The U.S. healthcare reform law will worsen a shortage of physicians as millions of newly insured patients seek care, the Association of American Medical Colleges said on Thursday.

The group’s Center for Workforce Studies released new estimates that showed shortages would be 50 percent worse in 2015 than forecast.

“While previous projections showed a baseline shortage of 39,600 doctors in 2015, current estimates bring that number closer to 63,000, with a worsening of shortages through 2025,” the group said in a statement.

“The United States already was struggling with a critical physician shortage and the problem will only be exacerbated as 32 million Americans acquire health care coverage, and an additional 36 million people enter Medicare.”

Medicare is the federal health insurance plan for people over the age of 65, and census projections show that group growing as the giant baby boomer generation born from 1946 to 1964 hits retirement age.

The U.S. healthcare reform plan signed into law by President Barack Obama in March is designed to provide insurance to 32 million Americans who now lack it.

The AAMC projected a shortage of 33,100 physicians in specialties such as cardiology, oncology and emergency medicine in 2015.

It calls for Congress to increase funding to train new doctors. “The number of medical school students continues to increase, adding 7,000 graduates every year over the next decade,” the AAMC said.

It said at least 15 percent more were needed.

Other groups, such as the nonprofit Rand Corporation and the Institute of Medicine, have also projected various physician shortages.

Internal administration documents reveal that up to 51% of employers may have to relinquish their current health care coverage because of ObamaCare.

Senator John Cornyn - TX

By W. James Antle III

Well, that didn’t take long. After Democratic supermajorities rammed through their health care bill, Republicans were full of sound and fury about how this injustice will not stand. Even John McCain was on board, telling a television interviewer, “Outside the Beltway the American people are very angry and they don’t like it and we are going to try to repeal this.”

But in the GOP, cooler heads always prevail. What these Republican heads want to cool down is the campaign to repeal the health care takeover. Reports the Associated Press: “Top Republicans are increasingly worried that GOP candidates this fall might be burned by a fire that’s roaring through the conservative base: demand for the repeal of President Barack Obama’s new health care law.”

One of the Republican leadership’s volunteer firefighters is none other than Sen. John Cornyn, the Texas Republican who chairs the committee responsible for getting GOP candidates elected to the Senate this fall. Cornyn initially unfurled the “repeal and replace” banner, only to quickly make an exception for the “non-controversial stuff,” such as the ban on preexisting conditions which is unfortunately exactly what necessitates the “controversial stuff” like the individual mandate.

Cornyn was later seen pouring cold water on the idea entirely. Asked by the AP whether he was going to advise Republican senatorial nominees to run on repeal, he said, “Candidates are going to test the winds in their own states… In some places, the health care bill is more popular than others.” Meanwhile, Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee doesn’t need a weatherman to tell him where the wind blows: “It’s just not going to happen.”

Republican candidates seeking to join Cornyn and Corker in the club have gotten the memo. Shortly before Obamacare passed, Congressman Mark Kirk — the Republican running to fill Barack Obama’s old Senate seat in Illinois — bravely vowed to “lead the effort” to repeal the bill. Now he glumly tells a local newspaper, “Well, we lost.”

Not only is it the case that Republicans “do not have the votes,” but Kirk noted “a sliver of good things in the bill which Republicans agreed with.” Judging from the similarities between the new national health care regime and the Massachusetts bill Republican Sen. Scott Brown voted for and GOP presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney signed into law, for some Republicans it is more than a sliver.

Republicans against repeal have found an amen corner in the cooler heads among conservative commentators. One Oliver Garland even counseled that repeal was fundamentally unconservative: “True conservatives are not radicals; they respect tradition and work for stable reform to fix institutions.”

Read the rest of this article at The American Spectator.

Senator Tom Harkin on three separate occassions in the course of a single week basically admits the current health care ‘reform’ bill is nothing more than a stepping stone towards a government takeover of the health care industry.

Sen. DeMint Exposes Draconian Measure in Health Care Bill

Senator Reid Proposes Restrictions on Self-Governance

Senator Harry Reid has slipped language into the heath care bill, via an amendment that would tie the hands of future Congresses with regard to repealing or amending it. The amendment makes substantial changes to the standing rules of the Senate, a move that normally requires a super-majority vote of at least 67 Senators. When questioned about this by Senator DeMint, The Senate president ruled that the bill changes Senate procedure, but not Senate rules, so the 67 vote threshold did not apply. The unasked question that begs to follow is, “what establishes Senate procedures?” Answer: The rules. 

Section 3403 of Senator Harry Reid’s amendment (page 1020) states that “it shall not be in order in the Senate or the House of Representatives to consider any bill, resolution, amendment, or conference report that would repeal or otherwise change this subsection.” The subsection pertains to regulations imposed by the Medicare Advisory Board. The amendment goes on to require a vote of 3/5 the Senate (60 votes) to waive the paragraph. 

This posturing, setting some provisions of the law above others, so as to make them untouchable sets a dangerous precedent. It is the Constitution that is established as the supreme law of the land. The threshold for changing it was set high by the founders. Senator Reid and his cohorts are now attempting to enshrine provisions of their health care bill as above normal laws, and not subject to the normal democratic processes to change or repeal them. 

DeMint observed, “I don’t see why the majority party wouldn’t put this into every bill.” 

Ed Morisey made the point well in his article: “The elected representatives of today should not have greater authority than those who will follow them. Any attempt to pass this into legislation aggrandizes the power of this Congress at the expense of those that follow.” 

The proposed language of this health care amendment would, by simple majority vote, establish a requirement for a super majority to alter or repeal it. If this anti-democracy measure is allowed to stand, the implications for this and all future legislation are dire. Hundreds of years of established Congressional process will be subverted, the future will of the people, expressed by the election of their representatives, thwarted by unreasonable and unprecedented obstacles to our right of self-governance.

Take the recent amendment to the Senate health care plan by Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus (D-MT). This language allocates hundreds of millions of dollars of your money toward “Personal Responsibility Education for Adulthood Training.”

What can this possibly mean? According to the amendment’s mostly vague language, $400 million from the years 2010 to 2015 will be spent on “evidence-based effective programs” that will supposedly teach kids “healthy life skills,” including things like “goal-setting, decision making, negotiation, communication and interpersonal skills, and stress management.” This looks like standard Washington-speak: a great pile of words that mean whatever they need to mean.

That is, it looks that way until we get to the part of the amendment that deals with sex. Here we find reference to very specific “activities to educate youth who are sexually active regarding responsible sexual behavior.” The amendment claims to implement “evidence-based effective programs … that have been proven on the basis of rigorous scientific research to change behavior, which means delaying sexual activity, increasing condom or contraceptive use for sexually active youth, or reducing pregnancy among youth.”

Here we come to the nub of the matter. The “personal responsibility education” referred to in the Baucus amendment is actually sex education. The Senate health care plan is going to teach kids about sex. Graphically, and early. With heaps of tax dollars.

The amendment includes the obligatory passing reference to abstinence, (and does reinstate Title V funding for abstinence programs), and claims to provide “age-appropriate information and activities.” However, history shows that these claims are misleading at best. What “age-appropriate information” can the bill possibly have in mind for an 11-year-old boy (included in the bill’s intended target group)? Probably not the same “age-appropriate information” the boy’s parents have in mind.

And what good is “abstinence education” if contraception and abortion are being pushed right alongside it? Kids receive a mixed message. They are told, with a wink and a nod, that maybe they should abstain from sex, but the chances are that they simply can’t – and that no one really can. The past teaches us that “evidence-based” or “comprehensive” sex education is simply code for sexual education that treats sex as unavoidable, rather than a human choice.

In this bleak fantasy, kids are nothing more than farm animals, inevitably and indiscriminately sexual. All that the rest of us can do is simply pick up the pieces.

Read the rest of the column.

“There is a huge middle class marriage penalty hidden in the House and Senate health care bills. The penalty becomes evident by evaluating questions like the following:

How much would two single people, each making $30,000 per year, pay for private health insurance if the Pelosi bill was in effect now? The answer is $1,320 per year for both individuals combined (based on the premium limits and subsidies outlined on the charts below).

But how much would they pay for the same level of insurance under the Pelosi bill if they were to marry? Their combined cost would then be about $12,000 a year (the estimated cost for private insurance).

Health insurance premium costs for two adults with equal incomes if the Pelosi bill was in effect now

Sources:  The numbers on the chart are based on (a) a chart provided by The Committees on Ways & Means, Energy & Commerce, and Education & Labor, October 29, 2009, see next chart; (b) the current Federal Poverty Levels; see final chart below; and (c) the estimate that two adults would pay $12,000 annually for individual health insurance with average benefits if their income exceeds 400% of the Federal Poverty Level.

“Once the income of Americans exceeds 400% of the Federal Poverty Level, there are no limits on the premiums they can be charged, and their premiums are no longer subsidized. The poverty level is much higher for two people living unmarried as compared to the same two people being married. That is why citizens in many cases will pay far more for insurance if they are married. Why should married people be subjected to financial discrimination?  

“This extraordinary penalty people will pay, should they marry, extends all the way from a two-person combined income of $58,280 to $86,640, a spread of $28,360. A large number of people fall within this spread. As premiums for private insurance escalate, as expected, the marriage penalty will become substantially larger.

“The Senate bill also creates a marriage penalty, in this case by imposing a new tax on individuals who make $200,000 annually but it also applies to married couples making $250,000 each year. This marriage tax on the affluent, however, is just the tip of the marriage penalty iceberg in the Senate bill.

“The Senate bill stipulates that two unmarried people, 52 years of age, with private insurance and a combined income of $60,000, $30,000 each, will pay a combined cost of $2,483 for medical insurance. Should they marry, however, they will pay a combined cost of $11,666 for insurance—a penalty of $9,183 for getting married (based on tables available here).

“This substantial marriage penalty applies to persons on individual insurance, but, as the Heritage Foundation’s Bob Moffit said: ‘if an employer has a health care benefits package that is 12 to 13 percent of payroll, and they can solve their problem by paying an 8 percent payroll tax [into the Exchange], I think they’re going to do it,’ (New York Times, 9-30-09). And Howard Dean said that, ‘small business won’t need to buy health care for its employees any more’ (Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace, 11-29-09).

“Businesses will shed their employees and health care dollars into the Exchange, but the dollars that are paid back out will be directed only to those who make less than 400% of the Federal Poverty Level. Those above the Poverty Level will receive none of their previous insurance benefits from businesses. For that reason the new system is income redistribution on steroids.
 
“ ‘Household’ is defined in both bills as including those who can be claimed as dependents for federal income tax purposes thereby clarifying that adults can avoid the marriage penalty by living together unmarried. The new system provides a huge incentive for doing so.

“The bills additionally contain De Facto salary caps. How much would a married couple pay for private insurance under the House bill if their income was $58,000 per year?  The answer is $2,088. But what if their income increased by $1,000? Their annual premium would then be about $12,000. The economic penalty for going off the subsidized system is so severe that it will be difficult for people to increase their earnings beyond 400% of Poverty Level. The Senate bill works essentially the same way.

“Senior citizens and small businesses have already been identified as big losers in the health care bills. Married citizens in the middle class need to be added to the list.”

Official summary of premium limits and subsidy levels in the House bill*

Federal Poverty Levels now in use:

• Single person = $10,830
• Two person household = $14,570
• Three person household = $18,310
• Family of four = $22,050

400% of Federal Poverty Level:

• Single person = $43,320
• Two person household = $58,280
• Three person household = $73,240
• Family of four = $88,200

*  Chart provided by The House Committees on Ways & Means, Energy & Commerce, and Education & Labor, October 29, 2009.

The Senate Finance Committee, chaired by Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), claimed it posted the “full text” of its health care reform bill, “America’s Healthy Future Act,” on its Web site. But when users clicked the link to read the proposed law, they could only access a 259-page document that included summaries of both current law and the proposed legislation–or what some senators called a “plain English” version of the bill.
 
The actual “legislative language” of the bill–the words that would become the law of the land if the bill were enacted–is not available to the public and apparently has not even been written.

Nonetheless, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) scored the plain text summary of the bill on Oct. 7, cautiously estimating its cost at $829 billion. The members of the committee voted the bill out of the committee based on the summary on Tuesday, 14-9, picking up only one Republican vote, Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine.

While the committee released a memorandum to reporters and  editors on Oct. 2 claiming had released the “full text of the America’s Healthy Future Act,” the link attached to the online version of the memorandum led to the summary–not an actual legislative text–and the CBO’s Oct. 7 “preliminary analysis” of the bill contradictng the committee’s claim that it had released the “full text.” 

“The Chairman’s mark, as amended, has not yet been converted into legislative language,” said the CBO. ”The review of such language could lead to significant changes in the estimates of the proposal’s effects on the federal budget and insurance coverage.”

Read the rest of the story

Now that the Congressional Budget Office has concluded that the health-care bill proposed by Sen. Max Baucus will shrink the federal deficit over the next ten years, its champions are heralding the legislation as a model of fiscal responsibility.

But the CBO’s comforting analysis relies on a big assumption that’s highly questionable, an assumption that virtually no one on either side of the debate — politicians, pundits, even economists — is even challenging.

The assumption is that America’s employers will keep providing coverage for their workers. But, in fact, the Baucus bill severely undermines the employer rationale for offering insurance. Economist Michael Tanner of the conservative Cato Institute points out two main reasons.

First, the Baucus bill would substantially increase the costs of coverage, for example by requiring rich benefits packages and coverage for Americans with pre-existing conditions at far less than their actual expense. At some point, employers will decide that the appeal of offering insurance as a tool for recruiting and retaining employees no longer compensates for its soaring cost.

Second, the bill is based on perverse incentives that no one is even discussing. The subsidies it offers to citizens are so rich that if companies were to drop their plans, the majority of workers would get the same lavish coverage, and extra cash in their paychecks to boot. “Those two factors will change the equilibrium,” says Tanner. “With the government providing huge credits, employers will feel a lot less guilty about dumping their plans.”

Read the rest of the column.

By Chuck Norris – Flying under the radar last week was a new government report that forecasts that the national debt will double over the next decade. The White House has projected a cumulative $9 trillion deficit between 2010 and 2019, while the Congressional Budget Office estimates a more optimistic $7.1 trillion based upon the expiration of Bush tax cuts. What this means is that Washington’s out-of-control spending will likely turn the nation’s already-staggering $11 trillion debt into an astronomical $20 trillion.

But there are at least two ginormous expenses that are excluded in these projections. First, both projections from the White House and CBO incorporate their belief that the deficit will decline quickly over the next three years, as they assume less bailouts are needed and the economy rapidly grows. But isn’t there also the real possibility that the economy will not recover as quickly as they hope? Every additional bailout or stimulus (large or small), and every margin of error in their three-year prospective climb-out of the economic pit, will inflate our nation’s debt balloon even more.

The second expense is far less speculative – and it has to do with about one-fourth of America. The 72 million baby boomers (people born in America from 1946 to 1964, excluding immigrants), the largest generation America has produced, are going into retirement over the next two decades and will face the golden years of declining health and rising medical costs. Under current law, if the government were to add the projected baby boomer costs of Medicare and Social Security to its debt tab, it would send deficit projections into the abyss.

Here’s the primary problem: Medicare is bankrupt. Medicaid is bankrupt. And Social Security is bankrupt. Though boomers have paid into these programs via their taxes for decades, there are not enough benefits to offer them, now and even less in the future. The problem is compounded when one understands that the number of people in the United States ages 65 and older is expected to double by 2030, and so is the amount expected to fund their retirement and health care in their twilight years, which relatively few are prepared to handle themselves.

So what is the U.S. government to do, especially when it is already projected to have a $20 trillion dollar debt in 2019 (let alone what it will be in 2030)?

That reform is needed in health care is not a question, mostly because Americans are being raped by the insurance companies. But Obamacare in its present form is not the answer, because it will progressively cut (yes, cut) the care for baby boomers in the future, if not through the reductions and costs of private options then through the mandatory benefit cuts the government has to make in Social Security and Obamacare (former Medicare). Think about it. If government can’t handle the costs of the elderly now in retirement via its Medicare and Social Security programs, do we really expect they will offer the baby boomer better (and more costly) benefits in the future?

The government knows that, with any version of a public option in health care, it is impossible for them to assist the baby boomer generation the way they assist their parents’ generation right now. Do the math. It’s impossible, in any form – not without the biggest tax increases ever levied upon the American people. This Washington knows: It must cut the benefits of Medicare and Social Security, otherwise the government itself will go bankrupt trying to offer those programs to the boomers over the next two decades. For a little inside peak into the Washington corridors on this issue, consider the following. 

According to the Congressional Budget Office’s own report, “The U.S. Retirement System and the Baby-Boom Generation,” “Present trends are unlikely to persist indefinitely, however, because total payments to retirees are expected to grow much faster under current law than either the total incomes of workers who pay Social Security and Medicare taxes or the revenues earmarked for those programs. That widening gap will place increasing stress on both programs. Narrowing the gap could involve slowing the future growth of benefits.”

Notice the words “under current law” and “slowing the future growth of benefits”? That is key. The only way around this future financial dilemma (at least according to this administration) is to change “current law” and to “slow” or lower the benefits for baby boomers. That new law (or basic legislation upon which such changes can be amended) is Obamacare. Are we so gullible to believe that the CBO’s report on baby boomers has no interplay with Obamacare legislation?

Look closely at the carefully stated italicized words (emphasis mine) within the Congressional Budget Office’s political strategy found within that same boomer report: “The extent to which baby boomers are providing for their own retirement – and have time to react to policy changes – is thus an important consideration in evaluating proposals to reform the Social Security and Medicare programs.” The only way the boomers will “have time to react to policy changes” is if they are enacted before they go into retirement! (Are you catching another reason for the White House’s rush to pass this legislation?!)

This is dirty secret No. 4 in Obamacare that our government isn’t telling you: Obamacare is ultimately designed to force retiring baby boomers into a much cheaper version of socialized medicine than Medicare, which is already being positioned to be cut to the tune of $500 billion. Obamacare is not merely about reforming health care to aid 47 million Americans who are uninsured. It is about reforming “current law” to ax 72 million retiring Americans who the government can’t afford to support over the next two decades.

Now you know why President Obama and recently White House budget director Peter Orszag both declared that health-care reform is “central” to economic recovery. Many have wondered how or why they can say that. They aren’t saying so because the government is expanding medical coverage or because it will cost them a trillion more dollars to socialize medicine. They are saying that because offering 72 million baby boomers less Social Security and Medicare benefits (via Obamacare) will save the government trillions over the next couple decades.

Consider the fact that we’re already feeling the birth pains of this generational catastrophe: For the first time in Social Security’s history last week, Social Security checks are projected to freeze or be cut in 2010, 2011 and even 2012. In fact, according to Rep. Spencer Bachus, R-Ala., another bailout could be imminent for Social Security.

Cut Social Security checks?! Let me get this straight. Corporations are given Washington bailouts. Society is infused with government stimuli. Consumers and car lots are given cash for clunkers. And the elderly, who will undoubtedly bear the brunt end of disproportionate medical costs and coverage merely because of their age, are experiencing an economic freeze already from the administration that promises not to cut their future benefits? Sounds to me that health-care rationing has already begun via Social Security!

Bottom line: Washington believes it must control spending on retirement and health benefits before millions of baby boomers retire, and Obamacare is the ticket to accomplish that objective. As Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., said, “Today’s budget numbers send a clear signal that the time for putting off tough choices is over and the time to act is now.” But wouldn’t you like to know if those “tough choices” had to do with your future health care?

Again, friends, Washington’s whole covert plan can be summed up and seen in these words from the CBO report on baby boomers: “Under current law … slowing the future growth of benefits … have time to react to policy changes.”

I’ll say it one last time: Before so-called universal health care turns into your universal hell-care, write or call your representatives today and protest their rushing and voting Obamacare into law. Remind them what is needed in Washington is a truly bipartisan group that is allowed ample amount of time to work on compromised health-care law that reigns in out-of-control insurance companies and doesn’t raise taxes (for anyone), regulate personal medical choices, ration health care or restrict American citizens’ freedoms in any way.

My last four columns (outlining the four dirty secrets of Obamacare) are more than enough reason to kill this present so-called health-care legislation and send our politicians back to the drawing boards. That is why I’m sending my congressman this message that I also encourage you to send yours: “If you vote in Obamacare, I’ll fight to vote you out of office!”

Read Dirty Secret #1, Dirty Secret #2, Dirty Secret #3