Thursday, December 19, 2019

OBAMACARE IN SHAMBLES AS THE DEMOCRAT PARTY PROMISES 40 MILLION ILLEGALS "FREE" OBAMACARE

In the next two decades, should the country’s legal immigration policy go unchanged, the U.S. is set to import about 15 million new foreign-born voters. About eight million of these new foreign-born voters will have arrived through the process known as “chain migration,” whereby newly naturalized citizens are allowed to bring an unlimited number of foreign relatives to the country. JOHN BINDER

A federal appeals court in New Orleans has issued a split ruling in a challenge to the Affordable Care Act. The court says it is unconstitutional to force people to get healthcare coverage because Congress has gotten rid of the tax penalty on those who fail to get it. 


Health Care Doom on the Horizon


 

The relationship between Americans and their health care delivery is about to make a dramatic change for the worse.  Consumers of health care are poised to vote for a federally managed system.  Why would they go down this predictably awful rabbit hole?  They'll do it because they are overwhelmed and frightened in the current system.  They'll do it because this may be the only option that a typical voter understands.  They'll do it because our elected leaders do not have the courage to enact changes that could make things work and don't want to give up power.  And it will happen because the media will demonize and target anyone who isn't on the socialist bandwagon.
Currently, we have a situation in America where the insured among us are utilizing health care less than in the past.  This is because of the financial implications of high-deductible insurance policies, most people's only affordable option.  As a result, it is arguable that the very people who bear the financial burden for our medical care — namely, the minority among us who are insured Americans — are among those getting the worst care in our country.  It is well known that Americans often live on the edge of their finances.  So when it comes to budgeting for our deductible when health issues arise, we are frequently left with hard decisions.  This often results in the insured tolerating illness rather than seeking appropriate, expensive care.
The result of this development will most assuredly result in even conservative voters being swayed toward a federally managed health delivery system.  With the elderly freely using Medicare and Medicaid participants getting treatment with seemingly no debilitating financial consequences, it would be easy to desire something similar for the rest of us.  After all, what could be more messed up than the current system, where a simple visit to the emergency room can lead to bankruptcy?
The federal option for health care delivery will undoubtedly be wretched.  Ask any veteran or doctors who trained at those hospitals about their experience with the V.A., the best example of a federally run health delivery option.  You'll hear stories that will curl your toes.  It is not possible for government to provide quality care in a timely manner affordably, just as equality and liberty can't coexist without one sacrificing itself to the other.  Add on the layers of bureaucracy in a federally run hospital to the inefficiencies and redundancies they mandate, and the results are predictable.
Yet the people may opt for it anyway, because it is hard to imagine relying on the current system creating a more affordable market.  We are not using the economic tools that work to bring down costs.  There is no such thing as capitalism or a free market in health care delivery.  If a group of doctors think they can provide better care at cheaper prices than your community hospital, they cannot easily do so.  Government regulations would not grant them permission, because it is more "in the community's interest" to keep the inefficient and expensive existing hospital afloat than to allow the creative destruction that capitalism provides.  Ending local government's control over "certificate of need" would lower costs, but politics keeps these laws going.
Additionally, hospitals are allowed to charge much more for services than private practitioners of medicine and surgery.  This is because they have convinced local governments that this is justifiable because they have to take care of the indigent.  A lot of the recent dramatic rise in health care costs is a result of the incestuous relationship between hospital corporations and the government.  Doctors are getting absorbed into hospital employment with the lure that their pay will not go down as precipitously if they are paid the higher allowable fees that they can bill through the hospital.
You can add the insurance industry to the hospital corporations and the government as the three players that keep the system unaffordable and non-competitive.  Many competitive options for insurance coverage could decrease cost.  But these are opposed by the industry and are lobbied away.  The laws that could make these legal are unlikely to be enacted because power would shift from government and insurance companies to the individual.
One such idea is insurance pooling.  Suppose that someone who would normally be almost uninsurable, like a 33-year-old waitress with Crohn's disease, could join in with other waitresses and shop as a group for policies across state lines.  This would put market forces to work and necessarily drive down her costs.  This is because most waitresses are young and fairly healthy, and the actuaries in the insurance companies would jump to bid for this business.  For particularly difficult to insure populations, there could even be federally subsidized pools.  This could work for the uninsured and unemployed.
For this concept to work, there would have to be allowances for buying insurance across state lines.  Politicians have too many pet causes to allow this to happen.  Most insurance coverage in New York City mandates coverage for transgender operations.  Years ago in Connecticut, insurance had to cover hair plugs.  As you might suspect, insurance can run much higher in these environments when compared to similar coverage (not including these boondoggles) in the upper Midwest.  If a resident of New York or Connecticut could buy the Midwestern policy for similar coverage without the local mandates, costs would go down.
Another priority would be transferring ownership of insurance to individuals rather than through their employers.  But tax incentives encourage the opposite.  Policies that do not end when changing jobs or crossing into other states would be preferable, but business tax deductions change the game.  If individuals could deduct insurance cost, as businesses have traditionally done, it could work.
Tort reform would remove a lot of dysfunction and wasteful spending.  But most lawmakers are lawyers, so the possibility of goring this cash cow is remote.  (What will happen to this sector if the federal government runs medicine?)  Allowing information technology to evolve naturally rather than instituting top-down, central control to the medical records, billing, and other information systems would result in savings, too.  But I.T. is essential to maintaining power, which makes any change non-negotiable.
Americans may have had enough, egged on by progressive media.  Plots to make medical care more affordable by re-introducing the free market and capitalism through changes in the current laws seem to have died off.  The fawning hero-worship directed toward former president Obama by the media glorified the idea of health care as a human right, with support for this wrong-headed idea achieving his goal of "fundamentally changing America."  Medicare for all is depicted in the press as a desirable idea despite common sense suspecting the contrary.  When it is shown that the cost of administering health care through the existing system proves that insurance companies eat up around a third of the health care dollar, it does seem ridiculous to maintain the status quo.  After all, the cost of administration in the Veterans Administration is far less.  But we know intuitively that care will be worse.  And, as anyone who knows history can tell you, giving them power over our health care decision-making will be the final nail in the coffin of our freedom.
Yet, when the simple idea of a Health Savings Account, a necessary pillar of any health care reform, is above the heads of many voters, we have lost.  Because the media will shoot down any politician brave enough to try anything but a federal option (remember Tom Price, [R-GA]?), it is harder than ever to have any kind of inertia for reasonable change.  With the shortsightedness of insurance companies and hospital corporations essentially pricing themselves out of existence for access to more money today, it looks hopeless.  And when federal debt continues to be viewed as a "so what?" by politicians and citizens alike, we are done. 

It Pays to be Illegal in California

 

 By JENNIFER G. HICKEY  May 10, 2018 

It certainly is a good time to be an illegal alien in California. Democratic State Sen. Ricardo Lara last week pitched a bill to permit illegal immigrants to serve on all state and local boards and commissions. This week, lawmakers unveiled a $1 billion health care plan that would include spending $250 million to extend health care coverage to all illegal alien adults.
“Currently, undocumented adults are explicitly and unjustly locked out of healthcare due to their immigration status. In a matter of weeks, California legislators will have a decisive opportunity to reverse that cruel and counterproductive fact,” Assemblyman Joaquin Arambula said in Monday’s Sacramento Bee.
His legislation, Assembly Bill 2965, would give as many as 114,000 uninsured illegal aliens access to Medi-Cal programs. A companion bill has been sponsored by State Sen. Richard Lara.
But that could just be a drop in the bucket. The Democrats’ plan covers more than 100,000 illegal aliens with annual incomes bless than $25,000, however an estimated 1.3 million might be eligible based on their earnings.
In addition, it is estimated that 20 percent of those living in California illegally are uninsured – the $250 million covers just 11 percent.
So, will politicians soon be asking California taxpayers once again to dip into their pockets to pay for the remaining 9 percent?
Before they ask for more, Democrats have to win the approval of Gov. Jerry Brown, who cautioned against spending away the state’s surplus when he introduced his $190 billion budget proposal in January.
Given Brown’s openness to expanding Medi-Cal expansions in recent years, not to mention his proclivity for blindly supporting any measure benefitting lawbreaking immigrants, the latest fiscal irresponsibility may win approval.
And if he takes a pass, the two Democrats most likely to succeed Brown – Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa – favor excessive social spending and are actively courting illegal immigrant support.

COST to AMERICANS of the LA RAZA MEXICAN OCCUPATION in CALIFORNIA ALONE: $2,370 per legal.

All that “cheap” labor is staggeringly expensive!

"Most Californians, who have seen their taxes increase while public services deteriorate, already know the impact that mass illegal immigration is having on their communities, but even they may be shocked when they learn just how much of a drain illegal immigration has become." FAIR President Dan Stein.

Californians bear an enormous fiscal burden as a result of an illegal alien population estimated at almost 3 million residents. The annual expenditure of state and local tax dollars on services for that population is $25.3 billion. That total amounts to a yearly burden of about $2,370 for a household headed by a U.S. citizen.

  


Exclusive–Mo Brooks: Healthcare for Illegal Aliens Latest Democrat Effort to Turn U.S. into California

JOSH EDELSON/AFP/Getty Images
JOHN BINDER
 5 Jul 201971
3:34

Providing free, American taxpayer-funded healthcare to all illegal aliens is just the latest effort to use mass immigration to turn the United States into the sanctuary state of California, Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) says.

As Breitbart News reported, the majority of 2020 Democrat presidential candidates have endorsed a plan to force taxpayers to pay for free healthcare for all 11 to 22 million illegal aliens living across the country. The plan would cost taxpayers at least $660 billion a decade.
Brooks told SiriusXM Patriot’s Breitbart News Tonight that Democrats’ “primary motivation” behind offering healthcare to illegal aliens is not compassion, but rather an effort to transform the U.S. into the state of California through mass illegal and legal immigration.
LISTEN:
Brooks said:
The motivation for all for this is even worse. They don’t have compassion for these illegal aliens. That’s not their primary motivation. Their primary motivation is the desire to acquire raw political power. That’s what it’s all about. [Emphasis added]
If you limit votes to American citizens, Democrats do not fair to well with us. So what they’re trying to do is import people who do not understand the foundational principles that have combined to make America a great nation and who … are much more likely to vote Democrat once Democrats give them voting rights. [Emphasis added]
Brooks detailed how California, the state where former President Ronald Reagan was governor, has been forever changed due to the country’s mass illegal and legal immigration policy that imports about 1.5 million foreign nationals a year.
“Let’s learn from history. California used to be a purple state. Remember, Ronald Reagan came from there … the Democrats have flooded California with noncitizens,” Brooks said. “And why do noncitizens vote Democrat so often? Well, let’s look at illegal aliens. The data shows that 70 percent of households that have an illegal alien in them are on welfare. The data shows that 60 percent of households that have a lawful immigrant in them are on welfare. So, you’ve got three different themes that the Democrat Party now relies on: One is racism, two is sexism, and three is socialism.”
“In California, what used to be a purple state, now out of 53 congressional seats, only seven are Republican … 46 are Democrat and seven are Republican,” Brooks said. “So they have seen how that strategy of importation of foreign voters has worked in California. They’re trying to do it in Texas, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, in every state where they can possibly do it. They want to flood the voting booths with people who are dependent on welfare and who do not understand the principles that have made us a great nation. That’s how they change the voter pool and they’re doing it successfully.”
Health insurance expert Linda Blumberg told the New York Times that any of the Democrats’ plans that offer free health care to illegal aliens is could likely to drive a mass migration of foreigners with “serious health problems to enter the country or remain longer than their visas allow in order to get government-funded care.”
Likely U.S. voters, by a majority, said they oppose being forced to pay for the healthcare of millions of illegal aliens living in the country, as Breitbart News reported. The latest Rasmussen Reports poll found that 55 percent of voters said they opposed such a plan, including 8-in-10 Republican voters, about 6-in-10 swing voters, and 62 percent of middle-class voters.
In the next two decades, should the country’s legal immigration policy go unchanged, the U.S. is set to import about 15 million new foreign-born voters. About eight million of these new foreign-born voters will have arrived through the process known as “chain migration,” whereby newly naturalized citizens are allowed to bring an unlimited number of foreign relatives to the country.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder

Some Big Health Care Policy Changes Are Hiding In The Federal Spending Package

The spending bill to fund the government for the next fiscal year is expected to pass by Friday.
Win McNamee/Getty Images
Congress is set to pass a $1.4 trillion spending package this week, which President Trump has said he'll sign. The legislation includes policy changes and funding increases that public health advocates are celebrating, as well as the permanent repeal of three key taxes that were designed to pay for Obamacare — a win for industry groups.
Notably absent from the spending package: legislation to address surprise billing or prescription drug prices. The House passed a prescription drug price bill last week, but a bill that can get through the Senate may be a long way off. Surprise billing proposals had support from both parties in both chambers of Congress as well as in the White House. Still, such legislation have proven difficult to nail down. Lawmakers involved say it is a priority for next year.
Our health reporting team took a look at what is in the package and picked out notable highlights, including some surprising policy reverses for Congress.
Repeal of health taxes designed to pay for ACA
When President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law in 2010, he said: "It is paid for. It is fiscally responsible." But many of the taxes designed to cover the cost of expanding health coverage to 20 million people have been derailed. Now, the so-called "Cadillac tax" on generous employer health plans is getting permanently nixed, as are taxes on health insurance companies and medical-device makers.
Insurance industry groups applaud the move. But the repeal of these taxes alarmed many health policy and budget watchers. It will contribute $373 billion to the deficit, according to an estimate from Congress' Joint Committee on Taxation.
"So we're cutting the funding out from under Obamacare, but still doing all the spending," says Marc Goldwein, of the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. "This whole bill is about reversing the few hard choices that we made to pay for Obamacare."
"Everybody seems to want lower deficit in the abstract, but when it comes time to actually cut spending or raise taxes, there doesn't seem to be the political will in either party at the moment," he adds. —Selena Simmons-Duffin, health policy reporter
Raising the age to buy tobacco products to 21
The measure raises the federal age limit from 18 to 21 and would apply to both cigarettes and e-cigarettes.
At least 16 states and Washington, D.C., have raised the minimum age to buy tobacco products to 21, according to the American Lung Association. The organization, which has long campaigned to raise the federal age limit, said the move "will significantly reduce youth tobacco use and save thousands of lives."
The national conversation around tobacco age limits gained new momentum thanks to the surging numbers of teenagers who are vaping. The Trump administration had signaled that it planned to introduce an age limit. Some major tobacco companies have backed the idea, such as Altria, which owns Philip Morris USA and partially owns JUUL.
Advocates against vaping are also pushing for a federal ban on flavors for e-cigarettes, to make them less appealing to kids. Earlier this year, Trump had pledged to impose a flavor ban but has appeared to walk that idea back since then. It's not clear whether further sweeping regulations of the industry are still in store. —Merrit Kennedy, news desk reporter
A foundation for President Trump's plan to end HIV
In his state of the union address in February, President Trump announced a plan to end the HIV epidemic in America by 2030. This year, not a whole lot has happened toward this goal because there hasn't been funding from Congress — until now. The president's budget had called for $291 million, and Congress will overshoot that slightly.
This past fall, the Department of Health and Human Services gave grants to 32 state and local health departments where there are HIV "hotspots" so that they could develop or update programs to reach the goal of ending the epidemic. With this federal funding coming through, the hope is that those places will be able to hit the ground running.
"This is just the foundation — it's the first year of funding," says Carl Schmid of the AIDS Institute and the President's Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS. "It's an excellent start, but to achieve the goal of ending the epidemic, we'll need a lot more money to scale it up for next year and the years to come." —Selena Simmons-Duffin, health policy reporter
Paving the way to develop more generic drugs
A bill intended to promote generic drug competition is also expected to get a ride in the budget. The Creating and Restoring Equal Access To Equivalent Samples Act — called the the CREATES Act, for short — aims to make sure branded manufacturers sell samples of their products to companies that want to use them to develop generic versions.
Brand-name companies have, at times, refused to sell samples to would-be generic competitors, citing a Food and Drug Administration program designed to keep potentially harmful drugs from being misused. The FDA says some brands have exploited this program to stall development of generics, maintain their monopolies and keep prices and profits high. With the passage of the CREATES Act, generic companies can sue if they think they've been wrongfully denied samples.
"It's not a panacea, but it's definitely an important step forward in providing relief for Americans struggling with high prescription drug costs," says Harvard Medical School instructor Ameet Sarpatwari. The bill has been introduced five times but never managed to pass despite bipartisan sponsorship. The Congressional Budget Office expects CREATES to save taxpayers $3.7 billion over 10 years. —Sydney Lupkin, pharmaceuticals correspondent
First funding for gun violence research since 1996
The budget provides $25 million for research on preventing deaths and injuries from guns, split equally between the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"This is a very meaningful, small step in the right direction," says Christian Heyne, vice president of policy at Brady, an organization focused on ending gun violence. He notes that these are the nation's two preeminent public health agencies. The CDC has shied away from gun violence research since 1996, when legislation known as the Dickey Amendment first prohibited the agency from using federal funds to advocate or promote gun control. In 2018, language added to instructions accompanying a spending bill made it clear that the CDC was allowed to conduct research on the causes of gun violence. At that time, Congress provided no funding.
Now, lawmakers have not only allocated money, "they're actually naming that this money needs to be spent to research gun violence," says Heyne. —Nell Greenfieldboyce, correspondent
Shoring up suicide prevention efforts
The budget provides SAMHSA with $19 million for the Suicide Prevention Lifeline — this includes an increase of $7 million over last year. The additional funding is a "significant improvement," notes Lauren McGrath, the vice president of public policy at Centerstone, a behavioral health care provider working in several states.
Calls to the Lifeline are answered by a patchwork of about 165 local call centers that receive only about $1,500 to 2,000 per year of federal money. Most of the federal funds support the Lifeline's national infrastructure. The additional funding "will provide much needed resources to improve consumer access to the National Suicide Lifeline," McGrath wrote in an email. The funds will likely be used to identify areas where there are gaps in coverage and to find ways to fill in those gaps, she adds.
Still, she notes that the service is far from fully funded and centers struggle to keep pace with the rise in call volumes. As call volumes have increased, so have wait times and dropped calls. "We have a lot more work to do here," she adds.
The spending package also includes an increase of $7 million for the Zero Suicide Program, which provides a tools, training and outreach to help health care systems adopt effective suicide prevention approaches.
This budget doesn't address funding needs for transitioning to the new 988 number that's in the works. That might come in the next fiscal year, notes McGrath. —Rhitu Chatterjee, health correspondent
Medicaid in the territories, community health clinics, and other "extenders"
The U.S. territories had been facing a dramatic funding cliff this fall. The ACA gave the territories 10 years of additional money for Medicaid, but that ran out in September — causing a potential $1 billion shortfall in 2020. Guam and the Virgin Islands warned they would need to start cutting their Medicaid rolls, and Puerto Rico would have had to cut benefits to account for the funding cliff.
Now, they won't have to — the spending package restores funding to the territories' Medicaid for two years. In fact, as Politico first reported, the White House agreed to four years of funding, but Trump objected, a source familiar with the negotiations confirmed to NPR.
Also attached to the budget are several other health "extenders," including funding for community health centers and safety net hospitals. However, those only get funding until May, notes Edwin Park, a research professor and the Georgetown Center for Children and Families.
Park thinks the new May deadline might be designed to help push forward legislation on other health priorities like prescription drug prices or surprise billing.
"I hope that Congress will come back in the spring of 2020 and will provide a longer-term extension, as opposed to again kicking the can down the road and placing these provisions in limbo," Park says. —Selena Simmons-Duffin, health policy reporter

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