Tag Archives: Private

Videos

Understanding Obama’s health care reform bill… with video clips!

1 Comment
Sen. Tom Coburn
Sen. Tom Coburn

Tom Coburn

These video clips feature one of the conservatives I like, Senator Tom Coburn! (H/T Club for Growth)

Tom Coburn is a medical doctor, and ran a medical business. He gives you the inside view of why American health care needs changing, and why big government socialism is not the answer. This is not just a lesson in health care. Listen closely – this is a lesson in economics, and it shows the vision of free-market capitalism, liberty and personal responsibility that drives the policies of the right-wing.

Part 1:

Part 2:

And here is Ronald Reagan talking about the loss of liberty that follows when a country adopts socialized medicine. (H/T Club for Growth)

This is the easiest way to learn about health care policy.

Note: If you prefer to learn about socialized vs consumer-driven health care with podcasts, click here.

More details from a think tank

Here is a comprehensive treatment of the problems of health care today, and the right way to reform it. This article by the founder of the Heritage Foundation, Edwin Feulner, Ph.D., is so long that it is exactly the kind of thing that lefties like commenter Jerry won’t have the patience to read! This is the best thing to read in this post if you can only read one thing.

Here is are some of the myths he corrects:

If you like your health care package you can keep it

“…a public plan will lead many employers to drop private health coverage for their workers and dump them into the public plan… According to independent analyses, as many as 119 million Americans could end up in a public plan….”

The end goal is not a single payer system

“…The “single payer” here is Uncle Sam, using taxpayers’ money, and not just paying the bills but calling the shots and deciding what care every American will get—or not get….”

The end goal is not a single payer system

“…Congress’s own watchdog–have issued preliminary estimates that the cost could be high as $2 trillion over 10 years, with most of that borrowed money…”

The quality of your health care will get better

“…Medicare has huge gaps in coverage. Medicaid’s quality is notoriously bad. They both offer substandard care compared to most private insurance plans…”

And of course his letter also gives conservative solutions to the problem of rising health care costs. The Heritage Foundation is my favorite think tank. Conservative across the board – not just on fiscal issues.

James Demint

And conservatives like James Demint are getting this message out to the public, too.

Sen. James Demint
Sen. James Demint

Here is Senator Demint’s article in Forbes magazine. He answers the question: “What is the cause of our current health care problems? Is it the free market? Or is it government intervention into the free market?”

Excerpt:

…Washington politicians make it hard for individuals to own their own health insurance policies. Government gives tax benefits to businesses to provide group health plans to employees, but offers no such tax benefit to individuals who try to buy their own plan for themselves or their family. Government prevents consumers from shopping for better plans across state lines, which limits competition and drives up prices. Government health care programs like Medicare and Medicaid pay doctors and hospitals less than the full value of their services, and the difference gets priced into the higher premiums paid by people who do have insurance.

In other words, politicians deliberately restrict consumer choice, drive up prices, underpay doctors and hinder both access and portability. Then they turn around, blame the free market for the health care crisis and say the only way to save the system is a government takeover of health insurance in the form of a so-called “public option.”

And he’s goes on to explain conservative solutions to the problem of rising health care costs. A great article from one of my favorite conservatives.

The real costs of Obama’s plan

Keith Hennessey has an analysis of the costs of Obama’s new government-controlled, rationed health care plan. You may have heard that the CBO has issued an estimate about the costs of Obama’s plan: 1 Trilliion over 10 years. Keith says that the number is actually closer to 1.3 trillion.

Health care subsidies over 6 years
Health care subsidies over 6 years

Keith took at closer look at the CBO’s 1 Trillion estimate, which includes only ONE area where money will need to be spent (subsidies for the poor). He found that many items in the Democrats’ health care bill were not included in the CBO estimate!

Excerpt:

  1. The budgetary effects of neither the individual mandate nor the employer mandate are included in this score.  I think CBO will find these provisions would raise revenues for the government and reduce the deficit.  While the leaked draft of Kennedy-Dodd was specific about the employer mandate, the official version has just the placeholder language, “Policy under discussion.”  Both mandates leave wide discretion for the Secretaries of Treasury and HHS to create a level and structure of taxation “to accomplish the goal of enhancing participation in qualifying coverage.”  It is extremely difficult for CBO and their tax counterparts, the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) staff, to estimate something like this.
  2. The estimate does not include the budgetary cost of expanding Medicaid to childless adults with income below 150% of the poverty line.  I expect that this will add hundreds of billions of dollars to the cost over the next decade.
  3. It does not include the requirement that health plans define “children” as dependents up to age 27.  I expect this will raise costs.
  4. It does not include the effects of the Medical Advisory Council’s ability to define benefits, or the requirements that plans rebate premiums to the insured.  I think this too will raise costs.
  5. It does not include the budget effect of having a “public plan option.”
  6. There are a bunch of other programs in the bill, including a new disability program and lots of new public health programs.

Keith will be posting more articles on his blog as he calculates the real costs of Obama’s plan.

The bottom line

Obama’s health care plan is simply “Obama knows best”. You will pay money to Obama, based on your income, (not on your health risks). And then Obama will decide whether government will give you any health care. He’ll probably make these decisions the same way he makes other decisions: based on whether you are one of his unionized supporters, whether you donated to Democrats, or whether you investigate his corrupt dealings.

Obama thinks that you are more satisfied with the service at your local DMV than you are with Amazon.com. And he plans to make sure that you are dealing with government bureaucrats, not with private businesses, when you need health care. Who gives you better service? The government, that isn’t trying to compete with anyone to meet your needs? Or private businesses, which do need to compete to earn your business?

Further study

You can watch some videos containing horror stories from countries that have adopted single-payer health care, too.

My previous post on socialized medicine linked to even more horror stories from other countries with socialized medicine.

http://www.youtube.com/swf/l.swf?iurl=http%3A%2F%2Fi2.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2FAe2XEl5952A%2Fhqdefault.jpg&fexp=903902%2C902800&title=McCain%3A+%27This+is+a+joke%27+on+health+care&length_seconds=172&avg_rating=5.0&video_id=Ae2XEl5952A&showinfo=0&allow_embed=1&swf=http%3A%2F%2Fs.ytimg.com%2Fyt%2Fswf%2Fcps-vfl103922.swf&sk=_0zSL5HkbumJPmD211uCey-iMAHfrOKbC&fs=0&allow_ratings=1&rel=1&amp=&cr=US&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.verumserum.com%2F%3Fp%3D6405&showsearch=0
Videos

Michele Bachmann explains why government should not meddle in the free market

1 Comment

Video was found by the Maritime Sentry, a conservative policy-oriented blog.

We’ve seeing a lot of my two favorite Congresswomen lately. Did you miss the previous posts?

If we had elected these two as POTUS and VPOTUS, we would not be spending trillions of dollars on single-payer health care.

Commentary

Why do Democrats live far beyond their means?

Leave a comment

Republicans typically enjoy massive support from people who actually know how the world works, namely, small business owners, investors and entrepreneurs. But do Barack Obama and his new Supreme Court nominee know how the world works?

Sonia Sotomayor

Let’s look at Obama’s Supreme Court nominee first.

Here is what she says:

I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.

So she discriminates against people based on sex and race. There are words for people who discriminate against others based on sex and race.

The American Thinker reports on how she lives within her means: (H/T Commenter ECM)

Sotomayor’s annual earnings come to $196,000 a year ($170,000 a year as an appeals judge and $26,000 for part-time teaching). She has served as an appeals judge for 17 years. This service was preceded by lengthy tenure at a corporate law firm of Pavia and Harcourt, where she was a partner, and presumably was well compensated.

Yet after a career that has spanned 25 years, Ms Sotomayor only has one thousand dollars in net savings. As reported in the New York Post, Sotomayor’s bank account holds $31,985. Her credit cards debts are $15,823, and she has $15,000 in unpaid dental bills. That leaves her with $1,162. Sotomayor’s total assets, revealed as $708,068, consist almost entirely of equity in her Manhattan apartment.

And here is what it means for us:

If confirmed as a Supreme Court justice, Ms Sotomayor will be ruling on numerous cases that involve investors, savers, corporate profits, business regulation, and related free-market issues…. the fact that Ms Sotomayor, after so many years of highly paid professional work, has no savings or investments and no experience or apparent “empathy” with savers or investors, should be highly troubling to the tens of millions of Americans who do have investments, 401Ks, and personal savings.

And here is how this has affected her previous rulings:

In one of her most important rulings (as reported in the New York Times), Sotomayor ruled that corporations must address environmental concerns in the most radical manner without consideration of the cost. If one particle of pollutant remains to be removed, even at the cost of bankrupting all of the companies in the S&P 500 index, that particle must be removed. If a small business has failed to purchase the most advanced equipment available to address environmental concerns, even if the price of that equipment is one hundred times the revenue of the business in question, the equipment must be purchased. That is how much “empathy” we can expect from Judge Sotomayor.

If she is confirmed, she will probably hurt our free market capitalist system, and the liberties grounded by it. The more that the court hurts business and commerce with judicial activism, the more we lose our jobs, our incomes and our liberty itself.

Barack Obama

Now, let’s take a look at how Obama lives. First of all, it’s well known that Obama was raised with a silver spoon in his mouth and went to all the best private schools, where he snorted expensive cocaine. And he awarded massive taxpayer grants to the hospital where his wife worked after her salary was nearly tripled.

The National Review reports:

One of Obama’s Earmark Requests Was for the Hospital That Employs Michelle Obama.

Dan Riehl notes, via Amanda Carpenter, that in the list of earmarks he requested, $1 million was requested for the construction of a new hospital pavilion at the University Of Chicago. The request was put in in 2006.

You know who works for the University of Chicago Hospital?

Michelle Obama. She’s vice president of community affairs.

As Byron noted, “In 2006, the Chicago Tribune reported that Mrs. Obama’s compensation at the University of Chicago Hospital, where she is a vice president for community affairs, jumped from $121,910 in 2004, just before her husband was elected to the Senate, to $316,962 in 2005, just after he took office.”

The NY Daily News reports on how well the Obamas live within their means. (H/T Sweetness and Light)

A close examination of their finances shows that the Obamas were living off lines of credit along with other income for several years until 2005, when Obama’s book royalties came through and Michelle received her 260% pay raise at the University of Chicago. This was also the year Obama started serving in the U.S. Senate.

In April 1999, they purchased a Chicago condo and obtained a mortgage for $159,250. In May 1999, they took out a line of credit for $20,750. Then, in 2002, they refinanced the condo with a $210,000 mortgage, which means they took out about $50,000 in equity. Finally, in 2004, they took out another line of credit for $100,000 on top of the mortgage.

Tax returns for 2004 reveal $14,395 in mortgage deductions. If we assume an effective interest rate of 6%, then they owed about $240,000 on a home they purchased for about $159,250.

This means they spent perhaps $80,000 beyond their income from 1999 to 2004.

The Obama family apparently had little or no savings during this period since there was virtually no taxable interest shown on their tax returns.

These numbers clearly show the Obamas were living beyond their means and they might have suffered financially during the decline in housing prices had they relied on taking ever larger amounts of equity from their home to pay the bills.

And what did the Obamas learn from this?

But in 2005, Obama’s book sales soared and the royalties poured in. Michelle explained, “It was like Jack and his magic beans.”

Without those magic beans, the Obama family would have eventually suffered the consequences of too much debt.

President Obama has never faced consequences in his private life when it comes to managing money. He always had enough money simply by borrowing more and more. And just when things got tight, those magic beans came along to save the day.

I guess this explains Barack Obama’s fiscal policy and his surprise at the consequent surge in unemployment. But he can count on his new judge to back him to the hilt in all of his unconstitutional interventions in the free market – neither of them knows the slightest thing about saving and investing… just borrowing and spending.