Fact Check: What the Democrats Won’t Tell You About Pre-Existing Conditions

I wrote earlier about the HHS report released by ‘re-education’ Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. The report was released, coincidentally, the day before Republicans in the House vote to repeal ObamaCare. It is pure propaganda used to mislead the public and their own numbers prove this study is bogus.

Dave Camp writes, via The Committee on Ways and Means

The Obama Administration today released a “report” claiming that anywhere from 50 million to 129 million non-elderly Americans “could be denied affordable coverage” if the Democrats’ health care law is repealed.  With 17 million non-elderly individuals uninsured, the “report” attempts to mislead the public that up to 129 million Americans are at risk of losing their health insurance, which is simply untrue.  But, let’s get the facts straight – it doesn’t take a one trillion dollar, 2,000 page government-takeover of our health care system to assure protections for those with pre-existing conditions.  Despite the report’s misleading claims and mischaracterizations, consider the facts: 

• Even without the Democrats’ health care overhaul, most Americans with pre-existing conditions already have protections because they receive health insurance through an employer.  This means that if their employer offers coverage, they are guaranteed an offer of health coverage under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regardless of their health status or history.  HIPAA ensures that employers cannot deny the offer of health insurance to an employee on the basis of a pre-existing condition.  Currently, 61 percent of Americans under the age of 65 receive coverage through an employer. (CBO: Key Issues in Analyzing Major Health Insurance Proposals).
   
• An additional 24 percent of non-elderly Americans receive coverage through Medicare, Medicaid, or another government program and cannot be denied access to coverage because of a pre-existing condition. (CBO: Key Issues in Analyzing Major Health Insurance Proposals)
   
• Amongst the uninsured (17 percent of the non-elderly population), 42 percent are eligible for guaranteed coverage regardless of pre-existing condition but choose not to enroll.  For example, 12 percent of the uninsured are eligible for Medicaid, 6 percent are eligible for Medicaid and employer-sponsored insurance, and another 24 percent have an offer of employer-sponsored insurance.  (CBO: Key Issues in Analyzing Major Health Insurance Proposals)
   
• This leaves less than 14 percent of non-elderly Americans who can be denied health insurance on the basis of a pre-existing condition:  the remaining uninsured that do not have an offer of employer-based coverage and the 4 percent that purchase coverage on their own.  (CBO: Key Issues in Analyzing Major Health Insurance Proposals).  Keep in mind that many of these individuals may not have a pre-existing condition (like the healthy 25-year old who chooses not to buy coverage).  This is a far cry from the 50 percent claim made today by the Obama Administration.

Still, providing individuals with a pre-existing condition access to affordable coverage is a common-sense goal.  It is not solely a Democrat goal or a Republican goal – it is a goal of all who want to make sure that patients have much-needed protections – regardless of their health condition or how they buy coverage.

But the Democrats’ scare tactics beg the question:  Did Democrats have to spend over one trillion dollars, slash Medicare, and raise taxes to address this problem in their 2,000 page bill?  The answer: No.

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Need Braces? It just got more expensive thanks to ObamaCare

When you don’t read or understand a bill that you vote into law, ObamaCare is what you get. Pelosi said the bill had to be passed to see what’s in it. For those of us who pay taxes and pay for our own health insurance, it gives us higher taxes and premiums. Someone has to pay for those 32 million uninsured folks Obama just added onto the government welfare rolls.

ObamaCare places a tax on medical devices so your child’s need for braces (medical device) will be taxed. This is one of the sneaky taxes that were created to pay for ObamaCare.

Americans for Tax Reform reports:

The Obamacare law raises or imposes some two dozen new or higher taxes on American families and small employers.  Often, these tax increases can conspire together against normal, everyday decisions.  Below are all the taxes that would be imposed on a child’s dental braces starting in 2013 under the Obamacare law:

Excise Tax on Medical Devices.  Obamacare imposes a new tax of 2.3% on medical devices, including braces. While these will be paid by the braces manufacturer, the tax will be passed along as a higher cost of the product, ultimately to be paid by the parent buying the braces for their child.  The website bracesreview.com says that braces can cost as much as $5500.  This new tax could raise the cost of these braces by $127.

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Need a ObamaCare Waiver? Get in Line

The majority of Americans want a ObamaCare waiver. Where does the line start?

Detroit News reports:

Here is one of the secrets that Washington hopes that you don’t notice about the new $2.6 trillion health care law. If you don’t like the law’s slew of new mandates and taxes on families, doctors and employers, you can get an exemption.

If you don’t want the government picking your family’s insurance plan and your doctor, you can opt out. If you don’t want to pay higher premiums and watch your health care costs skyrocket, you can get a free pass.

How do you receive an exemption to the job-killing health care law? It’s simple: all you have to do is become politically connected. Beginning last fall, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius began awarding waivers to unions and corporations that couldn’t comply with one of the law’s countless new mandates.

But if the law is so great, shouldn’t it apply to everyone?

Here’s how it happened. Many employers provide workers with “mini-med” health plans, which is low-cost insurance with higher deductibles and smaller annual limits. It’s not full coverage, but for millions of hourly workers it’s better than being uninsured. Companies complained to Sebelius that they would have to drop this coverage because it doesn’t meet the health law’s unreasonable requirement that all plans include comprehensive benefits.

Some of the administration’s closest allies — including 43 unions — were quickly told that they didn’t have to comply with the law. The latest count is that 222 unions and corporations have been granted waivers to portions of the health care law by President Obama’s health secretary. The list includes names like the Service Employees International Union and McDonald’s.

More mandates are scheduled to take effect this year that will make it even harder for businesses to afford the coverage that they currently offer. When it’s all said and done, HHS is expected to release more than 30,000 pages of new regulations that will create an impossible compliance task for employers and families alike.

This charade is the clearest indication yet that the health law has failed to live up to the president’s often repeated promise that if you like your health plan, you can keep it. That promise has already been broken for workers with mini-med plans, and millions of other small business health plans will soon be deemed “unacceptable coverage” in the eyes of HHS bureaucrats.

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Democrats crying about the Democratic Party Losing White Voters

Democrats using race and identity politics. Never seen this before. Working class whites are fleeing the Democratic Party who is hell-bent on stealing from those who are productive and rewarding it to those who aren’t.

Also, most don’t like being labeled racist for disagreeing with the left’s socialism and Obama’s spread the wealth agenda.

The Hill reports:

A leading civil rights leader in Congress believes the Democratic Party is losing too many white voters.

In an interview, Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) said Democrats need to “go all out” to win back white Southern voters before the next election.

White voters preferred Republican candidates by almost two-to-one in the midterms last year. Their support helped the GOP win 22 seats in the states that make up the Old Confederacy. The Democrats’ only pickup in the region was the New Orleans district where the party holds a registration advantage.

That was the Old Confederacy of the Democratic Party. The party that was pro-slavery, pro-segregation, pro-secession and pro-lynching of white Republicans.

Since November, there have been a string of defections by Southern Democratic state lawmakers, which has prompted renewed speculation about the party’s future in the region. Former Alabama Rep. Artur Davis (D) said Democrats should even consider running as Independents if they want to succeed.

Yes, change that (D) behind your name and hope the voters are stupid enough to buy it.

Lewis, who was a civil rights activist before being elected to Congress in 1986, said he’s concerned the party is losing its diversity, which will make it difficult to reclaim the lost seats.

“We’ve got to go all out and get white voters, especially white men, to come back to the Democratic Party,” he told The Ballot Box. “I just think it’s important for the Democratic Party to roll out and try to reveal itself and not become a party that is split along racial lines.”

All race, all the time. This is the Democratic Party.

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NAACP Puts Geoge Washington in a Box during MLK event

Looks like the NAACP is discriminating against a statue of our First President, George Washington. Maybe the NAACP is offended by the presents of a bronze statue.

The annual MLK observance at the state house in Columbia SC had an interesting twist this year. The event is held on the north side steps of the statehouse. Prominent at that location is a large bronze statue of George Washington. This year, the NAACP constructed a “box” to conceal the Father of His Country from view so that participants would not be offended by his presence.

H/T to FreeNorthCarolina

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Thanks to the Liberal Education System, College Students Unable to think Critically

Wonder if we will hear the cries of “we need more teachers” and “reduced class sizes” after reading this study?

NEW YORK — An unprecedented study that followed several thousand undergraduates through four years of college found that large numbers didn’t learn the critical thinking, complex reasoning and written communication skills that are widely assumed to be at the core of a college education.

Many of the students graduated without knowing how to sift fact from opinion, make a clear written argument or objectively review conflicting reports of a situation or event, according to New York University sociologist Richard Arum, lead author of the study. The students, for example, couldn’t determine the cause of an increase in neighborhood crime or how best to respond without being swayed by emotional testimony and political spin.

These are the same people who voted for someone based on catchy campaign slogans such as “Yes we Can” and “Hope and Change.” Many of the left have a hard time separating fact from opinion. Look at what happened with the Tucson mass murder. Opinions took place of facts.

Arum, whose book “Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses” (University of Chicago Press) comes out this month, followed 2,322 traditional-age students from the fall of 2005 to the spring of 2009 and examined testing data and student surveys at a broad range of 24 U.S. colleges and universities, from the highly selective to the less selective.

Forty-five percent of students made no significant improvement in their critical thinking, reasoning or writing skills during the first two years of college, according to the study. After four years, 36 percent showed no significant gains in these so-called “higher order” thinking skills.

Combining the hours spent studying and in class, students devoted less than a fifth of their time each week to academic pursuits. By contrast, students spent 51 percent of their time — or 85 hours a week — socializing or in extracurricular activities.

Need more proof that liberals are dumbing down our children? This is not my opinion, this is a fact since most college professors are liberal.

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Health and Human Services Claims 1/2 of Americans have “Preexisting Conditions”

I guess this is part of HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’ “re-education” of America.

The Washington Post reports:

As many as 129 million Americans under age 65 have medical problems that are red flags for health insurers, according to an analysis that marks the government’s first attempt to quantify the number of people at risk of being rejected by insurance companies or paying more for coverage.

The secretary of health and human services released the study on Tuesday, hours before the House plans to begin considering a Republican bill that would repeal the new law to overhaul the health-care system.

This is part of Sebelius’ ‘re-education’ plan. Put out numbers, that can’t be trusted or verified, right before a vote to repeal ObamaCare is to take place.

Also, those who pushed the passing of ObamaCare told us that those evil insurance companies refuse insurance coverage for those with preexisting conditions.  Then they come out with this ‘study’ that says half of Americans have preexisting conditions. How is it that anyone has health insurance? Wouldn’t that mean that half of America is without health insurance?

This is not the case. 

A vote is expected on Wednesday. But while Republicans may muscle through a repeal bill in the House, its prospects are slimmer in the Senate, where Democrats andindependents will enjoy a 53-47 majority.

The new report is part of the Obama administration’s salesmanship to convince the public of the advantages of the law, which contains insurance protections for people with preexisting medical conditions.

Guess WaPo didn’t want to tell those who are paying for their own insurance about the rate increases on top of medical cost increases. No mention about the tax increases that are included inside ObamaCare. Reporting these facts goes against the liberal media’s propaganda.

Republicans immediately disparaged the analysis as “public relations.” An insurance industry spokesman acknowledged that sick people can have trouble buying insurance on their own but said the analysis overstates the problem.

The study found that one-fifth to one-half of non-elderly people in the United States have ailments that trigger rejection or higher prices in the individual insurance market. They range from cancer to chronic illnesses such as heart disease, asthma and high blood pressure.

Why shouldn’t people with more problems have to pay higher insurance premiums? If you have a lot of tickets and accidents, don’t you pay more for car insurance? And we know, Obama has used that car insurance analogy several times.

Obama doesn’t even have an understanding about car insurance, much less health care insurance.

The smaller estimate, by Health and Human Services Department researchers, is based on the number of Americans whose medical problems would make them eligible for states’ high-risk pools - special coverage for people denied insurance because of their medical history. The researchers arrived at the larger figure by adding in other ailments that major insurers consider a basis to charge customers higher prices or to exclude coverage for some of the care they need.

Are these the same ‘high-risk pools‘ that nobody is joining?

Using those two definitions, the study took 2008 findings, the most recent available, from a large federal survey of medical expenditures to figure out how many people had reported that they were bothered by those health problems, had visited a doctor for them or had been at least temporarily disabled because of them.

Two definitions? In other words, they used numbers that support their argument. Why didn’t HHS just get CBO to produce the numbers to support their claim?

The study is laced with reminders about provisions of the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act – as the health-care law is formally known – that are designed to eliminate insurance problems for such people.

The goal is to eliminate employer-paid health insurance. Obama said so himself…

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11% of Americans Believe Politicians Read Laws before Voting on Them

These 11% must not have seen the debacle that is ObamaCare. The Democrats who reportedly wrote the bill admitted theynever read it. Some Democrats even laughed at those demanding them to read the bill.

Rasmussen Reports:

House Speaker John Boehner like many of his predecessors has pledged that the new Congress will be more open and transparent than the previous one, but voters want even more openness than he has promised.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 11% of Likely U.S. Voters think most members of Congress read laws before they vote on them. Sixty-five percent (65%) don’t think that’s the case, and another 24% are not sure.  (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Just before Democrats in Congress passed the national health care bill last March, only 20% of voters believed most members of Congress understood what was in the plan.

Last-minute deal-making on the health care bill prevented its public posting until just before the vote, and in response to complaints about the handling of it and other legislation, Boehner has said all bills will be posted publicly online three days before the House votes. But voters say overwhelmingly that that’s not long enough.

Due to all the bribes and job offers between Democrats.

Eighty-two percent (82%) of voters say that, except in extreme emergencies, legislation should be posted online in final form and available for everybody to read before Congress votes on it. Only eight percent (8%) disagree. This is nearly identical to findings in September 2009 after Congress had returned from a recess filled with angry town hall meetings over the health care bill, the bailout plans and the $787-billion economic stimulus.

Of those who favor posting proposed final legislation online, 92% don’t think Boehner’s plan goes far enough: 33% say bills should be posted one week before a vote, and 59% think posting should take place two weeks or more in advance. Just six percent (6%) say three days is good enough, and one percent (1%) feel one day beforehand is all right.

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Irony? Obama wants to shed regulations, via Executive Order, his administration put in place

This is what happens when you have a President and his administration who turned to regulation when they couldn’t legislate. Obama has been anti-business and bad for business since stepping into the Oval Office. Don’t believe me? Look at the high unemployment numbers that have given us 22 months of 9% plus unemployment.

Now after 2 years of regulating everything under the sun, Obama wants to “help” by shedding rules that hurt job growth.

From CNBC.com:

President Barack Obama Tuesday ordered a government-wide review of regulations with the goal of eliminating those that hurt job creation and make the U.S. economy less competitive.

Getting Obama out of the White House would help.

Obama took action after unveiling his plan in an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal in which he said some rules have placed “unreasonable burdens on business — burdens that have stifled innovation and have had a chilling effect on growth and jobs.”

The executive order marked Obama’s latest move to repair relations with U.S. business, which were frayed amid bitter debate over his overhauls of Wall Street regulations and healthcare that some business leaders said would stymie corporate America.

Obama has struck a more business-friendly tone since his Democrats lost the U.S. House of Representatives and saw their Senate majority reduced in November congressional elections widely seen as a verdict on his handling of the stumbling economy and persistently high unemployment.

It was not immediately clear, however, how far-reaching Obama’s new regulatory strategy would be in changing the way the federal government operates.

Despite Obama’s promise, the administration’s legislative victories are producing dozens of new regulations, on everything from credit card fees to health insurance premium increases, to the annoyance of the business community.

Obama said he would require that in the future, government agencies “ensure that regulations protect our safety, health and environment while promoting economic growth.”

He also issued a memorandum to all executive agencies calling for “more transparency and accountability in regulatory compliance” and a second one on the need to “reduce burdens on small businesses whenever possible,” the White House said.

It’s the same bullshit from the biggest bullshiter in history. Two years and we still hear the same bullshit from Obama.

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Far-Left Lunatic, James Eric Fuller: ‘There Would Be Torture and Then an Ear Necklace…’

Someone has issues. Then again, most on the left side of the political spectrum suffer from mental disabilities. Liberalism is a mental disorder. James Eric Fuller is proof.

From the NY Post:

James Eric Fuller, 63, who was shot in the knee, had told The Post on Friday, the day before his arrest, that top Republican figures should be tortured — and their ears severed.

“There would be torture and then an ear necklace, with [Minnesota US Rep.] Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin’s ears toward the end, because they’re small, female ears, and then Limbaugh, Hannity and the biggest ears of all, Cheney’s, in the center,” Fuller said.

Also on Friday, Fuller stopped by the home of gunman Jared Lee Loughner and told a neighbor he was going to forgive the shooter, The Associated Press said.

Someone is a media whore.

On Saturday, Fuller was carted away for a psychiatric exam after disrupting the town hall meeting by taking a photo of Tucson Tea Party co-founder Trent Humphries and shouting, “You’re dead!”

Sounds like your typical violent lefty.

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