What the Pelosi health care bill really means – Update: Cost

UPDATE: Make sure you read the details but the latest costing of the Pelosi bill is now out. How’s $3 trillion grab ya. Guess our Congresspeople are going to have to update their web sites. Ha! Ed Morrissey has his take on the number but I think it’s perfectly valid. The cost is the cost, not what it costs after you’ve raised taxes. But the bill is so much more than dollar cost.

Betsy McCaughey has another outstanding op/ed in the WSJ in which she details some of the more insidious sections of the Pelosi bill.

Now we already know from the SOS, that the bill will put people like me, with pre-exisitng conditions, in the death pool,

But what follows is the real shocker.  Subsection (h)(2) at page 25 provides:

“If the Secretary estimates for any fiscal year that the aggregate amounts available for payment of expenses of the high-risk pool will be less than the amount of the expenses, the Secretary shall make such adjustments as are necessary to eliminate such deficit including reducing benefits, increasing premiums or establishing wait lists.  [emphasis supplied]”

What that tells me is that in the minds of those drafting Obamacare, the folks who need the most medical care due to their physical condition will be the first to be thrown under the bus.

Betsy has more, much more:

• Sec. 224 (p. 118) provides that 18 months after the bill becomes law, the Secretary of Health and Human Services will decide what a “qualified plan” covers and how much you’ll be legally required to pay for it. That’s like a banker telling you to sign the loan agreement now, then filling in the interest rate and repayment terms 18 months later.

On Nov. 2, the Congressional Budget Office estimated what the plans will likely cost. An individual earning $44,000 before taxes who purchases his own insurance will have to pay a $5,300 premium and an estimated $2,000 in out-of-pocket expenses, for a total of $7,300 a year, which is 17% of his pre-tax income. A family earning $102,100 a year before taxes will have to pay a $15,000 premium plus an estimated $5,300 out-of-pocket, for a $20,300 total, or 20% of its pre-tax income. Individuals and families earning less than these amounts will be eligible for subsidies paid directly to their insurer.

• Sec. 59b (pp. 297-299) says that when you file your taxes, you must include proof that you are in a qualified plan. If not, you will be fined thousands of dollars. Illegal immigrants are exempt from this requirement.

• Sec. 1302 (pp. 672-692) moves Medicare from a fee-for-service payment system, in which patients choose which doctors to see and doctors are paid for each service they provide, toward what’s called a “medical home.”

The medical home is this decade’s version of HMO-restrictions on care. A primary-care provider manages access to costly specialists and diagnostic tests for a flat monthly fee. The bill specifies that patients may have to settle for a nurse practitioner rather than a physician as the primary-care provider. Medical homes begin with demonstration projects, but the HHS secretary is authorized to “disseminate this approach rapidly on a national basis.

Read it all … and if you object … be prepared for jail time pardner!

Today, Ranking Member of the House Ways and Means Committee Dave Camp (R-MI) released a letter from the non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) confirming that the failure to comply with the individual mandate to buy health insurance contained in the Pelosi health care bill (H.R. 3962, as amended) could land people in jail.

Barbaric, BARbaric, BARBARIC!