In a raw exercise of political power, on Christmas Eve, while many of us will be with our families, celebrating the birth of our Savior, preparing to tuck in our children who will be cuddled up in their beds, awaiting a wonderful Christmas morning, the Democrats in the United States Senate will likely have rammed through a secretive, unpopular healthcare bill with the single purpose of permanently expanding the American entitlement state.
The Democratic Senators who faked opposition to the bill will be receiving the largest gifts on Christmas morning. According to the Senate Finance Committee, Senator Chris Dodd will unwrap higher reimbursements for certain hospitals under Medicare in his state and $100 million for the University of Connecticut medical center. Of course Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu gets $300 million in Medicaid subsidies as part of the “Louisiana purchase, while Bill Nelson of Florida gets an estimated $3 billion to $5 billion in exemptions from Medicare Advantage benefits, presumably because of their large retiree population. However, Arizona, also the home to many retirees didn’t qualify because it’s two Senators are Republicans. Massachusetts and Vermont get $500 million and $600 million respectively in higher Medicaid reimbursements and Vermont gets another $10 million for community health-care centers. Michigan gets an exemption from the insurance fee for Blue Cross/Blue Shield and higher Medicare reimbursements for certain hospitals. North and South Dakota, Wyoming and Montana get higher Medicare payments to “frontier” hospitals and doctors and Montana gets Medicare coverage for individuals exposed to environmental health hazards in or around Libby, an asbestos superfund site. And the final holdout, Ben Nelson of Nebraska will be unwrapping an exemption from the insurance fee for Blue Cross/Blue Shield and Mutual of Omaha and 100% federal payment for new Medicaid coverage for life. WOW! What a Merry Christmas it is for Democrats without principle.
For those Democrats who weren’t shrewd enough to receive their bribe from Harry Reid, he said, “If they don’t have something in it (this bill) for them, it doesn’t speak well of them.”
If that’s not enough of a Christmas Eve gift for all of us, the Democrats in the Senate will also be voting to approve an increase in the federal debt limit by $290 billion. All the Republicans are expected to vote against it. This is important say the Democrats because it is expected that the debt limit will be reached by December 31, potentially putting the United States at risk of default. Keep in mind they wanted to increase the debt limit by at least $1.8 trillion so they wouldn’t have to come back and ask for more before the 2010 elections. The $290 billion will only get them by for two months.
Are we experiencing the kind of change you can believe in? If they were proud of this legislation, would they be ramming it through with zero bipartisan support on Christmas Eve? Is it Constitutional to REQUIRE an American citizen to purchase something he or she may not want in order to be in good standing as an American citizen? Is it appropriate for a one-sided White House and Congress to ram through legislation that 2/3 of the population disagree with? If you answered no to these questions it’s time for you to seriously think about your role in creating the change we can believe in. Please check my blog regularly. I’ll be commenting on issues I believe are important to all of us. Your comments are appreciated.

Tony Larson

The newest version of the proposed healthcare legislation, which will either fail or be rammed through by a filibuster-proof Congress, isn’t about solving real healthcare insurance problems.
Let’s be honest, if this were about political representatives, working in good faith to improve the quality, delivery and cost of healthcare in America, the debate would be very different. All good ideas, especially those that would improve our current system without resulting in excessive costs and burdens on the economy would be considered.
John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, became controversial for offering creative healthcare solutions in a Wall Street Journal editorial in August. His alternative ideas were seen as a rebuttal to what he saw as the costly, business-killing and ineffective legislation being proposed by the president and Congress. He suggested eight common sense and affordable actions to take to lower healthcare costs for everyone:
1. Remove the legal obstacles that slow the creation of high-deductible health insurance plans and Health Savings Accounts.
2. Change the tax laws so that employer-provided health insurance and individually owned health insurance have exactly the same tax benefits.
3. Repeal all state laws that prevent insurance companies from competing across state lines.
4. Repeal all government mandates regarding what insurance companies must cover.
5. Enact tort reform to end the ruinous lawsuits that force doctors into paying insurance costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.
6. Make health care costs transparent so that consumers will understand what health care treatments cost.
7. Enact Medicare reform: We need to face up to the actuarial fact that Medicare is heading toward bankruptcy, and move toward greater patient empowerment and responsibility.
8. Permit individuals to make voluntary tax-deductible donations on their IRS tax forms to help the millions of people who have no insurance and aren’t covered by Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP or any other government program.
Although these ideas received great attention and support none are even being considered in the current legislation. Instead, we have a partisan Congress, seemingly determined to create a new, costly and open-ended government-run entitlement program at a time when our economy, our businesses and our people are struggling. We don’t have the money to pay for it.
The political class in Washington, D.C., is digging a financial hole for us and future generations. We are now literally buried. We have $12 trillion in debt and it doesn’t even occur to them to stop digging. The debt is projected to be more than $13.8 trillion by the end of next year.
Just to provide some perspective, if our $1.8 trillion expected deficit this year was a stand-alone economy, it would be the eighth largest in the world. Or put another way, our deficit this year could finance the entire economies of Russia, Spain, Brazil, Canada or India. We already have a serious spending problem in Washington, D.C., with no serious debate on how to solve it, and now we’re going to put it on steroids by creating a trillion-plus dollar healthcare entitlement program.
Recently, the Congressional Budget Office reminded Congress that if spending grew as projected and taxes were raised in tandem, tax rates would have to reach levels never before seen in the United States, which would create an additional negative impact on the economy and small businesses that account for 60 percent of the nation’s jobs. This, at a time when the unemployment rate is already the highest it’s been since 1983.
Why is it that we trust the government to run anything effectively? The long-term cost estimates of government-run health programs give us a glimpse of what we can expect. When Medicare was created, Congress predicted it would cost $12 billion in 1990. It cost $110 billion in 1990. Medicaid now costs 37 times what it did when it was launched in 1965; Medicare 16 times more (both adjusted for inflation).
By a 2-to-1 margin, Americans continue to believe that Congress should address the extraordinary fiscal problems we face before they spend money on healthcare reform.
With considerable opposition and virtually no bipartisan support in Congress, it is fairly simple to understand why this legislation is being pushed so hard and so quickly. Most say this proposal, which will represent more than one-sixth of our economy, is flawed and many say it will not accomplish what the advocates say it will. Proponents clearly believe this is their best and possibly last chance to socialize American healthcare.
In an article in the Nov. 18 issue of the Wall Street Journal, Dr. Jeffrey Flier, dean of the Harvard Medical School, gives the legislation a failing grade. “The various bills deal with access by mandating subsidized insurance at substantial cost,” he said. “However, there are no provisions to substantively control the growth of costs or raise the quality of care. In discussions with dozens of health-care leaders and economists, I find near unanimity of opinion that, whatever its shape, the final legislation that will emerge from Congress will markedly accelerate national health-care spending rather than restrain it. It appears that the people who favor the legislation are engaged in collective denial.”
With a projected $1.8 trillion deficit this year, several trillions more in deficits projected over the next decade, and with both Medicare and Social Security entitlement spending about to ratchet up several notches over the next 15 years as baby boomers become eligible for both, we have created a system that is unsustainable. With more and more businesses and individuals struggling, increasing taxes to pay for new programs will only make things worse. As Margaret Thatcher once said, “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.”

by Tony Larson
From the December issue of Northwest Business Monthly Magazine