6. You must buy a policy that covers ambulatory patient services, emergency services, hospitalization, maternity and newborn care, mental health and substance use disorder services, including behavioral health treatment; prescription drugs; rehabilitative and habilitative services and devices; laboratory services; preventive and wellness services; chronic disease management; and pediatric services, including oral and vision care.
You're a single guy without children? Tough, your policy must cover pediatric services. You're a woman who can't have children? Tough, your policy must cover maternity services. You're a teetotaler? Tough, your policy must cover substance abuse treatment. (Add your own violation of personal freedom here.) (Section 1302).
Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former CBO director, explains the faulty math in the CBO's 'costs' of health care in the NY Times:
Gimmick No. 1 is the way the bill front-loads revenues and backloads spending. That is, the taxes and fees it calls for are set to begin immediately, but its new subsidies would be deferred so that the first 10 years of revenue would be used to pay for only 6 years of spending.
Even worse, some costs are left out entirely. To operate the new programs over the first 10 years, future Congresses would need to vote for $114 billion in additional annual spending. But this so-called discretionary spending is excluded from the Congressional Budget Office’s tabulation.
The worst part about it is that in Douglas' opinion, the CBO should have been more critical of the spending.
Speaking of spending, Social Security finally hit the point of no return... where outlays are more then revenue. We are now also running a Social Security deficit:
This year, the system will pay out more in benefits than it receives in payroll taxes, an important threshold it was not expected to cross until at least 2016, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
But we need to spend more on social programs. Right.
Did you know that as part of the health care bill takeover, from now on, the federal government will be in charge of student loans? That should bring down the cost of tuition...
Ending one of the fiercest lobbying fights in Washington, Congress voted Thursday to force commercial banks out of the federal student loan market, cutting off billions of dollars in profits in a sweeping restructuring of financial-aid programs and redirecting most of the money to new education initiatives.
This is like taking the car keys away from the guy who is stumbling drunk and giving them to the guy who is passed out, and telling him, "Here... you look responsible!"
A week after the health care takeover was passed, Rasmussen did a poll. They found out the following:
One week after the House of Representatives passed the health care plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats, 54% of the nation's likely voters still favor repealing the new law. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 42% oppose repeal.
The only people who didn't see that coming were hard core democrats.
