Frugal Café Blog Zone

Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on April 27, 2010

Should Americans start thanking Pres. Obama now for this new government-mandated health care scandal?

Not only will ObamaCare cost trillions more than the Democrats said it would, but the Democrat weasels in Congress (most definitely in the loop were the head honcho weasels — POTUS, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid — as well as Health and Human Services czarina Kathleen Sebelius) KNEW this information, boldly misrepresented what was in the bill, and like dishonest children, hid from the American public the obscenely cost-skyrocketing ObamaCare information — generated and reported by actuaries — for a month following the House of Representatives’ ram-it-down-your-throat health care passage.

Well, shucks, then… THANK YOU, Mr. President.

FOX News: Government Releases New Numbers on Obamacare Showing Costs Will Skyrocket

From Gateway Pundit, Breaking: Dems Hid Damning Health Care Report From Public Until a Month After Vote!:

More hope and change–
A damning health care report generated by actuaries at the Health and Human Services (HHS) Department was given to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius more than a week before the health care vote. She hid the report from the public until a month after democrats rammed their nationalized health care bill through Congress.

[...]

When Nancy Pelosi told America, “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,” she forgot to mention that democrats already knew what was in it. They just didn’t want the rest of the country to find out.

If we had a responsible media this would make headlines for about the next year and a half.

Nancy Pelosi: We have to pass the health care bill so that you can find out what is in it

From Sister Toldjah, So now we know why WaxmanCo. called off CEO show trial:

The NYT reports today on the reason behind Henry Waxman’s decision to call off the CEO show trial regarding cost claims on Obamacare:

WASHINGTON — When major companies declared that a provision of the new health care law would hurt earnings, Democrats were skeptical. But after investigating, House Democrats have concluded that the companies were right to tell investors and the government about the expected adverse effects of the law on their financial results.

At issue is a section of the law that eliminates a tax break available to companies that provide drug benefits to retirees as part of their insurance coverage. The tax change, expected to generate $4.5 billion of revenue over the next 10 years, will help offset the cost of providing coverage to the uninsured.

Within days after President Obama signed the law on March 23, companies filed reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission, saying the tax change would have a material adverse effect on their earnings.

The White House suggested that companies were exaggerating the effects of the tax change. The commerce secretary, Gary F. Locke, said the companies were being “premature and irresponsible” in taking such write-downs.

Representative Henry A. Waxman of California and Bart Stupak of Michigan, both Democrats, opened an investigation and demanded that four companies — AT&T, Caterpillar, Deere and Verizon — supply documents analyzing the “impact of health care reform,” together with an explanation of their accounting methods.

[...]

Representative Joe L. Barton of Texas, the senior Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said, “From a financial standpoint, from a purely economic standpoint, many companies would be better off discontinuing health care as a fringe benefit, paying the penalty and pocketing the savings.”

In a memorandum summarizing its investigation, the Democratic staff of the committee said, “The companies acted properly and in accordance with accounting standards in submitting filings to the S.E.C. in March and April.”

Moreover, it said, “these one-time charges were required by applicable accounting rules.” The committee staff said this view was confirmed by independent experts at the Financial Accounting Standards Board and the American Academy of Actuaries.

Duh. How many conservatives were saying this after Waxman called for the hearings?

From New York Times:

A tabulation by the United States Chamber of Commerce shows that at least 40 companies have taken charges against earnings that total $3.4 billion since the law was signed.

“Companies like AT&T, Verizon and a range of stakeholder associations are hopeful that the benefits of the new law will outweigh the costs,” Mr. Waxman and Mr. Stupak said in a memorandum to committee members. “But they cannot quantify the benefits until the law is implemented.”

AT&T, which took a $995 million charge to reflect the impact of the health care overhaul, said it would be “evaluating prospective changes to the active and retiree health care benefits offered by the company.”

Under another provision, employers may be subject to financial penalties if they do not offer health insurance to employees. Documents provided to Congress by AT&T indicate that its medical costs in 2009 were $4.7 billion, divided about equally between active employees and retirees — far more than it would pay in penalties if it did not provide coverage.

Verizon said it was taking a $970 million charge against earnings because of the change in tax treatment of a subsidy it receives for retiree drug coverage. In addition, Verizon said it could be affected by a new tax on high-cost health plans that takes effect in 2018.

“Many of the plans that Verizon offers to employees and retirees are projected to have costs above the thresholds in the legislation and will be subject to the 40 percent excise tax,” the company told employees.

[...]

A Caterpillar executive made a similar point in an e-mail message to colleagues, saying the tax changes could “drive many employers to just drop coverage for retirees altogether, and let the government foot the whole bill.”

Caterpillar, the maker of construction equipment, said Monday that it was taking a $90 million charge to earnings because of taxes resulting from the new health care law.

In addition, according to documents provided to Congress, Caterpillar could incur new costs because the law eliminates lifetime limits on coverage, and certain children would be allowed to stay on their parents’ insurance until their 26th birthday.

From Pundit & Pundette, “Everyone went into lockdown, and people here were too scared to go public with the report”:

I’ve run out of polite pejoratives. Get a load of this: DEMOCRATS HID DAMNING HEALTH CARE REPORT FROM PUBLIC UNTIL A MONTH AFTER VOTE

As you may recall, the story was that Congress went ahead with the ram-through, declining to wait for Medicare’s Office of the Actuary’s report on the costs of the bill.

Scratch that. The report was submitted to HHS, and to the White House, at least a week before the vote. It “set off alarm bells,” and was hidden from the public.

[...]

And not one ‘public servant’ at HHS leaked anything about the report’s existence or contents. They were ‘too scared.’ Way to earn that salary.

I don’t suppose Sebelius or Obama broke any laws by hiding the report, but it’s unequivocally unethical. Sebelius, at least, should be hauled before one of those blowhard committees, sworn in, and required to disclose what she knew and when she knew it. It’s outrageous. This is the woman who’s been given enormous powers over our healthcare under the new law. And we pay her salary, too.

From Rush Limbaugh’s EIB radio broadcast, April 26, 2010, Guess What? Obamacare Bill Raises Health Care Premiums:

Guess what? Health care premiums and costs are going to skyrocket. From the American Spectator Prowler: “The economic report released last week by Health and Human Services, which indicated that President Barack Obama’s health care ‘reform’ law would actually increase the cost of health care and impose higher costs on consumers, had been submitted to the office of HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius more than a week before the Congressional votes on the bill, according to HHS sources, who added that Sebelius’s staff refused to review the document before the vote was taken. ‘The reason we were given was that they did not want to influence the vote,’ says an HHS source. ‘Which is actually the point of having a review like this, you would think.’”

So everybody knew. Everybody knew that Obamacare would ratchet up the cost. That news was suppressed. Sebelius didn’t want to read it on purpose, saying she “didn’t want to affect the vote,” all of which is true. She knew the vote would be affected. There’s the problem with this now. Well, it’s a problem if the Republicans are on the game. The problem is that there are a lot of vulnerable Democrats, some in the Stupak coalition, others not. There are some who said specifically they voted for Obamacare “Because the CBO doesn’t lie. We looked at the numbers. It lowers premiums, it lowers costs, and it lowers the deficits.” There’s about 12 to 15, maybe more Democrats, who said that — over and over and over again. They are on record. Jim Geraghty, Campaign Spot, National Review Online, has a list of these guys and women and their quotes.

So now, their own administration, their own regime has undermined them. As long as the Republicans are on the case and are able to go out and run very effective TV commercials with the simple truth: “Hey, they knew a week before the vote that the costs were going to skyrocket, and they didn’t tell their own Democrats.” Now, let me ask a question, getting back to amnesty for just a second here. How does that help create and save jobs? Cause isn’t that the laser-like focus of the Obama administration, creating jobs, a laser-like folks? And amnesty does that how? Amnesty creates and saves jobs how? A lot of people say, “Rush, how come the CBO numbers are different from the Medicare actuary’s numbers?” That’s a good question, and the answer is very simple. The Medicare actuary does not have to work with the numbers that Congress gives them. The Congressional Budget Office does.

The CBO can only use the numbers Congress gives them to score the costs, and that’s why the whole process is filled with fraud and is flawed: Because the numbers were cooked in order to get the favorable score in the first place. The Medicare actuary can use the real numbers, and obviously has, and has come to the conclusion that we all knew that this is going to ratchet prices up like crazy. It can’t do anything else. Wall Street Journal: “ObamaCare Mulligan — About those lower insurance costs we promised. … When President Obama signed his health-care reform last month, he declared it will ‘lower costs for families and for businesses and for the federal government.’ So why, barely a month later, are Democrats scrambling to pass a new bill that would impose price controls on insurance?” Did you know they’re doing this?

From Hot Air, Video: Orszag explains how ObamaCare imposes rationing:

Not that any of this comes as a surprise to those who paid attention to the ObamaCare bill, of course. I wrote about the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) twice in December, first when the CBO scored the bill as a $130 billion deficit reduction, and the second time just before the passage of ObamaCare by the Senate. In both posts, I noted how the IPAB was set up specifically as a rationing system, which ObamaCare advocates denied, but which none other than OMB Director Peter Orszag confirms in this interview from earlier this month, caught by Naked Emperor News for Breitbart TV:

If anything, Orszag might be underestimating the difficulty in changing the IPAB’s decisions on rationing. The bill required a supermajority of 67 votes in the Senate to override the IPAB, which made Jim DeMint irate and prompted a big “I told you so” from Sarah Palin.

Democrats in Congress lied and concealed information to get their way, knowing full well if the truth was provided, no sane politician with a shred of integrity would have voted for this monstrosity.

Related reading:
Legal Insurrection: Health Care Cost Report Deliberately Held Back? Update: Denial. and The Numbers Were A Lie All Along: and He Who Controls The Health System, Controls “Information”
Uncommon Knowledge, Big Government: US Taxpayers Pay for Germany’s Socialized Medicine – and Other Terrible News
GayPatriot: Obamacare means longer waits in emergency rooms
Radio Vice Online: Obamacare…more unintended consequences
Frugal Café Blog Zone: What Now? Obama Media & Team Obama Failed to Report Automatic Paycheck Deduction Hidden in ObamaCare Health Bill (video) and Congress Suddenly, Literally Faced with Crappy ObamaCare: “Unintentional” Language in Bill May Force Congressional Members to Give Up Their Own Platinum Packages & Be Part of the American Public and ObamaCare “Fine Print” Nightmare Continues: Now 60 Doctor-owned Hospitals Canceled Because of Democrats’ New Oppressive Health Law, Thousands of Jobs Killed
Moonbattery: Bernanke: “Now He Tells Us” about ObamaCare
Gateway Pundit: Another Broken Promise (Lie)… Workers Will Pay More For Health Care Starting NEXT YEAR and The “Giddy” Is Gone… Dem’s Health Care Plan Will Cost Taxpayers BILLIONS More Than Promised (Video) and State-run media comes clean… and First State Opts Out of Abortion Funding in Dem’s Nationalized Health Care Bill and Pelosi: We Are 1 Pillar Away From Completing Obama’s Blueprint For America
Flopping Aces: Even Congress Is Confused About ObamaCare and Get Ready For The National Sales Tax As ObamaCare Makes It More Attractive For Businesses To Stop Growing
Pundit & Pundette: More goodies hidden in Nancy’s fridge
On My Watch — The Writings of SamHenry: Who Do we Trust Now? True Cost of Government Health Care Suppressed in Two Administrations
Patterico’s Pontifications: Congress May Have “Unintentionally” Lost Their Current Coverage by Voting for ObamaCare — What Do the “Intentionalists” Have to Say About That? and What’s in the Bill, Senator? and Killing the American Economy
City on a Hill Political Observer: Rob Andrews on healthcare: “We didn’t explain it well”
Mcnorman’s Weblog: Baffled by Health Plan? So Is Congress
Charging Elephant: HOUSTON WE HAVE A PROBLEM: Dems Hid Damning Health Care Report From Public Until a Month After Vote! STORY COMPLETELY BURIED?
Market Wire, Milken Institute: D.C.’s Failure to Contain Medical Costs Could Deplete Gains of Middle-Class, According to Stephen Nyce and Sylvester Schieber in Latest Milken Institute Review
Nice Deb: Media Narrative Takes Another Hit: Poll Shows 4 In 10 Tea Partiers Are Dems Or Independents
FOX News: Report: Health Overhaul Will Increase Nation’s Tab

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