"I have a message for the President. Mr. President, I have a message for you. Your health care bill stinks, just as we said it did. As a matter of fact, your health care bill is a fraud.
Your health care bill does not cover pre-existing needs for children as you said it did.
Your health care bill does, in fact, slash life-saving diagnostic tests for senior citizens, as we said it did, including MRIs, CAT scans, diagnostic labs, home health, medical devices, nursing homes, in-patient rehab facilities, in-patient psych hospitals, etc. Did you know that, Mr. President?
Your health care bill does change coverage for retirees, who now receive prescription drug coverage from businesses -- and forces them onto Medicare Part D.
You lied again, Mr. President. That's a change in coverage.
At the same time, your health care bill is not $940 billion over ten years, is it, Mr. President?
You lied, didn't you?
You fixed the books like Al Capone's accountant. When you add $320 billion to cover payments to doctors under Medicare. And when you double-counted $550 billion in Medicare "cuts". You increased spending by over $2 trillion when we add in the rest. Don't you, Mr. President?
You lied, didn't you?
And if you were in the private sector, you'd be indicted and facing sure imprisonment, wouldn't you, Mr. President?
And, in fact, your health care bill does drive up costs for small businesses. If they offers a private plan to employees that exceeds some government-imposed limit, over time it's taxed at 40%. Why?
And if these business don't offer health care to their employees, they're fined $2,000 per employee. Isn't that an expense?
If they offer a health plan that's not approved by the government, they're fined as well. Isn't that an expense?
Doesn't that change coverage?
And if these businesses don't offer coverage to part-time workers, they're find $2,000 a pop, again.
And your health care bill punishes young people and middle-class citizens as well even though you said it wouldn't.
You lied.
As the great Bill McGurn reports in the Wall Street Journal today:
Almost by definition, those hit by the mandate will be either young people starting out, or those working for smaller businesses that do not provide employees with health coverage. Back in November, a report by the Congressional Budget Office and Joint Committee on Taxation estimated that nearly half (46%) of the mandate penalties will be paid by Americans under 300% of the poverty line.
That's lower-middle class citizens, Mr. President. You lied.
In today's dollars, that works out to $32,500 for an individual. For a family of four, it's $66,150. Generally speaking, these are not the folks who have to worry about paying taxes on, say, a villa in the Dominican Republic or income from the International Monetary Fund.
So we are left with one of two possibilities. The first is that the penalty for not having "minimal essential coverage" is fully enforced, in which case Americans of relatively modest means will get a lesson in how the government deals with people who don't pay up.
Or the penalty for violating the individual mandate will become like the fines for not filling out your Census form. In other words, unenforced. In that case, the costs of this legislation will be even higher and more hidden than we have been led to believe.
You lied, Mr. President.
And you lied about the cost of premiums, too, Mr. President. You said that premiums would on average go down two thousand, five hundred dollars a year. The Associated Depress is reporting that:
Americans under the age of 35 can expect their individual health insurance premiums to rise by about 17 percent.
That's not a $2,500 cut, is it, Mr. President? You lied.
You also lied about the costs to the states, Mr. President.
The Council of State Governments, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, estimates that your expansio of Medicaid alone:
...will cost states $25 billion over the next 10 years, not including other significant administrative costs to initially implement the new law.
And you lied when you said your health care plan would increase efficiency, didn't you, Mr. President?
In fact, it will cause doctor shortages and long waiting periods. The Associated Depress reports the obvious:
Primary care physicians already are in short supply in parts of the country, and the landmark health overhaul that will bring them millions more newly insured patients in the next few years promises extra strain.
And what of those medical records -- our medical records, which will become part of the federal medical database, Mr. President? How do you plan to secure those? With the IRS?
Who will have access and how will we prevent misuse of our records, Mr. President?
Oh, you were all proud and celebratory, excited about this historic moment. The more we learn about this bill, the more disastrous it becomes. You got a very slight pop in the polls -- did you notice, Mr. President? And now you're down again. The generic party polls for Congress? Pelosi Democrats -- you got a very slight tick up -- and now you're down again. The people are wise to you.
As a matter of fact, you know your bill is deeply flawed, don't you, Mr. President? You were on the Today Show this morning, which is where you go when you want to put out your talking points, because you're never really challenged there. And now you're talking about this being just a first step. This is just a first step, ladies and gentlemen! Gee, I can't wait for the next one, can you? All these little steps, right over the cliff.
I think it is a critical first step in making a healthcare system that works for all Americans. It is not going to be the only thing. We are still going to have adjustments that have to be made to further reduce costs.
What does he mean, "further reduce costs"? Have costs been reduced anywhere?
Now, let me ask you a question: does it occur to anybody at the Today Show or on any of these other programs... has it occurred to a real, live journalist with a degree in Journalism... to confront this President as a serious person and ask him, "Mr. President, all these issues, all these points, you've been campaigning on -- as recently as last week. As recently as this weekend... and yet they were false! And you do this, you massively expand entitlements in this country despite the fact that we now have a report that the Social Security system is broke! Where is your proposal, Mr. President, for fixing the Social Security system? What are you going to do about it?"
Oh, it's one thing to create new programs, to create new promises. But, as President of the United States, you're still responsible for these programs. Nancy Pelosi was as proud as could be! Ol' Stretch was down there on the House floor saying that you all had invented Social Security, you all had invented Medicare and Medicaid. Okay, I'll give you that. But you've also destroyed them! You invented them -- and you destroyed them.
So the question, Mr. President, is: on your watch, what are you going to do about Social Security?
The editors of Investors Business Daily -- a real newspaper -- write:
Social Security's chief actuary reports that the social safety net will run a deficit for 2010, nine years earlier than predicted.
Put down that big gavel, Madam Speaker, we're about to hit the iceberg. Wow. Social Security is now offically broke.
They're expanding Medicaid. There are states that are soon to be officially broke. And yet they're required to pay a huge amount of this Medicaid.
They're going to be slashing Medicare, while pushing more citizens onto it, because the bill punishes businesses that are generous with prescription drug programs for retirees.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, this is what happens when radical, left-wing ideologues sit around and talk with each other about coming up with a Utopian proposal. Because there's no Utopia. This is misery, and it's only just begun, because it hasn't really kicked in yet.
But people are planning. Small and large businesses, senior citizens, young people, they're going to have to plan, going to have to hustle, have to figure out how to protect themselves. While the president bounces all over the place from one issue to the next, one entitlement to the next, one tax and spending increase to the next, patting himself on the back over how wonderful he's made this country.
You know what bothers me most about this? We have a man in the Oval Office who has no respect for what's come before him. He has no respect for what's been tried and tested throughout American history or -- for that matter -- throughout world history. We know that these Stalinist-like programs are failures. We know that, rather than create food, they create starvation. Rather than clothe people, people freeze in the winter. Rather than provide medical treatment for people, people suffer.
Oh, Mark, you say, that's extreme rhetoric: 'these Stalinist-like programs'. Really? Soviet-style? Where does come from? It doesn't come from the Founding Fathers. It doesn't come from the great philosophers on whom they relied.
Where does it come from?
It comes, mostly, from the same mindset. Oh, they have different degrees and levels of suffering and implementation and aggressiveness. But it's a soft tyranny as I've said before and have written. This is the soft tyranny that others have warned about. This is the soft tyranny that we witness in other societies -- being imposed upon us.
Obama has done nothing to cut costs in health care. He's done nothing to increase efficiencies in health care. He's done nothing to create competition in health care. He'd done nothing to address those who suffer -- and those who will suffer. Except to make it worse.
Except to make it worse.
...So welcome to ObamaCare, welcome to the Obama recovery, as jobs continue to not be saved or created, welcome to the Obama housing boom, welcome to the Obama business boom, isn't it great?
Isn't Utopia hell?
This bloated, out-of-control, top-heavy federal government couldn't run a damn weather-stripping program or "cash-for-clunkers" without billions in misery, waste, fraud and abuse. Now picture what that means for your health care."
