Make no mistake: The health care debate going on in Washington is about one thing, and it is not the millions of uninsured Americans. It’s about the Obama administration’s goal of turning this country into a socialist nation.
President Barack Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) are pushing Congress to pass the health care overhaul before the August recess, riding roughshod over the protests not only of Republicans, but of some Democrats, many business interests and hospitals. Obama has made clear that, as White House advisor David Axelrod put it, “Ultimately, this is not about a process, it’s about results. … We’d like to do it with the votes of members of both parties, but the worst result would be to not get health-care reform done.”
Wednesday, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee passed the “Quality, Affordable Health Coverage for All Americans” bill, otherwise known as QAHCAA (pronounce it as it looks — CACA). The House Ways and Means Committee followed suit Thursday. No Republicans have voted for it so far, and several Democrats have voted against it.
During the presidential campaign, Republicans, including candidates Fred Thompson and John McCain, warned about the tax implications of electing Obama president. They were right. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel (D-NY) announced late last Friday that Congress would pay for health care by hiking taxes on the households earning more than $350,000 per year and individuals earning $280,000. The hike would put New York’s top bracket at nearly 60 percent. Rangel predicts revenue of $540 billion over 10 years. Democrats’ ultimate goal is to have the highest income earners pay for health care for everyone else. But even the liberal Washington Post editorialized, “There is simply no way to close the [funding] gap by taxing a handful of high earners.”
To cover part of this deficiency, Democrats propose cutting tax breaks for hospitals because they don’t provide enough charitable care to earn them any longer. According to the American Hospital Directory, fewer than half of the 5,482 hospitals in the country actually pay federal, state or local taxes. That will change. Furthermore, the hospital industry agreed this week to take $155 billion less in payments from the government, leaving the money to cover the uninsured.
Beyond the money, the regulations are mind-boggling. In the “Limitation On New Enrollment” section on page 16 of 1,018, under the Orwellian heading “Protecting The Choice To Keep Current Coverage,” the bill states: “Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day” of the year the legislation becomes law.
In other words, according to Investor’s Business Daily, “[W]e can all keep our coverage, just as promised — with, of course, exceptions: Those who currently have private individual coverage won’t be able to change it. Nor will those who leave a company to work for themselves be free to buy individual plans from private carriers.” Private individual coverage will be outlawed by attrition.
Meanwhile, Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) added an amendment to the bill that would require all health insurance companies to provide unspecified “preventive care and screenings” for “pregnant women and individuals of child-bearing age.” Asked if this would include abortion, Mikulski sidestepped: “It would provide for any service deemed medically necessary or medically appropriate.”
More “highlights”: CNS News editor in chief Terence Jeffrey also reports that “the legal use of tobacco products is the only vice for which insurance companies will be able to charge their customers higher premiums,” adding, “a person could have been admitted to hospitals three times for heroin overdoses, or been pregnant five times out of wedlock, or been treated for venereal diseases at least once per year for the past five years, but none of these factors could be used to charge that person a higher insurance premium.” Jeffrey further notes that the bill calls for improved immunization coverage, including the use of “reminders or recalls for patients or providers, or home visits” to accomplish it. Yes, home visits.
Ronald Reagan once said, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.'” Little did the Gipper know just how terrifying those nine words could be.
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