From FOX:

WASHINGTON — Sweeping health care legislation has cleared its first hurdle in the full Senate on a party-line vote.

The 60-39 vote clears the way for a historic debate after Thanksgiving on the legislation. The measure is designed to extend coverage to an estimated 31 million Americans who lack it and crack down on insurance industry practices that deny benefits.

The White House released a statement saying, “The President is gratified that the Senate has acted to begin consideration of health insurance reform legislation. Tonight’s historic vote brings us one step closer to ending insurance company abuses, reining in spiraling health care costs, providing stability and security to those with health insurance, and extending quality health coverage to those who lack it. The President looks forward to a thorough and productive debate.”

The rare Saturday session amounted to a first round in the fight to pass the bill in the full Senate, with the remaining Democratic holdouts announcing they would support at least the measure to open debate on the bill, avoiding an early knockout by Republicans.

Sens. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana waited until Saturday to say they would vote yes for a floor debate. Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska announced Friday his support for moving the bill forward.

All three cautioned that their votes to start debate should not be construed a support for the bill in its current form.

“It is a vote to move forward to continue the good and essential and important and imperative work that is under way,” Landrieu said on the Senate floor. “I’ve decided that there’s enough significant reforms and safeguards in this bill to move forward but more work needs to be done.”

Lincoln said she still would support a filibuster if the so-called “public option,” a government-run insurance plan, remains in the health care bill.

“I along with others expect to have legitimate opportunities to influence the health care reform legislation that is voted on by the Senate later this year or early next year,” she said.

No surprises here. Everyone knew that Lincoln, Landrieu and Nelson would vote with their party, just like they will when it’s time for a final vote. All this posturing and empty threats about supporting a filibuster if the public option isn’t removed is pure theater.

Landrieu, demonstration that she’s nothing but a political whore, literally sold her vote to Reid for a cool 100 million dollars.

We’ll keep writing, keep protesting, keep shutting down the capitol switchboard, and keep building our majority as we watch these dirty scumbags in congress ignore the American people and push through their liberal, nation-killing agenda. That’s all we can do, at least as far as affecting legislation goes, until the 2010 midterms.

But we are building a majority, and along with developing and supporting worthy conservative candidates from the local levels on up, that is what will ultimately pull us out of this socialist nightmare.

Faith. Courage. Strength. Persistence.

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-Cnation

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Related:

CNN: Senate health care bill clears key hurdle

RedState: Every Dem Senator up in 2010 Cast the Winning Vote

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HotAir: Melt the Phones: Senate vote Saturday to proceed on ObamaCare debate

Harry Reid plans a key procedural vote in the Senate this weekend, apparently trying to follow Nancy Pelosi’s footsteps in jamming ObamaCare down the throats of a skeptical chamber before members can hear from their constituents.  Unlike Pelosi, however, this vote will not be on the bill itself, or even to close debate.  Instead, the vote will be to open debate, and Reid has a good chance to prevail — for now: more…..

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Connie Hair: Healthcare Big First Vote Saturday

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) 2,074-page health care bill is a lot like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s 2,032 page health care bill, without the Stupak amendment banning the federal funding of abortion.  Harrycare pays for abortion through the premiums paid by tax dollars in the government-run plan.

The Democrats are using budget gimmickry to cloak the true cost of bill which, when fully implemented, will cost taxpayers $2.5 trillion dollars over the next ten years.  Taxes begin in 2010 yet the bill is not fully implemented until 2014.  This allows Democrats to hide the true “10-year” cost since the majority of the spending is being deferred for four years. more…..

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New York Post: Another Set Of Cooked Healthcare Books

SENATE Majority Leader Harry Reid is touting the Senate’s latest health-care bill as costing $849 billion over 10 years. But this uses the same accounting trick as past versions: 99 percent of the costs don’t kick in until the fifth year of that “10-year” period. The true 10-year costs are well over twice what Reid’s advertising: $1.8 trillion. more…..

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Byron York: First, stop Medicare and Medicaid fraud

Last month, “60 Minutes” did an alarming report on the $60 billion-a-year Medicare fraud industry. Reporter Steve Kroft began by cautioning “that this story may raise your blood pressure” and “raise some troubling questions about our government’s ability to manage a medical bureaucracy.” The venerable CBS investigative news program spoke with an FBI agent who warned that Medicare fraud had become a “way bigger” problem than the drug trade in Miami.

While the prospect of Crockett and Tubbs kicking down South Florida nursing home doors might not appeal to Hollywood, taxpayers should take this matter very seriously. To put the $60 billion in fraud in perspective, Medicare loses seven times as much money in fraud every year than the combined profits of the 14 health insurance companies on the Fortune 500. more…..

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The Telegraph: Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of ‘Anthropogenic Global Warming’?

If you own any shares in alternative energy companies I should start dumping them NOW. The conspiracy behind the Anthropogenic Global Warming myth (aka AGW; aka ManBearPig) has been suddenly, brutally and quite deliciously exposed after a hacker broke into the computers at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (aka Hadley CRU) and released 61 megabites of confidential files onto the internet. (Hat tip: Watts Up With That)

When you read some of those files – including 1079 emails and 72 documents – you realise just why the boffins at Hadley CRU might have preferred to keep them confidential. As Andrew Bolt puts it, this scandal could well be “the greatest in modern science”. These alleged emails – supposedly exchanged by some of the most prominent scientists pushing AGW theory – suggest: more…..

If this is legit, it’s huge. Contrary to Michelle Malkin’s assertion that “The alleged hackers need to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law” though, I say that for their part in further exposing this global warming fraud being perpetrated on the people of the world by environmental fanatics, these ‘hackers’ deserve our thanks and gratitude.

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Mona Charen: Holder’s True Motive: KSM will put the CIA and the Bush administration on trial.

Attorney General Eric Holder adopted a tough-guy pose when he announced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others will be tried in federal court for the most heinous terror attack on Americans in history. “After eight years of delay,” he intoned, “those allegedly responsible for the attacks of September 11 will finally face justice. It is past time to finally act.”

Where to begin? The claim that the Bush administration was somehow dilatory sets a new standard for gall, particularly coming from Eric Holder. more…..

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RCP: Obama Below 50 in Gallup, What it Means

For the first time, Barack Obama fell below 50 percent in the Gallup tracking poll.

Obama’s decline comes at an historic pace. It ranks in the lower third of modern American presidents.

The fall below 50 is a fraught milestone for any president. In legislative terms, a president is only as powerful as he is popular. Public approval rating is the metric of that popularity.

Below 50, a president can no longer claim the majority’s support. His political arsenal depletes. A president’s political opposition has powerful, though nebulous, new ammunition. more…..

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-Cnation

Dear Senator Hagan,

Allow me to state right off the bat that I do not want or need another dissertation from you on the on the budget reconciliation process, nor on why you believe that healthcare ‘reform’ in any of its current proposed forms is good for us, the little people. We get it. We know where you stand. What I need -you- to understand is that a majority of your constituents and the American people in general do not want the federal government taking over and thereby destroying the health care and health insurance industries, along with what’s left of our national economy.

Senator,  we’ve petitioned you with fact-based, reasoned and rational arguments against the nationalization of the healthcare system, and you’ve responded with almost an entire year of  “It is an honor to serve as your United States Senator, and I appreciate your patience as I transition into this new role” , with only the occasional foray into feel-good political rhetoric and ‘politics 101′ descriptions of the process. Not once have you ever directly or honestly addressed the issues.

Not once.

In the 2008 presidential election, N.C. went for Obama by by only three-tenths of one percent. Look at NJ, look at Virginia, both states that voted for Obama by a much broader margin in ’08, and which have now swung wildly in favor of the GOP in the latest elections.

I realize you have five more years in office, but I think you’ll find that that the historically short memory of the American voter can no longer be counted on as a safe bet to save your seat come election time. Vote in favor of any of the proposed healthcare bills at any stage of the process, and your constituents - the people whose futures you are throwing away – will remember. Those who don’t will be reminded.

Understand this, Senator – if you vote to advance any of the proposed healthcare bills and the shameless, disgraceful assault on liberty that they represent, not only will I not vote for you, not only will I turn the votes of at least a dozen people in my immediate circle towards your opponent whoever he/she may be; I will work tirelessly to see you voted out of office ­ I will organize like-minded taxpayers, fund raise, man phone banks, use every social networking and website technology at my disposal…..I will sweat blood to ensure you’re voted out of office in 2014.

That is my promise to you.

Last Saturday night Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) forced through a vote on her 2,032 page health care bill only a few days after releasing it to the public. Now Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is poised for another Saturday night cram down, forcing a Senate cloture vote mere days before his 2,074 page bill was given to Senators. Yet again, Congress will be forced to vote on a bill that none of them have actually read. More importantly, as we pour through the details, it becomes obvious that none of them even believe the plan will do what the bill says.

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Kills Jobs: All told, the Reid Bill raises taxes by $370.2 billion over the next ten years with many of those taxes starting to be collected this year while unemployment is at 10.2% and rising. Worse, the bill includes a job killing employer mandate which taxes companies for hiring people. Specifically, companies with more than 50 employees that do not offer a health plan approved by federal bureaucrats will be forced to pay a $750 per employee job tax.

Hurts Small Businesses: The Reid Bill acknowledges it is terrible public policy for small businesses and tries to address this problem by including a “small business tax credit” to minimize the impact of the job killing employer mandates and regulation-caused rises in private health insurance premiums. But the tax credit only lasts two years and largely excludes small business owners, small businesses with high-average payrolls, and firms with 25 or more workers. After all exclusions, essentially the only eligible firms are those firms with 10 or fewer workers as well as those with low-income workers—the least likely to offer coverage even with a significant price reduction.

Hurts Families: The Reid Bill includes an individual mandate that forces any American who does not have a federal bureaucrat approved health plan to pay an annual tax penalty of $750 per adult family member and $375 per child, with a maximum penalty of $2,250 per family. These penalties are indexed for inflation, which means they are likely to increase nearly every year. These taxes are fixed amounts based on family size, not income. A family of at least two adults and two children is actually worse off under the Senate bill if they make less than $99,350 a year. The only nod to affordability is a “hardship exemption” if the lowest available premium for a bare-bones plan is more than 8 percent of your income. But that saves you money only if your income is less than $28,125 a year.

Hurts Poor: The Reid Bill’s employer mandate is especially punitive on poor families. Firms that hire an employee from a low-income family who qualify for an insurance subsidy are charged a tax penalty of $3,000. So a company could save $3,000 by hiring, say, someone with a working spouse or a teenager with working parents, rather than a single mother with three children. Worse, companies only have to pay $750 an employee instead of $3,000 if one quarter of employees are low-income. This creates a situation where, if a company has a lot of low-income workers, they can actually save money by dropping their health plan and just dumping all their employees into the federal exchange at their own expense.

Hurts States: The Reid bill expands Medicaid eligibility for people below 133 percent of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL). Even with a provision aimed at Senator Landrieu’s Louisiana that picks up some state costs, the CBO estimates that state spending under the Medicaid provisions will still increase by $25 billion. The Democratic Governor of Tennessee Phil Bredesen told a state budget meeting this Wednesday: “I wish every member of Congress would have to come sit in this room and listen to the real world of what’s going on in Medicaid today. I mean how can you listen to this stuff and the stuff you are talking about eliminating just to get through this and then talk about adding a whole bunch of new expenses onto the states.”

Funds Abortion: Unlike the House-passed Stupak-Pitts amendment which treats abortion funding the same way the Federal Employee Health Benefits Plan does (the same health insurance all members of Congress have), the Reid Bill fosters taxpayer funding of elective abortion by authorizing the HHS Secretary to create a funding scheme that will permit inclusion of abortion coverage in the bill’s public option and mandates the inclusion of at least one plan with elective abortion coverage in each state’s health insurance exchange.

Hides True Costs: According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Reid Bill as written would spend less than $900 billion over the next ten years. But the CBO is only allowed to score what Congress says it will do, not what everybody knows it actually will do. So the CBO warns: “These longer-term calculations assume that the provisions are enacted and remain unchanged throughout the next two decades which is often not the case for major legislation … The long-term budgetary impact could be quite different if key provisions of the bill were ultimately changed or not fully implemented.” The Senate bill depends on using cuts to Medicare to pay for its $1.2 Trillion coverage expansion. These dramatic savings, of course, assume that these spending cuts stay intact. Nobody believes they will. And the Massachusetts experience proves just that. Harvard Medical School Dean Dr. Jeffrey Flier explains:

There are important lessons to be learned from recent experience with reform in Massachusetts. Here, insurance mandates similar to those proposed in the federal legislation succeeded in expanding coverage but—despite initial predictions—increased total spending.
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Selling an uncertain and potentially unwelcome outcome such as this to the public would be a challenging task. It is easier to assert, confidently but disingenuously, that decreased costs and enhanced quality would result from the current legislation.

That is exactly what the Reid health care bill is: a completely disingenuous plan to increase coverage while reducing cost. Nobody believes Congress can or will follow through with spending cuts required to keep this scheme from bankrupting our country. That is why the AMA can support Obamacare despite the fact that both the House and Senate bills call for at least a 21% cut in doctor pay starting in 2011. Nobody believes those cuts are going to happen. Nobody believes in this bill.

QUICK HITS

Last Friday, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and five other terrorists would be tried in a civilian court in New York City rather than before a military tribunal. Pressing Holder on this decision at yesterday’s Senate Judiciary Committee Oversight hearing of the U.S. Department of Justice, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) asked: “Can you give me a case in United States history where a (sic) enemy combatant caught on a battlefield was tried in civilian court?”

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Holder responded: “I don’t know. I’d have to look at that. I think that, you know, the determination I’ve made…” At which point Graham interjected: “We’re making history here, Mr. Attorney General. I’ll answer it for you. The answer is no.” Holder’s decision does make history. And not in a good way. Edwin Meese III, the Ronald Reagan Distinguished Fellow in Public Policy and Chairman of the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation as well as the United States Attorney General between 1985 and 1988 released the following statement yesterday on Holder’s unprecedented decision:

It is clear that foreign terrorists and terrorist groups have committed acts of war against the United States, and that our national security requires that we respond accordingly. This means that President Bush’s prudent actions and the military response which he led should continue as our answer to these attacks.

Congress overwhelmingly reaffirmed their commitment to military commissions in 2006, which have historically been the way that we respond to acts of war. To abandon our two centuries of tradition and to substitute some new civilian procedure as a response to such attacks endangers the security of our country and our national interest.

It was a tragic mistake to decide to abandon the prison facility at Guantanamo Bay, which was designed physically and legally to handle these types of cases. It is a further tragic mistake to now bring the detained war combatants into the United States and to employ civilian criminal procedures which were never intended for this type of situation.

The U.S. Constitution protects American citizens and visitors from the moment they are suspected of criminal wrongdoing through a potential trial. These same protections are not, have never, and should not be granted to enemy combatants in war, since it is clear that regardless of the outcome of the trial, these detainees will likely remain in the custody of the United States.

QUICK HITS

Heritage Foundation Morning Bell for 11/18/2009

Yesterday at 3:00 p.m. ET, the Treasury Department updated its calculation of the U.S. National Debt to: $12,031,299,186,290.07. That $12 trillion record high comes just eight months after it hit $11 trillion and is only expected to rise faster considering the federal deficit for 2009 was over $1.4 trillion. And what is the leftist majority of Congress going to do tomorrow about these skyrocketing deficits? They are going to pile on the spending faster.

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The issue at hand is the congressionally created formula for annually updating the payments doctors receive for treating Medicare patients. The centrally planned price fixing formula was designed to control health care costs by tying doctor payments to the overall growth rate of the economy. Problem is the realities of supply and demand in the health care sector have pushed doctor’s fees higher than the formula allows for. So instead of going back and fixing the formula (or heaven forbid introducing some market based reforms into Medicare), every year Congress passes short-term fixes rescinding the scheduled rate cuts.

Fixing the problem permanently has long been the top legislative priority for the American Medical Association, and in exchange for their endorsement of Obamacare, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) promised them she would do so. Problem is Pelosi and co. could not figure out how to game the Congressional Budget Office’s numbers to show that Obamacare was deficit neutral and pay for the so called “doc fix” at the same time. So they solved the problem by pretending the “doc fix” was not health care reform. But to keep the AMA happy they took the unusual step of combining the debate rules for Obamacare and the doc fix.

As a result, Congress is set to debate the bill tomorrow for just one hour, and no amendments will be allowed. In other words, even if conservative Democrats or Republicans wanted to propose an amendment that would pay for the doctor’s higher payments, they are prevented from doing so. According to the CBO, just the ten year cost of the legislation will be $210 billion, but the damage does not end there. Medicare is a never ending entitlement program, so the real pain caused by the left’s free spending will be felt for decades to come. According to the latest report from the Medicare Trustees, the 75-year cost of allowing doctor payments to match the percentage change in the medical economic index is $1.9 trillion in more debt.

Americans who are concerned about our nation’s exploding deficits under President Obama and the leftist majorities in Congress should keep the doc fix debacle in mind when considering Obamacare. The deficit neutrality of the House-passed Obamacare bill entirely depends on Congress’ ability to cut $500 billion from hospital Medicare payments over the next ten years. Does anyone believe those cuts will ever happen?

QUICK HITS

Heritage Foundation Morning Bell for 11/17/2009

Forget everything bad you’ve ever heard about President Barack Obama’s $787 economic stimulus. Combing through the data on the $18 million Recovery.gov website you’ll find tons of Obama stimulus success stories from across the country. In Minnesota’s 57th Congressional District, 35 jobs have been saved or created using $404,340 in stimulus funds. In New Mexico’s 22nd Congressional District, 25 jobs have been saved or created using $61,000 in stimulus cash. And in Arizona’s fighting 15th Congressional District, 30 jobs have been saved or created with just $761,420 in federal stimulus spending.

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The it-would-be-funny-if-it-weren’t-our-tax-dollars-at-stake punch line here is that none of the above Congressional Districts actually exist. Yet those jobs “created or saved” claims still sit on the Obama administration’s official “transparency and accountability” website Recovery.gov. As the Washington Examiner’s David Freddoso points out, it would have been nearly costless for the Recovery.gov site designers to limit the input fields so that non-existent Congressional Districts never made it into the public domain, but for whatever reason the Obama administration chose otherwise. Defending the fake data on his website, Recovery.gov Communications Director Ed Pound told ABC News: “We report what the recipients submit to us. Some recipients clearly don’t know what congressional district they live in, so they appear to be just throwing in any number. We expected all along that recipients would make mistakes on their congressional districts, on job numbers, on award amounts, and so on. Human beings make mistakes.”

Pound is dead wrong. The problem with Recovery.gov is not human reporting error, but an error of human design. Highly trained professional economists don’t agree on how to tell when a job has been “saved or created” yet the Obama administration expects a Kentucky shoe-store owner to accurately create such data? “Just throwing in any number.” That just about sums up the accuracy of Recovery.gov. And the usually compliant mainstream press is beginning to notice.

The Washington Examiner has begun tracking stories from established media outlets on bogus job claims made by the Obama administration and they have already identified 75,343 fake jobs out of the 640,000 that the Obama administration claimed. You can track Obama job fakery from around the country on the Examiner’s interactive “Bogus Jobs” map here.

The lesson here is that the American people simply cannot trust any stimulus claims made by the Obama White House. Fortunately we have an objective way to hold Obama accountable.

The Bureau of Labor and Statistics has been collecting accepted and standardized data employment data since the 1940s.

When President Obama was selling his $787 billion stimulus to the American people he promised unemployment would never rise above 7.8% and that by 2010 the U.S. economy would employ 138.6 million jobs. The unemployment rate is now 10.2% and with only 130.8 million jobs in the U.S. economy, President Obama is now 7.8 million jobs short of what he promised the American people. That makes President Obama’s stimulus an objective failure.

QUICK HITS

Politico: Health reform’s hidden land mines

After all the controversy over the public option, people might think that everyone can sign up right away if Congress passes health reform.
Or that insurance premiums will go down.Or that they’ll be able to shop around for insurance if they don’t like what their company offers.
Think again. more…..

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ABC News: Exclusive: Jobs ‘Saved or Created’ in Congressional Districts That Don’t Exist

Here’s a stimulus success story: In Arizona’s 15th congressional district, 30 jobs have been saved or created with just $761,420 in federal stimulus spending. At least that’s what the Web site set up by the Obama administration to track the $787 billion stimulus says.
There’s one problem, though: There is no 15th congressional district in Arizona; the state has only eight districts.  more…..

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Big Government: ACORN Still Owes $2.3 Million in Overdue Taxes

ACORN and its affiliates are content to impose crippling big-government laws, regulations, and taxes on Americans, but when called upon to obey those same rules, ACORN’s network of scofflaws and deadbeats simply refuses to comply.

ACORN and its affiliates currently owe more than $2.3 million in long overdue back taxes to all levels of government. more…..

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Michelle Malkin: SEIU thugs vs. the Boy Scouts — and other related Big Labor antics

The Purple Shirted-thugs of the Service Employees International Union — ACORN’s alter ego and Obama’s most frequent visitor — are going after an Eagle Scout who poses a threat to their workers because he’s volunteering too much. more…..

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Washington Examiner: The ‘Making YOU Pay’ tax credit

President Obama’s “Making Work Pay” tax credit was an idea he first set forward during his presidential campaign. Unfortunately, it will soon take many Americans unawares and hurt some financially.

The credit has been administered as part of the stimulus package through a reduction in tax-withholding from workers’ paychecks. But the reduced withholding, which began quietly this April, might cause up to 15 million Americans to underpay the IRS even though they did nothing wrong. more…..

Related: Millions will have to repay part of tax credit (AP)

WASHINGTON — More than 15 million taxpayers could unexpectedly owe taxes when they file their federal returns next spring because the government was too generous with their new Making Work Pay tax credit.

Taxpayers are at risk if they have more than one job, are married and both spouses work, or receive Social Security benefits while also earning taxable wages, according to a report Monday by the Treasury Department’s inspector general for tax administration. more…..

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Doctor Zero / Hot Air: The Essential Fusion

I had a hard time finding a definitive paragraph from this outstanding piece to publish here. Just go read it.

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Video: Global warming con man Al Gore met by protesters in Boca Raton, Florida

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-Cnation

Heritage Foundation Morning Bell for 11/16/2009

Standing in the Rose Garden on November 7th, President Barack Obama celebrated the passage of the House health care bill claiming: “The Affordable Health Care for America Act is a piece of legislation that will provide stability and security for Americans who have insurance; quality, affordable options for those who don’t; and bring down the cost of health care for families, businesses, and our government, while strengthening the financial health of Medicare.”

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Quite a bold statement if true. But a report released Friday by the non-partisan and independent Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the agency in charge of running Medicare and Medicaid, blows the lid off of every one of Obama’s claims. All of the following quotes are from the report itself:

Health Care Costs Increase: “In aggregate, we estimate that for calendar years 2010 through 2019 [national health expenditures (NHE)] would increase by $289 billion, or 0.8 percent, over the updates baseline projection that was released on June 29, 2009.” In other words, Obamacare bends the cost curve up, not down.

Millions Lose Existing Private Coverage: “However, a number of workers who currently have employer coverage would likely become enrolled in the expanded Medicaid program or receive subsidized coverage through the Exchange. For example, some smaller employers would be inclined to terminate their existing coverage, and companies with low average salaries might find it to their – and their employees’ – advantage to end their plans … We estimate that such actions would collectively reduce the number of people with employer-sponsored health coverage by about 12 million.” In other words, Obamacare will cause millions of Americans to lose their existing private coverage.

Millions Pay Fines Yet Remain Uncovered: “18 million are estimated to choose not to be insured and to pay the penalty associated with the individual mandate. For the most part, these would be individuals with relatively low health care expenses for whom the individual or family insurance premium would be significantly in excess of the penalty and their anticipated health benefit value.” In other words, 18 million Americans will either face jail time or be forced to pay a new tax they will receive no benefit from.

Millions Lose Medicare Advantage: “Section 1161 of Division B of H.R. 3962 would set Medicare Advantage capitation benchmarks … We estimate that in 2014 when the MA provisions would be fully phased in, enrollment in MA plans would decreased by 64 percent (from its projected level of 13.2 million under current law to 4.7 million under the proposal).” In other words, 8.5 million seniors who currently get such services as coor­dinated care for chronic conditions, routine eye and hearing examinations, and preventive-care services would lose their existing private coverage.

Millions Placed on Welfare: “Of the additional 34 million who are estimated to be insured in 2019 as a result of H.R. 3962, about three-fifths (21 million) would receive Medicaid coverage due to the expansion of eligibility to those adults under 150 percent of the FPL.” In other words, more than half the people who gain health insurance will receive it through the welfare program Medicaid.

Seniors Access to Care Jeopardized: “H.R. 3962 would introduce permanent annual productivity adjustments to price updates for institutional providers… Over time, a sustained reduction in payment updates, based on productivity expectations that are difficult to attain, would cause Medicare payment rates to grow more slowly than and in a way that was unrelated to, the providers’ costs of furnishing services to beneficiaries. Thus, providers for whom Medicare constitutes a substantive portion of their business could find it difficult to remain profitable and might end their participation in the program (possibly jeopardizing access to care for beneficiaries).” In other words, the Medicare cuts in the House bill are so out of touch with reality that hospitals currently serving Medicare patients might be forced to stop doing so. Thus making it much more difficult for seniors to get health care.

Poor’s Access Problems Exacerbated: “In practice, supply constraints might interfere with providing the services by the additional 34 million insured persons. …providers might tend to accept more patients who have private insurance (with relatively attractive payment rates) and fewer Medicaid patients, exacerbating existing access problems for the latter group.” In other words, those 21 million people who are gaining health insurance through Medicaid are going to have a very tough time finding a doctor who will treat them.

Reacting in part to Friday’s CMS report, Robert J. Samuelson writes in today’s Washington Post:

The disconnect between what President Obama says and what he’s doing is so glaring that most people could not abide it. The president, his advisers and allies have no trouble. But reconciling blatantly contradictory objectives requires them to engage in willful self-deception, public dishonesty, or both.

There is a reason why as more Americans learn about Obamacare, the less popular it gets.

QUICK HITS

What could possibly go wrong?

As if there weren’t enough to deal with already, the latest word from the White House is that they believe 2010 to be the -perfect- year to grant amnesty to illegal aliens living in the United States.

Because, you know, like everything’s going so well and all…

I defy anyone to name any nation at any time in history that was as hell-bent on committing national suicide as we are right now.

From the New York Times (via Michelle Malkin):

White House to Begin Push on Immigration Overhaul in 2010

By JULIA PRESTON
Published: November 13, 2009

The Obama administration will insist on measures to give legal status to an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants as it pushes early next year for legislation to overhaul the immigration system, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said on Friday.

The latest on President Obama, his administration and other news from Washington and around the nation. Join the discussion.

In an address at the Center for American Progress, a liberal policy group in Washington, Ms. Napolitano sought to dispel any notion that the administration — with health care, energy and other major issues crowding its agenda — might postpone the most contentious piece of an immigration overhaul until after midterm elections next November.

Laying out the administration’s bottom line, she said it will argue for a “three-legged stool” that includes enacting tougher enforcement laws against illegal immigrants and the people who hire them, and streamlining the system for legal immigration, but also what she called a “tough and fair pathway to earned legal status.”

With unemployment surging over 10 percent and Congress wrestling with health care, advocates on all sides of the immigration debate had started to doubt that President Obama would keep to his pledge to take on the divisive issue of illegal immigration in the first months of 2010.

Congress should be ready to move forward on immigration, Ms. Napolitano said, because the administration had made a “fundamental change” in security at the border and in cracking down on employers hiring illegal immigrants. She said that the Border Patrol had increased its forces by more than 20,000 officers, and that more than 600 miles of border fence had been completed, both milestones set by Congress.

“Let me emphasize this,” she said. “We will never have fully effective law enforcement or national security as long as so many millions remain in the shadows.”

Under the administration’s plan, illegal immigrants would have to register, pay fines and all taxes they owe, pass a criminal background check and learn English.

Ms. Napolitano has been leading the administration’s efforts to gather support for the immigration overhaul, meeting in recent weeks with business leaders, faith groups, law-enforcement officials and other groups to gauge their support for the effort.

“Fundamental Change”?

OK everybody, say it with me on the count of three.

1…2….3….

BULL-SHIT!

First of all, anyone who’s ventured out of their house in the last couple of years knows that there has been virtually zero enforcement of immigration laws of any sort, anywhere in our country. Not in the workplace, not in federal, state or local social services, not in our prisons. NOWHERE.

Yes, there’s the occasional high-profile raid on some poultry processing plant somewhere, but one is as meaningless as the next. Most often, those swept up in raids are simply released within a day or two with a promise to show up in court which, of course, they never do.

The only change whatsoever I’ve noticed is that the illegals don’t seem to be the least bit worried about being caught anymore.

For Napolitano to stand there and assert that all this ‘progress’ in terms of enforcement has been made is way, way beyond dishonest, it’s….I don’t know, surreal is the only word I can come up with.

Second, this bit about  a “tough and fair pathway to earned legal status.” Really? Fair for whom? Certainly not for the 16 million or so Americans who can’t find jobs. Not for the immigrants who have come here legally, embraced the American way, and did the hard work to earn their citizenship. Certainly not for those who, rather than jumping a border fence and living off the stolen social security numbers and taxpayer-funded social services of  legal United States residents, are patiently waiting their turn for a chance of legitimately becoming part of the greatest society in the world.

Here’s a  clue, Janet – If it doesn’t involve first going to the back of the line – which, btw, is IN MEXICO, than it’s not “tough and fair”.

If nothing else, this woman’s got balls. (no pun intended).

The country is currently dealing with over 10% unemployment, our fiscal situation is dire and getting worse, and the Obama administration wants to flood the labor market with MORE workers, and flood the social services systems with MORE recipients. All while putting us in jail for not having health insurance. This is absolute, 100% complete unadulterated fucking madness.

There’s been talk lately that healthcare legislation is this administration’s and the liberal left’s ‘crown jewel’, but I would suggest that amnesty is the real crown jewel, because it is amnesty for 20 million (the 11 mil figure is grossly underestimated), PLUS an additional 20-40 million in chain migration, that will give the Democrats the numbers they need to establish their permanent majority, and therefore the numbers needed to enact the rest of their nation-killing, Constitution-shredding socialist agenda. Healthcare is big, but gaining 20+ million votes is HUGE. With that many votes, they can and will do whatever they damn well please.

This must be stopped, or America as we know it – as the greatest nation on the face of the earth – is over. O-V-E-R.

They think healthcare fight is tough? They have no idea what they’re in for.

Tea Parties Against Amnesty and Illegal Immigration

Round 1: Tomorrow, Saturday November 14th. Click here to locate an event near you. If you see nothing listed, check with your local TEA party or other conservative activist group. As always, if there isn’t one in your area, starting one is as simple as contacting a like-minded friend or two and getting to work.

…..

-Cnation