Crimes Against Liberty by David Limbaugh Read Free Book Online Page B

follow-up studies were even considering an analysis by the Center for Studying Health System Change, which found another flagrant underestimation of costs: ObamaCare doesn’t allocate nearly enough money to cover the estimated 5.6 to 7 million Americans with pre-existing medical conditions who will qualify for temporary high-risk insurance pools. According to MoneyNews.com , “The gap will force policymakers to freeze enrollment in the new pools, limit access and benefits, or increase premiums.” 44
    The CMS report also indicated more than 7 million seniors could lose their current Medicare coverage and as many as 15 percent of hospitals, nursing facilities, and home health agencies could be forced out of the Medicare system. Further, the funds derived from the new 3.8 percent Medicare tax (Obama’s tax on unearned income) will not be paid into the Medicare trust funds. The report might as well have directly described this provision as fraudulent advertising. It said, “Despite the title of this tax, this provision is unrelated to Medicare; in particular the revenues generated by the tax on unearned income are not allocated to the Medicare trust funds.” 45 Instructively, Obama dispatched his hit-squad staff to attack CMS chief actuary Richard Foster and his findings. Both Nancy-Ann DeParle, director of the White House Office of Health Reform, and White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer criticized Foster’s analysis on the White House website, but Foster stood by his work. 46
    Following passage of the bill, dozens of companies have reported to the Securities and Exchange Commission—more than just the few that Henry Waxman tried to intimidate—the losses they expect to incur from ObamaCare. Companies that offer drug benefits to their retiring employees will be taxed on the federal subsidies they receive for those retirees. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has projected that some forty large companies will sustain losses totaling $3.4 billion. 47
    Furthermore, about a month after the bill was signed into law, Senate Democrats debated in the health committee a bill that would confer on states the power to reject premium increases that state regulators deemed to be “unreasonable.” This could not be included in the actual ObamaCare bill due to procedural rules. The Wall Street Journal editors opined that the reason for this new proposal is that “Democrats are petrified they’ll get the blame they deserve when insurance costs inevitably spike” under ObamaCare. “So the purpose of this latest Senate bill is to have a pre-emptive political response on hand.... As Democrats are showing by trying to pass a new insurance bill, they want all U.S. health care to function like price-controlled Medicare.” 48
    But the real shocker was that the administration had this information more than a week before Congress voted on the bill, at a time when Obama and his congressional Democrats were still maintaining what they knew to be false: that their bill would not increase the deficit. The economic report was submitted to HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius, and she sat on it until after the House vote. Inside sources said that Sebelius’s staff refused to review the document beforehand, saying they didn’t want to influence the vote. But as the source correctly observed, that’s the entire “point of having a review like this.” Obama was not going to let anything get in the way of this bill, not least the facts concerning costs.
    The analysis was performed by Medicare’s Office of the Actuary, a non-political office. An HHS staffer said, “We know a copy was sent to the White House via their legislative affairs staff and there were a number of meetings here almost right after the analysis was submitted to the secretary’s office. Everyone went into lockdown, and people here were too scared to go public with the report.” 49 So despite knowing full well he was lying through his teeth, Obama declared, as he was