This is a copy of an article at CNN.com.  You can read the original at: http://money.cnn.com/2009/07/24/news/economy/health_care_reform_obama.fortune/index.htm

5 freedoms you’d lose in health care reform

If you read the fine print in the Congressional plans, you’ll find that a lot of cherished aspects of the current system would disappear.

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FIXING HEALTH CARE

• White House hits watchdog on Medicare plan
• Little savings seen from Medicare panel
• Obama plays up small biz health care pain
• The ‘new’ new tax on the rich
• 5 freedoms you’d lose in health care reform
• Health care’s future may already exist

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NEW YORK (Fortune) — In promoting his health-care agenda, President Obama has repeatedly reassured Americans that they can keep their existing health plans — and that the benefits and access they prize will be enhanced through reform.

A close reading of the two main bills, one backed by Democrats in the House and the other issued by Sen. Edward Kennedy’s Health committee, contradict the President’s assurances. To be sure, it isn’t easy to comb through their 2,000 pages of tortured legal language. But page by page, the bills reveal a web of restrictions, fines, and mandates that would radically change your health-care coverage.

If you prize choosing your own cardiologist or urologist under your company’s Preferred Provider Organization plan (PPO), if your employer rewards your non-smoking, healthy lifestyle with reduced premiums, if you love the bargain Health Savings Account (HSA) that insures you just for the essentials, or if you simply take comfort in the freedom to spend your own money for a policy that covers the newest drugs and diagnostic tests — you may be shocked to learn that you could lose all of those good things under the rules proposed in the two bills that herald a health-care revolution.

In short, the Obama platform would mandate extremely full, expensive, and highly subsidized coverage — including a lot of benefits people would never pay for with their own money — but deliver it through a highly restrictive, HMO-style plan that will determine what care and tests you can and can’t have. It’s a revolution, all right, but in the wrong direction.

Let’s explore the five freedoms that Americans would lose under Obamacare:

1. Freedom to choose what’s in your plan

The bills in both houses require that Americans purchase insurance through “qualified” plans offered by health-care “exchanges” that would be set up in each state. The rub is that the plans can’t really compete based on what they offer. The reason: The federal government will impose a minimum list of benefits that each plan is required to offer.

Today, many states require these “standard benefits packages” — and they’re a major cause for the rise in health-care costs. Every group, from chiropractors to alcohol-abuse counselors, do lobbying to get included. Connecticut, for example, requires reimbursement for hair transplants, hearing aids, and in vitro fertilization.

The Senate bill would require coverage for prescription drugs, mental-health benefits, and substance-abuse services. It also requires policies to insure “children” until the age of 26. That’s just the starting list. The bills would allow the Department of Health and Human Services to add to the list of required benefits, based on recommendations from a committee of experts. Americans, therefore, wouldn’t even know what’s in their plans and what they’re required to pay for, directly or indirectly, until after the bills become law.

2. Freedom to be rewarded for healthy living, or pay your real costs

As with the previous example, the Obama plan enshrines into federal law one of the worst features of state legislation: community rating. Eleven states, ranging from New York to Oregon, have some form of community rating. In its purest form, community rating requires that all patients pay the same rates for their level of coverage regardless of their age or medical condition.

Americans with pre-existing conditions need subsidies under any plan, but community rating is a dubious way to bring fairness to health care. The reason is twofold: First, it forces young people, who typically have lower incomes than older workers, to pay far more than their actual cost, and gives older workers, who can afford to pay more, a big discount. The state laws gouging the young are a major reason so many of them have joined the ranks of uninsured.

Under the Senate plan, insurers would be barred from charging any more than twice as much for one patient vs. any other patient with the same coverage. So if a 20-year-old who costs just $800 a year to insure is forced to pay $2,500, a 62-year-old who costs $7,500 would pay no more than $5,000.

Second, the bills would ban insurers from charging differing premiums based on the health of their customers. Again, that’s understandable for folks with diabetes or cancer. But the bills would bar rewarding people who pursue a healthy lifestyle of exercise or a cholesterol-conscious diet. That’s hardly a formula for lower costs. It’s as if car insurers had to charge the same rates to safe drivers as to chronic speeders with a history of accidents.

3. Freedom to choose high-deductible coverage

The bills threaten to eliminate the one part of the market truly driven by consumers spending their own money. That’s what makes a market, and health care needs more of it, not less.

Hundreds of companies now offer Health Savings Accounts to about 5 million employees. Those workers deposit tax-free money in the accounts and get a matching contribution from their employer. They can use the funds to buy a high-deductible plan — say for major medical costs over $12,000. Preventive care is reimbursed, but patients pay all other routine doctor visits and tests with their own money from the HSA account. As a result, HSA users are far more cost-conscious than customers who are reimbursed for the majority of their care.

The bills seriously endanger the trend toward consumer-driven care in general. By requiring minimum packages, they would prevent patients from choosing stripped-down plans that cover only major medical expenses. “The government could set extremely low deductibles that would eliminate HSAs,” says John Goodman of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a free-market research group. “And they could do it after the bills are passed.”

4. Freedom to keep your existing plan

This is the freedom that the President keeps emphasizing. Yet the bills appear to say otherwise. It’s worth diving into the weeds — the territory where most pundits and politicians don’t seem to have ventured.

The legislation divides the insured into two main groups, and those two groups are treated differently with respect to their current plans. The first are employees covered by the Employee Retirement Security Act of 1974. ERISA regulates companies that are self-insured, meaning they pay claims out of their cash flow, and don’t have real insurance. Those are the GEs (GE, Fortune 500) and Time Warners (TWX, Fortune 500) and most other big companies.

The House bill states that employees covered by ERISA plans are “grandfathered.” Under ERISA, the plans can do pretty much what they want — they’re exempt from standard packages and community rating and can reward employees for healthy lifestyles even in restrictive states.

But read on.

The bill gives ERISA employers a five-year grace period when they can keep offering plans free from the restrictions of the “qualified” policies offered on the exchanges. But after five years, they would have to offer only approved plans, with the myriad rules we’ve already discussed. So for Americans in large corporations, “keeping your own plan” has a strict deadline. In five years, like it or not, you’ll get dumped into the exchange. As we’ll see, it could happen a lot earlier.

The outlook is worse for the second group. It encompasses employees who aren’t under ERISA but get actual insurance either on their own or through small businesses. After the legislation passes, all insurers that offer a wide range of plans to these employees will be forced to offer only “qualified” plans to new customers, via the exchanges.

The employees who got their coverage before the law goes into effect can keep their plans, but once again, there’s a catch. If the plan changes in any way — by altering co-pays, deductibles, or even switching coverage for this or that drug — the employee must drop out and shop through the exchange. Since these plans generally change their policies every year, it’s likely that millions of employees will lose their plans in 12 months.

5. Freedom to choose your doctors

The Senate bill requires that Americans buying through the exchanges — and as we’ve seen, that will soon be most Americans — must get their care through something called “medical home.” Medical home is similar to an HMO. You’re assigned a primary care doctor, and the doctor controls your access to specialists. The primary care physicians will decide which services, like MRIs and other diagnostic scans, are best for you, and will decide when you really need to see a cardiologists or orthopedists.

Under the proposals, the gatekeepers would theoretically guide patients to tests and treatments that have proved most cost-effective. The danger is that doctors will be financially rewarded for denying care, as were HMO physicians more than a decade ago. It was consumer outrage over despotic gatekeepers that made the HMOs so unpopular, and killed what was billed as the solution to America’s health-care cost explosion.

The bills do not specifically rule out fee-for-service plans as options to be offered through the exchanges. But remember, those plans — if they exist — would be barred from charging sick or elderly patients more than young and healthy ones. So patients would be inclined to game the system, staying in the HMO while they’re healthy and switching to fee-for-service when they become seriously ill. “That would kill fee-for-service in a hurry,” says Goodman.

In reality, the flexible, employer-based plans that now dominate the landscape, and that Americans so cherish, could disappear far faster than the 5 year “grace period” that’s barely being discussed.

Companies would have the option of paying an 8% payroll tax into a fund that pays for coverage for Americans who aren’t covered by their employers. It won’t happen right away — large companies must wait a couple of years before they opt out. But it will happen, since it’s likely that the tax will rise a lot more slowly than corporate health-care costs, especially since they’ll be lobbying Washington to keep the tax under control in the righteous name of job creation.

The best solution is to move to a let-freedom-ring regime of high deductibles, no community rating, no standard benefits, and cross-state shopping for bargains (another market-based reform that’s strictly taboo in the bills). I’ll propose my own solution in another piece soon on Fortune.com. For now, we suffer with a flawed health-care system, but we still have our Five Freedoms. Call them the Five Endangered Freedoms. 

7/26/2009

Dear Mr. President,

I want to thank you for doing in six months what many liberals failed to do in 70 years. You have successfully turned us into a socialist nation.   (note the sarcasm)

You rushed through the stimulus bill saying that it was imperative in order to stop the recession. You promised us jobs, a tax cut, and a decrease in the cost of living. You told us that the stimulus bill would do all these things. You told us that this bill would keep the unemployment rate from exceeding 8%. It now sits at 9.7% and is well on its way to being 10%. Where are all the jobs you promised us? And do not tell me about the teacher that was spared the pink slip or all of the state and federal jobs that exist to contend with the bureaucracy your bill created. Where are the jobs for the manual laborers? What about the small businesses that have closed their doors? Those are the jobs we need. It appears that the only people that have benefitted from this bill are state and federal employees. The number one beneficiary is the Federal Government.

You promised us fiscal responsibility. In the last six months where have you or your administration demonstrated fiscal responsibility? That Stimulus Bill cost $787 billion dollars. You had to borrow money from China to help pay for it. Clearly, the United States is bankrupt if you are borrowing money to pay for a bill that is supposed to stimulate the economy. How is that being fiscally responsible? What was in that 1,600 page bill? Did you even read it? I think not, considering you rushed it through during your first week as president. You promised no more pork, but how can a bill that it over a 1,000 pages long not have any pork?

In a recent address of yours, you said that the stimulus package was doing exactly what it was designed to do. I thought it was supposed to promote economic growth. Instead we are getting an economic collapse. So if your statement is true, then that means this bill was designed to destroy the economy, create unemployment, and bring fear to the American people.

And now you want us to accept your health care reform bill. You are adamant about getting it passed before the end of the year. Why the rush? What is in this bill that you do not want people to know about? Could it be that you know within a year’s time you will not have the majority you need to pass your agenda? This bill has the pungent smell of dead fish. It can’t be about reform. You are just expanding an already broken system and shoving everyone into it. We have already proven in this country that government run health care does not work. Medicare and Medicaid are two government run health care programs on a limited scale and they are both bankrupt. The people on these programs do not get the care they need because they have to wait for approval from the government.

Why are we following the model of Europe or even Canada when it comes to health care? Their government run systems are failing. People leave those countries and come to the United States for medical care. Are you so arrogant that you believe you can do it better? Are you so stupid that you refuse to learn from the mistakes of others? Do you truly care about the best interest of America, or are you only concerned about what helps Barack Obama? But most importantly, will be subject the very system that you want to put the American people on?

This health care reform bill is too conveniently timed. Most people without health insurance are unemployed. The unemployment rate is dangerously close to 10%. People are frightened that if something happened they won’t get to see a doctor much less be able to pay for it. And here you step in to save the day with another expansive government program. Very, very convenient.

And why so silent on Cap and Trade? I know the bill is being pushed through Congress. Please explain why we need to tax the hell out of businesses in order to offset global warming. The passage of this bill will prove disastrous for this country, especially since we are in a recession. Cap and Trade has never worked in the past in reducing carbon emissions. It did destroy businesses. You passed a stimulus bill to stimulate the economy. Now you want to pass Cap and Trade which is known for destroying the economy. Don’t the two cancel each other out?

Your foreign policy is no better than what you have done domestically. You routinely call America an arrogant nation. You insult your own country overseas mentioning it with disdain. Not once have you defended America. Do you hate your own country so much that you are incapable of talking about the very things that make America great? Not once have you mentioned what we have given the world. The United States feeds most of the world’s population. We are always there to help those that desire freedom from tyranny and oppression. We have defeated some of the worst tyrants in history for the sake of the world.

You are the President of the United States. It is your duty to protect and defend the American people. You have failed to perform such a task. When North Korea vowed to wipe the United States off the map, you said nothing. When Somali pirates took Americans hostage, you waited over a week to finally do something. It was only when people started asking questions that you finally sent in the Navy Seals to free the hostages. You won’t even address the atrocities that are happening in Iran. You have snubbed Israel, our only ally in the Middle East. Instead you shake hands and act all chummy with the likes of Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales, and Raul Castro. You derided the Honduran people for defending their country and constitution from a man who tried to declare himself a president for life. Why do you like dictators so much?

You promised us hope and change. Instead of change you brought us more of the same. Instead of hope we have despair. You lied to us, Mr. President. You sold us a bill of goods. You conned the American people into voting for you. You have demonstrated that you are unfit to be the President of the United States.

You are a sniveling little weasel. A man who slithered his way into the Oval Office on false promises and false hope. You have systematically taken over elements of this country that were once in the hands of the private sector, the people. You have systematically usurped the Constitution. You have betrayed the trust of the American people. You have betrayed the U.S. Constitution. You, Sir, are a traitor.

Signed,

Lady Liberty

I just found this at Fox News.  This is very interesting, considering it concerns the future of health care in the United States.  This also points out why government should never be allowed to run anything.

1. Why was a stimulus bill passed when we had to borrow money from China to pay for it?

2. Since all revenue generated by the government is already spent and our country is basically bankrupt, why does Congress and the president continue to pass spending bills?  Wouldn’t the sensible thing to do be to cut spending?

3. Universal health care, in all its forms, has failed everywhere it has been tried. Medicare and Medicaid are bankrupt and do not provide quality care to its recipients. Why, then, is President Obama and Congress pushing for a Universal Health Care plan? Since the U.S. is bankrupt and is forced to borrow money to meet its spending, how do they expect to pay for it?

4. Cap and Trade failed during the Clinton administration and slowed economic growth. Knowing this, why is the federal government passing it again?

5. We are in a recession and well on our way into a depression, so why is Congress and President Obama passing more legislation that increases spending and our taxes? Such measures prevent economic prosperity and prolong economic downturn.

6. We were told that the Stimulus Bill would stop the rising unemployment rate and create more jobs. Why then, since its passage, the unemployment rate has dramatically increased? Where are all the jobs Obama promised us?

7. In the six months since the Stimulus Bill was passed, over 2 million jobs have been lost, costs are going up, taxes are increasing, and the unemployment rate has almost doubled, sitting at 9.5%. Why is Obama not taking responsibility for this? Why does he continue to blame Bush for the bad economy, especially since the past 6-7 months is the consequence of his bill?

8. Why do we constantly have the same people, the same faces in Congress?

9. Why do former Democrat Presidents keep showing up on the public stage giving speeches or running for another office, while former Republican Presidents tend to just go home?

10. Why do presidents have czars when they are unconstitutional?

11. Why does our government continue to whine the rich do not pay enough in taxes? The wealthy in this country already pay the majority of our taxes. They always have.

12. How much does an individual have to pay in taxes before it is considered enough?

13. Why does the federal government control almost every aspect of our lives? They control the schools, health care, businesses (through various regulations), food and drug, banks, car companies, industry, and agriculture to name a few.

14. Why do people jump for joy when the government says they will give them something for free, knowing all along that it’s never free? (i.e. universal health care or free health care)

15. Why is we are told the less government and deregulation is what caused this current economic mess when for the past 70 years we have steadily moved toward more government regulations and more government programs? (Despite efforts by some Republicans, we have yet to enact massive deregulation and massive, permanent tax cuts.)

16. Why do we have Affirmative Action? In a time when we are supposed to ignore the color of someone’s skin, doesn’t Affirmative Action make look at race first?

17. Why can’t people admit that the only reason Barak Obama was elected, and that they voted for him, was because he is black?

And why can’t the media just admit that they are in love with this idiot, who has the same IQ as TOTUS? (TOTUS is the president’s teleprompter that seems to have been breaking down an awful lot lately.  Good Job TOTUS!  Keep up the good work.)

18. The time when Countries, especially the United States, experienced the most economic growth and prosperity was when the federal government left people alone and did not micromanage everything. Why is it we have not learned from that? Why do we increase the size of government and spending when the economy is failing?

19. Why are liberals incapable of telling people who they really are and what they stand for? (They always run as moderates or semi-conservative to get elected and then show their true colors.)

20. If the state of California is bankrupt from all of their spending on welfare/entitlement programs and are now forced to hand out IOUs, why is Congress and President Obama following their example? Shouldn’t they be learning from their mistakes and not duplicating California? (New York and Massachusetts are also going bankrupt with their big government policies.)

21. Where is the tax cut that Obama promised 95% of Americans? Or is that the extra ten dollars in everyone’s paycheck? (Wow. We can now go to Starbucks to prevent them from going into bankruptcy.)

22. Why is President of Obama, leader of the FREE world, shaking hands and being chummy with dictators who force their people to live in poverty?

23. Manuel Zelaya, former president of Honduras, was overthrown by the Honduran military when he tried to remain in office even though his term was up and the people had voted for a new president. According to the Honduran constitution, Zelaya had to leave, but he tried to usurp the constitution and declare himself president for life. The Honduran military upheld their constitution, their laws. It was not a coup. Obama condemned the actions of the Honduran people and military demanding that they return Manuel Zelaya to power. Could this be an insight into Obama’s true intentions? Is he planning to remain president even when his term ends and the American people elect another to take his place?

President Obama swore an oath the uphold, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. Since then he has systematically violated it and has taken over industries that were one in the hands of the private sector. Nowhere in the Constitution is our government (the Presidency, Congress, and the Supreme Court) given the authority to take over businesses, mange health care, dole out welfare/entitlement funds to anyone, to buy crops from farmers.  Why is he not up for impeachment? (Many member of Congress should be impeached as well.)

Why is Obama concerning himself with universal healthcare, cap and trade, and another stimulus bill when we are being threatened by foreign powers?  North Korea vowed to wipe the United States off the map.  Why has Obama not addressed this?

Why is Obama cutting our military defenses?  Does he want the U.S. to be attacked?

How could the Obama administration “misread the economy” when he spent his entire campaign telling us that we “are in the worst economy since the Great Depression”?

Did anyone ever bother to consider that perhaps the 46 million people in this country who do not have health insurance, do not want it? (Everyone in this country has access to health care, even if they do not carry health insurance.  This will change under Obama’s health care plan.)

Did it ever occur to people, especially the government, that the reason the health care system in the U.S. is broken is because the of all the rules/regulations imposed on it by the government and the bureaucracy that always accompanies said regulations?

Why do people turn to the government to fix the economy when it was the government that caused the economic downturn?

Why is it that those who are for universal health care and praise Canada’s health care system, go to privately run hospital in the U.S. and stay far away from countries that have socialized medicine?  Also, if government run health care is so great, why do people who live in countries such as Canada, England, Sweden, etc. come to the United States for medical care? Look at Micheal Moore.  He constantly praises countries like Canada and Cuba for their great health care.  Yet when he needed medical help in losing weight, he went to a privately run hospital in Florida.  Hypocrite!

The U.S. Constitution is no more than 3-4 pages in length.  Why are all the bills passed by Congress more than a 1,000 pages?  Can we say, “pork barrel spending?”

Why is it that lately Congess has passed legislation without even reading or debating the bill?  Isn’t it important to know exactly what you are voting on and enacting into law?

Why would anyone want the federal government to run the health care system, or any system in this country when they destroy everything they touch? Look at the education system.  Since the formation of the Department of Education and the feds took control of education, the quality of education in this country has decreased every year.  High Schools are turning out kids who can barely read or do basic math, much less actually think.  Colleges routinely turn out graduates who know less than they did before they registered with classes.  Very few graduates understand history, basic economics, common sense, or that the gray matter between their ears is for thinking.  Analytical thinking.  It is not for listing to your ipod or watching the latest music video on you tube.

What ever happened to the American Spirit and America’s rugged individualism?

Why are liberals always angry at a bunch of dead, white males? THose dead, white males made this country that they live in and prospered in.

Everyday we are told that we need health care reform. Obama claims that the nation’s health care system needs to be overhauled and that he is the one to do it. Obama, Liberals and Democrats, the major media, and nearly every American believes that the health care system in this country is broken. People are told every day that if nothing is done, if the government doesn’t do something, then health care in America will vanish. People will not have access to medicine. The country will go bankrupt.

The truth, however, is that all of this is nothing more than fear mongering. Obama and his liberal friends want you to be frightened of losing your current health care coverage so that you will go along with their solution. The thing is, the solution being offered is the cause of the problem.

Obama claims that about 46 million Americans are not insured. No one bothers to ask why they have no insurance. It is assumed that these people want insurance but are unable to afford it or get it from an employer. The fact is that approximately 17.6 million of these 46 earn $50,000 or more a year and about 10 million earn more than $75,000 a year. People who earn this much tend to pay for their health care out of pocket. Therefore, they do not need insurance. Basically about 38% of these 46 million who are uninsured earn enough money to afford it, but choose not to have it. This 46 million uninsured is a number thrown around by politicians, Obama, and the media to gain sympathy from you.

The population of the United States is roughly 300 billion. The fact that 46 million people might not have health insurance is the least of our problems. The majority of Americans have health insurance whether it is through their employer, a private insurance company, or the government. There are a variety of reasons for why individuals do not have insurance. Affordability is at the bottom of the list. Most people do not carry health insurance for two reasons: they do not want it, or they don’t need it.

But here is a fact no one bothers to mention. Every American has access to health care. A person is never denied access to a doctor or a medical procedure because they don’t have insurance. The difference is, they pay for it directly out of their own pocket instead of waiting for a third party to cover the cost from money that they sent in over a period of time.

Whenever we purchase items from a store we pay for it directly right then and there. Why should medical care be any different? When you pay for medical care directly, you only pay for what you use and pay less than what you would through an insurance company or if you relied on the government. You are ultimately responsible for paying for your health care. It is your responsibility to go to the doctor when needed and then pay for it. It has never been the government’s responsibility to cover your medical costs. Such measures violate the U.S. Constitution and degrade individuals. It also robs us of you of your liberty.

Obama claims that universal health care will bring competitiveness to private insurance companies. This is a blatant lie. In every country that has had socialized medicine the private sector was destroyed, leaving people with only one option: the government’s program. The private sector has never been able to compete with the government. The private sector depends upon profit to stay in business. When the government steps in and says “free” the private sector disappears.

Obama claims that rising health care costs caused the deficit. Anyone with an ounce of common sense knows that this is absurd. What about the $700 billion stimulus bill that he passed back in January? How about the amount of spending that the government does every year with no regard for the fact that they do not have the money? How about all of the pork barrel spending that is snuck through on every bill that goes through Congress? All of this caused and adds to the deficit. If Congress and our current president cannot control their spending, the deficit will never get paid off, despite current health care costs.

The fact is, our nation is bankrupt. We have no money. The value of the dollar continues to fall. As a nation we continue to borrow more from China to pay for all of Congress’ spending. The two government run health insurance plans in this country are bankrupt. How can we as a nation afford a single payer system like what Canada has? We can’t.

People believe that Obama is pushing health care reform because he cares about them. Obama, like all politicians, does not care about anyone but himself. He doesn’t care about you or the fact that people are without health insurance. Obama sees this as an opportunity to seize more power and he is using it. If our Congress, and if Obama really cared about the people’s access and ability to pay for health care, they would be pushing for less government involvement. They would be pushing for an end to Medicare, an end to Medicaid, and for deregulation of the health care sector.

Here is another question: why are we moving towards universal health care when the countries that already have it are moving towards privatized medicine? We have had Medicare and Medicaid for about forty years. In that time they proved that government run health care does not work. Why is our government expanding these programs instead of getting rid of them?

In short there are five reason to ditch Universal healthcare in all of its forms:

1. Government run health care is unconstitutional

2. Government run health care does not work.

3. Government run health care drives up the cost of medicine and limits access

4. Countries with it are moving away from it.

5. This is the United States of America not Europe. It is time that we quit emulating Europe and be Americans with American innovations and American solutions.

This country was built by people who were fiercely independent, did not rely on the government for anything, solved their own problems, and did not bitch, whine or complain when things were not fair. They told the government where to stick. It’s time we do it again.