Healthcare Hypocricy?

[wu_shizzle]

Dems eye 1099 repeal

Democrats are quickly learning that the 1099 reporting regulations in the HCR bill are ridiculous and onerous for most businesses. The problem is, BHO and Nancy Pelosi have told everyone that HCR will cost nothing and repealing this part puts them in the hole 17 Billion dollars.

This is what happens when you pass bills to find out what's in them.

[AMaizNShocks]

Dems eye 1099 repeal

Democrats are quickly learning that the 1099 reporting regulations in the HCR bill are ridiculous and onerous for most businesses. The problem is, BHO and Nancy Pelosi have told everyone that HCR will cost nothing and repealing this part puts them in the hole 17 Billion dollars.

This is what happens when you pass bills to find out what's in them.

No surprise here. The Democrats did the same thing when they vilified Arizona's imigration law when most had not taken the time to read it.

[SubGod22]

Cuccinelli Says 'Liberty' on the Line as Judge Weighs Virginia Health Care Suit

Virginia's top-ranking attorney warned Monday that the federal government will be able to order Americans to "buy anything" if the state's lawsuit against the health care overhaul goes down, after a federal judge in Richmond heard arguments in the landmark case.

Invoking Revolutionary War-era struggles, Cuccinelli suggested that not even the British would have attempted to force Americans to buy a product. His argument is that the federal government is attempting to "stretch" the definition of the Constitution's Commerce Clause in order to "regulate inactivity." In other words, the government wants to force Americans to buy a product and then fine those who don't buy that product -- a scenario Cuccinelli described as "non-commerce."

[SubGod22]

CBO Says Health Reform Causes Drug Costs to Rise

And now a new analysis from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office shows that health reform will actually let drug companies increase their prices for drugs that are purchased through Medicare.

[SubGod22]

What Republicans Can -- And Can't -- Do about ObamaCare

[Maggie]

This essay, by Charles Kesler, is worth your time:

The Stakes of Obamacare

Obama has huge legislative victories that he will be eager to defend because they're the jewels in his crown—and because without them, he cannot win the still longer game he's playing. That game is all about preserving and perpetuating the era of big government. It's about building a bigger and better state that will grant people new kinds of rights and at last achieve a new kind of national community—a "more perfect Union," as he terms it, meaning a more perfect social democracy.

In that protracted effort, Obamacare is key. It's unpopular now, but he's wagering that the American people never met an entitlement they didn't like eventually, whether out of sentiment, self-interest, or simply habit. The more one ponders Obamacare's electoral, policy, and longer political implications, the more it stands out as the centerpiece of his whole political enterprise. Stop it—repeal it, we must now say—and you have a good chance of stopping the transformation he seeks. Fail, or worse, don't even try, and you permit what can be called, without exaggeration, gradual regime change at home. For the health care question involves, in its longest reach, nothing less than the form of government and the habits and character of the American people.

If, Rip Van Winkle-style, one had slept though the Obama Administration, one would awaken, as it were, in a new land. The old word for such a profound change was revolution. As a good American progressive, however, Obama reckons his revolution will be one in a series, an unending series generated by progress or history itself. His reforms will connect to Woodrow Wilson's, Franklin Roosevelt's, and Lyndon Johnson's before him, and others yet to come, and all these together will constitute a steady evolution of American society and politics, a continual updating. That sounds reassuring, insofar as it promises to take the sting and surprise out of political change; but that predictability or security comes at the expense of liberty, because there is no choice about the whole of liberal-style progress and evolution. You could choose whether or not to make a revolution; a revolution might be defeated or reversed. But you don't get to deliberate about the inevitable, which is how progressives think of History. As Americans have been told for generations now, ad nauseam: you can't turn back the clock.

Read the whole thing.... :good:

[ISASO]

The question is whether the public has the character, the love of freedom, to assert itself justly and intelligently in this predicament. For President

Obama's campaign to transform the country is only the latest installment in modern liberalism's long-running project to change America by changing Americans' relation to their government. For a century, the Left has argued that the old Constitution was obsolescent, an 18th-century artifact needing thorough modernization, which liberals were happy to supply. Key to its reform was changing the scholarly, and eventually the public, interpretation of its purpose: not to limit government, to separate powers, and to keep the national government devoted to national affairs, but to liberate government so it could grow easily, to combine powers so that experts could direct government more efficiently to good purposes, and to expand the universe of good purposes by urging the national government to take responsibility for state and local affairs all the way down to the socio-economic well-being of every American.

[RoyalShock]

Just got out of our company's health benefits meeting.

Our full family plan premium (employee's portion) is jumping 42%. As far as I know the company is still paying the same percentage (two-thirds) of the overall premium.

Thank you, Mr. President and your minions.

[SubGod22]

Just got out of our company's health benefits meeting.

Our full family plan premium (employee's portion) is jumping 42%. As far as I know the company is still paying the same percentage (two-thirds) of the overall premium.

Thank you, Mr. President and your minions.

I recieved an email yesterday about ours here at work. It didn't have a lot of details as the company is still looking at things but were pretty much warning that massive changes would probably come in the next year. I don't make enough money to have to lose more of my paycheck to this.

[ISASO]

Aren't companies going to be required to pay 85% of the premiums? That's what will drive a lot of them to drop coverage altogether, paving the way for the government's single-payer system. Once the government "proves" that insurers and employers refuse to provide mandated coverage, the HHS Secretary, at her discretion, can just about invoke any system the Obama Administration deems necessary to provide the new American right to healthcare.

[RoyalShock]

Or, we'll see an extended period of wage freeze or decline in order for companies to be able to adjust to paying a higher percentage of even higher premiums.

That will be great for the economy! :roll:

[1979Shocker]

Va. federal judge strikes down health care law

WASHINGTON — A federal judge declared the Obama administration's health care law unconstitutional Monday, siding with Virginia's attorney general in a dispute that both sides agree will ultimately be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

U.S. District Judge Henry E. Hudson is the first federal judge to strike down the law, which has been upheld by two others in Virginia and Michigan. Several other lawsuits have been dismissed and others are pending, including one filed by 20 other states in Florida.

[wu_shizzle]

Supreme Court here we come.

[ShockBand]

My school district adopted a plan that is termed a "consumer interest driven" plan with three levels of choice on deductible. In doing so, the monthly premium has actually gone down. The tradeoff is that brand name prescriptions and anything at the primary care doctor's office other than the visit and standard lab work are all applied to the deductible first, making initial out of pocket expense higher. But, it does make us at the consumer level more aware of some of those costs and I think is intended to get us thinking more about asking for generic med alternatives and whether or not some procedures are really necessary.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out in my district, but at first glance I like the idea even though some things are now being paid first by me.

[SubGod22]

What's Next For the Health Care Lawsuit?

If the high court does not get involved in the Virginia suit right away then the appeal will go to the Richmond-based Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. A three judge panel of that court--which has a conservative reputation--would most likely hear the case. Although that step could be skipped in favor of consideration before the entire 13-member bench.

The Fourth Circuit's final decision, which could come in the second half of 2011 would then likely be appealed to the Supreme Court. The justices then have the option of granting the case as a stand-alone matter or combine it with other cases that are in the legal pipeline. It could also decide not to take the case, which it often does to the thousands of petitions it reviews each year, but would be an extraordinary decision given the unique nature of this law.

This legal battle has me more intrigued than any I can think of.