According to a the Baucus Markup, the health care plan currently being debated in the United States Senate (America’s Healthy Future Act) will fine Americans if they do not purchase health insurance, and if they refuse to pay the fine, they can be thrown in jail for a year or fined $25,000. Excise Tax. The consequence for not maintaining insurance would be an excise tax. If a taxpayer‘s MAGI is between 100-300 percent of FPL, the excise tax for failing to obtain coverage for an individual in a taxpayer unit (either as a taxpayer or an individual claimed as a dependent) is $750 per year. However, the maximum penalty for the taxpayer unit is $1,500. If a taxpayer‘s MAGI is above 300 percent of FPL the penalty for failing to obtain coverage for an individual in a taxpayer unit (either as a taxpayer or as an individual claimed as a dependent) is $950 year. However, the maximum penalty amount a family above 300 percent of FPL would pay is $3,800.  Click here to read it for yourself.  Page 32. (And the IRS would be the government agency coming after you to collect. Dennis Smith is a senior fellow in healthcare reform at The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Health Policy Studies. He says that penalty is just one of the many “hidden, unknown consequences” in the legislation. (Baucus’ proposal contains ‘hidden consequences’)

The plan will also force severe rationing of health care to seniors by penalizing the 10% of doctors who submit the most in reimbursements to Medicare. (TITLE III—IMPROVING THE QUALITY AND EFFICIENCY OF HEALTH CARE SUBTITLE A—TRANSFORMING THE HEALTH CARE DELIVERY SYSTEM PART I—LINKING PAYMENT TO QUALITY OUTCOMES IN THE MEDICARE PROGRAM  “Beginning in 2015, payment would be reduced by five percent if an aggregation of the physician‘s resource use is at or above the 90th percentile of national utilization. After five years, the Secretary would have the authority to convert the 90th percentile threshold for payment reductions to a standard measure of utilization, such as deviations from the national mean.”  Click here to read it for youself  Page 84)

This inevitably will pressure doctors to prescribe fewer and cheaper treatments just to avoid being the one doctor in 10 whose pay will be docked.
Since there will be a top 10% every year, doctors are likely to severely restrict treatment anywhere and everywhere they can, because they will have no way of knowing where the threshold is.

The bottom line is that ObamaCare will send folks who can’t afford insurance to jail and will result in rationing of care to seniors. That makes it bad for Americans of all ages.

From http://fixhealthcarepolicy.com/in-the-news/dont-let-co-ops-become-a-trojan-horse/

According to today’s Washington Post, the Senate Finance Committee will soon produce a health care plan that rejects “a government-run health insurance plan in favor of a network of member-owned cooperatives.” More commonly referred to as “co-ops”, these organizations actually already have a long and proud tradition in many sectors of the U.S. economy, including health care. But Americans must be wary that our nation’s co-op tradition does not become a vehicle for government-run health care.

To some, the word “co-operative” may have a slight Bolshevik whiff to it, but actually a private co-op is nothing more than private individuals exercising their right to voluntarily self-associate. From farm bureaus to barn-raisers, private co-ops are part of American society. In the realm of health care, a group that organizes coverage provided by private insurers could be structured as a co-op. Or the health insurer itself could be a co-operative owned by its member policyholders. Those kind of insurance companies are called mutual insurers.

Understood in this manner, co-ops have far more to do with Edmund Burke and little platoons than with Leon Trotsky and manning the barricades. And they can be part of the health care solution.

But, don’t be fooled; Burkean little platoons are not what the Obama Administration and its allies in Congress have in mind. In liberal Washington today, leaders such as Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), are talking up co-ops that would be:

• Run by the government, preferably the federal government
• Funded or subsidized by the government, or
• Includes plans chosen by the government.

A co-op with any of these three features is obviously unacceptable. A real co-op is:

• Run by its members,
• Funded by its members and other private sources, and
• Controlled by its members.

Why is the left fastening to co-ops now? Because their public plan idea—a way for the government to take over health care—has run into a buzz saw of opposition among the American people. Liberals have concluded, it seems, that there’s more than one way to skin a cat. So if the public plan was a Trojan horse for single-payer (which means a complete government takeover of your health care decisions), a co-op (the way liberals mean it) is a Trojan horse for a public plan.

Congress should, of course, be empowering true local, private co-ops to be a real health choice for Americans. To do that, Congress needs to amend the tax laws to do two things: Allow mutual insurance companies to be the foundation of non-profit insurance companies; and give people the same tax breaks for getting insurance from a co-op as from their employer.

None of this is, however, what some leading members of Congress have in mind when the subject of co-ops comes up.

This is from Cato.org

In making his case for a government takeover of the US health-care system, President Obama is going far beyond the usual Washington truth-stretching.

Take a look at just a few of the most common claims:

“If you like your current health-care plan, you can keep it.” Even White House spokesmen have said that Obama’s oft-repeated pledge that you can keep your current insurance isn’t meant to be taken literally. The reality is that millions of Americans — perhaps most Americans — will be forced to change insurance plans.

First, the president supports an individual mandate — a requirement that every American buy health insurance. And not just any insurance but insurance that includes all the benefits government thinks you should have. That insurance could be more expensive or include benefits that people don’t want or are morally opposed to, such as abortion services.

And that doesn’t just affect those without insurance today. The bills now before Congress say that while you won’t be immediately forced to switch from your current insurance to a government-specified plan, you’ll have to switch to satisfy the government’s requirements if you lose your current insurance or want to change plans.

Plus, the president supports the creation of a government insurance program that would compete with private insurance. But because this ultimately would be subsidized by American taxpayers, the government plan could keep its premiums artificially low or offer extra benefit.

In the end, millions of Americans would be forced out of the insurance they have today and into the government plan. Businesses, in particular, would have every incentive to dump their workers into the public plan. The actuarial firm the Lewin Group estimates that as many as 118.5 million people, roughly two-thirds of those with insurance today, would be shifted from private to public coverage.

“You will pay less.” The Congressional Budget Office has made it clear that the reform plans now being debated will increase overall health-care costs, yet President Obama on Friday repeatedly said that his reform would reduce costs and save Americans money.

But no matter how many times he says it, the truth is you will pay more — much more — both in higher taxes and in higher premiums.

The final health-care bill is expected to cost more than $1 trillion over the next 10 years. That means much higher taxes, and not just for the wealthy.

If one totals up all the new taxes in the House Democratic health-reform bill — the income surtax, the penalties on businesses and individuals that fail to buy into the government health plan, as well as other fees and taxes — the cost to US taxpayers will top $800 billion. New York City will face marginal tax rates as high as 57 percent.

At a time of rising unemployment and economic stagnation, that is like throwing an anchor to a drowning man.

In addition, the new insurance regulations expected to be part of the final bill are likely to drive up insurance premiums. And, if the new government-run plan under-reimburses doctors and hospitals — as Medicare and Medicaid do — providers would be forced to recoup that lost income by shifting their costs to private insurance, driving up premiums. A study by the Council for Affordable Health Insurance estimates that the president’s proposals could increase premiums by 75 to 95 percent.

“Quality will improve.” Anyone who thinks a government takeover of the health-care system will improve quality of care has only to look at the health-care programs the government already runs: The Veterans Administration is overwhelmed with problems, Medicaid is notorious for providing poor quality at a high cost — and Medicare has huge gaps in coverage.

Worse, however, on Friday, Obama endorsed the creation of a government board with the power to dictate how your doctor practices medicine and all but endorsed the rationing prevalent in nationalized health-care systems around the world.

In short, when it comes to claims about the wondrous new world of government-run health care, a bit of skepticism might be in order.

ELDERLY SWING AGAINST OBAMA PLAN

By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN

Published on DickMorris.com on August 11, 2009

The most ominous signal yet for the Obama health care plan emerged in the poll by Scott Rasmussen released today. While public support for the plan fell to a new low (42% support, 53% oppose — down five points in two weeks), the elderly emerged as the strongest opposition group. Those over 65 rejected the plan by 39-56 while almost half — 46% — said they were “strongly opposed” to it.

The group that supports the plan most strongly is those likely to be least affected, voters under the age of thirty, 67% of whom support the proposals.

The Democratic Senators and Congressmen can well choose to ignore polls. Polls go up. Polls go down. They may figure that the public will have moved on by the time they run for re-election, particularly those Senators who are not up in 2010. With four or six years to go in their terms, they can afford a relaxed view of polling data.

But the Democratic Party as a whole cannot afford to ignore a massive defection in the ranks of the elderly, one of its key building blocks. Ever since the New Deal coalition was cobbled together by FDR, the elderly have been a major component. Worried about Republican designs on their Social Security, they vote overwhelmingly Democratic.

But the Obama proposals, which many see correctly as a major cut in Medicare, might be seminal in driving them en masse away from the Democrats.

The Democratic Party is built on six pillars — blacks, Latinos, single women, young people, union members, and the elderly. If legislation threatens one of those pillars, it threatens the stability of the entire partisan structure. And Obama’s health care reform seems to do just that.

With 40% of the savings in medical spending coming from Medicare, the senior citizens of America are coming to see the Obama proposals as an assault on their health care system. Since their needs are fully met by Medicare, they see no need for monkeying with the system and are highly suspicious of any changes. When they watch as their fellow seniors attend town meetings to protest to their Congressmen about these cuts and are labeled “un-American” for their pains, their alienation from the Democrats just grows.

The fissure Obama is driving between his party and the elderly will not soon heal. When the elderly change their voting habits, they tend to do so for a very, very long time. Even Senators who are up in

2012 or 2014 should worry that their votes for the Obama plan could doom their ability to attract elderly support.

As to the young people who back the plan, once they learn that they will have to pay steep premiums for health care coverage, whether they want to or not, their support is likely to cool. Under the bill, for example, those making $30,000 a year would have to pay up to 7% of their income in health insurance premiums before they could get a government subsidy. A $2,100 bill for such a young person might seem affordable to Obama, but perhaps not to them. Thus, the legislation may well come to be seen as a tax on the young, another of the key constituencies of the Democratic Party.

The cost of Obama’s health care changes just keeps growing — financially and politically.

2 of the news stations in Austin covered the event and they BOTH under counted us…imagine that!  Here are the stories from their sites with the links to the actual report.  The NBC affiliate has video on their site.

Protestors rally against Obama health care plan
8/9/2009 5:05 PM
By: News 8 Austin Staff

Hundreds of protestors rallied on the steps of the Capitol Sunday, most demonstrating against President Barack Obama’s national health care initiative.Protestors chanted, “Kill the bill. Kill the bill.”

Only a handful of people were there to support the president’s plan.

“I’m a veteran. I would like to see everybody have a good health care program. That’d be fine, but find the money to pay for it and find the same one for the Congress and the Senate as they got for me and then I’d be happy,” San Antonio resident Amos Joel Jones said.

The crowd was estimated to be about 250 people

Click here for the original story.

Hundreds protest against
Obama plan

Protestors say health plan is too
intrusive

Updated: Sunday, 09 Aug 2009, 6:32 PM CDT
Published : Sunday, 09 Aug 2009, 6:32 PM CDT

• Paul Matadeen