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Now is the time to repeal Obamacare
Steve Pearce
Recently, the House of Representatives acted to fully repeal Obamacare. I call on the Senate to follow the House’s lead.
In 2010, Congress passed, and President Obama signed into law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Since day one, this law (commonly known as Obamacare) has been touted by Democrats as a long-term solution to health care in the United States. However, after last month’s Supreme Court ruling, we now know that this is just a new tax on hard-working New Mexican families.
On June 28, the Supreme Court ruled the most controversial provision of Obamacare, the individual mandate that requires virtually every American to carry health insurance, is only constitutional because it is a tax – which the judges declared Congress has the power to implement. Being a tax directly contradicts public statements by the president and Democratic leaders who have always claimed this mandate was not a tax.
The vast majority of these 21 new or higher taxes will fall on those making less than $120,000 annually. Even more surprising, many paying this tax will be those living below the federal poverty line (according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office).
All told, the average American family will pay roughly $4,700 a year in new taxes. To state this in the president’s own terms, the 99 percent will almost exclusively be targeted by this tax. Clearly, this law is a far cry from the president’s promise to not increase taxes on middle class families.
Above the law
Since the Supreme Court’s decision, I have had the opportunity to visit with business owners from New Mexico. During my visits, I have heard about the effects of Obamacare on their businesses and your jobs. The overwhelming consensus is that this law is causing layoffs, suppressing job creation, forcing employers to consider dropping coverage for employees and doing economic damage to communities and job creators across New Mexico.
The president claims to be looking out for the 99 percent. Yet, immediately following the passage of this law, large corporations started lobbying the president to be granted special exemption from this damaging law. In all, over 1,000 big businesses (i.e. the 1 percent) have been granted special favor from the president.
Allowing elite large businesses to be above the law sends a clear message that the president cares more about the 1 percent special interest than protecting middle class jobs.
When companies can buy influence to be above the law, these companies create a competitive advantage over everyone. Over the next few years, local New Mexico companies will be increasingly burdened by the expenses this law requires of them. The majority of businesses cannot afford to pay a lobbyist millions of dollars to grant them special favor with the president. This means wage reduction, layoffs and eventually even closure for New Mexico companies. The economic health of our communities and state should not hinge on special interest and presidential favors or waivers.
Take action
Now is the time for Congress to act to prevent the economic damage this law will create. While I disagree with the Court’s interpretation of this law, I respect its authority to make this decision. However, the courts validation does not mean the American people support the law anymore today than when it was jammed through Congress in 2010.
Congress has the responsibility to listen to the facts and the American people, and take action against this damaging law.
Recently, the House of Representatives acted to fully repeal Obamacare. I call on the Senate to follow the House’s lead. This law must be repealed and replaced with patient-centered approaches before more economic damage is done.
Pearce, a Republican, represents New Mexico’s 2nd Congressional District in the U.S. House.
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Notice that Rep. Pearce does not propose an alternative with cost analysis and national coverage analysis. So, one may presume that he supports the insanely unsustainable and impossibly expensive and Byzantine status-qua.
The free movement of labor is a fundamental unpinning of true capitalism. The status-qua intolerably limits freedom of changing jobs, marital status and even geographical location all in the name of holding onto health insurance coverage with an employer.
How many erst-while entrepreneurs are trapped working for an employer for the sake of health insurance rather than striking out on their own to create small businesses that in turn create employment? The PPACA will increase personal freedom and employment because health insurance will no longer necessarily be tied to the employer. PPACA will fix this dire problem.
Also, when I think of fee for service, I think of having to pay every time I go to the doctor to treat the same condition that requires follow up and iterative treatment. I would prefer a fee for treatment contingent on health outcome. For example, charge one fee to treat high blood pressure or a skin infection. The doctor would have a vested interest in the outcome of their proscribed treatment if they only get paid upon improvement. If improvement is not in the cards for a particular patient, then document best effort for the pay off only if the patient is too elderly or intransigent.
As it stands, you go in to see the doctor and he gives you 4 minutes and sends you away. If his treatment is wrong, ineffective or requires follow up he has a vested interest in his treatment causing you to come back for multiple visits and tests as he gets paid by the visit. There is no incentive to get you well or take responsibility for patients to be well. Wellness, has to be the goal, not proliferating treatments, office visits and tests. If it is a long term condition that will require long term treatment like diabetes or injured back, then pay the doctor on an annual basis according to an effective data driven treatment plan. Doctors need to be paid a salary to cover a capped population size and not fee for service. This would improve the quality of life for the doctor, the quality of care and contain costs.
According to a statement made by SCEDO-Mayor John Mulcahy of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico this week, Representative Steve Pearce has been pressuring the local government of this municipality to approve the ill-advised shortening of key runways used by the U.S. military for training purposes, in order to serve the interests of Hot Springs Land Development mogul Gregory B. Neal (please google this guy!) and local developer Randy Ashbaugh.
As if the paid trip that Representative Pearce took to St. Petersburg on Greg Neal’s dime was not obvious enough, Mr. Neal indicated in literature distributed to his investors that he had spent more than $125,000 on lobbying efforts. The problem is that neither Greg Neal or anyone else associated with Hot Springs Land Development or Hot Springs Motorplex have ever been registered as lobbyists in either Santa Fe, NM or in Washington, D.C. Hmmm…
The fact that Public Regulation Commissioner Patrick H. Lyons was the very Commissioner of Public Lands responsible for the illegal conveyence of title for BLM property previously leased to the Truth or Consequences Municipal Airport into the hands of Gregory B. Neal and Hot Springs Land Development, only serves to create an even more compelling narrative.
The pivotal question being: “Why is a federal representative meddling in the local issues of a New Mexico municipality?”
I like that “extraordinary misuse of data (and severe lack of mathematical aptitude) …” This is the same kind of garbage Congressman Pearce tried to lay on us about Social Security back in 2005, I think it was. He and his army of misinformers came to Alamogordo and had a “Town Hall Meeting” and stated that each person paying into the Social Security fund only got, on average, a 1% return on investment. It took an hour of complicated charts and spewing of confusing nonsense before I suddenly realized that they were counting every person born who did not live to age 65 as having a ZERO return on investment. That’s from babies that die at birth to soldiers that die in wars to people who drop dead of heart attacks at age 64.
The free market cannot give us good health care.
1. End the anti-trust exemption for insurance companies to allow for interstate competition.
…
4. Convert Medicare and Medicaid from fee for service to insurance vouchers to stop the incentive for out right fraud and also the ‘soft’ fraud of unnecessary or ill advised procedures which benefit providers but don’t improve outcomes.
These are bad ideas because health care, and health care insurance, isn’t like most other things people buy. It takes an expert (or the advice of an expert) to make a good decision on health care or insurance, and most people most of the time aren’t experts and don’t have a disinterested expert to advise them. Because people can’t make good buying decisions, the market can’t work properly.
The classic example of the perils of the free market comes from the turn of the 20th century. Before effective federal regulations and laws there were all kinds of patent medicines available in the market. People bought them, and the sellers got rich, despite the fact that many of them were ineffective at best, and poisonous at worst. Just as most people can’t look at a pill and say “yes, I can tell that this pill contains tetracycline in the appropriate amount and no harmful fillers”, most people get really confused in shopping for health insurance trying to figure out what is covered and what isn’t.
The answer to unecessary procedures, of course, is fully socialized medicine like the VA. Even with private insurance, or vouchers, doctors still have an incentive to convince patients to buy unecessary procedures from which they make money.
The individual mandate was but one aspect, but Massachusetts was a case study.
From the Mass gov site:
http://www.mass.gov/bb/h1/fy13h1/exec_13/hbuddevhc.htm
notably: http://www.mass.gov/bb/h1/fy13h1/img_13/wordimgs/buddevhc_image002.gif
“Health care spending has crowded out key public investments that, among other things, likewise significantly impact the health and welfare of the people in the Commonwealth. The historic trends are also unsustainable for local governments, businesses and families, forcing all of these groups to make difficult choices between paying for health care and other areas of potential investment.”
This is after eight years of reform in Massachusetts.
Democrats have given us fiscal disasters of Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security by promising endless unpaid goodies.
One can add Republicans for Part D (which Pearce voted for). Now we add Democrats for Obamacare.
In 2015, when people are rioting in the streets because foreigners won’t lend us any more money to spend on chiropractors, don’t start asking then, Why?
It’s obvious.
Steve Pearce is one of the Repubs called out by name by Annenberg’s Factcheck.org (http://factcheck.org/2012/07/twisting-health-care-taxes/) for his extraordinary misuse of data (and severe lack of mathematical aptitude) in this particular op-ed. Actually, the $4,700 Pearce claims will be paid by the average American family is actually the tax penalty for a family with an income over $200,000 that declines to purchase insurance. Since the national median income is around $50,000, in what country is Pearce finding these ‘average’ Americans? The facts are these—the ‘average’ American family already has insurance and, therefore, will not be paying a penalty; the vast majority of those having to purchase insurance under the mandate will receive tax credits to do so; and almost none of the new taxes that are paying for Obamacare will impact New Mexicans.
OMG. Get over it already. Being told no, on the same issue 33 times isn’t enough? Please stop wasting your time and my taxpayer money.
Here is an alternative, why don’t you all charge Dick Cheney and George W with war crimes against humanity for breaking the Geneva Convention and invading a soverign nation without provocation? Perhaps that may prove to the world we are not heathens and begin to let all the illegals here know that sometimes the law does apply to people.
Right off the bat, no, Democrats consider the PPACA only a start on a long term solution. So, this is wrong.
“Since day one, this law (commonly known as Obamacare) has been touted by Democrats as a long-term solution to health care in the United States.”
If you go back to
http://www.nmpolitics.net/index/2012/07/federal-health-reform-a-drama-in-three-acts/
Carol Miller talks about the third act of innovation by the states to provide health care to their populations.
Now, shall we take the misinformation and GOP propagandist emphasis on labeling one line at a time?
I support PPACA because it’s fair; without it I’d be dead or bankrupt.
I’ve always had health insurance. Always. When I first became too old for my parents’ policy I got my own policy, and I’ve had a Blue Cross Blue Shield major medical policy ever since. That’s more than 35 years, and I’ve always paid more in premiums than I’ve gotten in benefits. Despite paying tens of thousand more in premiums than I’ve received in benefits I’ve kept it, because that’s the deal with insurance: you pay when you don’t need it so that it’ll be there if you do need it.
Now I’m in the age group where I’m more likely to need insurance (gettin’ old, you know) and now the private insurers want to say “Nope. You’re too likely to need health care. We won’t sell you insurance’. Now I have a few chronic conditions (controlled high blood pressure, for one) and that disqualifies me from the private insurance market.
Now if I got a job with a big employer I could most likely get employer sponsored health insurance, but I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to be forced to get a job with a big employer – whatever job they offer, for whatever pay they offer – just to get health insurance. I want to buy health insurance with my own money from my own pocket, as I’ve done for decade after decade.
PPACA lets me do that.
Right now I’m buying New Mexico subsidized health insurance through the New Mexico Medical Insurance Pool. It’s subsidized because they only charge about 125% of average premiums for people of my sex and age, but they have a bunch of people who are too risky to buy private insurance. The last I looked, New Mexico was paying about $7,000 per risk pool member from taxes.
Of course, they’re making a profit from me. I’m paying that high premium rate, but (knock on wood) so far I haven’t needed much health care. I’m still paying more in premiums than I’m getting in benefits. But I keep paying it, because that’s the deal with insurance: maybe one day I’ll have that heart attack, or get cancer, or whatever, and I’ll need the insurance.
Don’t throw me back into the market where I can’t buy insurance. Don’t repeal PPACA. Like millions and millions of other people, I really need to be able to buy a health insurance policy that won’t deny coverage or exclude benefits if you’ve got some pre-existing conditions.
Absolutely.
Current law discourages employment, particularly at the low end. It will actually increase medical spending if projections and Massachusetts are indicators and it further balloons the deficit.
Let’s have real reform that actually does ‘bend the curve down’ without costing our already indebted nation and without restricting business:
1. End the anti-trust exemption for insurance companies to allow for interstate competition.
2. End the tax-exemption for employee health insurance premiums ( an unfair burden to those buying insurance individually with after tax dollars ) which promotes medical inflation.
3. Swap education and transportation spending by the federal government in exchange for the federal government assuming Medicaid which will allow uniform administration and economy of scale.
4. Convert Medicare and Medicaid from fee for service to insurance vouchers to stop the incentive for out right fraud and also the ‘soft’ fraud of unnecessary or ill advised procedures which benefit providers but don’t improve outcomes.
It is offensive that we wasted a year and a half while the nation suffered through recession and called this ‘reform’.
I’m sorry – this Congressman has been an embarrassment to New Mexicans. His political agenda is to act as the de facto leader of the Tea party, to spout anti-Federal government rhetoric and to serve the oil and gas lobbyists.
New Mexico’s 24.7 percent uninsured rate is the second highest in the country, and the fact is Congressman Pearce just doesn’t care.
Congressman Pearce should add “for the 33rd time.”
Jason Heffley, Pearce’s spokesman, said in an email exchange (that was forwarded to me) that Pearce believes the law’s requirement that people buy health insurance or pay a penalty transforms the TOTAL COST of purchase of insurance into a tax, even if the taxpayer wants to buy insurance anyway.
Heffley said Pearce used census data to determine the median family income in the United States is $67,019. He multiplied that number by 7 percent and got $4,691.30. Median household income in NM is about $42,000.
Justice Roberts came up with a different calculation. Roberts noted that in 2016 (the year with the highest penalty), a family with $35,000 of income would have to pay $720 a year if they did NOT have insurance. A family with $100,000 of income would pay a penalty of $2,400. Because the penalty is much less than the cost of coverage, it does not force the individual to purchase insurance.
What Congressman Pearce, and the rest of the Republicans, REALLY don’t like is that, as of 2017 (and Vermont is the first of the states to push for moving that date up to 2014) EACH STATE can implement its own plan, as long as the plan provides equivalent coverage for as many Americans as the Affordable Care Law does. That would end the health care industry’s stranglehold on America’s health, and lower the level of donations to members of congress from that industry!
I suggest that Congressman Pearce, and his Republican colleagues, focus on job creation for once. That is the platform they sold the voters in 2010. And in our area, more funds for forest thinning and updated firefighting equipment is a critical need.
Every week, one of Pearce’s hacks or a secret PAC writes a guest editorial for him. Support Evelyn Madrid Erhard for Congress and she’ll bring to the office respect and solid policy credentials. Retire Pearce, for the good of New Mexico. One less obstructionist Republican in Congress will help President Obama in his second term.
“Identification and Proof of (Health) Insurance, please.”
https://sites.google.com/site/erikhawkes/Home/identification-and-proof-of-health-insurance
Most people unemployed do not have dental insurance, and it is common to skip a month or two of auto insurance when you simply do not have the money. Now the State is going to MANDATE that EVERY individual carries health insurance or pay a penalty?! With auto insurance, the argument is that driving is a privilege, not a right. Does that mean that your LIFE is now a privilege, not a right? Whatever happened to the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Just how close are we to the Mark of the Beast?
How PPPs Really Work
https://sites.google.com/site/erikhawkes/Home/how-ppps-really-work
The Declaration of Independence: A Transcription
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”
“But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
Someone wrote for Congressman Pearce: ” The overwhelming consensus is that this law is causing layoffs, suppressing job creation, forcing employers to consider dropping coverage for employees and doing economic damage to communities and job creators across New Mexico.”
No doubt the pine bark beetle and chile wilt are also due to ObamaCare. Perhaps in the interest of honesty or accuracy the Pearce posse could supply one or two names of people who have lost their jobs due to ObamaCare. Or would a little actual data be too difficult to come by? Or any example of the claims made? I don’t really expect honesty from this bunch, but it’s worth a shot to ask.