Russia Today
Wednesday, March 24th, 2010
The world may have been brought crashing to its knees by the economic crisis, but some say we have not seen anything yet.
The authors of a radical new book, entitled “After the World Crisis”, claim that while America continues to accumulate debt, China is growing ever more powerful, which could trigger a global collapse. (more…)
Shannon Pettypiece and Alex Nussbaum
Bloomberg
Wednesday, March 24th, 2010
Indoor tanning salons will charge customers a 10 percent tax beginning today in just one of the changes Americans will see as a result of the U.S. health-care overhaul signed into law by President Barack Obama.
Insurers will be required by September to begin providing health coverage to kids with pre-existing illnesses and allow parents to keep children younger than 26 on their plans as the clock has begun ticking on many of the law’s provisions. Medicare recipients will receive a $250 rebate for prescription drugs when they reach a coverage gap called the donut hole if the Senate passes and the president signs companion legislation approved March 21 by the U.S. House.
The $940 billion overhaul subsidizes coverage for uninsured Americans, financed by Medicare cuts to hospitals and fees or taxes on insurers, drugmakers, medical-device companies and Americans earning more than $200,000 a year. Many of the changes in the bill of more than 2,400 pages, such as requiring most people to have health insurance and employers to provide coverage, will take at least two years to go into effect.
“Most of the major public policy changes embodied in the health care reform legislation will become effective only after the next presidential election in 2012,” said Maury Harris, an economist with UBS AG, said in a research report.
Long lines at store checkouts could be history if a new technology created in part at Rice University comes to pass.
Rice researchers, in collaboration with a team led by Gyou-jin Cho at Sunchon National University in Korea, have come up with an inexpensive, printable transmitter that can be invisibly embedded in packaging. It would allow a customer to walk a cart full of groceries or other goods past a scanner on the way to the car; the scanner would read all items in the cart at once, total them up and charge the customer’s account while adjusting the store’s inventory.
More advanced versions could collect all the information about the contents of a store in an instant, letting a retailer know where every package is at any time.
1. You are young and don’t want health insurance? You are starting up a small business and need to minimize expenses, and one way to do that is to forego health insurance? Tough. You have to pay $750 annually for the “privilege.” (Section 1501)….
2. You are young and healthy and want to pay for insurance that reflects that status? Tough. You’ll have to pay for premiums that cover not only you, but also the guy who smokes three packs a day, drink a gallon of whiskey and eats chicken fat off the floor. That’s because insurance companies will no longer be able to underwrite on the basis of a person’s health status (aka socialism). (Section 2701).
3. You would like to pay less in premiums by buying insurance with lifetime or annual limits on coverage? Tough. Health insurers will no longer be able to offer such policies, even if that is what customers prefer. (Section 2711).
4. Think you’d like a policy that is cheaper because it doesn’t cover preventive care or requires cost-sharing for such care? Tough. Health insurers will no longer be able to offer policies that do not cover preventive services or offer them with cost-sharing, even if that’s what the customer wants. (Section 2712).
5. You are an employer and you would like to offer coverage that doesn’t allow your employers’ slacker children to stay on the policy until age 26? Tough. (Section 2714).
6. You must buy a policy that covers ambulatory patient services, emergency services, hospitalization, maternity and newborn care, mental health and substance use disorder services, including behavioral health treatment; prescription drugs; rehabilitative and habilitative services and devices; laboratory services; preventive and wellness services; chronic disease management; and pediatric services, including oral and vision care.
You’re a single guy without children? Tough, your policy must cover pediatric services. You’re a woman who can’t have children? Tough, your policy must cover maternity services. You’re a teetotaler? Tough, your policy must cover substance abuse treatment (again, socialism). (Add your own violation of personal freedom here.) (Section 1302).
7. Do you want a plan with lots of cost-sharing and low premiums? Well, the best you can do is a “Bronze plan,” which has benefits that provide benefits that are actuarially equivalent to 60% of the full actuarial value of the benefits provided under the plan. Anything lower than that, tough. (Section 1302 (d) (1) (A))
8. You are an employer in the small-group insurance market and you’d like to offer policies with deductibles higher than $2,000 for individuals and $4,000 for families? Tough (aka no HSA’s). (Section 1302 (c) (2) (A).
9. If you are a large employer (defined as at least 101 employees) and you do not want to provide health insurance to your employee, then you will pay a $750 fine per employee (It could be $2,000 to $3,000 under the reconciliation changes). Think you know how to better spend that money? Tough. (Section 1513).
10. You are an employer who offers health flexible spending arrangements and your employees want to deduct more than $2,500 from their salaries for it? Sorry, can’t do that. (Section 9005 (i)).
11. If you are a physician and you don’t want the government looking over your shoulder? Tough. The Secretary of Health and Human Services is authorized to use your claims data to issue you reports that measure the resources you use, provide information on the quality of care you provide, and compare the resources you use to those used by other physicians. Of course, this will all be just for informational purposes. It’s not like the government will ever use it to intervene in your practice and patients’ care. Of course not. (Section 3003 (i))
12. If you are a physician and you want to own your own hospital, you must be an owner and have a “Medicare provider agreement” by Feb. 1, 2010. (Dec. 31, 2010 in the reconciliation changes.) If you didn’t have those by then, you are out of luck (Wha? …And for new doctors?). (Section 6001 (i) (1) (A))
13. If you are a physician owner and you want to expand your hospital? Well, you can’t (Section 6001 (i) (1) (B). Unless, it is located in a county where, over the last five years, population growth has been 150% of what it has been in the state (Section 6601 (i) (3) ( E)) (What? This is complete socialism). And then you cannot increase your capacity by more than 200% (Section 6001 (i) (3) (C)).
14. You are a health insurer and you want to raise premiums to meet costs? Well, if that increase is deemed “unreasonable” by the Secretary of Health and Human Services it will be subject to review and can be denied. (Section 1003) (In fairness, I think this is actually more fascism than socialism. Mussolini would be proud)
15. The government will extract a fee of $2.3 billion annually from the pharmaceutical industry. If you are a pharmaceutical company what you will pay depends on the ratio of the number of brand-name drugs you sell to the total number of brand-name drugs sold in the U.S. So, if you sell 10% of the brand-name drugs in the U.S., what you pay will be 10% multiplied by $2.3 billion, or $230,000,000. (Under reconciliation, it starts at $2.55 billion, jumps to $3 billion in 2012, then to $3.5 billion in 2017 and $4.2 billion in 2018, before settling at $2.8 billion in 2019 (Section 1404)). Think you, as a pharmaceutical executive, know how to better use that money, say for research and development? Tough. (Section 9008 (b)).
16. The government will extract a fee of $2 billion annually from medical device makers. If you are a medical device maker what you will pay depends on your share of medical device sales in the U.S. So, if you sell 10% of the medical devices in the U.S., what you pay will be 10% multiplied by $2 billion, or $200,000,000. Think you, as a medical device maker, know how to better use that money, say for R&D? Tough. (Section 9009 (b)).
The reconciliation package turns that into a 2.9% excise tax for medical device makers. Think you, as a medical device maker, know how to better use that money, say for research and development? Tough. (Section 1405).
17. The government will extract a fee of $6.7 billion annually from insurance companies. If you are an insurer, what you will pay depends on your share of net premiums plus 200% of your administrative costs. So, if your net premiums and administrative costs are equal to 10% of the total, you will pay 10% of $6.7 billion, or $670,000,000. In the reconciliation bill, the fee will start at $8 billion in 2014, $11.3 billion in 2015, $1.9 (Misprint?) billion in 2017, and $14.3 billion in 2018 (Section 1406).Think you, as an insurance executive, know how to better spend that money? Tough.(Section 9010 (b) (1) (A and B).)
18. If an insurance company board or its stockholders think the CEO is worth more than $500,000 in deferred compensation? Tough.(Section 9014).
19. You will have to pay an additional 0.5% payroll tax on any dollar you make over $250,000 if you file a joint return and $200,000 if you file an individual return. What? You think you know how to spend the money you earned better than the government? Tough. (Section 9015).
That amount will rise to a 3.8% tax if reconciliation passes. It will also apply to investment income, estates, and trusts. You think you know how to spend the money you earned better than the government? Like you need to ask. (Section 1402).
20. If you go for cosmetic surgery, you will pay an additional 5% tax on the cost of the procedure. Think you know how to spend that money you earned better than the government? Tough. (Section 9017).
Today’s smartphones and PDAs could have a new use in the nation’s airports: helping passengers avoid long lines at security checkpoints.
The Transportation Security Administration is looking at installing devices in airports that home in and detect personal electronic equipment. The aim is to track how long people are stuck in security lines. (Uh huh)
Information about wait times could then be posted on websites and in airports across the country.
“This technology will produce valuable data that can be used in a variety of ways,” TSA spokeswoman Lauren Gaches said, noting it could help prevent checkpoint snarls.
But civil-liberties experts worry that such a system enables the government to track people’s whereabouts. “It’s serious business when the government begins to get near people’s personal-communication devices,” said American Civil Liberties Union privacy expert Jay Stanley.
[…]The TSA is in the early phases of exploring the technology, which Purdue University researchers tested for a month last year at Indianapolis International Airport. Thumbnail-size receivers near checkpoints detected serial numbers emitted by some electronic devices being carried by passengers.
[…]Some electronic devices automatically broadcast, or “chirp,” their serial number every 15-20 seconds when they are turned on.
By Josh Fulton
The health insurance bill passed, and it’s one more triumph of the federal government over individual rights. All statists, rejoice! You’ve managed to succeed in having Big Brother intrude into one more aspect of your life. I, for one, am not happy about it, not only because I don’t like living under the watchful eye of Big Brother, but also because I know that American health care used to be run in a very different way.
The government originally got involved in the health insurance industry in the 1920’s, because health insurance was originally too inexpensive. That’s right: too inexpensive. At the time, “fraternal societies,” of which one-fourth of Americans were a part, contracted with individual doctors to provide health coverage for lodge members. This was such a good deal for the lodge members that lodge members only paid $2 for an entire year’s worth of coverage. This is while non-lodge members paid $2 per visit to a doctor.
Well, that didn’t last too long. The American Medical Association lobbied Congress to make it so that in order for a doctor to practice medicine in a state the doctor had to be licensed by the AMA. Congress agreed, and that was the end of the fraternal lodge insurance practice. The AMA made sure that its members did not contract with any more lodges. After all, the medical profession had its image and profits to protect.
The government continued to interject itself into the health care market and to screw it up. Licensing requirements expanded. Insurance companies could no longer compete across state lines. Tax exemptions for employer-sponsored health insurance were introduced during World War II as a way to get around wage restrictions. Medicare was introduced (which despite rallying cries to the contrary, is not doing well.) Congress even carved out an antitrust exemption for health insurance companies. If there were ever a case against a government-created monopoly, it may be health insurance.
As we can see, government intervention has taken us from inexpensive health care to health care that costs 1/6 of our GDP and is increasing in cost at four times the rate of inflation. Of course, the option of repealing the laws that brought us to this place is never brought up. No, government expansion is only brought up. But government expansion is not the solution. Government is not a creative force. For its very existence, it must take from private industry. Government expansion did not get us out of the Great Depression, and it won’t get us out of this.
All this isn’t even to mention the fact that the bill is an economic disaster. It does not decrease costs. It increases costs. The CBO has already estimated that it will increase costs for the individual market by 10 – 13%. Each person in the individual market will also have to spend on average $5,800 for an individual plan, and $15,200 for a family plan. Also, despite Obama’s proclamations that this plan will save $118 billion over ten years, when Medicare is included the entire bill winds up costing over $600 billion over ten years. That’s right. All these claims of cut costs are just based on accounting tricks.
I, however, think the situation is even worse than they’re claiming. The Washington Post says that 19 million people will receive subsidies of $6,000 to help pay for their plans. 19 million * $6,000 = $1.14 trillion. That’s right: trillion. This is simple math, but for some reason this number is never mentioned. I think that much like with Bush’s estimated costs for the Medicare Modernization Act in 2003 and the Iraq war, we’re just being told numbers on the low side to make things more palatable to us. Once the smoke clears, that’s when we get the real numbers. …Personally, I hope this bill covers treatments for a hemorraging national debt.
Of course, this doesn’t even account for the potential government intrusion into our privacy. This bill nearly doubles the IRS’s budget. Why would the IRS’s budget nearly get doubled as a result of this if the government didn’t have plans to look more deeply into our personal lives, and to keep more detailed records on us? Not to mention that the House version of the bill allowed for the “real-time (or near real time) determination of an individual’s financial responsibility at the point of service” (aka looking into your bank account) and for “enabl[ing], where feasible, near real-time adjudication of claims” (aka taking money from your bank account if deemed necessary.) I have no reason to believe that language is not in the final bill.
This bill is a mess. I’m glad that people are angry, but we need to get even angrier. We need to support states in their efforts to nullify this law. Thirty seven states have already said they intend to do just that. If we can get states to once again be bulwarks against the federal government, then we’ve succeeded, even if for a while we have to endure the government looking into our records and telling us to turn our heads and cough.
________
Josh Fulton runs the website http://joshfulton.blogspot.com
The United States government has officially announced its decree of dependence through bailouts and the outright robbery known as “Health-care Reform.” Our present-day government has become an abomination against the Founding Fathers and the documents they created for the protection of all free men and their descendants. (more…)
Mark Anderson
American Free Press
If, God forbid, Americans are ever rounded up in large numbers during a natural or manmade disaster, where could they be detained? Well, perhaps look no further than the school building next door, the office building around the corner or the stadium downtown. And besides existing military installations, state fair grounds, horse stables, airports “and maybe even a hotel” also could be used as detention centers.
That’s according to Restore the Republic’s Gary Franchi at Freedom Law School’s recent Health & Freedom Conference. Franchi was one of several speakers who gathered at the Airport Hilton in Ontario, Calif., March 12-15 to talk about cutting-edge developments in health and politics.
Many vigilant Americans have become aware of some apparently underutilized military facilities and other installations around the nation that seem designed to detain large numbers of people but are largely empty.
Unsubstantiated rumors and urban legends have been circulated, and Franchi was careful not to overstate this issue. But he said there is cause for considerable concern in these post-9-11 days when the normal patriotic impulses of Americans are being relabeled as radical or even on par with terrorism by federal agencies.
Franchi told the conference audience that on April 1, 1979, under Executive Order 12127, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was created but it unfortunately was “no joke” for April Fools Day. Just as FEMA was absorbed nearly 25 years later by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), FEMA at its birth absorbed the Department of Defense civil-preparedness functions that designated schools, office buildings and other structures as atom bomb “fallout shelters” starting in the 1950s during the Cold War days with the Soviet Union.
DHS, created on the direct recommendation of the 9-11 Commission, that purported to deeply study what happened on Sept. 11, 2001, says, under its “Goals and Objectives” statement (Part VI), that its mission is to “protect our nation from dangerous people.”
Now under the DHS umbrella, FEMA’s three basic objectives, according to its own policy, are: national emergency recovery, continuity of government and “to combat perceived threats to the social and political order,” Franchi emphasized.
He showed an aerial picture of “FEMA City,” the drab barracks set up in Florida after Hurricane Charlie. These cookie-cutter mobile homes were “free housing with nosebleeds,” Franchi said, referring to the effects of chemical fumes emitted from the shoddy building materials.
The area, courtesy of FEMA, became a crime haven. Any genuine public benefit was marginal at best.
Fast-forward to Highland Mall in Austin, Texas, claimed by FEMA in 2005 in the wake of Hurricane Katrina as a place to put Louisiana refugees entering Texas. The New Orleans Superdome itself was “another
private building used to house refugees,” Franchi added.
Given the ongoing “war on terror” and the threat to the people’s liberties that can arise from “anti-terror” measures, combined with steep economic decline and the procedures and policies that FEMA and DHS have developed or are still developing, Franchi says the situation looks grim unless Americans protest now and show they are informed of, and actively opposed to, potential plans to imprison large numbers of people, lest Americans bite the dust the way the USSR people did when they were sent to brutal labor camps amid political turmoil and the demonizing of “unlawful” political beliefs.
Pointing to the World War II detention of thousands of Japanese-Americans, Franchi said the detaining of Americans has already happened. Recall that during Woodrow Wilson’s days, many notable war dissenters were imprisoned in a nation supposedly dedicated to free speech. So it’s only a question of circumstance, as Franchi sees it.
The FBI’s Project Megiddo in 1999, the Missouri Information Analysis Center “militia” report from February 2009 and the April 2009 DHS report Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment, are among the reports that have tried to tie Americans’ concerns and beliefs to supposed violent tendencies, so these linkages can be transformed into the “truth” and used to arrest political dissidents, just like what happened in the early 20th century, said Franchi.
He added that the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has long tried to influence law enforcement and legislation, has issued yet another report that follows a similar tack. His research is in the documentary Camp FEMA. “We cannot let these people . . . intimidate us; we are sovereign U.S. citizens, and nothing is going to stop us from [resisting] this tyranny,” Franchi said, noting that public television stations may help.
Excise Tax on Uninsured Individuals –Individuals who fail to maintain minimum essential coverage will besubject to a penalty equal to $750. The fee for an uninsured individualunder age 18 is one-half of the adult fee.
Excise Tax on High-Cost Employer Plans – Thefederal government would impose a 40% tax on the value ofemployer-sponsored health coverage exceeding certain thresholds. Thoselevels are projected to be $8,500 for self only and $23,000 for anyother level by the year 2013. This excise was announced with fanfare by the White House and labor unions in January and remains in the final bill.
Increase in additional tax on distributions from HealthSavings Accounts and Archer Medical Savings Accounts not used forqualified medical expenses – An increase from 10% to 20% ontaxes of money in a health savings account not used for qualifiedmedical expenses. For Archer medical savings accounts, an increase from15% to 20%.
Additional Hospital Insurance Tax on High-Income Taxpayers– High income tax payers, making on a joint return over $250,000 and astandard return over $200,000, are required to pay an additional 0.5%of wages. This applies to both self-employed, and regularly employedindividuals.
Fees on Health Plans – A fee applied to all healthinsurance providers based upon net premiums and any third party feesassociated with the administration of those programs. The fees willtotal $6.7 billion annually. This figure begins at $8 billion in theReconciliation Act and rises to $14.3 billion by 2018.
Tax on Indoor Tanning Services – The act imposes a10% tax on amounts paid for indoor tanning services. Like a sales tax,the tax will be collected from the person tanning when payment for thetanning services is made.
Tax on individuals without acceptable health care coverage– A 2.5% income tax on individuals who do not have health carecoverage, limited to a cost less than the average national health carepremium.
Excise tax on elective cosmetic medical procedures– A tax of 5% is levied upon the am mount paid for any cosmeticsurgery. This does not include the need for such surgeries created bytrauma or a disfiguring disease. If the tax is not collected by thatprofessional completing the procedure, their business is still liablefor the requirement.
The Reconciliation Act also legislates for the following surcharges:1% surcharge on individuals making more than $350,000, 1.5% surchargeon individuals making more than $500,000, 5.4% surcharge on individualsmaking more than $1 million.
Taxes On Employers – If you are a largeemployer (defined as at least 101 employees) and you do not want toprovide health insurance to your employee, then you will pay a $750fine per employee (It could be $2,000 to $3,000 under thereconciliation changes) (Section 1513).
Taxes on Pharmaceutical Companies – The government will extract a fee of $2.3 billion annually from the pharmaceutical industry (Section 9008 (b)).
Taxes on medical device manufacturers – The government will extract a fee of $2 billion annually from medical device makers (Section 1405).
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