The House of Representatives is expected to vote TOMORROW on H.R. 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act, Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) disastrous healthcare reform bill.
I urge you, if you haven’t already, to tell your U.S. Representative that you OPPOSE this absolutely unaffordable government takeover of healthcare!
As if the original House healthcare reform bill that sparked outrage at congressional town hall meetings in August weren’t bad enough, Speaker Pelosi has now crafted a 1,990-page regulatory and fiscal nightmare.
CCAGW Member, H.R. 3962 poses a fundamental threat not only to our nation’s and your own financial health and prosperity, but to every American’s individual liberties and right to free choice!
According to an initial estimate by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), H.R. 3962 will cost our country a minimum of $894 billion over 10 years. Robert Pear of The New York Times reported on October 30, “By the most commonly used yardstick, the bill would cost $1.05 trillion over 10 years.” Historically, healthcare programs have cost more than predicted — in 1990 Medicare spending was nearly 10 times what was originally estimated in 1967 — and this is the biggest healthcare plan in history.
Quite frankly, America cannot afford even the minimum price tag for Speaker Pelosi’s healthcare scheme when the federal deficit stands at an all-time record and the national debt is projected to nearly double over the next 10 years.
What’s more, President Obama has said that his healthcare “reform” will cut costs in the long run, but CBO’s preliminary analysis of H.R. 3962 found that the bill would bend the federal cost curve for healthcare UP, not down.
H.R. 3962 would also inflict a whole host of new taxes and costly mandates on individuals and businesses as American families struggle to make ends meet and unemployment approaches double digits.
For example, the bill would impose an individual mandate tax of up to 2.5 percent of income on individuals earning as little as $9,350 who do not purchase “acceptable health care coverage.” The National Federation of Independent Business estimates that the employer mandate in H.R. 3962 will disproportionately affect small businesses, triggering up to 1.6 million lost jobs. The direct impact on families of all the new rules, regulations, and tax increases will be an additional $500 per year in the cost of insurance.
And I can’t believe I’m saying this, CCAGW Member, but the financial burden of this healthcare plan to our government and the costs to American businesses, taxpayers, and our economy aren’t even the worst of it.
The most dangerous part of Speaker Pelosi’s healthcare “reform” bill is that it paves the way to a complete government takeover of healthcare in this country that will dramatically expand the size of government; allow bureaucrats and politicians to dictate your choice of doctors, treatments, and medicines; and ration quality care to control costs.
H.R. 3962 creates 111 new federal boards, bureaucracies, commissions, and programs. It also expands Medicaid to all individuals with incomes below 150 percent of the federal poverty level, an estimated 10 million Americans.
President Obama has repeatedly vowed that “if you like your health plan, you can keep it,” but the so-called “public health insurance option” that Speaker Pelosi included in her bill at the urging of her pro-socialized medicine backers will quickly undermine private insurance by undercutting its costs. A study earlier this year by The Lewin Group, a respected economics consulting firm, projected that 83.4 million Americans would lose the private coverage they have today if a “public option” becomes law.
On top of everything else, Speaker Pelosi proposes to pay for this government takeover of healthcare with massive cuts to Medicare. Those include more than $170 billion in cuts to Medicare Advantage Plans that will gut the program, forcing the more than 10 million seniors who opt for it back into traditional fee-for-service Medicare, which has higher out-of-pocket expenses.
Make no mistake. With these cuts to Medicare coming as the Baby Boomers are retiring and the program is facing bankruptcy in just seven years, seniors will be the first to experience rationing and a decline in their quality of care!
CCAGW Member, that’s why it’s so vitally important that you tell your U.S. Representative vote NO on H.R. 3962 today!
If we don’t succeed in blocking this very dangerous government takeover of our healthcare, you and I and all Americans will have no choice but to live under the mandates, restrictions, and rationing that federal bureaucrats and politicians in Washington will impose to curb costs.
The goal of Speaker Pelosi and her pro-socialized medicine backers is clear: to put all Americans under a single-payer, government-run healthcare system, like those in Canada and Great Britain, that will dictate our choice of doctors, treatments, and medicines and ration the care we can receive.
Time is short! The House will vote TOMORROW, Saturday, November 7. Tell your U.S. Representative today to vote NO on this costly and dangerous government takeover of healthcare.
Related Reading:
Toxic Burn: The Grassroots Struggle against the WTI IncineratorDebates over global warming and fossil fuel dependence dominate public discussions of the environment. For many of us, these debates are abstract because environmental problems do not yet disrupt our daily lives. But in communities throughout the United States and around the globe, environmental activism is not a matter of choice, it is a necessity. East Liverpool, Ohio, is one of those places. Since 1993, the eastern Ohio River Valley has been home to a massive hazardous waste incinerator. The WTI incinerator in East Liverpool burns 60,000 tons of hazardous waste each year, has experienced dozens of accidents, and is located within 100 yards of an elementary school. Yet, it continues to operate.
Toxic Burn is a gripping account of the activist movement against the imposing WTI incinerator in this struggling rust belt town. Drawing on personal interviews with key participants as well as official documents, Thomas Shevory tells the story of building, maintaining, and resisting the incinerator. It begins in the 1970s with community leaders who responded to failing pottery and steel industries by proposing the incinerator as a source of jobs and tax revenue. The incinerator’s opponents fought back, challenging EPA permits in court. They also enlisted the support of Greenpeace and publicly called presidential hopeful Al Gore to task for the Clinton administration’s backing of the incinerator. These activists’ efforts have not only helped to curtail the industry’s expansion, Shevory concludes, but have also encouraged movement toward more sustainable models of industrial production.
Hazardous waste disposal is a hot-button issue in many communities. By analyzing the obstacles faced by the WTI incinerator’s opponents, as well as their victories, Toxic Burn shows that the actions of decent and determined citizens are powerful and essential to developing new environmental models and ultimately saving the health and lives of those in the path of potential disaster.
Thomas Shevory is professor of politics at Ithaca College. He is also author of Notorious H.I.V.: The Media Spectacle of Nushawn Williams (Minnesota, 2004).
Citation Details
Title: Tax compliance provisions in H.R. 3962 (House-Passed Health Care Bill).
Author: Unavailable
Publication: Tax Executive (Magazine/Journal)
Date: January 1, 2010
Publisher: Tax Executives Institute, Inc.
Volume: 62 Issue: 1 Page: 54(4)
Distributed by Gale, a part of Cengage Learning
The Pig Book: How Government Wastes Your MoneyThe federal government wastes your tax dollars worse than a drunken sailor on shore leave. The 1984 Grace Commission uncovered that the Department of Defense spent $640 for a toilet seat and $436 for a hammer. Twenty years later things weren't much better. In 2004, Congress spent a record-breaking $22.9 billion dollars of your money on 10,656 of their pork-barrel projects. The war on terror has a lot to do with the record $413 billion in deficit spending, but it's also the result of pork over the last 18 years the likes of:- $50 million for an indoor rain forest in Iowa
- $102 million to study screwworms which were long ago eradicated from American soil
- $273,000 to combat goth culture in Missouri
- $2.2 million to renovate the North Pole (Lucky for Santa!)
- $50,000 for a tattoo removal program in California
- $1 million for ornamental fish research
Funny in some instances and jaw-droppingly stupid and wasteful in others, The Pig Book proves one thing about Capitol Hill: pork is king!
