Capitol Hill Update, 27 January, 2014

House & Senate/Schedule: Both chambers are in session this week.  The House will only be in town through Wednesday, while the Senate will be in town continuously through Presidents’ Day (Feb 17th).

State of the Union Address: On Tuesday evening, President Obama will give the annual State of the Union Address to a joint session of Congress.  He is expected to focus on his divisive message of income inequality, and to declare his intent to make law through executive order if Congress does not act. FreedomWorks President Matt Kibbe will deliver a “pre-buttal” to the President at 8:45 on live.freedomworks.org, and afterwards you can watch the SOTU streaming online and join us on our live chat room.

House/Farm Bill: The Farm Bill has been trapped in conference as House and Senate members hashed out their differing version of the bill.  It is possible that the conference could report a bill and that it could receive a final vote in the House as soon as this Wednesday. Reports are that there will be almost nothing in the way of reforms to the Farm Bill, and that it will be a five-year extension. The food stamps and corporate welfare subsidies contained in this bill will cost over a trillion dollars over ten years.  FreedomWorks will oppose the bill.

House/ObamaCare: The House Committee on Ways and Means will be holding a hearing at 10 AM on Tuesday, January 28th on how ObamaCare’s 30-hour rule and employer mandates are hurting businesses and reducing job creation. Because ObamaCare fines businesses who have over 50 employees working more than 30 hours per week, many businesses are cutting employee hours (or just employees) in order to avoid the fines.

Senate/Flood Insurance: The Senate will finally consider their bill to delay reforms to the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), S. 1926.  Under a bill passed in 2012, flood insurance premiums were scheduled to be adjusted according to redrawn floodplain maps, so that homeowners in high-risk flood areas would have to pay higher premiums (as would be the case if the insurance policies were being offered in a free market).  This bill would delay these reforms, which will put taxpayers on the hook for a much larger amount when these high-risk areas inevitably flood again.  NFIP is already $20 billion in debt to taxpayers, and will incur tens of billions more in debt if it is not seriously reformed.

The desire to rule is the mother of heresies. —St. John Chrysostom

In America, a politician intentionally selects to enter politics. They seek power in the name of public good, but predominately they seek power. When a person enters Congress or the Presidency, they seek and use the coercive power of government. 

Proposed Medicare regulations will shorten the lives of seniors.  The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (Yes, the same CMS that commanded the incompetent website for ObamaCare.) has proposed limiting the drugs available to seniors.  Presently, Medicare Part D insurance pays for drugs to treat depression and organ transplants.  CMS seeks to limit the number of the drugs available.  Thus, the CMS bureaucrats will reduce the quality as well as the length of life for seniors. Diana Furchtgott-Roth explains in Real Clear Markets:

Depression is the most frequent mental health problem in the elderly, and lack of treatment can lead suicide. Depressed patients can cause difficulties for family members and caregivers. Immunosuppressant drugs are used in the case of a transplant, to prevent the body from rejecting a transplanted organ. Cutting back on these drugs mean that transplants would be more risky and less successful. This would decrease life expectancy of seniors.

Additionally, CMS is forcing seniors to use Medicare doctors.  Even if a senior has Part D any drug or services prescribed must be by a Medicare doctor.  As more and more doctors refuse to take Medicare patients, seniors will be forced to use fewer and fewer doctors.  What an inglorious bureaucratic subterfuge! 

Federal bureaucrats at CMS are changing the rules to the detriment of seniors by denying them drugs and requiring them to only use Medicare doctors.  Worse, because Americans were alarmed by Obamacare's “death panels,” Congress responded by cutting funding for the death panels.  Now, in retaliation, the bureaucracy is stealthily reinstating the death panels by regulations.  Again, Furchtgott-Roth reports:

The newly-passed fiscal year 2014 budget cuts $10 million from the Independent Payment Advisory Board, which was given the power under the Affordable Care Act to disallow medical drugs, devices, and procedures that the Board deemed too costly and therefore inefficient. But the new regulations show that CMS has taken over the rationing role.

Abuse of Power:  

To pass ObamaCare, the President and other Democrats repeatedly said “ you can keep your insurance and your doctor.”  Then, our public was outraged to find this wasn't the case.  So now, the Obama administration has quietly told CMS to reduce costs, and governing by deceit and stealth tactics continues.   James Madison, the intellectual force that formed our Constitution, warned in his speech at the Virginia State Convention of 1829-1830:

The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse. 

Only We the People will stop this abuse of power by government.  Our greatest strength is exposing corrupt governance and communicating with family, friends, neighbors and the millions of Americans that seek honest and competent government.  Hopefully, through the internet, We the People will save America and restore honest and competent government.

Federal statistics can be easily manipulated to suit the present needs of the bureaucrats who need a certain story to be told. Imagine announcing that you're on a diet and you gain five pounds in the first month. In an effort to save face, you simply ignore any weight you gained up to age twenty when telling other people where you're currently at. 

That's the federal way. 

When the numbers can't be manipulated through mere accounting trickery, they can just be inflated through sheer confusion.

Enrollment in Medicaid spiked in December, aided by Obamacare exchanges and an expansion of the government-run health coverage program for the poor in 25 states.

But it was far from clear just how many of the Medicaid enrollees are new people drawn by Affordable Care Act-related initiatives, as opposed to re-enrollments, according to a leading health-care analyst who called the data released Wednesday "confusing."

By the end of December, more than 6.3 million people were determined to be eligible for Medicaid or CHIP, the program covering children, through state-run agencies and state-based Obamacare exchanges, according to a Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services report released Wednesday.

That tally does not include the 750,000 or so people who were determined eligible in Medicaid through the federally-run Obamacare exchange HealthCare.gov.

Adding the two enrollment numbers together equals more than 7 million Medicaid-eligible determinations. But some of the determinations made by HealthCare.gov may be duplicative of state-based decisions.

Such is the state of "success" for the PPACA thus far. 

Reuters suggests that some of the Medicaid numbers probably include people who happened to find out they qualified even before the law expanded eligibility. 

An expansion of Medicaid didn't require a complete overhaul of an industry however. We were told that was necessary to get the in-between people insured. This was what the public demanded, according to Obamacare apologists/champions. Certainly there would be a rush by these people to enroll once the tech glitches were partially resolved, right? 

Not so much. 

So...what if they gave an industry a crippling makeover and nobody came? 

Meanwhile, the hits just keep coming one after another. 

In the waiting room of Memorial Sloan-Kettering’s radiation treatment center, I discovered that in the race of life, those running to stay on the track are among the most determined, hopeful and courageous. They’re also grateful, for it’s in the sanctuary of sympathetic and expert care where cancer patients experience calm and clarity after the storm of diagnosis and decision-making.

As if living with cancer-induced anxiety weren’t enough, many Sloan-Kettering patients must Think Again about their treatment since the cancer center is among many prominent hospitals no longer “in network” for most Obamacare-compliant insurance plans.

Americans already have the world’s best health care system. The question is how to make it broadly accessible, especially to the most vulnerable. Claiming a monopoly on moral and political virtue and disparaging as uncompassionate obstructionists those who opposed the 2,700-page Affordable Care Act, lawmakers drove its passage, promising increased access, lower costs and, “If you like your doctors, you can keep them, period.”

Now it’s broken hearts and spirits — not just broken promises, websites and insurance systems — that plague intrepid patients, to their providers’ frustration. Meanwhile, healthy Americans laboring under stagnant wages are recoiling from sticker and doc shock, proving C.S. Lewis’ maxim that “those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

“Pay more for less” isn’t a winning slogan, but it’s the truth. The collusion of government and insurance companies to limit competition and consumer choice has impaired Americans’ freedom to be value-oriented shoppers and imperiled our property and privacy rights.

Americans want patient-centered and patient-owned health care and an array of competitive choices to assure price stability, service quality and access to all. But rather than consider targeted and less disruptive changes like insurance portability, tort reform, tax credits and high-risk pools, Obamacare proponents further straitjacketed the health care system with one-size-fits-all mandates, taxes and micromanagement by an inept bureaucracy.

Yet lawmakers won’t wear the straitjacket they designed for Americans. Sen. Harry Reid’s staff is exempted from Obamacare, and according to the Los Angeles Times, Congress and staffers enjoy “more generous benefits packages, VIP customer service from insurers and the same government-subsidized premiums they’ve always enjoyed.”

This is government over the people — not our founders’ vision of government of, by and for the people. They wanted America to be the exception to human history’s rule, where tyranny, bondage and stifled human potential defined life for the vast majority. While French revolutionaries were sticking dissenters’ heads on bayonets, America’s revolutionaries established self-government and enshrined popular consent and human equality — the idea that no one by nature can be the ruler of anyone else — in our founding documents.

To preserve individual freedom, they designed a government system that separated political powers and dispersed authority, pitting “ambition against ambition” to check political impulsiveness. To force consensual deliberations and thwart large mistakes like Obamacare, the Senate was to be the “necessary fence” against the “fickleness and passion” of the House, where transient majorities rule.

But lawmakers more interested in advancing partisan agendas than assuring government’s legitimacy and durability have chipped away at the system that enabled American society to become the freest, most productive and most decent in human history.

They’ve passed massive, lobbyist-written and unread laws on party-line votes; concentrated power in the executive branch and the unaccountable administrative state; and, most recently, activated the “nuclear option” in the Senate to eliminate the filibuster (a 60-vote threshold requiring consultation with the minority) on presidential nominees — a 2-century-old tradition.

Ironically, Americans aren’t so polarized. Though politicians exploit wedge issues to foment divisions, we’re united in wanting to limit the size, power and cost of government. We know that to overcome our challenges, individual citizens must wrest decision-making authority away from Washington.

Fifty years ago, instead of attending the 100th anniversary of President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, President Kennedy went to Dallas, where he was assassinated. In commemorating these anniversaries, Americans recall why these leaders are revered — because they united us around shared values, summoning us to assure liberty’s survival for subsequent generations.

Kennedy declared, “The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it,” imploring us to “ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for our country.” Lincoln roused a fractured citizenry to finish the soldiers’ work so that “these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Exhausted by democracy’s follies, we should recall these words and heed their advice.

Think Again: Rather than allow politicians to divide us, remember we’re all freedom-loving Americans eager to realize our full potential in the race of life.

Melanie Sturm reminds readers to Think Again. You might change your mind. She welcomes comments at melanie@thinkagainusa.com. Follow on Twitter at @ThinkagainUSA

Good news, readers. I now have pediatric dental insurance. I don’t have kids, I have a dog.  I'm not responsible for the teeth of any children at all, but I’ve got the insurance now just in case. I don’t need pediatric dental insurance, I didn’t know I wanted pediatric dental insurance, but Obama thinks I do, so I must now buy it.  

That’s right. I got a call from my health insurance company to discuss changes to my plans due to Obamacare. One of those changes was the addition of pediatric dental insurance. I naively explained that I don’t have children, as though that might make a difference, and was told that it didn’t matter. Whether or not I have children, whether or not they have teeth, and whether or not I wanted dental care for said teeth if they existed is not relevant in today’s America. The government says I need pediatric dental care, so I am now paying for pediatric dental care. 

It’s not expensive. In fact, it's a negligible amount of money. However, it’s a negligible amount of my money, and I’d like to spend it as I see fit. I had no say at all in the matter. It’s not as though the government can trust regular Americans to make their own decisions about useless coverage. My Dad likes to say that “a lot of a little is a lot,” and I have to assume that mine is not an usual story. How many people are being forced to pay a negligible amount? How much is being taken from Americans for health care they neither want nor need? You can bet it adds up to a significant amount of money. 

In the America of 2014, we have the government forcing men to purchase maternity coverage and people without children purchasing pediatric dental insurance. While I don’t have children,Virgil, my dog just had his first birthday, and he has teeth. Do you think they’d notice if I stuck him in the dental chair? I might as well get something for my money. 

[Note: FreedomWorks has also endorsed the Senate companion bill by Marco Rubio, HERE]

As one of our millions of FreedomWorks members nationwide, I urge you to contact your representative today and urge him or her to support H.R. 3541, the “ObamaCare Taxpayer Bailout Prevention Act”. Sponsored by Congressman Tim Griffin (R-AR), this bill would simply eliminate the section of ObamaCare that provides for taxpayer bailouts of health insurance companies.

This simple, one-line bill would eliminate Section 1342 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), which is the section that provides for “risk corridors” for health insurers.  These risk corridors are basically a safety net – to make up some of the difference if health insurers lose money under ObamaCare. 

Of course, with the recent catastrophic failures in ObamaCare’s online insurance exchanges, it is now all but certain that insurance companies will not sign up enough young and healthy people to offset the cost of the expanded coverage that all plans are now forced to provide.

The complex problems that ObamaCare is causing in the insurance industry are the inevitable result of central planning. No government agency or team of highly-skilled technocrats can know all of the ins and outs of a health care system that currently accounts for a sixth of our entire economy. But the solution to this government intervention is to get rid of ObamaCare, not to bail out the insurance companies – many of which actively lobbied on behalf of the law because of its promise to increase their customer base. 

I urge you to contact your representative today and urge him or her to support H.R. 3541, the “ObamaCare Taxpayer Bailout Prevention Act”, to stop taxpayers from being on the hook for tens of billions more dollars to the insurance companies.

Sincerely,

Matt Kibbe

President and CEO,

FreedomWorks