© 2011, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

© 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.

Day By Day, March 15, 2010

Day By Day, March 16, 2010

© 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.

© 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.

Pelosi on November 7, 2009

This is the day that Madam Speaker will likely cherish for years to come. Against many odds she was able to pass the healthcare act that some were saying might be delayed into next year, or might not be passed at all.

It’s a significant achievement, even in a setting where the Democrats have solid majorities in both the House and Senate. It certainly wasn’t easy, as attested by the fact that 39 Democrat Congressmen voted against the bill, and that it passed with a bare minimum of 220 to 215.

But what does the passing of this bill really mean?

Take out the Congressional credit card…

We can — and surely will — argue the merits of the likelier-than-ever to be healthcare law ad nauseam. For now suffice to say, perhaps the biggest hurdle of the law is its cost.

The projections for the cost of the law are at $900 billion at the low side, to $1,200 billion at the high. This cost includes a shift of $500 billion in Medicare funds, that are assumed to be “saved”, some or all of which will drop to the bottom line should the “savings” not be realized.

Large Congressional bills seem to almost universally come with a fudge factor that goes unstated at the time of passage, but reflects the real cost of the program as the years go by. This factor was about 3 for Medicare, i.e. the bill cost almost 3 times as much as originally believed. For military hardware it’s seemingly never less than 2. One could dig deep and find the full range of fudge factors, but it would be very surprising if there ever was a negative one.

If we were to apply a “safe” fudge factor of 2 to the potential cost of the program of $1,700 billion, we end up with $3,400 billion over 10 years.

Where does that money come from? It isn’t new taxes, because that’s already factored into the $1,200 billion figure. Without the 2.5% healthcare fee on everyone, and the new 5% tax on individuals making more than $500,000 the stated cost of the act would have been much higher.

It also isn’t discretionary funds that Congress has stashed away for projects such like this one, as Congress already spends 30% more than it takes in.

It seems that paying for the program was not on the mind of Congress as the bill was passed.

Previous estimates of the budget deficit Congress is already projecting to overspend its income by some $1,000 billion a year for the next 10 years. That number just jumped by 15-30%, depending on how accurate the projections of the cost of the bill were.

© 2009 – 2011, Pontificus. All rights reserved.