Defund ObamaCare? Not Happening

Canada Free Press – by Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh

While Americans demand vociferously the defunding of ObamaCare in hopes of getting rid of the most destructive and freedom-robbing piece of legislation passed in modern times, Congressmen pretend to make valiant efforts to do so via various proposals that only low information and extremely naïve voters can believe to be true.  

The reality is that ObamaCare is here to stay. Fourteen laws have already been signed that “amend, rescind, and otherwise change parts of ObamaCare.” The President has delayed his own law five different times. The law is “unfair, unworkable, and unaffordable.” It will eventually cause loss of current health coverage, reduction of full-time work to part-time work, and will allow faceless bureaucrats to control your health care and the denial of services.Their efforts are akin to a handful of people standing on the tracks of an oncoming speeding train, waving their hands in hopes that the engineer will see them in time and be able to stop thousands of tons of momentum at the last minute. Even Heritage President, Jim DeMint, called for an end to these ‘pretend votes’ and ‘gimmicks’ that have now been postponed until next week, supposedly as the result of concerned Americans’ calls. It is just another way of buying time until the bill comes fully into effect.

Billionaire Mort Zuckerman said on McLaughlin Group, “Part-time employment is going to grow from 25 percent of the workforce to close to 50 percent of the workforce in part because of the problems of healthcare obligations.”

Heritage Foundation featured Dr. Josh Shepherd, who has beenrunning a family practice in Lewisville, Texas, for 35 years. He is so concerned about the impact of the Affordable Care Act on his patients, the layers of bureaucracy that it will create, the unreliable government reimbursement for medical services that he stated, “I am a believer in defunding ObamaCare because I think it’s going to be a disaster for our country.” There is so much administrative work that is taking time away from patient care already. Five of his 15 employees deal only with paperwork. (Heritage Foundation, Morning Bell, 9/12/2013)ObamaCare is such an unbelievable bureaucratic nightmare. According to CNSNews.com, it is 8 times longer than the Gutenberg Bible. Since the unaffordable Affordable Care Act was passed, The Federal Register published 109 final regulations directing how ObamaCare is to be implemented with a total of 10,516 pages. The Gutenberg Bible has 1,286 pages.

Unions have been enthusiastic supporters of the Affordable Care Act before it passed. As of Wednesday, September 11, 2013, AFL-CIO, the largest union, voted on a “strongly worded resolution that says that the Affordable Care Act will drive up costs of union-sponsored health plans to the point that workers and employers are forced to abandon them.”

According to the Senate Conservatives Fund House Update, “GOP leaders will attempt to pass a ‘trick rule’ that allows them to pretend to defund ObamaCare without actually doing so. Under the trick rule, the House will pass a continuing resolution that fully funds ObamaCare along with a separate phony bill that defunds ObamaCare. Democrats in the Senate will then throw the defunding bill in the garbage and send the real bill that funds ObamaCare to the president’s desk.”

More evidence is coming to light of elements of ObamCare that were previously unknown. On October 1, 2013, any employer, who does not notify its employees by letter within 14 days of the existence of the health care exchanges, will be fined $100 per day by the IRS.

Any person subsidized under ObamaCare must reimburse the government for part of the healthcare exchange subsidy if their income changes.

A comment on Virginians for Quality Healthcare, entitled Sue’s story, exemplified in painful detail what will be happening to our stellar health care in this country. Once ObamaCare is in full force October 1, 2013, our citizens will be denied health care by the death panels that Democrats insisted that did not exist in order to ration care.

“My daughter is disabled and requires 24 hour care. She is on Medicare and Medicaid. At her last visit, her doctor said that she was of the age to start receiving mammograms, but that a ‘cost/benefit ratio’ would need to be done to determine whether she will qualify to receive one. Also, several of her caretakers have indicated that they can no longer work more than 29 hours a week because of ObamaCare. I have no doubt that this is just the beginning of what is coming to all of us under this law. One in 9 women will get breast cancer at some point and we all need to be screened. My daughter is not a budget item. She is a human being and shame on us if we treat people this way.”

Reckless government spending and the desire to nationalize health in order to control our bodies, make ObamaCare a very dangerous assault on our freedom. There are so many hidden flaws in ObamaCare that we have not even begun to assess what it will do to our citizens.

The Affordable Care Act should be scrapped for ten reasons

(Heritage Foundation, Morning Bell, September 9, 2013)

1. Temporary waivers were given to many companies unfairly, when companies complained about the costs of the law. More than half were union plans and they are not happy, they want another waiver.
2. Illegal taxpayers’ subsidies for Congress and its staffers, covering 75 percent of their premium costs.
3. Employer mandate was delayed one year, although Section 1514(d) of the law requires employers to comply with the law beginning after December 31, 2013. Hard-working Americans, on the other hand, are not getting a one-year delay from ObamaCare’s implementation.
4. Insurers stopped offering child-only plans in 17 states because HHS issued regulations prohibiting plans from turning down applicants with pre-existing conditions. Initially, the way the law was written, insurers were “still able to refuse new coverage to children because of a pre-existing medical problem.”
5. Out of Pocket Expense Caps under section 1302(c)(1) were also delayed, although they were to take effect “beginning in 2014.” The change was made by this administration by issuing rules subject to public comment after posting a series of questions and answer on an obscure website.
6. The basic health plan for people above the Medicaid income level under section 1331 of ACA was also delayed for one year.
7. Tax disclosures under section 9002 of ObamaCare required employers to file on W-2 forms the value of employees’ health insurance for all taxable years after December 31, 2010. The administration again delayed this requirement until after the 2012 presidential election.
8. The administration announced that in lieu of verification of income, all Americans were placed on the “honor system.” Americans will be able to ‘game the system’ and obtain more taxpayer-funded subsidies than they would otherwise be entitled to receive. There are enough loopholes in the law to make it even easier to do so.
9. The ObamaCare data hub is a security risk and will not be able to maintain the privacy of the American public health information. Michael Astrue complained about the security risks of ObamaCare’s new data hub.
10. Tobacco smokers can be charged under section 1201of ObamaCare up to 50 percent higher premiums. Because of a computer glitch such penalties “will be limited for at least a year, meaning non-smokers may have to pay more as a result.”

I am deeply moved and concerned by the letter of dying veteran Bill Schoonover, blasting his Senator for corruption.

What Bill Schoonover describes is now the reality of our America, once a success story born by freedom of opportunity, where Justice was blind, a country that cared not just for its citizens but anybody around the world who was in distress. It brings to mind my Dad’s painful death, when medical care, drugs, food, and water were denied because he was not part of the ruling elite in the communist utopian paradise that all good liberals long for in this country.

“As I face my final year, or so, with cancer, my president and my government tell me ‘You’ll just have to take a pill,’ while you, Senator, your colleagues, the president, and other exalted government officials and their families will get the best possible health care on our tax dollars until you are called home by your Creator while also enjoying a retirement beyond my wildest dreams, which, of course, you voted for yourselves and we pay for.”

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