Health care bill, a closer look:

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Why bother?

The House version creates 53 new federal bureaucracies with everything from a Health Choices Administration to a Health Insurance Exchange Trust Fund to a Health Benefits Advisory Committee. Thirty-three entitlement programs are created or expanded.

+ other very interesting remarks.

"Every doctor knows, as I did when I practiced years ago, how much unnecessary medical cost is incurred with an eye not on medicine but on the law. Tort reform would yield tens of billions in savings. Yet you cannot find it in the Democratic bills. And Obama breathed not a word about it in the full hour of his health-care news conference. Why? No mystery. The Democrats are parasitically dependent on huge donations from trial lawyers." --columnist Charles Krauthammer


Again, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain: "My interest is not in getting between you and your doctor." --Barack Obama during a bogus Town hall

"Back in the thirties we were told we must collectivize the nation because the people were so poor. Now we are told we must collectivize the nation because the people are so rich." --American author and commentator William F. Buckley Jr. (1925-2008)


"Be wary of accepting government largesse. It doesn't come free, and often accepting it takes away everything that is free. Melting into Washington's powerful, caretaking arms will just suck incentive to work hard and chart our own course right out of us -- and that not only contributes to an unstable economy and dizzying national debt, but it does make us less free." --former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin

"I am willing to accept the notion that the Surgeon General can be the poster-woman for a national effort to lose weight. That would be swell. But, if we accept that theory, then Obama should appoint: -- a junkie as Drug Czar, -- a person whose license has been suspended as Secretary of Transportation, -- a deserter as Secretary of Defense, -- a slum lord heading HUD and, -- Bernie Madoff as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. I was going to add 'tax cheats in the U.S. Treasury' but Obama has already done that." --political analyst Rich Galen

 

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Passage of the Obama health-care bill would be disastrous to the American nation. Anita Lane

Tennessee Voices

As a certified public accountant, I have read tax law for more than 25 years and after having read the health-care bill being discussed in the House of Representatives, I can easily say that this bill would be disastrous for our nation.

Let me explain why.

Title III-Subtitle B requires all but the smallest employers to pay 65 percent - 72.5 percent of employee health insurance or be subject to an 8 percent payroll tax. This will increase employer cost of doing business. There are only two ways for business to mitigate these additional costs:

1. by increasing the price they charge for goods and services they provide (inflation) or,

2. by decreasing other business expenses (cutting jobs). This is definitely not what the country needs.

Title I-Subtitle A-Sec. 102(a)(1) limits new individuals from being enrolled in grandfathered health insurance plans after the law goes into effect. Don't let the government mislead you by saying that you will have "choices." If you lose your current coverage, your "choices" will consist of the government-run plan or joining a plan that is part of the Health Insurance Exchange. The government dictates the benefits, premiums and even providers in this Health Insurance Exchange. So, your choice is the government plan or a government-controlled exchange plan.

Title 1-Subtitle A-Sec. 123(a) creates a 25-member Health Benefits Advisory Committee that will determine what benefits insurance plans will allow. Do you really want the government deciding what care will be available to Americans?

Title I-Subtitle E-Sec. 141 creates a Health Choices Administration that is part of the "executive" branch of government. The president appoints a health choices commissioner who creates the Health Insurance Exchange. This appears to be nothing short of a government takeover of the entire health-care industry. Sec. 205(b)(3)(A) gives this commissioner the authority to automatically enroll individuals without "qualified" coverage in randomly assigned government approved plans that the individual will pay for.

Title III and Title IV taxes individuals who do not have acceptable health-care coverage. Let's say you're young, healthy and have an insurance policy that merely covers catastrophic expenses. Your taxes will go up if your plan is not acceptable to the government.

I believe every American wants health-care reform, but we do not need health-care destruction or government takeover. Call U.S. Rep. Bart Gordon's office at 202-225-4231 and tell him that this health-care bill is not the answer. I know — I read the bill.

Do you really want the government having this power?