treatments. That’s why HERC, for example, proposed in May that Medicaid should not cover “treatment with intent to prolong survival” for cancer patients who likely have fewer than two years left to live. HERC presents an example to show their reasoning for such a decision: “In no instance can it be justified to spend $100,000 in public resources to increase an individual’s expected survival by three months when hundreds of thousands of Oregonians are without any form of health insurance.”
Let us not forget that Oregon Medicaid happily pays for assisted suicide–and indeed, has offered terminal cancer patients that option while denying life-extending treatment.
Also, Vermont–which legalized assisted suicide recently– as a single payer plan the state can’t pay for. And guess what: Using assisted suicide and rationing are both on the table as means of paying for the program. No question: Centralized control, mixed with culture of death values make for a toxic brew.
As for the eventual push to turn Obamacare into single payer: As I wrote at length, health care rationing is central to the operation of single payer systems. Obamacarians want more!" by Wesley J. Smith
Just a few of the many statements, such as, "you can keep your own doctor", "it will be less expensive", "health care for the poor and uninsured", have been uncovered to be completely false; and in fact, nearly 20,000 pages of regulations associated with the Act-Law-Tax have been generated with more to be written and because of the restrictions within the implementation policies fewer doctors, due to fixed compensation will be graduated, increase the debt, expand the government, raise premiums, kill jobs and force Americans out of the plans they currently have and like.
The cost, according to the Society of Actuaries, Kentucky could be as high as a 34% increase. The actuaries predict States like Wisconsin and Ohio, an 80% increase. The cost to every American has already increased as depicted on a chart, detailing the rising projected cost of the funded portions of Obama's signature legislation, Obamacare:
"...The latest estimate, as the chart details, is that Obamacare will cost $2.6 trillion dollars in its first real decade. The bill does not fully go into effect until 2014, therefore the estimate begins with that year.
"President Obama promised a joint session of Congress in 2009 to spend $900 billion over ten years on his health care law: 'Now, add it all up, and the plan that I’m proposing will cost around $900 billion over 10 years.' Adding up all the different spending provisions in the health care law, however, (including closing the Medicare 'donut hole,' implementation costs, and other spending) total gross spending over the FY 2010–19 period is about $1.4 trillion, based on CBO estimates," the Senate Budget Committee Republican staff explains. "And most of the major spending provisions in the law do not even take effect until 2014. Congressional Democrats delayed these provisions in order to show only six years of spending under the plan in the original 10-year budget window (from FY2010-19) used by CBO at the time the law was enacted. Therefore, the original estimate concealed the fact that most of the law’s spending only doesn't even begin until four years into the 10-year window. A Senate Budget Committee analysis (based on CBO estimates and growth rates) finds that that total spending under the law will amount to at least $2.6 trillion over a true 10-year period (from FY2014–23) —not $900 billion, as President Obama originally promised." by Daniel Halper
The unfunded liabilities portions of Obama's signature legislation, Obamacare will be very costly to Americans, as reported by Steve Eggleston, "Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, stated on the Senate floor that not only will ObamaCare cost $2.6 trillion in its first 10 years of full implementation, but that it will add $17 trillion to the nation’s long-term unfunded liabilities.
Before I continue, I do have to explain the concept of “present value”. Except for the $2.6 trillion 10-year value, the list of figures Sen. Sessions gives are in that concept. It is one of a few common measures of long-term finances, specifically one designed to measure what is required today to avoid (excepting earned interest, which in this case appears to be assumed to be roughly 3.25%) any future draw on financing over, in the case of the federal government’s usage of the term, the next 75 years. Usually when it is invoked by the federal government, the value of legislated, but unfunded, claims on general-fund revenue, such as those contained in the Hospital Insurance “Trust Fund” and legislated mandates to fully-fund Medicare Parts B and D regardless of whether their dedicated funding sources are sufficient, are not included in that calculation. However, the Medicare Trustees include that, as well as the $2.5 trillion in Social Security “Trust Funds”, in their unfunded liability calculations from the “budget perspective”, and on the health-care side, so did Sen. Sessions.
President Obama told the American people that his health law would cost $900 billion over ten years and that it would not add ‘one dime’ to the debt.
But we have shown the cost for ten years of implementation is actually $2.6 trillion—almost three times as much. In addition, the offsets used to reduce the law’s official cost were enormous and phony, as I have discussed before, and will detail at another time. The more we learn about the bill, the more we discover that it’s even more un-affordable than was suspected.
So, over a period of about three months, our staff worked to estimate the new unfunded liability imposed by the health law. This is not the total cost of the bill, but the unfunded, mandatory coverage obligations incurred by the
United States government on behalf of the United States people over a period of time. An unfunded obligation is basically the amount of money we have to spend on a mandatory expense that does not have a funding source—money we don’t have but that we are committed to spend. It is this kind of long-term, unfunded obligation that has placed this nation’s financial situation at such great risk. It is what has called witness after witness before the Budget Committee, where I serve as Ranking Member, to tell us that we are on an unsustainable path. That means money we will either have to print, borrow, or tax to meet the obligations we have incurred as a people as a result of the passage of this bill. For instance, Social Security has an unfunded liability of $7 trillion over the next 75 years. That’s an enormous sum. It’s double the entire amount of the United States budget today.
My staff used the models that are used by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and worked diligently to come up with a figure. That figure—based on the administration’s own optimistic assumptions and claims about the cost of the law—is an incredible $17 trillion. That is more than twice the unfunded liability of Social Security.
When you include the new health law with our existing obligations like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid—we now have $99.4 trillion in total unfunded obligations over 75 years….
Let me briefly explain some of what now comprises this additional $17 trillion in unfunded obligations.
$12 trillion is for the health care law’s premium subsidy program. You see, the law created new regulations that drive up the price of insurance for millions of Americans. The writers of the law knew it would inflate the cost of insurance premiums, so to cover that cost they had to include new government subsidies so people could pay for their more expensive insurance.
On Medicaid, this new health care law has added another $5 trillion in unfunded liabilities. This is on top of the substantial unfunded obligations that the federal and state governments have already had to take on in order to support Medicaid, and they have vigorously protested to us, warning of these deep, additional expenditure requirements that are falling on the states.
Obviously, we cannot “pre-fund” those future liabilities as they are far greater than our ability to pay now, Indeed, as we are discovering with the Social Security and Medicare Hospital Insurance “Trust Funds”, even the fiction of “pre-funding” through the “Trust Funds” is being blown up as the federal government is and will be forced to come up with far more than the current face value of said “Funds”.
There is a second measure of future liabilities discussed by both the Medicare Trustees and Social Security Trustees, what percentage of cumulative GDP over the next 75 years is required to cover the shortfall. That is useful for estimating what it would take to fund an unfunded liability in the future. The Social Security Trustees put the “present value” of the cumulative GDP between 2011 and 2085 at $873.7 trillion. Dividing the $17 trillion (present value) in unfunded liabilities into that $873.7 trillion (again present value) means that implementing ObamaCare will cost us an additional 1.94% of the entire economy over the next 73 years and some months.
When one extends that math to the rest of the liabilities, which if one applies the broader “budget perspective” to the remainder is over $102 trillion in present value, nearly 11.7% of the entire GDP will be going to cover the unfunded obligations of the welfare state. As Sen. Sessions said, that is not the entire cost, but just the portion that won’t be covered by the revenues already dedicated to them. Considering the historical post-World War II average federal revenues are roughly 18-19% of GDP, I’ll let you guess as to whether tax increases could possibly cover this unfunded spending.
To put that in another perspective, the Social Security Trustees estimate that the nominal (not adjusted for inflation) cumulative GDP will be $9.603 quadrillion dollars, or if you prefer, $9,603 trillion. 11.7% of that, the unfunded liability discussed above, is $1.124 quadrillion (or $1,124 trillion). That, if the mother of all tax increases is not imposed, will be a part of the public debt. By comparison, the nominal value of GDP in 2085 will be only $435 trillion. Even before any of the other deficit spending, or the current debt, is considered, that means publicly-held debt would be 258% of GDP by 2085 exclusively because of the unfunded liabilities."
The IRS has been assigned and authorized to directly debt bank accounts in order to satisfy fines.
The correct method for legal remedy when dealing with this unconstitutional and unlawful seizure of private information and assets (please see the article entitled, Power Grab by Dictator of National Care) is to nullify the Federal law by way of proper resolution through state assemblies. Many States have already done just that.
The Tenth Amendment explicitly states that those powers not granted to the federal government by the Constitution are reserved to the States, unless the Constitution forbids such authority. if the person occupying the White House and Congress yell about Supreme Court rulings, it will not matter if the States hold void the law by nullification.
Forcing Americans to purchase anything they do not want under the penalty of fine is extortion. Depriving Americans of their freedom to choose is a basic attack on personal liberty. The Bill of Rights has been under attack by this administration, in particular, and if the person in the White House has his way, as outlined in his NDRP, which can be read in the article Busy Bees Make Shiny New Hive a blatant grab of liberties by the government. In the article Power Grab by Dictator of National Healthcare, some of the issues that are now making spotty media coverage, had been covered by Fix America, and as more and more people, including those who supported the act from the beginning, oppose it, it is clear the Act-Law-Tax is more costly than originally thought. Even prominent Democrats in Congress are beginning to call for suspension of ACA even before it is implemented.
Many people have and will continue to argue the authority given to government by way of the 'necessary and proper' and 'for the general welfare' clauses. There is no provision within either or both of these clauses that justify or permit the usurpation of individual and sovereign rights by any governmental authority.
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With the reasoning and logic displayed in the statement, “We have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it” Nancy Pelosi violated the constitutional responsibility that "Congress must exercise vigorous debate." Vigorous debate should be the first part of passing a bill, while listening to the citizens of the country. When you use faulty logic, what you obtain is a 2,700-page law and 10 times that in new regulations, which only makes things worse.
I have only one question for the Esteemed Fix America Readers. Are We to endure the pain of Health Care at any cost, but not for all Citizens? Why not allow Citizens to join the health care system for congressional members?
