ninme

Curtsy to RC2’s Twitter ‘n blog:

“…When you expose this bill’s budget gimmicks, does it increase the debt and deficit? Yes.

“Will it take coverage away from seniors, raise premiums for families, and decrease health care innovation? Yes.

“Will it raise taxes on small businesses and workers, and cost us nearly 5.5 million jobs when our unemployment rate is 10.2%? Yes.

“Does this bill mean the government will take over running our health care system? Yes.

“But what is worse is this bill replaces the American Idea with a European-style social welfare state. This bill more than any other decision we are going to make in this body will lead to millions of Americans becoming dependent on the state rather than being dependent upon themselves.

“This is not about health care policy. If it were, we could pass a bipartisan bill to fix what”s broken in health care without breaking what’s working in health care.

“This is about ideology. What side of history do you want to be on? Will you be on the side of history where you stick with the people and the principles that built this exceptional nation? This is the choice we face.”

And, a little extra:

(Cinematography Tips: I get that you want the Capitol Building and flag behind you but dude, the lighting sucks. Turn around, get some lights on your face, and use some other bit of DC as your backdrop. Or, better yet, go inside.)

And, a Senator (unnamed) writes to Kathryn Jean Lopez:

What does it say about this bill if Dems win the final vote but lose a significant chunk of their conference and pick up no Republicans? What does it say when they have to cut dozens of side deals and rely on members who say they’re against the bill but “just want to move the process along?” And what does it say about the bill when even proponents have to cajole members to vote with them with promises that their bill will get better eventually?

If the only thing bipartisan is the opposition, and a party with an overwhelming majority is scrambling to get it over the first hurdle, it sure says something about the bill.

And her again:

The President [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

“I look forward to signing comprehensive health insurance reform into law by the end of the year.”

A Senate aide tells me: “and I would like a pony.”

Well we can hope. RC2’s Twitter (you see how I brought this full circle?):

Sec. 224: 18 mos after bill is law, HHS Sec will decide what a qualified plan covers and how much you are legally required to pay for it.

I thought we got to keep the plans we have?

Update: I totally meant to link to this like a week ago and then I had to restart and forgot to get back to it…

WSJ – The Worst Bill Ever<br/> Epic new spending and taxes, pricier insurance, rationed care, dishonest accounting: The Pelosi health bill has it all.

Usually I emphasise the important bits but rather than give you a sea of bold text I might just skip to the emphases…

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has reportedly told fellow Democrats that she’s prepared to lose seats in 2010 if that’s what it takes to pass ObamaCare, and little wonder. The health bill she unwrapped last Thursday, which President Obama hailed as a “critical milestone,” may well be the worst piece of post-New Deal legislation ever introduced.

…1,990-page runaway train…spending and debt already at record peacetime levels…a new and probably unrepealable middle-class entitlement that is designed to expand over time. Taxes will need to rise precipitously…ObamaCare so dramatically expands government control of health care that eventually all medicine will be rationed via politics.

…Democrats have dumped any pretense of genuine bipartisan “reform”…pure power politics…ram through whatever income-redistribution scheme they can…destructive on every level—for the health-care system, for the country’s fiscal condition, and ultimately for American freedom and prosperity.

•The spending surge. …will cost $1.055 trillion over a decade…still a low-ball estimate.

…benefits would be offered only to those whose employers don’t provide insurance or work for small businesses with 100 or fewer workers…which is sure to cave in when people see the deal their neighbors are getting on “free” health care…

As for Medicaid…15 million new people will be added to the rolls as private insurance gets crowded out at a cost of $425 billion. A decade from now more than a quarter of the population will be on a program originally intended for poor women, children and the disabled.

…governors would still be forced to take on $34 billion in new burdens…

• European levels of taxation…$572 billion in new taxes…top marginal rate to 45% in 2011 from 39.6% when the Bush tax cuts expire—not counting state income taxes and the phase-out of certain deductions and exemptions…

…8% of their payroll…72.5% of their workers’ premiums…eat into wages…severe consequences for hiring, job creation and ultimately growth…a high structural unemployment rate, much as Europe has done by expanding its welfare states.

…a tax equal to 2.5%…on some 18 million people who CBO expects still won’t buy insurance in 2019…

• The insurance takeover. A new “health choices commissioner” will decide what counts as “essential benefits,” which all insurers will have to offer as first-dollar coverage. Private insurers will also be told how much they are allowed to charge even as they will have to offer coverage at virtually the same price to anyone who applies, regardless of health status or medical history.

(I left that paragraph in toto. Because we’ll all be able to keep our existing plans, don’t you know.)

The cost of insurance, naturally, will skyrocket…premiums…will triple…

There will be no such thing as “private” health insurance.

All of this is intentional…overriding liberal ambition…

…Congress’s balance sheet drowns…trillions of dollars in new obligations…cost-minded decisions about which treatments patients are allowed to receive…medical rationing is inevitable…

Mr. Obama rode into office on a wave of “change,” but we doubt most voters realized that the change Democrats had in mind was making health care even more expensive and rigid than the status quo. Critics will say we are exaggerating, but we believe it is no stretch to say that Mrs. Pelosi’s handiwork ranks with the Smoot-Hawley tariff and FDR’s National Industrial Recovery Act as among the worst bills Congress has ever seriously contemplated.

And I left the last paragraph too.

Update II: Oh and here’s a juicy tidbit:

Wheat & Weeds – Why Do They Hate Us? II

The new health care bill means you are required under penalty of law to buy a $15,000 (for now) health insurance plan; the plan will be provided for you by the HHS secretary; Medicare has been gutted in favor of redirecting funds to “community organizers” to fight obesity.

Err, and I don’t think I ever re-quoted what she quoted here:

Wheat & Weeds – Why Do They Hate Us?

• Puts virtually all decisions about medical care in the hands, not of the patient, the doctor, or even the insurer, but in the iron fist of the federal government.

• Outlaws competition between insurance carriers:

     • Must accept all applicants;<br/>      • Cannot charge more for subscribers with pre-existing medical conditions;<br/>      • All carriers must offer the same gold-plated plans;<br/>      • Carriers cannot sell outside their own states — yet they will also be subject to antitrust regulation; thus they must be completely governed by the federal government to avoid being sued (or indicted).

• Forces medical-care rationing:

     • Rationing by waiting list (the “death queue“), where the feds hope that if they delay your treatment long enough, you will either go to some other country and pay for it — or better yet, just die;<br/>      • And rationing by the ObamaCare Payment Advisory Commission, or whatever they’ll cal it — that is, a “death panel” — just as the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission decides how much the feds will pay for any Medicare procedure, or whether to cover it at all. No coverage, no care… unless you had the good sense to become a multi-millionaire.

• Mandates that all Americans buy a very expensive policy, like it or not.

• Includes a strong government-run health-care component.

• Rigs the game so that employers are virtually forced by economic necessity to dump their health-insurance programs and force employees into the mandatory government option. Most Americans will lose their current health insurance in favor of the government plan, whether they want to switch or not.

• Raises taxes by many hundreds of billions of dollars, not just on medical care but on pharmaceuticals and even medical devices.

• Dramatically raises the cost of medical care and prescription drugs for everyone. Except for members of Congress and senior White House staff, including the president; top government officials are all exempted from the restrictions and rationing of SqueakerCare.

• Speaking of that program, the Pelosi bill loots Medicare to the tune of half a trillion dollars — or more.

• Costs in excess of $1.2 trillion…

Emphases hers.

/yoink