White House Misinformation

The largest bit of misinformation is what is coming out of the white house about being able to keep your coverage if you like it. All you have to do is read the text of the bill to find out that this is absolutely not true. Well, it's sort of true I guess, you can keep it for 5 years if it meets the government standard and your employer doesn't change a single thing in your benefits for those 5 years.

I found the text of the bill, one that didn't crash my computer when I tried to pull it up, at http://energycommerce.house.gov/Press_111/20090714/aahca.pdf and I encourage everybody to read it.

Sec 102 beginning on page 16 of the bill is laughingly titled "Protecting The Choice To Keep Current Coverage". Here's the rundown on this section.
subsection (a)describes individual coverage and defines grandfathered as any insurance in effect before year 1 of this new bill and which does not change.
subsection (b)defines the grace period for employer based health plans. If we get to keep it if we like it then why exactly is there a grace period? Here's what it says...
10 (1) GRACE PERIOD.—
11 (A) IN GENERAL.—The Commissioner shall establish a grace period whereby, for plan years beginning after the end of the 5-year period beginning with Y1, an employment-based health plan in operation as of the day before the first day of Y1 must meet the same requirements as apply to a qualified health benefits plan under section 101, including the essential benefit package requirement under section 121.

So this means that we get to keep the insurance we like for up to 5 years if, and only if, it meets the requirements set down by the government. They even define "acceptable coverage" and your plan has to meet their definition of this acceptable coverage in order for you to keep it, and then you can only keep it for 5 years before being forced off of it. Your employer may still be able to offer you a plan after that, but it will be whatever plan the government deems "acceptable".

The bill also includes information to determine whether your employer has the right to be "self insured" which means that they write the plan and absorb the costs while paying an insurance company to administer the benefits. So the government can come back and tell your employer that -- although your business has decided to self insure and your accountants are sure you can support it-- being self insured is just too risky and you can't do it. Gee, guess you better put your employees on that government plan. Nice!

So tell me again Mr President how I am going to be able to keep my coverage if I like it. Lie to me one more time.

Bend Over For The President

While in Italy the President was captured checking out a backside reportedly attached to a 16 year old girl. This could be just a man appreciating a thing of beauty, after all, who hasn't looked at something that caught your eye just to find out it was something you really shouldn't be looking at? I'd give him the benefit of the doubt if it wasn't for the fact that, since he took office, he's been asking every American to bend over and grab their ankles.

But here we have a man who is trying to pass legislation, and pass it quickly, which will grow the federal government to the largest it's ever been. He's taking us further and further away from the government listed in our Constitution and the ideals set forth in our Declaration of Independence. He is single minded in his goal to turn us into Europe, the one thing our Constitution was supposed to protect us from. But maybe he only wants to be someplace where he can ogle a teenage girl's backside with impunity. But if that's the case, I wish he would have moved there on his own and left us the hell alone.

And why do you think it is so important to pass the healthcare legislation before the August break? Is it because the crisis that they've been talking about for 20 years just can't wait a day more? Will all of us be bankrupt from our medical bills by the time Congress comes back? Nope. But if the congressmen get back to their own districts and find out just how upset people are about the high cost and low return, his bill will really be in trouble. People may want a healthcare bill, but they also want a good one.

I for one am a little ticked at the idea of our healthcare reform bill including money for parks, walking paths and street lights. They may say it's an encouragement for people to exercise, but if you don't go out and walk now, streetlights aren't going to help.

So when it comes right down to it, I'd rather have our President looking at a teenage girls butt instead of him asking me to bend over and present him with mine.

If You Build It...

I just watched the Nancy Pelosi weekly press conference (have I mentioned that I love working from home)and healthcare was addressed. The congress is looking mainly for a government run option which would follow their pattern of spending as much money as they can as fast as they can.

When asked about the cost of the public option that the majority support, Pelosi indicated that the Congressional Budget Office has not factored in the savings from prevention and early intervention, and that they need to look for every bit of savings they can find. Savings, savings, savings, is what she said. But that savings would be very difficult to calculate. Should we base the savings on the assumption that if you build it they will come? There are many people, like me, who just don't go to the doctor regularly. And I have preventative care as part of my insurance. How then can we calculate the cost of the savings when we don't know how many people would actually use their new preventative benefit? History has already shown us that their estimates on the costs of their programs is usually way off, and this could be why. If they are going to count on savings that won't actually ever come to pass, we should be concerned.

My other concern is their insistence that a bill, any bill, must be passed this summer. This continues their trend of being more concerned with doing something fast than doing it right. Look at how that worked out with the stimulus package. We had to pass it without reading it so the money could get into the system immediately. And 4 months later only 10% of the money has been spent. Shouldn't we instead take the time to ensure that a program which will impact the country for decades, if not forever, is the best possible bill that it can be? Shouldn't they be looking for a plan that delivers the best solution for the lowest cost instead of trying to cook the books to make the plan they want more palatable to the people? Shouldn't this fall under the old cliche of "if it's worth doing it's worth doing right"?

I am very concerned with the way Congress is spending our money. It appears, to me at least, that they are using our money to fund the growth of the government instead of the growth of the economy. And should we burden an already struggling economy with another $1 trillion in debt?

Delay is preferable to error. - Thomas Jefferson

Is Health Care More Important Than Education?

I don't think so. I believe that the education of our youth is absolutely critical to the continued success of our nation. If our children are not educated, and educated well, we lose our ability to compete in the world. We rely on immigrants to do the research, design and engineering for our nation. How can we possibly succeed if we aren't teaching our children?

And yet what are we focusing on? Universal Health Care and taxation on our energy usage. Oh yes, by the way, they're sneaking that cap and trade thing in on a vote tomorrow so you might want to contact your congressmen about it.

They tell us that 47 million Americans don't have health care coverage. But 34 million ADULTS in America can't read. That 47 million uninsured included children, but the 34 million illiterate is just our adults. And what's a bigger emergency to our government? If somebody cannot read how are they ever going to reach any level of self-sufficiency? Maybe if they could read they'd have a job that offered them health insurance. Ever think of that Obama?

For their science scores, our youth are currently ranked 17th out of only 30 countries tested. We're in the BOTTOM 50%. In math it's even worse. We're 24th out of 30. That means we're in the BOTTOM 20%. How ugly is that. We are flat out not giving our children the tools they need in order to be competitive in the world. And what are we doing about it? Not a dad gum thing! The dumbing down of our youth is a far bigger emergency that health care but it's not even on the radar. What has the Obama administration done about education so far? They cancelled the voucher programs in DC. A program that sent kids to a school that was actually teaching them something.

So what is wrong with our educational system? Here are some of my theories. We're focused more on the teachers than the students. We teach our kids what to think instead of how to think. We throw money at it without ever analyzing the problem and identifying the causes. We spend more time and effort on the disabled than the gifted. (Now before you start screaming at me, I'm not saying we shouldn't put time and effort into the disabled, just that we should put as much if not more into the gifted). Bad teachers can't be fired because of tenure. There is no "pay per performance" in the teacher's union. We can't get rid of the disruptive and downright dangerous students in our schools. We write our curriculum for the lowest common denominator instead of trying to bring those kids up to a high standard. And finally, too many parents aren't involved in their child's education.

But what are we doing to fix this issue and ensure that our children can compete with the rest of the world? Nada, zip, zero. In all of the social programs we have out there to help the poor, giving them the education they need so that they WON'T be poor isn't even on the radar.

Obama talks a lot about how much health care is costing us and why it's yet another emergency, but how about what a bad educational system is costing us. How much more would we be collecting in taxes if our children were so well educated that we led the world in engineering, inventions, economics, etc?

We are currently not only saddling our children with a mountain of debt, we're denying them the education they'll need to actually make enough money to cover it.

If we continue with this trend, I wouldn't be at all surprised to have our current youth attempt to slap the wrinkles off our faces as they reach middle age.

If We're Already Paying For The Uninsured Then Where's The Crisis?

The new plan for covering the cost of health care for the uninsured is to tax our employer paid benefits. Unless, that is, you work for a union. So even though our insurance premium rates are rising at a higher level than our salaries, we should pay more to cover those uninsured people. But the Congressional justification for this is that we're already paying for the uninsured in the high prices of care and, therefore, the high cost of our premiums.

So here's my question; if we're already paying for the uninsured why is this a crisis? Why do we have to pass something immediately if the American people are already paying the health care costs of those uninsured? If those 47 million uninsured, which includes illegal aliens, people who are offered insurance but decline it, and those uninsured for a matter of days through the year, are already getting their costs covered then what's the big deal?

Congress is now trying to tell us it will be a wash. OK. So as soon as they start taxing my employer paid benefits then my premiums will go down, right? Don't think so. It will take years for the premium amounts to change to reflect a lowering in health care costs, if it ever happens at all. Which I doubt. What will actually happen is that the health insurance premiums will continue to rise for years, but we'll just be paying taxes on those higher rates as well. Many of us have already forgone raises or taken pay cuts in order to keep our jobs and the jobs of others within our companies, but now our take home pay will decrease again due to yet another tax.

And what happened to the promise that 95% of the population would not have a tax increase under this administration? This will definitely be a tax increase on people of all levels of pay as long as they are responsible enough to take the coverage offered by their employer. And what will the new tax rate on our coverage be? Too dang high is my guess.

So maybe we just all just opt out of our employer offered coverage so we not only don't get a tax increase, but we get more take home pay and somebody else to pay for our health care. Sounds like a plan to me.