1990-Page Health Care Reform Bill - Covers Vending Machines?

From page 1515 of the bill...

“(viii) VENDING MACHINES.—In the case of an article of food sold from a vending machine that—
“(I) does not permit a prospective purchaser to examine the Nutrition Facts Panel before purchasing the article or does not otherwise provide visible nutrition information at the point of purchase; and
“(II) is operated by a person who is engaged in the business of owning or operating 20 or more vending machines,
the vending machine operator shall provide a sign in close proximity to each article of food or the selection button that includes a clear and conspicuous statement disclosing the number of calories contained in the article.

What else is in there?

What They Really Think

After trying to 'work with Congress' and keep a 'place at the table', the insurance companies are FINALLY starting to say in public what they have been saying in private. Here is one example:

...the 39 Blue Cross and Blue Shield companies warned after the Thursday unveiling of "devastating consequences."

"Millions of people would lose their current private coverage they are happy with," the companies warned. "In addition, the government will underpay providers — even if negotiated rates are initially used — creating major access issues, including long waits for services, with some providers closing their doors."

The Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association also pointed out how any "government-run plan will use its built-in advantages — no matter how it is initially structured — to take over the market" through "price-setting based on Medicare" or by using "existing government programs as leverage for negotiations."

A government option would also enjoy "many financial advantages right from the start, including an exemption from federal and state taxes and other assessments that private plans must pay, immunity from state lawsuits, as well as a host of other state rules and regulations." Plus it will get "at least $2 billion in startup capital."

IRS Issues Long-Term Care Premium Deductibility Limits for 2010

The Internal Revenue Service announced that deductibility levels for LTC policies purchased in 2010 would increase just as they did in 2009.

Jesse Slome, executive director of the American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance, recently noted that “for the first time, the maximum deductible limit for an individual exceeds $4,000.” He called the development “a positive sign,” adding that the IRS did not do the same for pension contribution limits.

In addition, Slome says a number of states now offer tax credits for the purchase of LTC insurance that lower a participant’s tax bill, dollar for dollar.

The deductible limits for eligible LTC premiums includable in the term “medical care” under Section 213(d)(10) will rise to $4,110 next year, from $3,980 this year for policyholders who turn older than age 70 before the taxable year ends, according to IRS Revenue Procedure 2008-66 (for 2009 limits) and 2009-50 (for 2010 limits).

For those in their 60s, the deduction increases to $3,290 from $3,180, while the figure rises to $1,230 from $1,190 for those in their 50s. The gap narrows for all other age groups, rising to $620 from $600 for those in their 40s and to $330 from $320 for those who are age 40 or younger.

Does Congress Care What We Want?

A new opinion poll by the Galen Institute shows that 71% of Americans oppose an individual mandate to buy health insurance, despite a penalty of only $750 a year.

The Virginia-based organization, which focuses on free-market health care reform and tax policies, also found that 68% of surveyed respondents are against reducing Medicare benefits to pay for health reform and 58% oppose taxing the middle class to pay for health reforms. In addition, 71% of those surveyed are concerned that if Congress passes health care legislation, then their current health insurance will change.

Overheard

"Today, I got a note from a friend of mine who just had yet another heart attack. It seems his stent is now blocked by 50%. He is a vet, and his primary care is the Veterans Administration. The Veterans Hospital system will not do a procedure to unblock the stent until it is 70% blocked. He does not have any money, so he is simply waiting to have another heart attack. I am really looking forward to government-run health care."

John Mauldin

What Makes Them Think It Will Cost LESS?

Politician just don't seem to understand that if you force insurance companies to cover certain procedures/items and force them to accept everyone (regardless of health status) that it increases cost - significantly. And that is BEFORE you add in the waste inherent in government programs. Here is more proof from the state of New Jersey...

"State mandates make health insurance more comprehensive, but they also make it more expensive. A state can easily increase the cost of a basic health insurance policy by 25%, depending on the number of mandates it has and what they cover. The higher premiums drive some into the ranks of the uninsured.

_________________________

in Pennsylvania, for instance, a family
can buy a comparable insurance policy
for a quarter to half the price.
_________________________

New Jersey has arguably the highest health insurance premiums in the country, and health insurance mandates (the state currently has 45, about average for the country) are one reason.

In the early 1990s, New Jersey also passed legislation requiring insurers to accept all applicants, regardless of their health status (guaranteed issue) and charge them all the same price (community rating). President Barack Obama wants to do the same thing nationally.

There were repeated warnings that such legislation would drive up health insurance premiums. But New Jersey legislators ignored those warnings. Today, New Jersey residents have relatively few health insurance options, and coverage is significantly more expensive than in most other states. Just across the state line in Pennsylvania, for instance, a family can buy a comparable insurance policy for a quarter to half the price. Read more.

Wall Street Journal

$829 Billion Is Lowballing It — Just Look at History

"According to the preliminary analysis just released by the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation, the Senate Finance Committee’s health bill will cost American taxpayers $829 billion over ten years.

How much confidence should we have in that forecast of $829 billion? Not much. For example, in 1967 the House Ways and Means Committee predicted that the new Medicare program, introduced the previous year, would cost $12 billion in 1990. However, actual Medicare spending in 1990 was $110 billion—almost 10 times higher than the original estimate."

Here are other examples of missed estimates. All on the low side - imagine that...

(Click image to enlarge)

Mark Perry

Unconstitutional

While the idea of a "public health option" is flawed for a host of reasons, Sen. Orrin Hatch has written a piece explaining why a "requirement" to have health insurance, and the subsequent "fine" imposed on those who do not have insurance, is unconstitutional.

'The liberty we enjoy in America requires limits on government power, and those limits come primarily from the Constitution. Our written Constitution delegates only certain powers to the federal government and Congress must point to at least one of them as authority to pass legislation.

This means, of course, that the Constitution might not allow some things Congress might want to do. Some provisions of the Finance Committee's health care bill are in this category. It would, for example, require nearly everyone to purchase health care insurance. Failure to do so could result in an "excise tax" to be assessed through the tax code and collected by the IRS….

_________________________

if politics trumps the Constitution,
the Constitution cannot limit government
and, therefore, cannot protect liberty.
_________________________

For the first time, the federal government would be ordering Americans to buy a particular product or service they had not chosen to purchase. Rather than regulate an activity in which individuals chose to engage, Congress would be requiring an activity in which individuals had chosen not to engage.

The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service issued a report concluding this is a completely novel, unprecedented constitutional issue….

Another constitutional problem with the individual mandate is that the penalty for failing to purchase health insurance is, in fact, not the excise tax that the Finance Committee bill says it is. It is really not a tax at all, but a fine masquerading as a tax. An excise tax is a tax on the sale of goods or services, such as a gasoline tax. If you do not buy gas, however, you do not pay the gas tax." Read more.

Orrin G. Hatch, Utah Republican, is a senior member of the Senate Finance Committee.

Paid To Do Nothing

Remember, the ones responsible for bringing us the U.S.P.S want to run your health care, too. And they claim they can do it more efficiently than private enterprise?

"The U.S. Postal Service, struggling with a massive $7 billion deficit caused by plummeting mail volume, spends more than a million dollars each week to pay thousands of employees to sit in empty rooms and do nothing.

It’s a practice called “standby time,” and it has existed for years — but postal employees say it was rarely used until this year. Now, postal officials say, the agency is averaging about 45,000 hours of standby time every week — the equivalent of having 1,125 full-time employees sitting idle, at a cost of more than $50 million per year.

Mail volume is down 12.6 percent compared with last year, and many postal supervisors simply don’t have enough work to keep all employees busy. But a thicket of union rules prevents managers from laying off excess employees; a recent agreement with the unions, in fact, temporarily prevents the Postal Service from even reassigning them to other facilities that could use them. So they sit — some for a few hours, others for entire shifts. Postal union officials estimate some 15,000 employees have spent time on standby this year. Read More.

Federal Times

Some Choose Not to Have Health Insurance

"I learned a lot about the cost of health care when I had a hybrid general surgery practice in California's rural San Joaquin Valley. My practice consisted of uninsured women with breast cancer combined with a smaller percentage of cosmetic patients whose cash payments for "vanity care" subsidized the treatment of women unable to pay for needed medical treatment.

I encountered patients who gladly paid upward of $1,000 in cash for laser hair removal treatments. The paperwork filled out during their initial consultation asked them to indicate whether or not they had health insurance. Several hair-removal patients reported being covered by Medi-Cal, the government-funded health coverage for California's low-income population.

A friend of mine sells private health insurance plans. He told me of the 39-year-old father of two whose family was quoted a monthly insurance premium of $250.

"Are you kidding?" he said, refusing the coverage. "That's almost as much as my boat payment!"

Individuals in this country have a right to decide how — and how not — to spend their money. But that right does not include accepting entitlements without sharing responsibility. Doing so contributes to the high cost of care that burdens every unsubsidized patient.

If individuals prefer to buy luxury items rather than pay for their health needs, that preference should not be rewarded while taxpayers struggle to pay their own bills." Read more.

Linda Halderman, M.D.

States Show How Not To Fix Health Care

Since the debate over the government takeover of medical care exploded onto the national stage, advocates of market-based, patient-centered reforms have pointed to the failed government health care systems of Canada and the U.K. as examples of what America should not replicate.

Yet we don't need to peer over borders and across oceans to find government health care that does not work; indeed, we have examples here in our United States.

_________________________

Hawaii, Oregon, Massachusetts, Tennessee
and Maine have all created some version
of government takeover or administration
of health care, and all are a mess.

_________________________

Hawaii's Prepaid Healthcare Act and its coverage mandates have left Hawaiians with fewer coverage choices, higher costs and nearly double the number of uninsured. Recent budget cuts resulted in discontinuation of its coverage for children.

Oregon's state-controlled care includes an official list that dictates what treatments will be covered based on annual budget constraints. If your disease is above the treatment line, you are covered. Below the line — you're not.

In the three years since the Massachusetts "universal" coverage plan was launched, the state still has thousands of uninsured, costs have exploded to unsustainable levels, and waiting lists for treatments have appeared.

Tennessee's "TennCare" program, an attempt to expand coverage to low-income uninsured, included dead people, escaped felons and NBA stars. It drove doctors and insurers out of the state, and has been on the brink of insolvency several times.

Tennessee's Democrat governor, Phil Bredesen, recently went to Washington, D.C., to explain to Congress that government health care does not lower cost.

But perhaps the worst — and closest — example of why a federal takeover of health care won't work comes from Maine... Read more .

Kerri Houston Toloczko

Gov't Care: A Victory For Special Interests

"The Democrats' proposal for health care reform would put more health care decisions in the hands of the government. Government involvement means special interests dominate. This is not a good thing.

Each decision about care would mean millions or billions of dollars for interest groups that pressure legislators with all the means at

_________________________

The way to lower the cost of health care
and try innovative solutions to increase
access is to reduce government intervention,
not increase it.
_________________________

their disposal. Put the federal government in charge of deciding what is appropriate care, and special- interest groups will fight long and hard for a place on the list.

Politics, not patient needs or the need for increased access to care, will determine which procedures are covered.

Evidence of political influence in health care abounds, mostly at the state level, because that is where health care has been regulated. Increasing regulatory power at the federal level will bring out lobbyists' big guns, as any win is much bigger than it is at the state level."

Shirley Svorney

Hey Congress, Want To Take Over Health Care? Fix This First

"Starting this year, Social Security will spend more in benefits than it will receive from its payroll taxes. This is somewhat unexpected as just last year, the 2009 cash surplus was predicted to be about $80 billion. Even in May of this year, the program's actuaries predicted a roughly $19 billion surplus. However, they failed to allow for the full effects of the recession, and the soaring unemployment both reduced tax collections and increased the number of workers who were forced to take early retirement.

This is very bad news for taxpayers, but worse is yet to follow. The 2009 deficit of about $10 billion will be followed by a 2010 deficit of about $9 billion. If there is a strong recovery--which is questionable at best--the program could briefly return to surpluses. But by 2016, deficits will return and continue permanently. A far more likely scenario is that Social Security will run deficits from this point on.

Social Security's future has arrived early. Despite reassuring words that these deficits are temporary, the reality is much worse. These deficits are likely to be permanent, and the only way out of this cash crunch is to fix the program."

David C. John

Quick Question...

If lawmakers can easily cut nearly $1 trillion in waste from Medicare and Medicaid over the next 20 years, shouldn't they do so to reduce Medicare's $36 trillion unfunded obligation, not to fund massive new health care benefits?

Canada - Return To Private Health Care

As a result of Canada's health woes, a network of private health clinics has spring up. Clinics schedule simple surgeries and tests in as quickly as a week. They are technically illegal, and a court case in October may settle the matter.

"What we have in Canada is access to a government, state-mandated waiting list," says Brian Day, former director of the Canadian Medical Association, who now runs his own private

_________________________

"Access to a waiting list is not
access to health care."
_________________________

clinic in Vancouver. "You cannot force a citizen in a free and democratic society to simply wait for health care, and outlaw their ability to extricate themselves from a wait list."

The door to re-privatizing health care in Canada was opened in 2005, when the Canadian Supreme Court answered the question of whether health care can be effectively delivered by the same people who deliver the mail. The answer was no.

The case was brought by George Zeliotis, who needed and wanted hip-replacement surgery but was told by the government he had to wait a year. He told the government that was too long and he'd pay for his own surgery. That was illegal. But instead of heading south to a hospital in Boston, Buffalo or Cleveland, as many Canadians do, he sued.

Canada's high court found that "delays in the public health care system are widespread and that, in some serious cases, patients die as a result of waiting lists for public health care." As Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin wrote, "Access to a waiting list is not access to health care."

IBD