HR3200: America’s Affordable Health Choices Act HR3962: Affordable Health Care for America Act S1679: Affordable Health Choices Act S1796: America’s Healthy Future Act

The US Senate is gearing up for a vote on their version of Health Care Reform; Liberal Democrats plan on voting yes to anything Reid presents.

The Stupak Amendment (No Federal funding for Abortions) helped the House version pass, but it doesn’t apply to the Senate version. Make sure your legislators know that you expect them to vote against any bill that contains taxpayer funding for:

• Abortion
• Illegal Immigrants
• Unions
• Community Organizations

According to defendyourhealthcare.us, the U.S. Census Bureau shows that of the 47 million people identified as “uninsured,” 14 million are already eligible for government programs such as Medicaid and SCHIP (for children) and simply need to sign up. Another 10 million have household incomes over $75,000. That leaves 23.7 million people who don’t have and may need help affording insurance, not 47 million. Other estimates from news sources indicate that, without counting illegal immigrants, that number is more like 18 million uninsured who are not eligible for existing government programs.

They call us “fear mongers”. They, who have recruited a zombie population to sell their souls to special interest, fiscal devastation for generations to come, rationed health care ( by committee), and end-of-life planning requirements (death panels), because They know how afraid ‘we‘ are of getting sick. They call us “fear mongers”.

The real fear mongers are telling you what to think and how to feel about it, we’re just telling you what pages to read for the truth. Take a deep breath and then call your legislators and tell them that health care reform done right trumps health care reform done now.

We are NOT saying it’s okay for health care to be out of reach for self employed people, small businesses, people with pre-existing conditions, etc.

We ARE saying that special interest, personal agendas, vote purchasing, and the Reid/Pelosi pinky-and-the-brain approach to world domination are not on our list of priorities and completely fail litmus tests for fiscal responsibility, accountability, and transparency.

The CBO has not provided an analysis, however at last tally, this “deficit neutral’ bill would cost taxpayers over a trillion dollars with benefits ‘phasing in’ only after 3 complete years of payment… starting now.

Class III – Senators Whose Terms of Service Expire in 2011 Class III terms run from the beginning of the 109th Congress on January 3, 2005, to the end of the 111th Congress on January 3, 2011. Senators in Class III were elected to office in the November 2004 general election, unless they took their seat through appointment or special election.

When: Saturday, December 5, 2009 / 10:00 a.m.
Where: Santa Fe Station Poke Room / 4949 N. Ranch Drive / Las Vegas, NV

Bounty Players: Richard Scotti, Mike Wiley, Bill Parson, more to be announced.

RSVP: http://www.myclarkgop.org/pokerparty
For more information: Email Frank Ricotta at coalitions@clarkgop.org

The Nevada Policy Research Institute has released The 2009 Nevada Legislative Session Review & Report Card.

Anger is Brewing committed to releasing our own report card based on priority votes and measured only on the basis of fiscal responsibility, accountability, and transparency, regardless of party or position.

As we read over the NPRI report card, we determined that there was no reason to reinvent the wheel.  Geoffrey Lawrence, of the Nevada Policy Research Institute, compiled the same enormous amount of information into a thoughtfully crafted report based on standard methodology and series of weight algorithms by vote.

Click HERE to download the entire report.

Here is an excerpt from the report that sums up the rating scale very nicely.

To assist Nevadans interested in the overall performance of individual lawmakers on fiscal issues, NPRI has produced the following report card. It provides an objective measure of each lawmaker’s voting record on legislation with a fiscal impact. To ensure consistency and objectivity, this tabular report utilizes the respected methodology developed by the National Taxpayers Union for the grading of congressmen.

The NTU model is widely regarded as the “gold standard” of methodologies for ranking legislative performance according to taxpayer interests. One of the great strengths of the model is that it allows more important pieces of legislation to be weighted in relation to their significance. Thus, each bill impacting Nevada tax rates, either directly or indirectly as the result of spending beyond available revenues, is assigned a weight of 1 through 100 depending on magnitude of impact.
Bills that would create hidden taxes through costly regulation also are considered.
It should be noted that some legislative proposals can reduce the tax burden – either by lowering tax rates directly or by curtailing spending. For such proposals, legislators can gain points by voting in favor of the bills. Sadly, there were few examples of tax-cutting proposals in the 2009 session.
As a result, legislative scores across the board were low. To adjust for this, the scores reported here were placed within a normal distribution. Where substantial disagreement on how best to curtail spending exists, bills are not considered. Bills that have zero net impact on spending or simply reassign existing funds are also excluded. When a legislator has been excused from or did not vote on a bill, the bill’s corresponding points are subtracted from the denominator to reflect his or her absence.

All scores are expressed as a percentage of the maximum possible number of points. No congressman has ever received a perfect score using the NTU model and so perfect scores should not be expected. Generally, a legislator with a score above 50 is considered to be a friend to the taxpayer.

As the report card reveals, in the 2009 Legislative Session, Assemblyman Ed Goedhart won the distinction of “taxpayer’s best friend.”

A listing of the bills considered for this analysis is available on NPRI’s website, www.npri.org, along with the underlying spreadsheet calculations.

Top 10 Nevada Legislators:

1  Goedhart, Ed               Assembly      95.54%
2  Gustavson, Don             Assembly      93.33%
3  Cobb, Ty                   Assembly      87.19%
4  Hambrick, John             Assembly      86.23%
5  Christensen, Chad          Assembly      74.59%
6  McGinness, Mike            Senate        74.20%
7  Amodei, Mark E.            Senate        73.90%
8  McArthur, Richard          Assembly      72.87%
9  Settelmeyer, James         Assembly      64.22%
10 Washington, Maurice E.     Senate        61.23%

By BETSY MCCAUGHEY

The health bill that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is bringing to a vote (H.R. 3962) is 1,990 pages. Here are some of the details you need to know.

What the government will require you to do:

• Sec. 202 (p. 91-92) of the bill requires you to enroll in a “qualified plan.” If you get your insurance at work, your employer will have a “grace period” to switch you to a “qualified plan,” meaning a plan designed by the Secretary of Health and Human Services. If you buy your own insurance, there’s no grace period. You’ll have to enroll in a qualified plan as soon as any term in your contract changes, such as the co-pay, deductible or benefit.

• 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. 303 (pp. 167-168) makes it clear that, although the “qualified plan” is not yet designed, it will be of the “one size fits all” variety. The bill claims to offer choice-basic, enhanced and premium levels-but the benefits are the same. Only the co-pays and deductibles differ. You will have to enroll in the same plan, whether the government is paying for it or you and your employer are footing the bill.

• 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. 412 (p. 272) says that employers must provide a “qualified plan” for their employees and pay 72.5% of the cost, and a smaller share of family coverage, or incur an 8% payroll tax. Small businesses, with payrolls from $500,000 to $750,000, are fined less.

Eviscerating Medicare:

In addition to reducing future Medicare funding by an estimated $500 billion, the bill fundamentally changes how Medicare pays doctors and hospitals, permitting the government to dictate treatment decisions.

• 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.”

• Sec. 1114 (pp. 391-393) replaces physicians with physician assistants in overseeing care for hospice patients.

• Secs. 1158-1160 (pp. 499-520) initiates programs to reduce payments for patient care to what it costs in the lowest cost regions of the country. This will reduce payments for care (and by implication the standard of care) for hospital patients in higher cost areas such as New York and Florida.

• Sec. 1161 (pp. 520-545) cuts payments to Medicare Advantage plans (used by 20% of seniors). Advantage plans have warned this will result in reductions in optional benefits such as vision and dental care.

• Sec. 1402 (p. 756) says that the results of comparative effectiveness research conducted by the government will be delivered to doctors electronically to guide their use of “medical items and services.”

Questionable Priorities:

While the bill will slash Medicare funding, it will also direct billions of dollars to numerous inner-city social work and diversity programs with vague standards of accountability.

• Sec. 399V (p. 1422) provides for grants to community “entities” with no required qualifications except having “documented community activity and experience with community healthcare workers” to “educate, guide, and provide experiential learning opportunities” aimed at drug abuse, poor nutrition, smoking and obesity. “Each community health worker program receiving funds under the grant will provide services in the cultural context most appropriate for the individual served by the program.”

These programs will “enhance the capacity of individuals to utilize health services and health related social services under Federal, State and local programs by assisting individuals in establishing eligibility . . . and in receiving services and other benefits” including transportation and translation services.

• Sec. 222 (p. 617) provides reimbursement for culturally and linguistically appropriate services. This program will train health-care workers to inform Medicare beneficiaries of their “right” to have an interpreter at all times and with no co-pays for language services.

• Secs. 2521 and 2533 (pp. 1379 and 1437) establishes racial and ethnic preferences in awarding grants for training nurses and creating secondary-school health science programs. For example, grants for nursing schools should “give preference to programs that provide for improving the diversity of new nurse graduates to reflect changes in the demographics of the patient population.” And secondary-school grants should go to schools “graduating students from disadvantaged backgrounds including racial and ethnic minorities.”

• Sec. 305 (p. 189) Provides for automatic Medicaid enrollment of newborns who do not otherwise have insurance.

For the text of the bill with page numbers, see www.defendyourhealthcare.us.

Ms. McCaughey is chairman of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths and a former Lt. Governor of New York state. Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A17

A student sponsored forum is scheduled to take place on the topic of Illegal Immigration. Among the invited panelists is Jim Gilchrist, founder of the Minuteman Project, and Miguel Acosta, a member of an immigrant rights organization in New Mexico. The forum is to be a debate. Nicolas Blevins, contemporary issues chairman for ASUN Flipside Productions, told reporters that the forum is purely educational for the purpose of opening dialogue.

Emma Sepulveda, director of UNR’s Latino Research Center, upset over not being consulted on the choice of panelists, has joined forces with the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada to sponsor their own immigration discussion and cultural celebration that same evening in a different building. We sincerely hope she was able to find a less anti, anti-illegal immigration speaker.

• Click HERE to read yesterday’s article entitled UNR faculty members complain about choice of immigration panelists
• Click HERE to read another article on the subject: ACLU urges UNR to let controversial illegal immigration opponent appear
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