Further evidence that Michele Bachmann=Awesome:
Michele Bachmann: Obamacare Is Crown Jewel of Socialism; We Won’t Stop Til We Repeal this President
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Tag Archives: Repeal
Change You Can Believe In: Obamacare Repealed, 245-189
Yesterday, the House of Representatives voted 245-189 to repeal Obamacare. The overwhelming majority, which included three Democrats, sent an unmistakable message to Democrats, and the voting public.
Harry Reid, claims that there will not be a vote in the Senate to repeal Obamacare because it’s just too popular to vote on: “not only would repeal not pass, but according to a poll by AP over the weekend, three out of four people don’t want it to.” Complete and utter nonsense from the Senate Majority Leader.
The truth of the matter is that Senator Reid cannot be sure that repeal would fail in the Democrat controlled Senate. With the evident popularity of the repeal movement, the Democrats cannot afford a vote on the bill. If the bill fails to pass the Senate, so-called blue-dog Democrats would once again be forced to show their true socialist colors. If a repeal bill were to pass, President Obama would veto the bill, further alienating himself from the electorate.
The repeal vote is a bold and necessary move from the House Republicans. Now the real work begins: dismantling the monstrosity of Obamacare piece by piece.
Disastrous Changes to Healthcare – Effective Now
Do you think that you will be better off in 2011 than you were in 2010? If you answered yes, you must not be a doctor, insurance company, or any sort of user/provider of healthcare.
On January 1, 2011, several new elements of Obamacare came into effect. These measures lay the groundwork for higher premiums and the eventual government takeover of healthcare.
Your HSA and FSA is a lot less valuable
In the past, you could purchase over the counter medical supplies – such as Advil, allergy pills, and cold medicine – using your Health Savings Account (HSA) or Flexible Savings Account (FSA). No income tax was paid on the money that you saved in either of these accounts.
Thanks to Obamacare, you can no longer purchase over the counter medications using these accounts unless you get a doctor’s prescription.
This will have two big effects:
1. Increase the real cost of over the counter drugs because you cannot easily purchase them with pretax dollars
2. Waste doctors’ time and increase the price of health insurance because doctors will be asked to write prescriptions for over the counter drugs just for the tax benefits.
A Provision Now Limits How Insurance Companies Use your Premiums
This one is unbelievable – a game changer in the insurance business. This is a leap towards the government takeover of healthcare.
Insurance companies now are forced to spend at least 80% of the insurance premium on patients. If a company or group purchases a healthcare plan, this number jumps to 85%.
The remaining 15%-20% of your premium may be spent on advertising, sales, administrative salary, profit, etc..
This provision will have numerous effects – some of which are:
1. It will force insurance companies out of states where administrative costs are higher – simply because these states will be unprofitable.
2. It changes the insurance business model – typically your insurance company will take big profits from healthy patients (who consequently, don’t make large insurance claims) and lose money on customers who get sick. Obviously, insurance companies want their customers to stay healthy (fewer claims). Now, they need their customers to get sick to meet this government requirement.
This will drive ‘cadillac’ plans out of existence. Insurance companies have no benefit from high margin plans – the only way to increase profit is to cover more people (you can no longer increase margins). Plans will be designed to fit the needs of large groups of people - individually tailored plans designed to fit your specific needs are a thing of the past.
Claim service and doctor payments will all be affected too. Companies will reduce their administrative staff to the bare minimum (one of the few ways to affect profit margin). Be prepared to sit on hold for several hours only to talk to someone in India when you call your insurance company.
This provision sets up an incredible moral hazard that should be unimaginable in America – the government telling a private company what its profit margin must be. If the company is charging too much, competitors will take advantage of the situation by offering lower prices. Perhaps the government should limit grocery store margins too – we all need food. This is the absurdity of big government.
3. The new model is impossible – companies can only use 15%-20% of their margins on advertising, administration, and profit – so they need as many customers as possible. Yet they need to spend more on advertising and administration to pay for all of the new customers. This will inevitably decrease profits and the number of companies participating in the health insurance market.
Don’t worry – once provisions like these eliminate all of the private insurance companies, I’m confident that President Obama and the Democrats will have a solution – government run healthcare.
If you don’t want the government running healthcare, there is only one option: REPEAL.
2011 GOP Battle Cry: Undo Obama
The media is atwitter over the fact that incoming GOP Congressmen have selected Carrie Underwood’s hit “Undo It” as their anthem.
Liberals in Congress and the media are worried that the GOP actually plans on fighting the Democrat socialist agenda.
Jennifer Steinhauer and Robert Pear lamented in the New York Times:
The health care law, entitlement programs, new limits on emissions of greenhouse gases from oil refineries and power plants, and other legislation that Republicans say cannot be justified by a strict interpretation of the Constitution — a document the new leaders plan to read on the House floor on Thursday — are all in the cross hairs.
While President Obama and Republicans were able to work together during last month’s lame-duck session — to the vocal consternation of the most partisan ends of each party’s base — to pass a tax package and a variety of last-minute legislation, including the repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy and the ratification of the anti-nuclear proliferation treaty with Russia, such bipartisan consensus seems unlikely at the outset of the new House session.
Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, who is in line to succeed Ms. Pelosi, has said that this time around he would lead efforts to revive the private sector by reducing the size of government — cutting federal regulation, taxes and spending, including the budget of Congress itself.
Mr. Boehner also said Republicans would alter House rules to make it easier to curb government spending and to require more public disclosure about the work of the House.
House Republicans plan on passing a full repeal of Obamacare as a symbolic act, acknowledging that it will be stopped in the Senate, or vetoed by the President. However, after setting the tone, the GOP plans on defunding and dismantling Obamacare piece by piece. Additionally, with Paul Ryan’s Road Map the GOP is finally starting to talk about realistic entitlement reforms.
Fueled by a reverence for the Constitution and an acknowledgment of reality, Republicans won in 2010 by representing the alternative to Obamunism. If the Grand Old Party wishes to remain in power surrender is not an option.
Mitch McConnell stated that his foremost political priority is ensuring that Barack Obama is a one-term president. Republicans are openly stating that they plan on using Obamacare as an albatross to hang around Democrats in 2012. The only way to fix the economy, and the country, is to get government out of the way. The only way to get government out of the way is to defeat Democrats. The GOP, at long last, is ready to play hardball.
On the other side of the aisle, Democrats believe that a renewed debate over Obamacare will actually help them. The Left believes that the only problem with Obama’s government takeover of healthcare is the branding. If only the American people really understood how great Obamacare is, they’d support the monstrosity.The fights over Obamacare, and liberty, are fights the GOP should welcome, and decisively win.
The legislative plan for the GOP is quite simple; Barry Goldwater spelled it out in 1960:
I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution or that have failed their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is `needed’ before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents “interests,” I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can.
For a modern interpretation “Undo It” works:
If Only There Were 434 More Mike Pences
From Today’s Wall Street Journal:
In the dead of night on Sunday, Democrats rammed their health-care overhaul through Congress. Some say we made history. I say we broke with history, turning our back on this country’s finest traditions of limited government, personal responsibility, and the consent of the governed.
Republicans remain committed to reforming health care in a way that honors these values. For the past year we have suggested ways to fix the system by reducing costs—specifically through instituting tort reform and by allowing Americans to purchase insurance across state lines.