What Will Obama Care Do To Us?

[ltstanfo]

Now that Obama Care is the law of the land, I'd like to take the opportunity to point out the trouble it will potentially cause. This thread may be short lived or it may last a while. It will be interesting to see just how many of those promises and assurances will really occur the way they were told to the public.

NOTE: I will update this list as news becomes available. If and when "good things" are listed I will add a category for that as well and try to maintain the list. Let's see where this goes...

1. Verizon Warns Employees

2. Child Coverage Has Apparent Gap

3. John Deere says new health care regulation will cost them additional $150 million after taxes for 2010!

4. Timeline of Major Provisions in the Democrats’ Health Care Package.

5. Verizon to incur $900 million cost (one time).

Regards,
Ltstanfo

 

[redrumloa]

A complete horror show :rant:

Thank GOD I am getting my multitude of testing out of the way before this travesty goes into full effect :x

 

[redrumloa]

#4 - Democrats approve of Federally funded Viagra to sex offenders.

By 57-42, Democrats rejected an amendment by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., barring federal purchases of Viagra and other erectile dysfunction drugs for sex offenders.

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

#4 - Democrats approve of Federally funded Viagra to sex offenders.

By 57-42, Democrats rejected an amendment by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., barring federal purchases of Viagra and other erectile dysfunction drugs for sex offenders.

You know better than that, Red.

 

[Fade]

Quote
"3. John Deere says new health care regulation will cost them additional $150 million after taxes for 2010!"
--------------------------------

This one is actually wrong. As anyone that has ever run a business will tell you, businesses do not pay taxes, their customers pay taxes. Taxes are just another expense, just like salaries, rent, or raw material.

In the case of John Deere and companies like them that sell their products world wide, I'm not too upset because I know that countries like Canada, the UK, and China are paying those taxes and people like McDeath, Wilse and Glaucus are indirectly subsidizing our new health care.

 

[redrumloa]

You know better than that, Red.

Politics aside, do you really think sex offender should get federally funded Viagra?

 

[redrumloa]

#5 - Major corporations announce write downs, slashing benefits.

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- AT&T on Friday said it will record a $1 billion non-cash expense in the first quarter related to the newly passed health-care law, joining a growing list of large U.S. companies.

The AT&T write-down is the largest reported so far. Caterpillar this week recorded a $100 million charge in the first quarter and Deere & Co. said it will report a one-time $150 million expense. See previous story on industries that say warn health reform will cost them.

Among its many changes, the new health-care law eliminated a tax deduction that companies used to cut the cost of drug-benefit programs for retired workers. President Obama signed the massive health-care overhaul into law earlier this week in a big victory for ruling Democrats.

Yet companies that still offer retiree drug benefits, mostly older industrial concerns or those with unionized employees, say the end of the deduction could force them to alter their benefit plans. In other words, they might curtail or even cancel them.

"As a result of this legislation, including the additional tax burden, AT&T will be evaluating prospective changes to the active and retiree health care benefits offered by the company," AT&T said in a filing with the government on Friday.

An AT&T spokesman declined to comment further on the filing.

Earlier this week, Verizon Communications sent a letter to employees suggesting that changes to their health-care plans could be afoot. AT&T and Verizon are the two largest phone companies in the U.S. and include a substantial number of unionized workers.

Several million retirees are estimated to receive drug benefits from a few thousand companies. If those retirees were shifted to the federal Medicare program, the government would to pick up the expense.

Job cuts will be coming, unemployment will skyrocket.

 

[cecilia]

this isn't about sex offenders getting drugs, it's about politicians playing games:

Republicans know that the health care reform process could be derailed if the Senate decides to adopt any changes in reconciling the bill passed by the House on Sunday.

So, GOP Senators have introduced a variety of provocative -- and occasionally outrageous amendments -- that Democrats who support the health care bill will be forced to vote against in order to get the reconciliation bill through.

 

[Glaucus]

You know better than that, Red.

Politics aside, do you really think sex offender should get federally funded Viagra?

If providing viagra to sex offenders is a problem, then it should just be illegal to prescribe them the drug regardless of who pays for it. Using the health care system to make these kind of decisions is not what health care is about. What you're describing should be kept separate as any health care bill needs to be kept fair. Next thing you'll know you'll be denying open heart surgery for murders or whatever. The basic rule should be this: It's covered if it's legal. If you don't want it to be covered, make it illegal. OR, just don't cover it at all. Besides, singling out certain groups is likely to fail the supreme court test so it's rather pointless.

Anyway, we all know that this is just the Republicans playing politics: Democrats for Child Molestation!

Vote-a-rama—the period before a bill's passage in which senators can offer up an unlimited number of amendments—serves two purposes. One is to eat up time. The two parties had 20 hours starting Wednesday to debate the amendments, and Republicans wanted to milk every last minute. The other purpose is to force the party in power to cast embarrassing votes. This health care reform bill already passed the House, so Senate Democrats were determined to vote down any amendment that would require another House vote. (It turns out that, for boring parliamentary reasons, the House has to vote again, anyway.) Republicans therefore wanted to make the "poison pill" amendments as hard to vote against as possible. If you can't beat them, the thinking goes, humiliate them.

Hence the series of Republican amendments that, on the one hand, encapsulated the GOP opposition—David Vitter of Louisiana proposed a full repeal, for instance—but, on the other hand, were more Democratic than the Democrats. Vitter also proposed increasing women's access to breast-cancer screenings. Democrats voted it down. Utah's Orrin Hatch offered an amendment that would "protect America's wounded warriors." The heartless Democrats voted against it. Other amendments simply forced the Democrats to take ridiculous stances. When Tom Coburn of Oklahoma proposed prohibiting coverage of Viagra for child molesters—an issue sure to pop up in future campaign ads—Democrats voted against it. Republicans did show some restraint, however, by declining to offer an amendment banning kitten executions.

The question is: Do these amendments actually do any damage? For the most part, no. There's a long history of forcing opposing parties to take embarrassing votes in order to pass important legislation, and some of them occasionally make it into 30-second attack ads. But it's usually the main bill, rather than the gimmicky stuff around the edges, that is remembered. "This health care bill is like an aircraft carrier," says Randy Strahan, a political science professor at Emory University. "These kinds of amendments are not going to stop it." Plus, Democrats have given themselves procedural cover by voting to "table" the amendments, which is technically different from voting against them.

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

You know better than that, Red.

Politics aside, do you really think sex offender should get federally funded Viagra?

There is no "politics aside" in the question. If the bill specifically stated that sex offenders should be given viagra at government expense then the clause would rapidly be stricken because it is ridiculous. If they MAY because it is a foreseeable remote possibility that one sex offender MIGHT receive viagra at government expense at some point in the future (but probably not) then it is just a silly word game. By repeating it you are implying that you have fallen victim to some pretty petty emotional manipulation without considering.

It would be like arguing against the good Samaritan because when he stopped to help the injured man he had no idea if the man was a child rapist or not. Therefore we must help no-one because we may accidentally help someone who does not deserve it. It is petty, it is wrong and it is Republican.

 

[faethor]

5: It'll break the Space-Time continuum...

 

[ltstanfo]

Added Verizon to my list in original post. Thanks for the extra $900 million cost to Verizon consumers President Obama (and Democrats). :roll:

Regards,
Ltstanfo

 

[faethor]

Minnesota is a state with quite a few medical device manufactures. The University of Minnesota was a government funded incubator for what eventually became some the major heart device makers in the world. Medtronic is one such company and is warning about employee layoffs. They blame the new tax on medical device makers.

Let's look at the #s.
Obama tax is 2.3%

Medtronic makes $3.5B / quarter with profits of $850M ... So changing 24% profit to 22% profit means layoffs?

That's a big stinking pile of BS. The answer is cut some more expenses by cutting employees and blame the government. Then laugh all the way to the bank.