© 2010, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

A shortened version:

1. It will cost $750 annually to go without health insurance, even if you are young and healthy. (Section 1501)

2. You won’t be able to get health insurance premiums that reflect your (presumably good) lifestyle. (Section 2701).

3. You won’t be able to bargain for lower health insurance costs by agreeing to certain coverage limits. (Section 2711).

4. You won’t be able to save by choosing a policy that doesn’t cover some preventive care. (Section 2712).

5. You won’t be able to offer cheaper insurance to employees by limiting the definition of “children” to something less than 26 years of age. (Section 2714).

6. “You must buy a policy that covers ambulatory patient services, emergency services, hospitalization, maternity and newborn care, mental health and substance use disorder services, including behavioral health treatment; prescription drugs; rehabilitative and habilitative services and devices; laboratory services; preventive and wellness services; chronic disease management; and pediatric services, including oral and vision care.” Regardless of if you need such services or not. (Section 1302).

7. Trying to balance cost of the plan with what percentage the plan covers is limited. (Section 1302 (d) (1) (A))

8. You can’t offer (or buy) policies with higher deductibles than $2,000/$4,000 in exchange for a lower premium. (Section 1302 (c) (2) (A).

9. It will cost an employer with more than 101 employees $750 (or $2,000 to $3,000, depending on what comes out of the closed door meetings) not to offer insurance. (Section 1513).

10. You can’t place more than $2,500 into a Flexible Health Spending Account. (Section 9005 (i)).

11. Physicians will be pressured into limiting the services they use through government monitoring. (Section 3003 (i))

12. A physician won’t be able to own a hospital. (Section 6001 (i) (1) (A))

13. A current physician owner of a hospital won’t be able to expand the hospital, except in limited circumstances, and even then the expansion is very limited. (Section 6001 (i) (1) (B), Section 6601 (i) (3) (E) and Section 6001 (i) (3) (C)).

14. The government will control premium increases. (Section 1003)

15. The government will take $2.3 billion or more every year from the pharmaceutical industry. (Section 1404, and Section 9008 (b))

16. The government will take $2 billion or more every year from medical device makers. (Section 9009 (b), and Section 1405).

17. The government will take $6.7 billion or more every year from insurance companies. (Section 1406, and Section 9010 (b) (1) (A and B))

18. Insurance companies will be limited in what kind of talent they can hire as CEOs, as deferred compensation is limited to $500,000. (Section 9014).

19. You will face a marriage penalty in that you will pay an additional 0.5% tax, or perhaps as much as 3.8%, on income over $250,000 if you file a joint return and $200,000 if you file an individual return. (Section 9015, and Section 1402)

20. Cosmetic surgery, or whatever is defined as such by the government, has a 5% tax on it. (Section 9017).

We won’t even begin with the many Constitutional problems this bill poses. Hope and change, Komrade.

© 2010, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

© 2010, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

Hold Onto Your Wallet!

In yet another act of “unprecedented transparency”¹, the Democrats have driven a bill through Congress that has now been signed by Obama (D) to raise the Congressional Credit Card limit to a staggering $14.294 TRILLION without the benefit of CSPAN capturing a single second of the closed door discussions.²

The vote in the Senate was taken just in time before the newly baked Senator Brown (R) from Massachusetts were to be sworn in, since he might have forced actual debate on the issue. It was simply safer for Reid (D) to drive the vote while the Massachusetts state officers with (D)’s behind their names were doodling and claiming that it just takes time to create the necessary documentation for Brown (R) to be sworn into office.³ After all, even when the results are not contested, it’s important to dot those t’s and cross those i’s, especially when a guy with an (R) is the topic, and not someone with a (D), isn’t it?⁴

Those in the Senate with (D) behind their names even claimed to wait for Brown (R) for any important vote, such as that on healthcare.

It must be that the (D) people don’t think that agreeing to spend $1.9 TRILLION is not an important vote. Interestingly, if $1.9 TRILLION doesn’t make the cut, but a healthcare plan supposedly costing $1 TRILLION or thereabout does, then is that an indication that the REAL cost of the healthcare legislation is far beyond $1.9 TRILLION? Harry (D), Nancy (D), please explain.

As we reported previously⁵, this bill increases the national debt “limit” by more than it has ever been increased before, both as a percentage of the total, and as an absolute number. Not even during the dark days of World War 2 was such a dramatic increase necessary.

So what’s different? A looming 2010 Congressional election disaster for those with a (D) behind their names has Harry (D) and Nancy (D) running scared, and Obama (D) can’t help but agree. With Brown (R) in the Senate now, Reid (D) might not have been able to push this (D) looneylaw through Senate, or at least not without some semblance of debate.

Yesterday, following up on his transparency pledge, Obama (D) chose to leave those pesky cameras outside yet again, and proceeded to sign this monster into law. All hail the chief, the Congressional Credit Card is safe from those pesky guys with (R) behind their names.

© 2010, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

Spending your way to debt bondage

In the sea of self-righteous proclamations by Democrats in Congress to wait for the new Republican Senator from Massachusetts before engaging in further healthcare debate, the same induhviduals have carefully neglected to discuss the real elephant in the room. Namely the national debt.

The reason is now obvious. Harry Reid and company clearly wanted to pass the biggest increase in the national debt ever, and saying that they would wait for Brown on such a key issue would have made them liars.

So there it goes, a $1.9 TRILLION dollar addition to the national debt, care of the Democrat Senate.¹ The vote was on party lines, 60-40, and would have failed had Reid waited another few days.

To put this number in perspective, it represents about 53% of the 2010 federal budget, as submitted by the biggest spender ever to occupy the White House. It also increases the national debt by a whopping 15%, the biggest percentage ever, in addition to by far the biggest absolute value ever. And it increases the direct national debt to $45,000 for every American man, woman and child.

This vote by the Democrat controlled Senate shows that Democrats with Harry Reid at the helm take issue with Brown, who might have taken away their credit card and impacted their freespending habits. Should the Democrat controlled House concur that the credit card limit should be raised by this whopper, the Democrats lead by Reid, Pelosi and Obama will be free to spend their way into the worst possible future for the American people. Namely debt bondage.²

© 2010, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

What Obamacare Means For You

Obamacare

• The Efficiency of the Postal Service
• The Sustainability of Social Security
• and all the Compassion of the IRS

(No further comment)

© 2009, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

Nevada Development Authority

The Golden State hasn’t been that golden in a long while. Year after year the state seems to move from one budget crisis to the next. From one massive budget shortfall to another just as big or bigger. If political speeches promising a better future had any worth, the state would be platinum by now.

The experience that California is going through can be very helpful to the rest of the nation.

If we were to look at what the state has done to avoid technical default, it would be an amazingly long list, just to name a few:

1. Defer payments to its creditors;
2. Front-load tax payment obligations from its residents;
3. Short term furloughs;
4. Pile on more debt;
5. Reduce services; and
6. Increase already high taxes on its residents.

To someone who has not followed the events more closely these maneuverings might give the impression that the state is addressing its budget problems. However the reality remains that if it were not a state it would have been in actual bankruptcy years ago.

One might conclude that California has done all it can, and that all the state needs to do is weather the current economic storm so that it can look forward to a bright future again.

But such a conclusion would be wrong on two accounts.

First, the state has bit by bit destroyed the business environment that made it the birthplace of many high technology industry giants, and the laboratory in which many of the things we take for granted today were invented. A few such examples are the mouse (Stanford), the graphical user interface (Xerox), the modern hard drive (IBM), and Ethernet (Xerox).¹

Second, California continues to avoid doing the one thing it should have done years ago: cut its programs that are bankrupting it. After adjusting for inflation and population California has increased its state spending per capita by 38% in the past 10 years.²

Even though the answer is staring every Californian right in the face, the state imposed yet another round of gimmicks, short term accounting adjustments and more debt to make it through the 2009-2010 budget year that was almost $25 billion short (about 22%). Now as the 2010-2011 budget year is getting closer, it seems that another $14 billion deficit needs lipstick.³

It’s not difficult to figure out where to look for real solutions to these problems. To start, here are a few good ideas by Craig Westover at the Minnesota Free Market Institute. While Mr. Westover makes the proposals for Minnesota, they apply equally to California:⁴

1. Reform the state tax system;
2. Cut state spending;
3. Limit state regulatory activity;
4. Reform tort law; and
5. Reform the relationship of state and local government.

Should California fail to address the root of its budget problems, then the rest of the country will get to observe the Great California Bankruptcy Experiment and hopefully learn what not to do.

© 2009, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

© 2009, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

Borrowing of course. And this is what our presidents are now reduced to doing to keep the money flowing…

April 2, 2009: Obama bowing to King of Saudi Arabia

April 20, 2006: Chinese Flag Flies at the White House

It wouldn’t at all be surprising if matters such as Chinese human rights violations will no longer be brought up by American presidents.
Or that American aerospace companies will share key missile technology with China.
Or that Israel will again be on its own to be thrown under the bus in the Middle East.
Or that Iranian nukes will get much less lip time from the White House.

… that’s the cost of bailouts, socialized medicine, and government takeovers of private industries.

© 2009, Pontificus. All rights reserved.