The Geniuses On Healthcare Reform

Companies Are Already Thinking About Dumping Worker Health Benefits

When the United States government passed healthcare reform, well that is the name they put to it anyway, many rallied around believing the law was goiing to lower premiums and cover more people. The liberals quickly pounded their chests that finally everyone would get to live off the government. Well, to those who think there is a free ride, read this article about post-healthcare reform.

Many big companies, Verizon (V), AT&T (A), John Deere (DE), and Caterpillar (CAT)for example, are thinking of dropping their own paid health insurance. Instead of the traditional employer-paid plans they will give employees a stipend to buy their own insurance on the federally mandated state insurance exchanges.

The problem is the Democrats never planned on this scenario when they forced this healthcare bill upon the people. Healthcare reform may have passed but there is no denying that it polarized this country like many of the Democratic policies hailed by Obama, Pelosi, and Reid.

The evidence comes from internal company documents that Fortune magazine obtained from a congressional committee, which requested them while investigating big-corporation complaints that the Affordable Care Act would collectively cost them $1.35 billion. (Short summary: The law closes a tax loophole that let companies double-count tax benefits established by Medicare drug program.) The committee was going to hold hearings on the companies’ write-downs of this money, writes Fortune’s Shawn Tully, until it saw the documents.

What they revealed is that all four companies believed that the savings for dropping employee health coverage would far outweigh the penalties they’d owe under the reform law for doing so — about $2,000 per employee. Even if the companies gave their workers raises with a post-tax value exceeding the cost of insurance premiums, after government subsidies, that amount plus the penalty would cost far less than the corporate health benefits did.

A slide from an internal AT&T presentation tells the story. Titled “Medical Cost vs. No Coverage Penalty,” it shows that in 2009, AT&T spent $2.4 billion on health benefits for its nearly 300,000 active employees. The penalty for not covering those employees, by contrast, would be only $600 million, or 25 percent of its current spend.

Basically the Democrats have positioned this market so that the government will become the biggest supplier of insurance. Since when is the government supposed to be in "business."


What has 75 balls and screws old ladies? Bingo. What has no balls and screws everyone? The government. Geniuses.

Obama Hits Record Deficit $1.4 Trillion-CBO

Associated Press writer Andrew Taylor pens an article on ABCNews.com that the Congressional Budget Office estimates our federal deficit at $1.4 trillion dollars for the fiscal year that ended last week.

From Paul Kanjorski's website:

Barletta Claim: Congress failed to provide the oversight necessary when passing the $700 billion economic rescue plan.


THE TRUTH. Paul Kanjorski believes that the rescue law is part of a comprehensive solution. It will help to stabilize the economy and safeguard the financial security of average Americans. Congress must now pass additional laws, like a new economic rescue that Paul Kanjorski is working to draft, to get our economy back on track.


•Paul Kanjorski worked with his colleagues to significantly alter the initial Treasury plan in order to ensure that it would work as intended, protect taxpayers, limit the financial windfalls of executives at the distressed companies getting help, establish strong oversight watchdogs, provide transparency, and control overall costs.
•As part of a comprehensive response, the House is already working on a new economic recovery bill to help average Americans, and the Speaker has tapped Paul Kanjorski to serve on a task force developing this plan.

How's that economic recovery plan that you claim ownership working for you? You call what you wrote as the truth!!!

Unemployment 9.5% quickly to reach over 10%. Obamanomics failed stimulus plan hasn't created jobs, it's lost them. Thank God the Europeans didn't listen to Obama with a Europorkulus plan of their own. They are already on the road to recovery. A friend is in France right now. He said the exchange rate sucks. No wonder our dollar continues on the decline.

France and Germany actually exited the recession last quarter. The leaders of both nations specifically and publicly rejected Obama's cries for Europorkulus. "It would be irresponsible to chose another policy, which would increase our country's indebtedness without having more infrastructure and increased competitiveness in the end," French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said at the time.

Yes, even the French have been more fiscally responsible in dealing with the recession than the Obama administration and the Democrat directorate in Congress.

And even though "Germany, with its heavy exports dependence, has been particularly badly hit by the global recession," its economy, too has turned the corner. Citizens of Germany should be glad that Chancellor Merkel didn't heed the call to resort to Obamanomics.

Paul Kanjorski- Bad Ideas, Bad Judgment

The Obamanation

Remember my post about disorder and how Americans go to the party that seems to represent stability. Well this country is fast becoming an Obamanation due to a young President with no real experience under his belt telling everyone else he knows more than them.

Every day, the economy is becoming more and more an Obama economy.

More than 4 million jobs have been lost since the recession began in December 2007 — roughly half in the past three months.

Stocks have tumbled to levels not seen since 1997. They are down more than 50 percent from their 2007 highs and 20 percent since Obama’s inauguration.

The president’s suggestion that it was a good time for investors with “a long-term perspective” to buy stocks may have been intended to help lift battered markets. But a big sell-off followed.

So a tumbling stock market is adding to the national angst as households see the value of their investments and homes plunge as job losses keep rising.

Many health care stocks are down because of fears of new government restrictions and mandates as part a health care overhaul. Private student loan providers were pounded because of the increased government lending role proposed by Obama. Industries that use oil and other carbon-based fuels are being shunned, apparently in part because of Obama’s proposal for fees on greenhouse-gas polluters.

Makers of heavy road-building and other construction equipment have taken a hit, partly because of expectations of fewer public works jobs here and globally than first anticipated.

“We’ve got a lot of scared investors and business people. I think the uncertainty is a real killer here,” said Chris Edwards, director of fiscal policy for the libertarian Cato Institute.

Some Democrats, worried over where Obama is headed, are suggesting he has yet to match his call for “bold action and big ideas” with deeds.

In particular, they point to bumpy efforts to fix the financial system under Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

Obama may have contributed to the national anxiety by first warning of “catastrophe” if his stimulus plan was not passed and in setting high expectations for Geithner. Instead, Geithner’s public performance has been halting and he’s been challenged by lawmakers of both parties.

Republicans and even some top Democrats have questioned Obama’s proposal to limit tax deductions for higher-income people on mortgage interest and charitable contributions.

Charities have strongly protested, saying times already are tough enough for them. The administration suggests it might back off that one.

Even White House claims that its policies will “create” or “save” 3.5 million jobs have been questioned by Democratic supporters.

“You created a situation where you cannot be wrong,” the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Montana Democrat Max Baucus, told Geithner last week.