Patriot Politics

Last week we attended a Town Hall Meeting.  We figured it was a great way to be part of a Nazi mob without making any kind of permanent commitment to National Socialism. 

The un-Americans in attendance were neatly dressed.  Ages ranged from young families to senior citizens.  The crowd numbered several hundred.  While at times the discourse was passionate, it was not unruly, despite the room being packed to capacity.

The speaker was a Registered Nurse, Twila Brase, who is affiliated with the Citizens Council on Health Care .  Brase arrived bearing a printed copy of all 1100 + pages of H.R. 3200.  Unlike our President and most of the members of Congress, this lady has more than 20 years of experience in medicine, and she has actually read this bill.

Enumerating specific reasons in summary form to oppose the bill during the beginning of her talk, Brase also took questions from the audience., and kindly uploaded a handy PDF on the CCHC site for you to study.

My notes reflect the following points, and are corroborated in the PDF:

1. Care will be rationed (including denied) in accordance with committee standards on what is clinically appropriate.  The Health Benefit Advisory Committee, comprised of political appointees, will decide essential and non-essential benefits and treatments.
2. A Health Choices Commissioner will decide which insurance plans are available, and the Secretary of HHS will implement the Advisory Committee’s decisions.  Yes, this sounds suspiciously like another Administration czar.  What, are there about 300 of them now?
3. There is an anti-discrimination section that allows non-citizen access.
4. There are numerous electronic systems contained in the bill: a national health ID card (GREAT!  maybe we can use it to vote, too…oh wait..), electronic data system to access citizen bank accounts for real-time “adjudication of claims,” and compliance checks and balances with data from the Department of Treasury and “any department or agency of the U.S.”
5. Tax and pay disincentives will coerce migration by physicians and consumers into the government options, essentially transitioning users into a single-payer system via economics.  These tax disincentives include a tax on unacceptable coverage (as determined by the political committee), fees on private insurers resulting in higher premiums (a hidden tax).  Pay disincentives to physicians include forced medicaid enrollment, same rate pay regardless of specialty and hospital monopolies.
6. Additional government intrusion includes home visits to train new parents in approved parenting methods, advanced directives on end of life-related intervention, research using private records without consents in addition to the above, and prevention and wellness funding to monitor behaviors and lifestyles from a health perspective.

I’m sure you can imagine the uplifting effect this knowledge had as the evening wore on.

The intent behind H.R. 3200 is clear: to make it economically unfeasible to maintain private health insurance coverage for individuals via financial constraints upon them and their employers.  In other words, coerce an oblique migration into socialized medicine.

A more comprehensive summary with page annotations appears as follows.

From What’s Really in Obama’s Health Care Reform Bill:

• Page 16: States that if you have insurance at the time of the bill becoming law and change, you will be required to take a similar plan. If that is not available, you will be required to take the government option!

• Page 22: Mandates audits of all employers that self-insure!

• Page 30: A government committee will decide what treatments and benefits you get (and, unlike an insurer, there will be no appeals process)

• Page 58: Every person will be issued a National ID Healthcard.

• Page 59: The federal government will have direct, real-time access to all individual bank accounts for electronic funds transfer.

• Page 65: Taxpayers will subsidize all union retiree and community organizer health plans (example: SEIU, UAW and ACORN)

• Page 84: All private healthcare plans must participate in the Healthcare Exchange (i.e., total government control of private plans)

• Page 95: The Government will pay ACORN and Americorps to sign up individuals for Government-run Health Care plan.

• Page 102: Those eligible for Medicaid will be automatically enrolled: you have no choice in the matter.

• Page 127: The AMA sold doctors out: the government will set wages.

• Page 145: An employer MUST auto-enroll employees into the government-run public plan. No alternatives.

• Page 126: Employers MUST pay health care bills for part-time employees AND their families.

• Page 149: Any employer with a payroll of $400K or more, who does not offer the public option, pays an 8% tax on payroll

• Page 150: Any employer with a payroll of $250K-400K or more, who does not offer the public option, pays a 2 to 6% tax on payroll.

• Page 167: Any individual who doesn’t have acceptable healthcare (according to the government) will be taxed 2.5% of income.

• Page 170: Any NON-RESIDENT alien is exempt from individual taxes (Americans will pay for them).

• Page 195: Officers and employees of Government Healthcare Bureaucracy will have access to ALL American financial and personal records.

• Page 241: Doctors: no matter what specialty you have, you’ll all be paid the same (thanks, AMA!)

• Page 253: Government sets value of doctors’ time, their professional judgment, etc.

• Page 265: Government mandates and controls productivity for private healthcare industries.

• Page 268: Government regulates rental and purchase of power-driven wheelchairs.

• Page 280: Hospitals will be penalized for what the government deems preventable re-admissions.

• Page 298: Doctors: if you treat a patient during an initial admission that results in a readmission, you will be penalized by the government.

• Page 317: Doctors: you are now prohibited for owning and investing in health care companies!

• Page 318: Prohibition on hospital expansion. Hospitals cannot expand without government approval.

• Page 321: Hospital expansion hinges on “community” input: in other words, yet another payoff for ACORN.

• Page 335: Government mandates establishment of outcome-based measures: i.e., rationing.

• Page 341: Government has authority to disqualify Medicare Advantage Plans, HMOs, etc.

• Page 354: Government will restrict enrollment of SPECIAL NEEDS individuals.

• Page 379: More bureaucracy: Telehealth Advisory Committee (healthcare by phone).

• Page 425: More bureaucracy: Advance Care Planning Consult: Senior Citizens, assisted suicide, euthanasia?

• Page 425: Government will instruct and consult regarding living wills, durable powers of attorney, etc. Mandatory. Appears to lock in estate taxes ahead of time.

• Page 425: Government provides approved list of end-of-life resources, guiding you in death.

• Page 427: Government mandates program that orders end-of-life treatment; government dictates how your life ends.

• Page 429: Advance Care Planning Consult will be used to dictate treatment as patient’s health deteriorates. This can include an ORDER for end-of-life plans. An ORDER from the GOVERNMENT.

• Page 430: Government will decide what level of treatments you may have at end-of-life.

• Page 472: Payments to Community-based organizations: more payoffs for ACORN.

What are the takeaways besides a knot in the pit of the nation’s collective stomach?

The biggest:  they think we’re stupid.  That’s no surprise.  Liberals have been telling citizens what’s good for us forever.  They still are.  And, despite being elected to represent the people, they’re still deciding to vote the way they want to, because they know what we really need.  “I will vote adamantly against the interests of the people in my district.” “That’s why I don’t do town meetings.” Citizens are brown shirt tacticians, hijackers and outlandish rumor-mongers.

Marginalizing your detractors is a great strategy . . . until your contempt motivates them instead.

Thomas Jefferson believed in “the natural integrity and discretion of the people, and in the safety and extent to which they might trust themselves with a control over their government.”  Those who author and promote this bill might do better to emulate his reverence, instead of asserting their self-appointed superiority.

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