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There's no logical reason why those
with healthcare can't keep it, and why
healthcare for the poor can't be free.

With the Gannett-owned USA Today chiming that people shouldn't knock Obamacare until they've tried it because there are a lot of subsidies available for low income individuals and families; and for the elderly, Duncan Black, the USA Today journalist noted, Obamacare is a gateway to expanded Medicare coverage. That's true—if you can find any doctors who will still accept Medicare patients. On the other hand, the working middle class which is expected to pick up the tab for those subsidies, is learning that the cost they are going to have to pay to cover themselves, their families—and the entitlement-minded poor who has always expected someone else to tote their barge—is more than the middle class can bear as well. Particularly since the "gimme" generation that Obama thought would pay the freight for the elderly has decided to simply opt out of the turkey shoot once they realized they were the turkey.

With all of the rhetoric from the left about subsidies and a variety of plans to keep costs down, one Texan was willing to share his sticker shock with Mike Adams of Natural News. Humana One notified the policyholder that "...Texas HB 1951 requires insurers to inform their members of specific information related to premium increases...[1] the dollar amount of the premium currently in effect, [2] the actual dollar amount of the premium after the rate increase, and [3] the percentage of change between the two amounts." In the case of that consumer, a man and wife, the current premium of their stripped-down bare bones healthcare plan was $212.10 per month. Humana One's new premium for an Affordable Care Act approved policy was $1,356.60—or an increase of 539.50%. Would that couple be eligible for a subsidy? Probably. But, it would depend on the family income which was purported to be less than $70K (but how much less is anyone's guess). After the 23rd time between June, 2009 and Oct. 1, 2013 when the first policy cancellation letters were sent by US healthcare providers to over 15 million unsuspecting individual coverage policyholders whom Barack Obama had promised "If you like your plan you can keep it—period," America learned on Oct.31 that from the first time he assured Americans they would not be jeopardy of losing their healthcare coverage Obama knew what he was telling the American people was a lie.

When HR 3962 (the original Senate healthcare bill posing as the nonexistent House bill) that ultimately evolved into a fraudulent House version, HR3590 which theoretically met the requirements of the Origination Clause was introduced, a grandfather provision was inserted in the measure that would exempt individual and group coverage policyholders from being obligated to go into the public healthcare system. In September, 2010, Senate Republicans brought a measure to the floor that would implement a grandfather rule to protect all healthcare policies in existence if Obamacare became the law of the land. The social progressives argued that the grandfather clause would allow everyone who currently has insurance to be exempted from Obamacare—leaving only the elderly and about 35 to 40 million young people who are not covered by employer plans and who have refused to spend their own money to provide insurance coverage for themselves. (These are the same 35 to 40 million people who will opt to pay a tax penalty (which is actually a Dept. of Health & Human Services fine collected by the Internal Revenue Service—regardless what Chief Justice John Roberts [who said that fining someone for not doing something is unconstitutional] decided to call it. Not even the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court can make something that is unconstitutional "constitutional" by simply calling it something else. When the federal government, using the IRS for leverage, is trying ti force you to do something [a] you don't want to do, and [b] probably can't afford to do, the penalty they assess against your gross income for not doing it is a fine regardless if they decide call it a tax. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and sounds like a duck, it's a duck. And, this duck looks, sounds and acts just like the "fine" HR 3962 said it was.

Democrats like Senators Mary Landrieu [D-LA], Jeanne Shaheen [D-NH], Mark Pryor [D-AR], Kay Hagan [D-NE] and Mark Begich [D-AK]—all of whom come up for election in 2014—voted against killing the grandfather rule when it came up for a vote in 2010. Today, each of them knows it will very likely end their political careers if their vote is tied to killing the grandfather rule by forcing every man, woman and child in America (except themselves and a few really rich campaign donors) into a socialized medicine scheme that will erase the American middle class from existence. Today, all of them are fighting to delay the individual mandate until after the 2014 election. Why? They all need to fool their constituents one more time and get themselves re-elected before angry middle class voters boot them out of office. (Remember, too, that every Democrat in the House of Representatives voted for Obamacare—and most of them mimicked Obama's "if you like your current plan, you can keep it" mantra. And while every Democrat in both Houses is pushing hard to postpone the implementation of Obamacare until after the 2014 midterm elections, warning Obama that they will lose the Senate and the GOP will increase their grip on the House if Obama does not stop the implementation of Obamacare until after November, 2014 since the Obama regulations now show that roughly 85% of all private healthcare plans in the United States will lose their grandfather status, forcing those Americans into the insurance exchanges where their health insurance costs will raise anywhere from double to five to ten times what those policyholders are now paying.

In Sept. 2010 as the Senate argued the grandfathering resolution, the GOP argued that if they did not pass the grandfather rule, a majority of all individual and group healthcare recipients would lose their insurance, breaking Obama's promise that if you like your current plan you can keep it. Sen. Chuck Grassley [R-IA] argued on the floor of the Senate that "...the District of Columbia is an island surrounded by reality. Only in the District of Columbia that if you like what you have you can keep it, and then pass regulations that do just the opposite—and figure that people are going to ignore it...The Administration's own regulations prove this is not the case. Under the grandfathering regulation, according to the White House's own economic impact analysis, as many as 69% of businesses will lose their grandfathered status by [2014] and be forced to buy government-approved plans."

Voting along party lines, the Democrats—without a single Republican vote in either House—killed the resolution which would have protected middle class health insurance policy owners and employees whose companies provided them with healthcare. Interestingly, the government's grandiose scheme to provide healthcare for those 30 to 45 million Americans who, it's beginning to turn out, didn't have health insurance simply because a great percentage of those without healthcare made a conscious choice and decided to spend their discretionary income on fun and games instead of healthcare. If they had 10% or 20% for take-home pay in their wages, they would have 10% or 20% more fun and games, not healthcare, in their lives.

Why did the Democrats do that? Because they knew if they did not force the middle class into the only healthcare system they could legislate, it would collapse. But, it appears, there may have been a second, and more sinister, purpose in Obamacare. Within the Obama bureaucracy, after the deed was done and the regulations were being written by the social progressives in charge of the worker bees at 200 Independence Ave, SW and 1111 Independence Ave., NW in the nation's capital, ingeniously designed a premium structure to deliver slightly better benefits to blue States and slightly higher premiums to red states based on the exchanges. While this will benefit some red state voters living in blue states and penalize some blue state voters living in red states, the bureaucrats did the best they could to help their constituents although I doubt anyone in either a red state or blue state will feel they are better off from living where they live.

As a candidate for president on June 28, 2008, Barack Obama pledged that the healthcare bill he expected to enact would "...[be] lower...by up to $2,500 for a typical family per year...by the end of my first term." But once he had his shoes propped up on the famous Resolute Desk in the Oval Office (made from the timbers of the HMS Resolute and given to the United States by Queen Victoria in 1880), Medicare actuarials told the community organizer that his savings projections were off—by just a hair. Instead of saving the average family $2,500 per year, during the first ten years, Obamacare would boost healthcare spending by roughly $621 billion more than would be spent if the Affordable Care Act had not being enacted. But even that estimate proved to be too low. The actuaries were forced to raise their projection in 2011 to $1.5 trillion more than consumers would be forced to spend to be covered by a program which, like all government programs, would cost much, much more and provide much, much less.

So, the $64,000 question is: how do you fix the problem? Or rather, can you fix the problem without junking Obamacare completely? No, you can't. But then, Obamacare was corrupt from the gitgo and constitutionally, is null and void and needs to be thrown out.

On July 14, 2009 the House of Representatives narrowly passed its first, and last, version of America's Affordable Health Choices Act. The Senate arrogantly decided they could do better and flatly rejected the 1,900 page HR 3200 bill. It was dead-on-arrival. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid [D-NV] (who needs to actually read the leather-bound copy of the Constitution given to him by dying Sen. Robert Byrd [D-WV]) decided the Senate could craft a better healthcare law than then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi [D-CA] , and they created their own 2,300 page House bill, HR 3962 which Pelosi seemed to have no problem with. In fact, she was gleefully excited for the House to "...hurry up and vote for it so they could find out what was in it." With 15 million American having their health insurance policies arbitrarily canceled by Obama-Reid-Pelosi regulations, I think someone should have read it before blindly enacting it. In my view, every politician whose name is inscribed on that vote needs to be fired, prosecuted and imprisoned—as does the guy who signed it into law. A criminal fraud was committed on the American people, and everyone in Congress knew it.

It was not until HR 3962 passed both Houses that someone somewhere in the vast bureaucracy remembered the Originality Clause. Congress had just enacted the most expensive revenue bill since the Social Security Act of 1935 and it was unconstitutional. They needed to cover their butts—and the law the social progressives have been trying to enact since 1935.

Harry Reid retrieved a dead House bill, HR 3590, enrolled by Congressman Charlie Rangel [D-NY] on Sept. 17, 2009. Only HR 3590, which passed in the House on a vote of 416-0, had nothing to do with healthcare. It was the Service Members Home Mortgage Tax Act of 2009—a bill to provide military veterans a one time tax credit when they buy a home. Using an obscure Senate parliamentarian rule that does not erase the unconstitutional nature of the deed, on Nov. 19, 2009 Reid amended the year-dead House bill, gutting all 714 words contained in it, and replacing them with the 379,976 words found in HR 3962 (also a Senate bill). Keep in mind that although HR 3590 was voted on in the House as the Affordable Care Act, it never created the bill, nor did a healthcare bill known as HR 3590 ever originate in the House of Representatives. It was a sham perpetuated to appear as though a healthcare bill under that number originated in the House of Representatives—before the Senate version, HR 3962, also with a House bill designation—and 109 more pages than it had as HR 3962. Were those the pages that created the $160 billion slush fund to keep Obamacare alive in the event the Supreme Court overturned it?

Okay, back to the $64,000 question. And only the $64,000 question. Before Obamacare rhetoric was fueling all of the dialogue in both Houses of Congress like bubonic plague, 85% of the American people had health insurance (which included those on Medicare and Medicaid). That meant, only 15% of the people had no health insurance at all. Which, of course means only about 15% of the people needed some form of health insurance and another 15% (give or take another 5% to 10%) needed more than they had.

So, how much would it cost to insure roughly 30% of the population? Surely not the $1.5 trillion estimate we have to insure it all. But there's a tough question that needs to be asked. Why should the taxpayers be obligated to foot the bill—not for those who can afford to pay for health coverage but would rather waste their money on fun and games—for those who need coverage but simply run out of money before their monthly debt obligations are pad? Contrary to our being raised with the biblical adage that we are all our brothers' keepers, there's a vast distinction between the biblical adage and the social progressive adage. In the Christian definition we actually share from our abundance, with Christians giving what they can to help their neighbors get through tough times. In the social progressive version government, using raw power to intimidate, takes what it wants and doles part of what it takes to the less fortunate but keep the bulk of what it takes to promulgate its communist agenda.

Okay. If you agree that there's a difference between the biblical view of being your brother's keeper and the government view of being Big Brother's source of revenue, let me show you that difference of terms of making a healthcare system work with virtually no cost to anyone--except government (which cannot be passed on to you and me). That cost will prove to be minimal because the graft is gone. Take graft out of government, and outlaw political contributions that the politician can keep when he leaves office and two things happen" [1] taxes will drop because the quid pro quos using taxpayer dollars will stop, and [2] term limits happen naturally since when cheap lawyers and opportunists realize they will leave office with less assets than they had when they were elected, they term limit themselves. The only ones vying for more than two terms will be the ideologues.

Since we are only talking about 30% of the population—and not raping the finances of the other 70% to provide healthcare for the 30%—it becomes simply an equation in logic. Those with healthcare, provided by an employer program or through a private carrier because they are self-employed, are not part of the problem and need not be part of a political solution that makes them part of the problem. But, we'll come back to the self-employed in a minute because there is a solution for them that will lower their costs.

Let's talk about the "gimme" crowd first. They believe life should be free for them because they are somehow entitled and, for some unexplainable reason, someone else should foot the bill for them. They are products of Lyndon Johnson's "Great Welfare Society" They were raised with the notion that if they are a minority race, life should be free. None of them realized that the "freebies" were the same bonds—albeit copper and silver instead of rusty iron—as the leg irons that shackled their ancestors to the cotton and tobacco fields in the deep South or the dingy, unsafe factories or hi-rise construction jobs that built the mid-19th century skyline of the North.

Do you remember Aesop's fable about the ant and the grasshopper? The ant worked hard all summer storing up provisions for winter while the grasshopper sang and whiled away the time. When winter came the grasshopper was starving and went to beg from the ant, who rebuffed him, telling him that since he sang all summer he should dance (to keep warm) throughout the winter. In the social progressive version of Aesop's fable, the ant feeds the grasshopper from his abundance. In our world today, as every America knows, there simply is no abundance—unless you work in the Obama Administration where the number of government employees earning over $150 thousand per year has increased a hundredfold since 2009.

There are two sub-classifications in the "gimme" crowd. First is the generational welfare "gimme" crowd which has been living off the working taxpayers since 1965 because the left decided it needed to provide minorities with a grand gratuity that would forever shackle black voters to the Democratic Party. They don't work because a work ethic was never instilled in them. Collecting welfare is their "job."During the housing boom, the left wrote that "job classification" into law. People who had never held a job and lived their entire lives on welfare found they were eligible to buy a house (with a higher interest rate than homebuyers with jobs and a history of paying their bills). The second sub-classification of a "gimme American" are those who have jobs. Most of them are freeloaders who spent their waking hours trying to scam family and friends into supporting them so they can use their paychecks for more important stuff—like fun and games.

The social progressives in Congress believe the first segment is entitled to free healthcare because, well, they've been living free for generations and, like house pets that rely on their owners for their meals and a place to sleep, people without even the most basic job skills shouldn't be expected to have to find jobs that don't exist in the black community.that has been faced with over 50% unemployment for the last five years. The price for their healthcare, like the price of that welfare check Obama has promised to restore, will have a price tag attached to it that most of that segment of the "gimme" generation will refuse to pay. First, to get healthcare benefits and public assistance, they need to be obligated to pee in a cup once a month. (The left will fight that because, to them, it's demeaning. It should be. If you feel uncomfortable living on the cuff, you'll find a job, or two, or three—even washing dishes or mowing lawns and pull yourself out of the doldrums, and begin feeling good about yourself.) Second, to keep that public assistance the beneficiary of that financial aid will be enrolled in, and get a passing grade in, a trade school where jobs exist for people without ambition. What you don't work for and earn by the sweat of your brow has no value.

It's a waste of taxpayer dollars to provide the "gimme" generation a college education just so they can continue to collect public assistance while they sit on the sofa, feeling good about themselves because, at least now, they can answer the questions on Jeopardy. Back to the healthcare. They will carry a provisional county or State healthcare card that expires and must be renewed monthly that will provide hospital or private medical clinic care, emergency room care for accidents, preventative care doctor visits and necessary surgical procedures related to that medical care. That care is not charged to the taxpayers of the city, county or State. Those charges become 100% tax write-offs for the doctor, the hospital and/or medical care facility in a new line on the Form 1040 between the taxpayers' gross income and adjusted gross income.

Since the federal government has such a penchant to provide healthcare to people who don't want to work, let the federal government pay for it out of its own pocket. How? By cutting all federal aid to our enemies, cutting all corporate welfare to the princes of industry who have moved the majority of their jobs overseas, to the barons of banking and big business, and by eliminating the agricultural subsidies to Hollywood actors and wealthy weekend farmers who grow nothing except hay to feed their own livestock—which also guarantees them all of the same tax credits hard-working farmers earn with calloused hands and the sweat of their brows as their crop yields suffer from dust storms, droughts, early winters and late springs.

And, by making congressional earmarks a felony since quid pro quos to major campaign donors from the pockets of the taxpayers are nothing more than kickbacks for big dollar bribes. And, best of all, eliminating all financial grants or aid to any unions, foundations or political action groups which advocate on behalf of, or against, any political organization, advocacy issue, or political candidate. If any organization wishes to endorse a candidate, a political agenda or a piece of legislation, let them do it with their own dime. The funds they currently receive, like AARP's $85 million stipend from Obama to convince seniors that Obamacare was a good thing, would be better spent providing seniors with lifesaving healthcare procedures and/or medications to save their lives, not an Independent Payment Advisory Board bureaucrat denying them the procedure or medication that will either save or prolong their life. And, finally, dropping out of the United Nations will save United States taxpayers billions of dollars per year since the United States, which pays 22% of the cost to maintain the UN (now about $7 billion per year) plus 26% of all of the UN peacekeeping efforts worldwide, is now a political devise used by the Muslim-dominated third world to battle the English-speaking industrial world and Israel.

And, finally, the second segment of the "gimme" generation who has a job but better use for their money. Fun and games. Since the social progressives believe everyone except the middle class is entitled to a free ride, the gainfully employed deadbeats who think someone else is responsible for their debt will qualify for partially-free healthcare based on their previous year's adjusted gross income. The doctor, hospital, clinic or pharmacy will still write off 100% of the cost for the procedures, tests, and medications. And the patient will endure the same humiliating "pee in a cup" procedure monthly just like the other segment living on the public dole. If you have money for illegal drugs, you have money for legal prescription drugs.

However, the patient ID numbers for the card holder would identify which segment of the "gimme" generation the medical recipient belongs to. That would allow the Internal Revenue Service [IRS] to easily identify both the the gainfully employed "fun and games" taxpayer and the public assistance taxpayer.

The "fun and games" taxpayer would have to reimburse the federal government for his share of his medical care when he files his income tax. The portion of his medical bill covered by the federal government, and 100% of the bill for the public assistance taxpayer will increase those taxpayer's adjusted gross income—and, of course, their taxable incomes. But, those portions of their medical expenses paid to the IRS on behalf of the hospitals or doctors would be deductible on Schedule A, Line 4 that year. Since the IRS would be charging them penalties and interest on whatever balance carried over to the next year, no portion of that balance would be deductible as a medical expense since much of it—perhaps even all of it—could be nothing more than penalties and interest.

The middle class taxpayers who are working and those who have been downsized and who have been forced into the individual policy market place, and who are struggling in today's economy to make ends meet—usually by compromising some facet of their family's standard of living either by doing with fewer of the material things they previously enjoyed, or spending less time with their loved ones by taking on menial part time jobs to make the money stretch from one payday to the next—already struggle to pay for health insurance. Both those covered by group plans or those paying more not only in premiums but through increased co-pays and deductibles. Both of these segments list their out-of-pocket medical expenses on Schedule A, Line 1 and take their deduction on Line 4. Okay. Under these proposed plans, everyone's covered. And, cost is reasonably assessed. Only those using medical services pay. And each pays only for his or her own coverage or family's coverage, and the non-covered costs related to the medical services provided.

But, there's a way government to actually make a difference for the first time since 1935. It can help the downsized workers who have lost their group insurance plans by using the healthcare exchanges they assembled in a more creative way—by creating group insurance exchanges for both self-employed and under-employed workers who otherwise do not qualify for any form of group coverage, subsecting the exchanges by career types to actually create affordable health care options for each segment of under-employed or self-employed genre. Of course, that defeats the purpose of the social progressive left who enacted Obamacare specifically to control the population of the United States by holding both their financial and physical fate in their steely grip.

If Congress could put their self-serving greed aside long enough to actually think of the taxpayers who employ them, and write a new healthcare law that protects everyone and assesses cost only to those who, since 1933, have perpetually expected someone else to pay the freight for their journey through life. This idea is both equitable and cost effective because it proportionally levies the cost to the user of the medical services while guaranteeing those services, fairly, to everyone who needs them. Well, for whatever it's worth, once again, you have my two cents worth on this subject. Until next time...

 

 

 

 

 

Just Say No
Copyright © 2009 Jon Christian Ryter.
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