Lawsuit over health care tax could kill ‘Obamacare’

• • Lawsuit over health care tax could kill ‘Obamacare’

  “Obamacare” looks increasingly inevitable, but one lawsuit making its way through the court system could pull the plug on the sweeping federal health care law.

A challenge filed by the Pacific Legal Foundation contends that the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional because the bill originated in the Senate, not the House. Under the Origination Clause of the Constitution, all bills raising revenue must begin in the House.

The Supreme Court upheld most provisions of the act in June, but Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. took pains in the majority opinion to define Obamacare as a federal tax, not a mandate. That was when the Sacramento, Calif.-based foundation’s attorneys had their “aha” moment.

“The court there quite explicitly says, ‘This is not a law passed under the Commerce Clause; this is just a tax,’” foundation attorney Timothy Sandefur said at a Cato Institute forum on legal challenges to the health care act. “Well, then the Origination Clause ought to apply. The courts should not be out there carving in new exceptions to the Origination Clause.”

The Justice Department filed a motion to dismiss the challenge in November, arguing that the high court has considered only eight Origination Clause cases in its history and “has never invalidated an act of Congress on that basis.”

The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia is expected to rule on the Justice Department’s motion “any day now,” said Pacific Legal Foundation attorney Paul J. Beard.

The challenge citing the Origination Clause isn’t the only lawsuit against Obamacare, but it is the only one that has the potential to wipe out the entire act in one fell swoop. Other claims, notably the freedom-of-religion cases dealing with the birth control requirement, nibble at the fringes but would leave the law largely intact.

In their brief, attorneys for the Justice Department argue that the bill originated as House Resolution 3590, which was then called the Service Members Home Ownership Act. After passing the House, the bill was stripped in a process known as “gut and amend” and replaced entirely with the contents of what became the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

Using H.R. 3590 as a “shell bill” may be inelegant, but it’s not unconstitutional, according to the government motion.

“This commonplace procedure satisfied the Origination Clause,” said the brief. “It makes no difference that the Senate amendments to H.R. 3590 were expansive. The Senate may amend a House bill in any way it deems advisable, even by amending it with a total substitute, without running afoul of the Origination Clause.”

The brief cites a number of cases in which courts upheld shell bills, but foundation attorneys counter that those rulings involved the Senate substitution of one revenue-raising bill for another.

“Here, by contrast, it is undisputed that H.R. 3590 was not originally a bill for raising revenue,” said the Pacific Legal Foundation lawsuit. “Unlike in the prior cases, the Senate’s gut-and-amend procedure made H.R. 3590 for the first time into a bill for raising revenue. The precedents the government cites are therefore inapplicable.”

The Justice Department also points out that the court has allowed revenue bills to originate in the Senate if the money raised was incidental to the bill’s mission.

The Affordable Care Act’s central purpose is to “improve the nation’s health care system,” and it fulfills that goal “through a series of interrelated provisions, many, if not most, of which have nothing to do with raising revenue,” said the government brief.

Mr. Sandefur disagrees. “What kinds of taxes are not for raising revenue?” he asked.

Legal opinion on the matter is split. Randy Barnett, a Georgetown University Law Center professor, said in an article for the Volokh Conspiracy that, “[I]f any act violates the Origination Clause, it would seem to be the Affordable Care Act.”

But Yale Law School professor Jack M. Balkin said the Obama administration has legal precedent on its side, although the lawsuit “may nevertheless become plausible if enough prominent people get behind it and vouch for it.”

“And then, perhaps, Chief Justice Roberts, given a second chance, will change his mind — again,” Mr. Balkin said in an essay for The Atlantic.

Legal scholars agree on one point: The courts haven’t seen the last of lawsuits against Obamacare.

“The Supreme Court’s ruling last June was only the end of the beginning as far as Obamacare litigation is concerned,” Cato Institute senior fellow Ilya Shapiro said at the February forum. “The more we read and the more regulations are promulgated, the more constitutional and other defects are found.”

 

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IRS: Cheapest Obamacare Plan Will Be $20,000 Per Family

IRS: Cheapest Obamacare Plan Will Be $20,000 Per Family
CNS News ^ | January 31, 2013 | Matt Cover 

Posted on January 31, 2013 4:43:47 PM CST by rhema

In a final regulation issued Wednesday, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) assumed that under Obamacare the cheapest health insurance plan available in 2016 for a family will cost $20,000 for the year.

Under Obamacare, Americans will be required to buy health insurance or pay a penalty to the IRS.

The IRS’s assumption that the cheapest plan for family of five will cost $20,000 per year is found in examples the IRS gives to help people understand how to calculate the penalty they will need to pay the government if they do not buy a mandated health plan.

“The annual national average bronze plan premium for a family of 5 (2 adults, 3 children) is $20,000,” the regulation says.

Bronze will be the lowest tier health-insurance plan available under Obamacare–after Silver, Gold, and Platinum. Under the law, the penalty for not buying health insurance is supposed to be capped at either the annual average Bronze premium, 2.5 percent of taxable income, or $2,085.00 per family in 2016.

In the new final rules published Wednesday, IRS set in law the rules for implementing the penalty Americans must pay if they fail to obey Obamacare’s mandate to buy insurance.

To help illustrate these rules, the IRS presented examples of different situations families might find themselves in.

In the examples, the IRS assumes that families of five who are uninsured would need to pay an average of $20,000 per year to purchase a Bronze plan in 2016.

Using the conditions laid out in the regulations, the IRS calculates that a family earning $120,000 per year that did not buy insurance would need to pay a “penalty” (a word the IRS still uses despite the Supreme Court ruling that it is in fact a “tax”) of $2,400 in 2016.

For those wondering how clear the IRS’s clarifications of this new “penalty” rule are, here is one of the actual examples the IRS gives:

“Example 3. Family without minimum essential coverage.

“(i) In 2016, Taxpayers H and J are married and file a joint return. H and J have three children: K, age 21, L, age 15, and M, age 10. No member of the family has minimum essential coverage for any month in 2016. H and J’s household income is $120,000. H and J’s applicable filing threshold is $24,000. The annual national average bronze plan premium for a family of 5 (2 adults, 3 children) is $20,000.

“(ii) For each month in 2016, under paragraphs (b)(2)(ii) and (b)(2)(iii) of this section, the applicable dollar amount is $2,780 (($695 x 3 adults) + (($695/2) x 2 children)). Under paragraph (b)(2)(i) of this section, the flat dollar amount is $2,085 (the lesser of $2,780 and $2,085 ($695 x 3)). Under paragraph (b)(3) of this section, the excess income amount is $2,400 (($120,000 – $24,000) x 0.025). Therefore, under paragraph (b)(1) of this section, the monthly penalty amount is $200 (the greater of $173.75 ($2,085/12) or $200 ($2,400/12)).

“(iii) The sum of the monthly penalty amounts is $2,400 ($200 x 12). The sum of the monthly national average bronze plan premiums is $20,000 ($20,000/12 x 12). Therefore, under paragraph (a) of this section, the shared responsibility payment imposed on H and J for 2016 is $2,400 (the lesser of $2,400 or $20,000).”

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2016 – OBAMA’S AMERICA; A CRITIQUE

2016 – OBAMA’S AMERICA; A CRITIQUE

 

By Lynn Stuter
September 25, 2012
NewsWithViews.com

In the brief time Dinesh D’Souza’s movie, 2016 – Obama’s America, appeared on YouTube, I was able to view it in its entirety. The movie may still be available here.

Like most movies of late, I wouldn’t have paid to go see it.

I found it particularly disturbing that D’Souza, a supposed conservative, did not make the distinction between what he characterized as Obama’s anti-colonialist view and Obama’s Marxist ideology. In watching the film, one gets the decided impression that they coalesce. They don’t.

Watching the film, one gets the decided impression that colonialism is what America is all about, emanating from our founding documents; the film making reference to American influence world-wide, as though Americaninfluence and colonialism are synonymous. They aren’t.

Those who have studied the history of our nation are aware of George Washington’s farewell address to the nation, in 1796, and his warning and caution—to not become involved in the affairs of other nations; to form no permanent alliance with any other nation.

Colonialism is not for the purposes of civilizing or increasing the wealth of a country; colonialism is almost exclusively about the taking of the natural resources of one nation by another for profit; something Obama saw in his years in Indonesia, in his time in Kenya. People in third world countries see their land raped, polluted, destroyed; their leaders get rich while the people become poorer. This forms the foundation of Obama’s anti-colonialism views; one that most Americans, including myself, would agree with.

The United States government, unbeknownst to most of the American people, is involved in this type activity. It is an activity our Founding Fathers would find abhorrent. Our current crop of politicians (not to be mistaken for statesman) in Washington, DC, pretend the activity doesn’t exist as their excuse for doing nothing. And those who profit are American corporations, the American government and American politicians, not the American people.

In making the insinuation that colonialism and influence are synonymous, D’Souza errors grievously. Our Founding Fathers were against colonialism; they were not, however, against American influence in helping other nations achieve prosperity.

We should not make the mistake of believing that Obama’s anti-colonialist views means he is pro-U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In Obama’s America – 2016 D’Souza failed to delineate why Obama’s association with Bill Ayres, his mentorship by Communist Party USA member Frank Marshall Davis should be of note; that these men, among many others, including the man supposedly his biological father, form the foundation of Obama’s Marxist ideology, are the basis of Obama’s disdain and dislike of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Few people, in America today, understand that Marxist ideology is antithetical to freedom, liberty and justice. After all, didn’t communism die when the U.S.S.R. imploded? Few Americans today realize that Marxism is alive and well, and residing in Washington, DC right now; that it is the philosophy of both the Democrat Party (communist) and the Republican Party (fascist); that the only argument between the two parties is who will own the means of production – the government under the guise of the people (communism) or the corporate state (fascism). The words of Alexander Tytler were prophetic,

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent force of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess [benefits] from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes the candidate promising the most benefit from the public treasure, with eh result that democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always foiled by dictatorship.

The American people, today, are given a choice between two candidates – one communist, promising those who want something for nothing largess from the public treasure, one fascist, promising the corporate state greater benefit under the guise of creating jobs. Mitt Romney, the Republican, said it right when he said that those being promised greater largess from the public treasure would vote for Obama. But Romney, promising greater largess to the corporate state, is no better; in both instances the American people are the loser. And because the American people hold their nose and vote for what they believe is the “lesser of two evils” instead of voting their conscience, America is on a never-ending downward spiral to the totalitarian state that was the U.S.S.R. That spiral has been aided and abetted, every step of the way, by the alphabet soup that defines the mainstream media: NBC, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, CNN; and yes, even FOX News.

And few children, having graduated the public (ergo, government) schools in the last fifty years, can articulate why our United States Constitution and Bill of Rights is antithetical to the Marxist ideology of Obama (and of Romney). If people know not from which they came, they will know not where they are going. And few American people today realize that the transforming of America, that has been in the works for the past hundred years, and specifically in the last twenty, is called transformational Marxism - the quiet or gradual atrophy to the Marxist state in which the people become the servant of the government instead of government’s master; human resources(yes, a Marxist term) to be used and discarded at the whim of the government, receiving food, shelter and healthcare (Obamacare) according to their value in producing goods and services for the benefit of the government elite under the guise of “the common good”.

Systems philosophy, what forms the foundation of the Marxist state, has already been put in place in every government entity in the United States by any of a number of innocent sounding ‘management’ styles: total quality management (TQM), continuous quality improvement (CQI), outcome-base education (OBE, a.k.a. performance-based education, competency-based education), the high performance work organization (HPWO), planning programming budgeting systems (PPBS).

The Goals 2000: Educate America Act, P.L. 103-227, March 31, 1994, was written expressly for the purpose of establishing the foundation, in government schools nation-wide, for the Marxist education system now utilized in our government schools under the guise of “education reform”. The law was the outreach of two Republican (Reagan and Bush I) and one Democrat (Clinton) president. It has not deviated, in focus, goal and purpose, under Bush II and Obama. As Hitler said, in 1939,

When an opponent declares ‘I will not come over to your side’, I calmly say ‘Your child belongs to us already. What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community.’

Sadly, most Christians in America today still send their children to the government schools; where they are properly indoctrinated with the Marxist ideology.

Likewise, most Christians in America today—flocking to their local churches every Sunday, where pastors preach social gospel (i.e. social justice) from the pulpit instead of the word of God—do not know or understand the role of Christianity in the establishment of and preservation of freedom, liberty and justice; believing that the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights establishes separation of church and state as has been hammered into their heads in the government schools; believing, without question, that their Christian beliefs must be left at the door as they enter the halls of government. Nothing could be further from the truth. One has to wonder if these so-called Christians believe that Obama leaves his religion at the door when he enters the halls of government. He doesn’t; not by any stretch of the imagination.

The First Amendment of the Bill of Rights was written to keep from happening in America what had happened in England and was the source of grief for religious freedom—the establishment of a state recognized religion. The First Amendment prohibits a state established (recognized) religion; it does not prohibit people from practicing their religious beliefs in the halls of government as individuals.

I found Obama’s America- 2016 a big disappointment as no clear lines were drawn of the ideologies being presented; that both colonialism and Marxism are antithetical to freedom, liberty and justice; D’Souza made no clear distinction between Obama’s anti-colonialist views and his Marxist ideology.

Obama seeks to destroy America, not only because of what he perceives as her colonialist activities in other countries, for which he wrongly believes the American people should pay—as opposed to those, like him, who have benefited directly from those activities as an elected representative in Washington, DC, but also because freedom, liberty and justice are antithetical to Marxism.There is a clear distinction and the American people need to know what that distinction is. I found the movie disturbing in its apparent ignorance of our history and founding documents.

And Obama is a Marxist.

© 2012 Lynn M. Stuter – All Rights Reserved

Activist and researcher, Stuter has spent the last fifteen years researching systems theory and systems philosophy with a particular emphasis on education as it pertains to achieving the sustainable global environment. She home schooled two daughters. She has worked with legislators, both state and federal, on issues pertaining to systems governance, the sustainable global environment and education reform. She networks nationwide with other researchers and a growing body of citizens concerned about the transformation of our nation from a Constitutional Republic to a participatory democracy. She has traveled the United States and lived overseas.

Web site: www.learn-usa.com

E-Mail: lmstuter@learn-usa.com 

 

How “wellness’ will make you sick

HOW ‘WELLNESS’ WILL MAKE YOU SICK

By Lee Duigon
August 30, 2012
NewsWithViews.com

Already famous for its “Chicago values” of murder, sodomy, and corruption, the city of Chicago has now given us a glimpse of the not-so-distant future of Obamacare in America.

Starting very soon, city employees will either have to sign up for the Chicago Lives Healthy “wellness program” or else—there’s always an “or else” in Chicago—pay an extra $50 a month for their health care plan (see “Chicago Pushing ‘Wellness Program on Its Employees” by Susan Jones, CNSNews.com, Aug. 24 ). “Our program will change lives,” gloated Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who expressed delight that some 22,000 have signed up so far—rather than toss an extra $50 a month into the garbage disposal. This is what Democrats usually mean by “choice.”

While few would object to being given assorted “free” health screenings—“free” means they aren’t telling you what it will cost the city’s taxpayers—there comes a point at which everyone in the program will have to take part in a “Wellness Assessment.” This is supposedly “a confidential questionnaire that assesses life and environmental factors that are critical to your health, well-being and your ability to improve both.” You’ll have to answer 60 questions intended “to get a better sense of factors that can’t be tested,” including the unsuspecting individual’s health history, mental health, stress, and “barriers to change.”

Let’s take a machete to this verbal jungle to see what’s hiding in it.

If you really are OK with a bunch of Chicago bureaucrats assessing your mental health, then nobody needs to assess it. You’re crazy.

Stress? How about the stress of having the Western world’s most corrupt political machine deciding what you have to do to be healthy—as they define healthy? If you’re already a stress eater, you’ll really blimp up after a few months of this.

What do you suppose they mean by “barriers to change”? That could mean just about anything, couldn’t it? “You ate at Chick-fil-A the other day. You didn’t contribute any money to the president’s re-election campaign. You have a picture of Sara Palin in your desk drawer. You’ve logged on to News With Views. All of these are barriers to change. Plus you smoke and drink and eat red meat and Twinkies! But don’t worry—we’re here to help you change.”

You’re going to have to go through all this to keep your job. They will assign to you “wellness activities,” whatever those turn out to be, “which must be performed every month.” They’ll check on you to make sure. These activities will be designed to help you reach your “wellness goals” as defined by Rahm Emanuel and his merry men.

Now are you getting just a little bit uneasy about this?

But here’s the punch line—today Chicago, tomorrow the entire country. Now that the government has made itself responsible for your health care, they will demand that you stay health. Or else.

So…

Get up off that couch! Get out from behind the wheel of that car! Turn off that TV and go to bed! What, you’re still in bed? Wake up! Give us twenty push-ups, twenty sit-ups, twenty jumping-jacks! And what’s this we hear about you not eating your tofu-burgers? You’ll burn off those calories, pal, or we’ll burn ‘em off for you!

We also have grave concerns about your mental health. A neighbor overheard you praying! You were actually seen not attending the Gay Pride Parade! We have you on tape making rude noises during the president’s televised speech the other night—which you were late in tuning in to, by the way. These are all signs of acute mental non-wellness!

Can anyone even imagine the cost of micromanaging the lives of everybody in America? The surveillance, the paperwork, the sheer magnitude of the administrative details?Does anybody really, truly want to live this way?

People become liberals because they think God’s laws are too harsh and too demanding. They’re like kids who run away from home because their parents tell them to stop playing video games and clean their rooms, who wind up in the hands of pimps and cults and gurus who demand of them a helluva lot more than their parents ever did.

Will they still call this country America when it isn’t America anymore?

© 2012 Lee Duigon – All Rights Reserved

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Lee Duigon, a contributing editor with the Chalcedon Foundation, is a former newspaper reporter and editor, small businessman, teacher, and horror novelist. He has been married to his wife, Patricia, for 34 years. See his new fantasy/adventure novels, Bell Mountain and The Cellar Beneath the Cellar, available on www.amazon.com

Website: LeeDuigon.com

E-Mail: leeduigon@verizon.net

10 Ways Obamacare Limits Patient Choice

• Kirk Raymond
• What’s Happening with Seniors Benefits

By Kirk Raymond | 8/17/12

A new Heritage Foundation report details 10 ways seniors will have their health care severely limited by Obamacare.

Under Obamacare, all preventive services rated “A” or “B” by the United States Preventive Services Task Force are mandatory and all patients must pay premiums for these services.  Any service rated “C” or “D” — like screening for testicular or ovarian cancer — could be dropped to keep costs down.

Obamacare dictates expanded preventative care for women, including forcing Americans to pay for contraception or abortifacient drugs.  Adding this coverage when it is unnecessary or against religious beliefs raises the cost of health insurance without adding useful coverage.

Obamacare includes an “essential health benefits package” which is a list of services the Department of Health and Human Services demands health insurers cover.   Since “essential” coverage will be decided by bureaucrats, it’s likely that many Americans will pay for coverage they don’t need and will not be able to get coverage for something they might want.

Many Americans now use Health Savings Accounts (HSA’s) to pay for medical goods or services out of pocket.  An Obamacare regulation called Medical Loss Ratio means HSA programs will be phased out.

Obamacare uses two new bureaucratic boards to limit patient care.  The Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) will decide what care is deemed “necessary” — and thus paid for — and that which isn’t, which will not.  The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute is supposed to compare treatment options but will actually be another means to reduce choice in treatment.

Obamacare’s Medicare Value-Based purchasing program pays hospitals differently based on federal quality measures.  This could lead to hospitals treating patients with the best value in Medicare reimbursement rather than the most effective treatment.

Expanding Medicaid and cutting provider payments for Medicare providers will lead to shortages of doctors and much longer waits for health care.  In Boston, under the near universal Romneycare, for example, the average wait to see a primary care physician is two months – while the rest of the country’s average wait is about three weeks.

Many doctors, over-worked from administering all the new “free” Obamacare mandates, will decide to enter so-called “concierge” medical services.

A patient would pay a yearly retainer in exchange for a doctor having a much smaller patient list and more access to the doctor for advice and medical visits.  A typical family doctor currently sees 2,500 patients but by moving to concierge services, that doctor would now only take on about 500 — leaving 2,000 patients to find a new doctor.

Finally, Obamacare guts the popular Medicare Advantage program, where seniors can choose a health insurance policy that better fits their needs than the traditional Medicare plan does.

Early Estimate of 2013 COLA: 1% – 1.5%

According to an analysis by the website Calculated Risk, seniors can expect a 1% to 1.5% COLA for 2013, pending the actual data for August and September.

COLA’s — or cost of living adjustments — are calculated based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners (CPI-W) average over the third quarter of the previous year.

The July 2012 CPI-W was 1% higher than the third quarter average for 2011.  Based on recent increases in gas and food prices, the estimate for third quarter CPI-W for 2012 could be as high as 1.5%.

John C. Goodman: Why the Doctor Can’t See You

The demand for health care under ObamaCare will increase dramatically. The supply of physicians won’t. Get ready for a two-tier system of medical care

Are you having trouble finding a doctor who will see you? If not, give it another year and a half. A doctor shortage is on its way.

Most provisions of the Obama health law kick in on Jan. 1, 2014. Within the decade after that, an additional 30 million people are expected to acquire health plans—and if the economic studies are correct, they will try to double their use of the health-care system.

Meanwhile, the administration never seems to tire of reminding seniors that they are entitled to a free annual checkup. Its new campaign is focused on women. Thanks to health reform, they are being told, they will have access to free breast and pelvic exams and even free contraceptives. Once ObamaCare fully takes effect, all of us will be entitled to a long list of preventive services—with no deductible or copayment.

Here is the problem: The health-care system can’t possibly deliver on the huge increase in demand for primary-care services. The original ObamaCare bill actually had a line item for increased doctor training. But this provision was zeroed out before passage, probably to keep down the cost of health reform. The result will be gridlock.

Take preventive care. ObamaCare says that health insurance must cover the tests and procedures recommended by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. What would that involve? In the American Journal of Public Health (2003), scholars at Duke University calculated that arranging for and counseling patients about all those screenings would require 1,773 hours of the average primary-care physician’s time each year, or 7.4 hours per working day.

 

And all of this time is time spent searching for problems and talking about the search. If the screenings turn up a real problem, there will have to be more testing and more counseling. Bottom line: To meet the promise of free preventive care nationwide, every family doctor in America would have to work full-time delivering it, leaving no time for all the other things they need to do.

When demand exceeds supply in a normal market, the price rises until it reaches a market-clearing level. But in this country, as in other developed nations, Americans do not primarily pay for care with their own money. They pay with time.

How long does it take you on the phone to make an appointment to see a doctor? How many days do you have to wait before she can see you? How long does it take to get to the doctor’s office? Once there, how long do you have to wait before being seen? These are all non-price barriers to care, and there is substantial evidence that they are more important in deterring care than the fee the doctor charges, even for low-income patients.

For example, the average wait to see a new family doctor in this country is just under three weeks, according to a 2009 survey by medical consultancy Merritt Hawkins. But in Boston, Mass.—which enacted a law under Gov. Mitt Romney that established near-universal coverage—the wait is about two months.

When people cannot find a primary-care physician who will see them in a reasonable length of time, all too often they go to hospital emergency rooms. Yet a 2007 study of California in the Annals of Emergency Medicine showed that up to 20% of the patients who entered an emergency room left without ever seeing a doctor, because they got tired of waiting. Be prepared for that situation to get worse.

When demand exceeds supply, doctors have a great deal of flexibility about who they see and when they see them. Not surprisingly, they tend to see those patients first who pay the highest fees. A New York Times survey of dermatologists in 2008 for example, found an extensive two-tiered system. For patients in need of services covered by Medicare, the typical wait to see a doctor was two or three weeks, and the appointments were made by answering machine.

However, for Botox and other treatments not covered by Medicare (and for which patients pay the market price out of pocket), appointments to see those same doctors were often available on the same day, and they were made by live receptionists.

As physicians increasingly have to allocate their time, patients in plans that pay below-market prices will likely wait longest. Those patients will be the elderly and the disabled on Medicare, low-income families on Medicaid, and (if the Massachusetts model is followed) people with subsidized insurance acquired in ObamaCare’s newly created health insurance exchanges.

Their wait will only become longer as more and more Americans turn to concierge medicine for their care. Although the model differs from region to region and doctor to doctor, concierge medicine basically means that patients pay doctors to be their agents, rather than the agents of third-party-payers such as insurance companies or government bureaucracies.

For a fee of roughly $1,500 to $2,000, for example, a Medicare patient can form a new relationship with a doctor. This usually includes same day or next-day appointments. It also usually means that patients can talk with their physicians by telephone and email. The physician helps the patient obtain tests, make appointments with specialists and in other ways negotiate an increasingly bureaucratic health-care system.

Here is the problem. A typical primary-care physician has about 2,500 patients (according to a 2009 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), but when he opens a concierge practice, he’ll typically take about 500 patients with him (according to MDVIP, the largest organization of concierge doctors): That’s about all he can handle, given the extra time and attention those patients are going to expect. But the 2,000 patients left behind now must find another physician. So in general, as concierge care grows, the strain on the rest of the system will become greater.

I predict that in the next several years concierge medicine will grow rapidly, and every senior who can afford one will have a concierge doctor. A lot of non-seniors will as well. We will quickly evolve into a two-tiered health-care system, with those who can afford it getting more care and better care.

In the meantime, the most vulnerable populations will have less access to care than they had before ObamaCare became law.

Mr. Goodman is president of the National Center for Policy Analysis and the author of “Priceless: Curing the Healthcare Crisis” (Independent Institute, 2012).

 

HOLDER DOJ ORDERS FAMILY: GIVE UP YOUR RELIGION OR YOUR BUSINESS

 HOLDER DOJ ORDERS FAMILY: GIVE UP YOUR RELIGION OR YOUR BUSINESS

July 31, 2012 – 4:33pm

 

The Justice Department last week presented the Newland family of Colorado–who own Hercules Industries, a heating, ventilation and air-conditioning business–with what amounted to an ultimatum: Give up your religion or your business.

“Hercules Industries has ‘made no showing of a religious belief which requires that [it] engage in the [HVAC] business,” the Justice Department said in a formal filing in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado.

In response to the Justice Department’s argument that the Newlands can either give up practicing their religion or give up owning their business, the Alliance Defending Freedom, which is representing the family, said in a reply brief: “[T]o the extent the government is arguing that its mandate does not really burden the Newlands because they are free to abandon their jobs, their livelihoods, and their property so that others can take over Hercules and comply, this expulsion from business would be an extreme form of government burden.”

Now that the Supreme Court has upheld the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and its mandate that individuals must buy health insurance, this suit which seeks to protect a small business from being forced to take actions that violate the moral and religious beliefs of the family that owns it is likely to be the next major court battle over Obamacare.

At stake is whether businesses are protected by the First Amendment—the part of the Bill of Rights that guarantees not only the free exercise of religion but also freedom of speech and of the press.

The Justice Department’s filing was made in Newland v. Sebelius–a suit brought by William, Paul and James Newland, and their sister, Christine Ketterhagen, who are Roman Catholics, and who together own Colorado-based Hercules Industries.

The Newland family founded Hercules in 1962 and have maintained it as a family-owned business ever since—growing it to the point where they now employ 265 people.

rney General Eric Holder and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta) 

The Newlands’ lawsuit challenges a regulation that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius finalized earlier this year that requires virtually all health plans to cover–without cost-sharing–sterilizations and all Food-and-Drug Administration approved contraceptives, including those that induce abortions.

Under the Obamacare law, businesses that have more than 50 employees must provide health insurance to their employees or face a penalty. To satisfy the mandate, the insurance must include the cost-sharing-free sterilization-contraception-abortifacient benefit. The regulation takes effect on Aug. 1, which means that as soon as any business starts a new plan-year for its health-insurance program after that date it will need to comply with Sebelius’s rule.

The Catholic Church, to which the Newlands belong, teaches that sterilization, contraception and abortion are intrinsically immoral. Last month, the Catholic bishops of the United States unanimously adopted a statement declaring Sebelius’s regulation an “unjust and illegal mandate” and a “violation of personal civil rights.”

While much of the media attention on Sebelius’ regulation has focused on the fact that it will apply to famous Catholic religious institutions such as Catholic University and the University of Notre Dame, the Catholic bishops have repeatedly pointed out that the regulation also violates the First Amendment-protected religious liberty of lay Catholic individuals. That includes employees who will be forced to pay insurance premiums on insurance plans that violate the teachings of their faith and business owners who will be forced to provide such plans.

In their unanimous statement, the Catholic bishops declared that Sebelius’s regulation created a class of Americans “with no conscience protection at all: individuals who, in their daily lives, strive constantly to act in accordance with their faith and moral values. They, too, face a government mandate to aid in providing ‘services’ contrary to those values—whether in their sponsoring of, and payment for, insurance as employers; their payment of insurance premiums as employees; or as insurers themselves—without even the semblance of an exemption.”

The Newlands currently run a self-insurance plan, providing their employees with generous health-care coverage that is consistent with the teachings of the Newlands’ church in that it does not cover sterilizations, contraception and abortifacients. They are precisely among the class of people that the unanimous Catholic bishops said have “no conscience protection at all” under Sebelius’s regulation.

In their complaint against the Obama administration, which was prepared by the Alliance Defending Freedom, the Newlands clearly explained why they could not comply with Sebelius’s regulation without violating their religious faith.

“The Newlands sincerely believe that the Catholic faith does not allow them to violate Catholic religious and moral teachings in their decisions operating Hercules Industries,” says the complaint. “They believe that according to the Catholic faith their operation of Hercules must be guided by ethical social principles and Catholic religious and moral teachings, that the adherence of their business practice according to such Catholic ethics and religious and moral teachings is a genuine calling from God, that their Catholic faith prohibits them to sever their religious beliefs from their daily business practice, and that their Catholic faith requires them to integrate the gifts of the spiritual life, the virtues, morals, and ethical social principles of Catholic teaching into their life and work.”

“The Catholic Church teaches that abortifacient drugs, contraception and sterilization are intrinsic evils,” says the complaint. “As a matter of religious faith the Newlands believe that those Catholic teachings are among the religious ethical teachings they must follow throughout their lives including in their business practice.”

The Justice Department responded by arguing that if the Newlands’ Roman Catholic faith prevented them from following the Obama administration’s command that they provide their employees with cost-sharing-free coverage for sterilizations, contraception and abortion-inducing drugs, the Newlands could simply give up their business entirely.

The Justice Department further argued that people owning for-profit secular businesses do not have a First Amendment right to the free exercise religion in the way they conduct their businesses—particularly if their business is incorporated.

“Here, plaintiffs have not sufficiently alleged that the preventive services coverage regulations substantially burden their religious exercise,” the Justice Department told the court. “Hercules Industries, Inc., is not a religious employer; it is ‘an HVAC manufacturer.’”

“The First Amendment Complaint does not allege that the company is affiliated with a formally religious entity such as a church,” the Justice Department told the federal court. “Nor does it allege that the company employs persons of a particular faith. In short, Hercules Industries is plainly a for-profit, secular employer.”

“By definition,” the Justice Department claimed, “a secular employer does not engage in any ‘exercise of religion.’”

“Hercules Industries has ‘made no showing of a religious belief which requires that [it] engage in the [HVAC] business,” DOJ told the court. “Any burden is therefore caused by the company’s choice to enter into a commercial activity.”

In its brief responding to the Justice Department on behalf of the Newland family, the Alliance Defending Freedom forcefully rebutted the claim that the First Amendment does not apply to corporations let alone to family-owned businesses.

“The government argues that the Newlands forfeited their right to religious liberty as soon as they endeavored to earn their living by running a corporation,” said the Newlands’ brief.

“Nothing in the Constitution, the Supreme Court’s decisions, or federal law requires—or even suggests—that families forfeit their religious liberty protection when they try to earn a living, such as by operating a corporate business,” they argued.

If the Obama administration’s understanding of the First Amendment were accepted, argued the Alliance Defending Freedom’s brief, the media would have no rights either.

“The government’s exclusionary attitude would push religion out of every sphere of life except the four wall of a church,” they said in their brief. “If for-profit corporations have no First Amendment ‘purpose,’ newspapers and other media would have no rights.”

If they refuse to sell their businesses, families like the Newlands are trapped by the Sebelius regulation. They can stop providing health insurance to themselves and their employees through the business, but then they and their employees would still be required, under Obamacare’s individual mandate, to buy health insurance, and under the Sebelius regulation all the health insurance plans they would be able to buy would still be required to cover sterilizations, contraception and abortion-inducing drugs. Their premiums would then contribute to those “services,” and the business owners would still be required to pay a penalty to the government of about $2,000 per year for each employee they did not insure.

If businesses like the Newlands’ try to simply flout the Sebelius regulation and continue providing insurance to their workers that does not cover the sterilization-contraception-abortifacient benefits that the Obama administration demands, they will be hit with confiscatory financial penalties.

“PPACA also imposes monetary penalties if Hercules were to continue to offer its self-insured plan but continued omitting abortifacients, contraceptive and sterilizations,” said the Newlands’ complaint. “The exact magnitude of these penalties may vary according to the complicated provisions of PPACA, but the fine is approximately $100 per day per employee, with minimum amounts applying in different circumstances.

With 265 employees, a business like the Newlands’ would need to pay the government $26,500 per day if they decided not to comply with Sebelius’s regulation and insured their employees anyway. Over 365 days that would amount to $9,672,500.

The president’s 8 million coincidence

http://my.brainshark.com/The-President-s-8-Billion-Coincidence-356086344

States Should Flatly Reject ObamaCare Exchanges…Here are the reasons…

• Added by Bill Bissell Moderator on July 5, 2012 at 11:33pm
• View Videos

Here are just a few reasons why states should refuse to create ObamaCare Exchanges.

Jobs. Refusing to create an exchange will block Obamacare from imposing a tax on employers whose health benefits do not meet the federal government’s definition of “essential” coverage. That tax can run as high as $3,000 per employee. A state that refuses to create an exchange will spare its employers from that tax, and will therefore enable them to create more jobs.

Religious freedom. In blocking that employer tax, state officials would likewise block Obamacare’s effort to force religious employers to provide coverage for services they find immoral — like contraception, pharmaceutical abortions, and sterilization.

The federal debt. Refusing to create exchanges would also reduce the federal debt, because it would prevent the Obama administration from doling out billions of dollars in subsidies to private insurance companies.

The U.S. Constitution. The Obama administration has indicated that it might try to tax employers and hand out those subsidies anyway — even in states that don’t create an exchange, and even though neither Obamacare nor any other federal law gives it the power to do so. If that happens, the fact that a state has refused to create an exchange would give every large employer in the state — including the state government itself — the ability to go to court to block the administration’s attempt to usurp Congress’s legislative powers.

A lower state tax burden. States that opt to create an exchange can expect to pay anywhere from $10 million to $100 million per year to run it. But if states refuse, Obamacare says the federal government must pay to create one. Why should states pay for something that the federal government is giving away?

Bye-bye, Obamacare. That is, if the feds can create an exchange at all. The Obama administration has admitted it doesn’t have the money — and good luck getting any such funding through the GOP-controlled House. Moreover, without state-run exchanges, the feds can’t subsidize private insurance companies. That by itself could cause Obamacare to collapse.

Michael F. Cannon is the director of Health Policy Studies at the Cato Institute. Video Produced by Caleb O. Brown and Austin Bragg.

Related video here: http://youtu.be/lAbmzAMZnJw
ObamaCare and the States (Leah Vukmir)

THE EXECUTIVE ORDER: “STROKE OF THE PEN, LAW OF THE LAND. KINDA’ COOL”

By Debra Rae

June 22, 2012
NewsWithViews.com

Paul Begala famously described an executive order as the law of the land executed by a mere stroke of the pen. To this, he added, “kinda’ cool.”[1] But not all Americans readily concur. In 1942, for example, FDR’s executive order bypassed approval from Congress while, for the duration of WWII, moving West Coast Americans of Japanese descent to confinement in detention camps in the SW desert.

Mind you, citizens of German and Italian descent were not treated the same. Only Japanese-Americans felt the full force of law through Roosevelt’s imperial executive order. “Stroke of the pen” governance, as his, omits public accountability from the equation; and this, my friend, is the problem.

Governance by Decree

Don’t get me wrong. Executive Orders have constitutionally legitimate purposes (e.g., granting presidential awards); however, they are dangerously inappropriate when used to enact rules and regulations Congress won’t pass—or when they are employed to create new law.

All accept that presidential action is justified in emergencies (as earthquakes, floods, and hurricanes), but the job of the executive branch is to carry out the laws that Congress makes. It’s not to rule by decree, thus vesting power of a monarch on whoever happens to hold the office of the presidency. Political affiliation is not the issue; deceptive “soft” law is.[2]

Deceptive “Soft” Law

The global governance agenda involves activation of “soft” law—specifically, unenforceable agreements among nations on the international stage. Because international agreements appear to represent consensus, they eventually evolve into enforceable international law. Take, for example, global agreements, conventions, pacts, declarations, treaties, summits, and executive orders. After 1907, EO’s were numbered. Since then, over 13,000 have been issued—and not without consequences.[3]

In May 2012, President Barack Obama’ was at it again—this time with an executive order closely tied with EO13563 and EO12866. In his race to standardize regulations between the United States and its trading partners, Obama flung open the door to further forfeiting our nation’s economic and environmental sovereignty—this, through a single international regulatory system—and the stroke of a pen.[4]

Collaboration and communication with respect to regulations involves bilateral, regional, or multilateral processes. What’s not to like about global cooperation among nations for trade, environmental, and legislative processes? International regulatory cooperation can, after all, identify approaches that are at least as protective as those adopted in the absence of such cooperation. Moreover, collaboration promises to reduce, eliminate, or prevent unnecessary differences in regulatory requirements, does it not?

On Its Heels: Significant Regulations

Not so fast. Keep in mind that meeting “shared challenges” reasonably leads to what Obama’s decree characterizes as “significant” regulations. That is to say, by his own admission, Obama’s “stroke of the pen” subjugates the U.S. to expected “significant” regulations to be enforced by an international body.

The sovereignty of a state is determined with reference to the U.S. Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land. It is “the supreme, absolute, and uncontrollable power by which an independent state is governed and from which all specific political powers are derived. National sovereignty is intentional independence of a state, combined with the right and power of regulating its internal affairs without foreign interference.”[5]

Obama’s bypassing the U.S. Constitution for looming, “significant” global regulations under the banner of international law (or any American President’s doing so) sounds to me like “foreign interference.” Indeed, “foreign interference” is what globalism is all about. Despite lofty claims to the contrary, successful globalization degrades control of governments by global industrial regulations, weakens labor, and thereby threatens our coveted middle-class lifestyle.[6]

Agenda Behind the Agenda[7]

By definition, globalism is a one-world agenda devoid of (1) Judeo-Christian ethic and (2) systems of checks and balances—e.g., sovereignty of nation-states, U.S. Constitution. Its iffy brand of “democratic” transnationalism is guided by the principle of sustainable development, specious term the U.N. uses to control populations and distribute wealth, concentrating that wealth (thus, power) into the hands of few who presume to manage masses by means of international law.

In the end, bio-regionally defined global governance trumps the Democratic Republic as brilliantly crafted by our nation’s founding fathers; and America is forced to take on the lowest common denominator the world has to offer. This new world order merges elements of communism with a semblance of capitalism to birth what some distinguish as common-ism.

Government “of, by, and for the people” bows to nongovernmental organizations (NGO’s or civil society). Civil society manages sustainable development, headed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), and the World Resources Institute (WRI).

True, the IUCN, WWF, and WRI set the ideological agenda, but only the United Nations designates official NGOs. Nongovernmental organizations increasingly acquire legal status to manage international, state, and local government under ultimate enforcement of the U.N. This new paradigm assigns private, nonelected groups as watchdogs to find and punish “soft” law violators. Certainly not what our founders intended.

Mankind at a Turning Point

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Henry Clay, and Abraham Lincoln opposed the global theory of free trade that siphons off America’s wealth and brings her economy to the level of others (socialism). You see, socialism serves as steppingstone for expanding bureaucratic controls, tightening regulations, invading privacy, and confiscating, then redistributing wealth (classic Marxism).

Mirroring the Marxist/Leninist maxim of “earning one’s keep on Earth,” sustainable development guides the global economy by this socialist principle of State-managed development. While top-notch university research demonstrates the value of market-based principles, trendy eco-socialists work hard to supplant private with public ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange.

The GATT trade treaty transfers American sovereignty to the World Trade Organization, which acts as a giant international economic Supreme Court in its non-democratic dispute resolution function. Indeed, it locks nations into rules and regulations that exceed authority of their own constitutions. This being the case, the WTO is the closest thing we have to world government. Through it, Americans yield significant control over the domestic economy to an international body that has ruled against the U.S. a number of times. This very principle applies here.[8]

By ceding portions of U.S. sovereignty to the international community, Obama actively furthers the Club of Rome’s master plan for sustainable growth. Mankind truly is at the turning point for world development based on (1) global allocation of all resources and (2) a new global economic system, minus American exceptionalism.

De-development

Pioneer sociologist Max Weber reasoned that the Reformation played a major role in the economic revolution that brought unprecedented affluence to America (The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, 1905). Clearly, the triumph of America’s economic prosperity is her free market system based on these Judeo-Christian principles: respect for rule of law, individual effort, and fair dealing. But, then, these no longer are valued. Ostensibly, “equity” and “social justice” are achieved, not by these tried and true principles, but rather by the Robin Hood approach of transferring wealth to underdeveloped countries.[9

Michael Oppenheimer of the Environmental Defense Fund fingers “the only hope for the world“—that being, “to make sure there is not another United States.“ (Say what?) He continues, “We can’t let other countries have the same number of cars or the amount of industrialization that we have in the US. We have to stop these Third World countries right where they are.“[10]

These are not the words of conciliation. Rather, they smack of force.

Given central control of world markets, the economic reach of globalism maintains a stranglehold on the goose that laid the golden egg—namely, our free enterprise system. In the words of Henry Lamb, publisher of Eco-Logic, this interdependent, one-world state will result in our taking on “the lowest common denominator that forced equity demands.”

To the delight of the late Paul Ehrlich (Professor of Population Studies), America’s unprecedented “economic revolution” is fast fading under the shadow of global socialism. Ehrlich insisted, “A massive campaign must be launched to develop the United States. De-development means bringing our economic system into line with the realities of ecology and the world resource situation.”[11]

The executive order is just what’s needed to see to it.

© 2012 Debra Rae – All Rights Reserved

Footnotes:

1.
2. Executive Order
3. James L. Hirsen, Ph.D. Government by Decree: From President to Dictator Through Executive Orders and The Coming Collision: Global Law v. U.S. Liberties (Lafayette, Louisiana: Huntington House Publishers, 1999).
4. Obama Barry’s new executive order
5. West’s Encyclopedia of American Law, Edition 2. Copyright 2008 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
6. William Greider. One World, Ready or Not: The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism (New York, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997).
7. Thomas Horn. “Globalism: Utopian Dream or Luciferic Nightmare?” How to Overcome the Most Frightening Issues you WILL Face This Century(Crane, Missouri: Defender, A Division of Anomalos Publishing House, 2009): 79-110.
8. Ted Flynn. Hope of the Wicked: The Master Plan to Rule the World (Sterling, Virginia: MaxKol Communications, Inc., 2000).
9. Max Weber. The Protestant Ethic and the “Spirit” of Capitalism and Other Writings (New York, New York: Penguin Twentieth Century Classics, 2002).
10. New One World Order Quotes
11. People for preserving our western heritage.

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Daughter of an Army Colonel, Debra graduated with distinction from the University of Iowa. She then completed a Master of Education degree from the University of Washington. These were followed by Bachelor of Theology and Master of Ministries degrees-both from Pacific School of Theology.

While a teacher in Kuwait, Debra undertook a three-month journey from the Persian Gulf to London by means of VW “bug”! One summer, she tutored the daughter of Kuwait’s Head of Parliament while serving as superintendent of Kuwait’s first Vacation Bible School.

Having authored the ABCs of Globalism and ABCs of Cultural -Isms, Debra speaks to Christian and secular groups alike. Her radio spots air globally. Presently, Debra co-hosts WOMANTalk radio with Sharon Hughes and Friends, and she contributes monthly commentaries to Changing Worldviews and NewsWithViews.com. Debra calls the Pacific Northwest home.

Web Site: www.debraraebooks.com

E-Mail: ABCs@debraraebooks.com