The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> Health Care B.S.

Health Care B.S.
Posted by Jeffrey (Guest) - Friday, July 6 2012, 4:34:47 (UTC)
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Health Care Decision a Death Blow to Single-Payer

Last week, news broke on the Supreme Court’s decision on the Affordable Care Act just as we were sending out our newsletter. We decided to wait on some commentary from OCA allies. Author Raj Patel's take on the decision pretty much sums it up:

“Now that the insurance industry knows it'll have a multi-billion-dollar market of mandatory customers, the industry won't have to spend all that money to buy a different political decision, and it never has to worry about single-payer health care again. And that's the tragedy of the debate around the health-care plan. In all the noise around this ruling, we can't hear the voices demanding a cheaper, better system that dispenses with insurance corporations. The U.S. already spends more per capita than any other country for worse care. The ruling entrenches a bad system. The media circus drowns out discussion of a better one.”

OCA’s ally, the Alliance for Natural Health, has written an excellent overview of what the decision means for integrative medicine.

What the Supreme Court Decision Means for Integrative Medicine

Posted By ANH-USA On July 3, 2012 @ 11:00 am In Uncategorized | 42 Comments

healthcare reformYou aren’t likely to read this anywhere else….

To everyone’s surprise, John Roberts, chief justice of the Supreme Court, didn’t exactly approve or disapprove of Obama’s healthcare law. He simply rewrote important parts of it and then approved it. So what do these changes mean for integrative medicine?

The most important change Roberts made for integrative medicine is that he changed the mandate, which in turn has truly major implications for financing integrative treatments. Under President Obama’s legislation, it was a legal requirement to buy an insurance policy that met all US government requirements. Under the law as modified by Roberts, it becomes a “lawful choice” (his own words) not to buy this government-defined insurance, to buy some other kind of insurance, or to buy no insurance at all.

The financial consequence is the same. Under the original legislation, you paid a “penalty” for not complying with the law. Under Roberts, you owe a tax but can get yourself exempted from it by buying government-approved insurance. Since the financial consequences are the same, is there a difference?

Yes there is. Studies show conclusively that people are not only motivated by money. Most people, quite apart from the cost, do not want to violate the law. If the law says they must buy the government’s version of insurance, they will. If they are told it is a “lawful choice” not to buy it, they may not, even if there is a financial cost attached to it, especially if the cost is not too high.

The cost of not buying government-defined insurance under Obama’s legislation is much less than buying it. The first year cost (in 2014) for an individual is $95. This increases to $695 in 2016 and then goes up with “inflation.” Households will either pay the greater of this or 1% of their total income, rising to 2.5% in 2016.

But how does this matter for integrative medicine in particular?

In our January article, “New Regulations Threaten Insurance for CAM Patients [1],” we showed how Obama’s legislation and related regulations seemed to doom the Health Savings Account (HSA). This was something we had tried hard to fix in the legislation before it passed but weren’t able to do. That was very, very bad for integrative medicine.

Many people today use HSAs to pay for their integrative medicine. They then add a catastrophic policy on top of the HSA to cover hospital and other costs if something really dire happens. The cost of the HSA plus the very low-cost, high-deductible catastrophic policy may be significantly less than one of the very low-deductible, government-defined policies required under the new healthcare legislation.

It is still possible that HSAs and catastrophic insurance policies will simply disappear as the new health system kicks in. Before this ruling, that was what everyone expected. If insurance companies have no demand for such policies, they won’t be offered. Now the chances of there being a demand for such policies—and the chances of the policies themselves surviving—are greatly increased. This is because it is now more likely that millions of people will choose to pay $695 rather than buy a government-approved policy that has a low deductible and no coverage of integrative medical services. Because it is now a “lawful” choice, they will pay the $695 and then turn around and pay for an HSA and a catastrophic policy, assuming that those are still available.

Under this scenario, the cost of integrative medicine goes up. But not nearly as much as would be the case if someone were to buy a very expensive, government-approved policy and then have to pay out of pocket for all integrative services on top of that.

There have been many articles suggesting this or that “fix” to the healthcare legislation. The single change we wanted the most was to save HSAs used in conjunction with catastrophic coverage. In broader terms, the whole bill would have been transformed if people had a choice about the kind of policy they bought and didn’t have to buy a one-size-fits-all policy defined by the government in consultation with hospitals, drug companies, the AMA, and other special interests. Legislatively this would be an easy fix: just say that any policy selected by an individual qualifies as health insurance or, if that sounds too broad, then any policy that has catastrophic coverage qualifies.

Changing the nature of the mandate was not the only major change that the Roberts court made to the bill, although it is the change that most directly affects integrative medicine. There is another change that is very much worth noting.

Seven of the justices, not just five, said that the government cannot force states to adopt the proposed new Medicaid program, which is an integral part of the healthcare legislation. Under this legislation, not only would states add a lot of people to Medicaid, the federal government would also have much more say about what services are covered under Medicaid.

This is of vital importance. Over half of the presently uninsured who would become insured under the new legislation were supposed to enter the new Medicaid program. According to figures from the Congressional Budget Office, Medicaid enrollment will grow from the current 36 million, or 13% of the population, to 52 million, or 18% of the population, under the new healthcare act. Here is a chart showing the changes:

medicaid chart

Now, with this court ruling, there may not be a new Medicaid program in any given state. Moreover, as we pointed out in April [2], states are cutting, cutting, cutting what they offer under Medicaid. So if the federal government can neither force the states to adopt the expanded Medicaid program nor define what is in that program, there may either be fewer people entering Medicaid or those people entering may find that their insurance doesn’t cover much. They may be “insured,” but in name only.

One of the little-known features of the new healthcare act from the beginning has been that it sharply increases medical expenses for poor people even while increasing their coverage. The Roberts court ruling on Medicaid will potentially make this worse and require some kind of legislative fix. The other worry has been that the minimum coverage provisions for employers may, in effect, nearly double the cost of hiring minimum wage workers, since the new, required coverage costs nearly as much as the minimum wage itself. This could lead to massive layoffs of the poorest workers and would also seem to demand some kind of urgent fix.


Another OCA ally, Mike Adams, of Natural News, weighs in here.

Obamacare, the Great Swindle

Monday, July 02, 2012
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...)

6,448 [Share this Article]

(NaturalNews) Now that Obamacare has been ruled a tax by the U.S. Supreme Court, reality is starting to sink in for all those who emotionally supported it. Promoted as a way to provide either free health care or low-cost health care to the masses, the sobering reality is that under Obamacare, health insurance prices keep rising, not falling. That's no surprise, of course, since the Obamacare legislation was practically written by the health insurance companies, and they sure didn't put their weight behind a sweeping new law that would earn them less profit.

In an era when the so-called "99%" are sick and tired of being exploited by the one percent who control everything, they just handed their medical futures over to precisely the one percent who skillfully monopolize the conventional health care system!

Obamacare is, at every level, a huge victory for the one percent.

A costly new tax on the middle class
By the year 2016, the Obamacare "penalty" tax will reach roughly $2,000 per year for a two-person household. According to Stephen Moore of the Wall Street Journal, 75% of the financial burden of Obamacare's new taxes will fall onto Americans making less than $120,000 a year (http://www.humanevents.com/2012/06/30/wsj-chief-economist-75-of-obama...). The great Middle Class, in other words, will bear this new tax more than anyone else.

In effect, what has really happened here is a great swindle: Obama got the middle class to support his legislation by promising it was NOT a tax, and by promising it would LOWER health insurance costs. In reality, however, it RAISES health insurance costs, it IS a tax, and the majority of that tax burden falls squarely on the very same middle-class voters who put Obama into office under false pretenses. That's a swindle, by any definition.

Not surprisingly, this realization doesn't sit well with many middle class taxpayers. While the original emotional appeal of Obamacare was nicely packaged and seductively marketed to the masses, the sobering, post-honeymoon reality slaps us all in the face like a wet fish: Smack! This thing is another huge tax increase on the working class! And on top of that, it gives the IRS scary new powers to pry into our private finances. How did you all think compliance with Obamacare was going to be enforced, anyway? It's going to empower the IRS with even more agents!

Government monopoly for Big Pharma
Even worse than the trillions in new taxes and the IRS spy grid that's now being set up to monitor compliance with Obamacare, there's also the sobering fact that Obamacare never even attempted to give consumers a free choice in their health care providers. There's no coverage of naturopathic medicine, herbal medicine, acupuncture or nutritional therapies. The entire law is written around -- and for -- Big Pharma and the conventional "sick care" industry that's best described as a "medical racket."

Thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court, we don't even have a chance to opt out of this corrupt, failed system of patented chemical medications and overpriced surgical procedures. Now, we are forced to hand over our hard-earned money to the very same medical system that we already know is responsible for killing over 750,000 Americans a year. It's called "iatrogenic death," and it means death by health care.

So not only are we being chemically abused and medically enslaved in America, we are now financially forced to pay for the privilege of being raked over the coals by the medical establishment. It makes you wonder... where is the "care" in Obamacare?

But wait, there's more! From this position of being coerced by the government to pay for a system of medicine you don't even want, it's not much of a leap to being coerced to undergo medical procedures you don't want, either.

How Obamacare will lead to mandatory vaccinations for everyone
Forced vaccinations -- for adults! -- are on the way, friends. And here's why: Once everybody is "in the system" of mandatory health care, we will begin to hear arguments like this:

"Anyone who refuses to get vaccinated against influenza is thereby at risk of being an influenza carrier and infecting other people, thus increasing health care costs for us all. To save money, government must force everyone to get vaccinated!"

It's a false argument, of course, but it will be used to literally line people up at courthouses (with the threat of arrest and jail time) and force them all to be vaccinated against their will.

The same false logic can be used to force people to undergo chemotherapy, take AIDS drugs, undergo coronary bypass surgery or be subjected to almost any medical procedure deemed "necessary" by the government. In the realm of mental health and psychiatry, this opens up a Pandora's Box of exploitation of patients for the purpose of raking in record profits for the criminally-operated psychiatric drug industry.

Such is the inevitable abuse of monopolistic market practices enforced by a corrupt government that serves the interests of its corporate masters: Once the sick care industry has this monopoly and can force everyone to participate, they will exploit that advantage to its fullest profiteering capacity.

Remember: It is the dream of every corporation to dominate the world. Obamacare just gave Big Pharma and the other sick care giants huge monopolistic cheats to pursue precisely that goal.

Sober up, America
In a time when consumers are increasingly demanding transparency, free choice and the ability to shop around for competitive bargains, Obamacare codifies secrecy, mandatory compliance and monopolistic practices.

Maybe it's time to sober up and take an honest look at what Obamacare really is instead of what Obama promised it would be. People bought into the dream, but what they actually received was a monumental swindle.

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/036361_Obamacare_tax_swindle.html#ixzz1zoUqUqSG



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