With billions of dollars in Medicaid spending at risk in Congress

(Reuters) The "red" and "blue" states that mark America's political divide between conservative and liberal sympathies are often far apart on issues involving healthcare, including Medicaid, the $420 billion-a-year program for the poor.

But lobbyists say governors, legislators and other state officials, Republican and Democrat alike, have found common ground in a push to convince a special congressional deficit panel that White House-backed Medicaid cuts totaling $41 billion will only weaken a system that already struggles to deliver care to 60 million beneficiaries.

The 12-member bipartisan panel, dubbed the "super committee" because of its powers, is tasked with finding $1.2 trillion in savings to cut huge U.S. deficits. The full Congress is due to vote on their recommendations by late December.

State officials appear most unified on an alternative cost-cutting strategy, which they say could save more than $100 billion by changing the healthcare delivery system for the poorest, sickest and most costly patients. Known as "dual-eligibles," they qualify for both Medicaid and Medicare, the government-run program for the elderly.

There are about 9 million dual-eligibles and state officials see billions of dollars in savings from shifting them into managed care plans better able to eliminate unnecessary doctor's visits, tests and hospital admissions.

"Support for that proposition is very broad," Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley, who chairs the Democratic Governors Association, told Reuters.

States also hope the super committee will adopt proposals to control Medicaid prescription drug costs, combat waste and fraud, and relax federal restrictions on benefits and eligibility, lobbyists said. http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/29/us-usa-debt-states-medicaid-idUSTRE78S0PK20110929

Freeze government salaries until the economy picks up again

Since 55 million retirees have received no cost of living increases for the last two years it only seems fair to freeze all government and elected officials' salaries until jobs in the private sector grow and tax revenues increase.

Moreover, there should be no bonuses for government employees until the economy becomes healthy enough to increase tax revenues.

These are ominous times and really tough decisions are needed. Printing and borrowing more money is not the answer.

Bill Huppert  

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/readersrespond/bs-ed-social-security-colas-20110929,0,2739843.story

Invite to Tea Party After He Calls Movement Racist

Actor Morgan Freeman has received a standing invitation to attend a Tea Partyevent after he dismissed the conservative grass-roots movement as racist.

Ali Akbar, a 26-year-old black small business owner who is one of the original national Tea Party organizers, wrote an open letter to the Academy-Award winning performer, who is African American, inviting him to a Tea Party in Tennessee, the place of Freeman’s birth, or any location in the country, to prove his opinion is wrong. 

McCaughey: Surge in Costs Start Of Obamacare Disaster

A new report claims that Obamacare is only negligibly responsible for the surge in health insurance premiums this year, but former New York Lt. Gov. and healthcare expert Betsy McCaughey says its provisions do come with a steep price and there is “no tooth fairy.”


The survey of private and public employers conducted by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation disclosed that the average cost of a family policy climbed 9 percent to $15,073 in 2011, the largest increase since 2005. Premiums for single coverage rose 8 percent.

The group’s findings also showed that health insurance is consuming a bigger share of employer costs, forcing many companies to eliminate pay raises and pass on more medical costs to workers.

Drew Altman, chief executive officer of the Kaiser Family Foundation, asserted that the healthcare reform bill enacted last year accounts for just 1 to 2 percentage points of the premium increases in 2011.

But McCaughey told Newsmax: "The early provisions of the Obama health law are bending the cost curve up, the opposite direction from what the president promised. The new rules — young adults on parents' plans, no annual caps on benefits, and no copays for preventive care — are not free. They add to the premium. There is no tooth fairy." http://www.newsmax.com/Headline/mccaughey-healthcare-costs-insurance/2011/09/28/id/412623?s=al&promo_code=D261-1

Liberal scare tactics: Death by government cuts

"To be a little melodramatic, the budget would kill people," New York Times columnist Paul Krugman recently told CNN about House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan's Path to Prosperity. "No question." With the Federal Emergency Management Agency's disaster relief fund set to run out of money Thursday, and with none of the federal government's 12 appropriations bills signed into law so far, you can expect a lot more melodramatic quotes like this one in the coming weeks.

Liberal assertions that cuts in government spending will cause certain death are nothing new. Sixteen years ago this week, Krugman's fellow columnist Bob Herbert warned New York Times readers that the welfare reform bill Republicans were then debating in the Senate "would hurt many people, would kill some and would help no one."  http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/2011/09/liberal-scare-tactics-death-government-cuts

Obama's unserious plans are losing the future

In consecutive weeks, President Obama has presented two painfully unserious and economically misguided proposals. The first, his $450 billion "American Jobs Act," is another stimulus proposal, based on the ill-conceived notion that more government spending is the answer to what ails the economy. The second is the president's plan to raise taxes by $1.5 trillion on American job creators. Both plans are a far cry from "winning the future," as the president claims on the campaign trail.

Like the president's last stimulus, which cost nearly $1 trillion and failed to turn the economy around, Stimulus 2.0 assumes that massive government spending on feel-good projects (with the administration picking the economic winners and losers) will result in job creation and jolt the economy out of its doldrums. This assumption is already a proven loser.

Stimulus 1.0 ended in bad investments, massive corporate welfare, wasteful spending and more debt. What was supposed to keep unemployment below 8 percent, create millions of new jobs and hasten the economic recovery instead stands as a textbook example of the failed liberal notion that we can spend our way out of an economic hole.

The most egregious failure of the first stimulus is the now-infamous case of Solyndra, a California solar energy company, which received a $535 million stimulus loan guarantee from the Department of Energy. At the time, Obama said such investments were "leading the way toward a brighter, more prosperous future." Vice President Biden said, "We are not only creating jobs today, but laying the foundation for long-term growth in the 21st century economy."

Solyndra has now filed for bankruptcy and more than 1,000 jobs have been lost, sadly emphasizing the disastrous consequences of economic meddling by the federal government.

President Obama then followed up his poor jobs plan with an equally unserious and overtly political deficit reduction proposal. It relies heavily on enormous tax increases at a time when the economy can least afford them.  http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/2011/09/obamas-unserious-plans-are-losing-future

Replace the property tax

I think everyone, including our legislators, would agree that school property taxes are out of control and only getting worse with relentless increases on the horizon.

My previous letter listed 10 reasons why we should replace school property taxes. Replace them with what, you ask? The answer is very simple. The state sales tax. The state Sales and Use tax was enacted in 1953 specifically to fund education. Why not broaden it?

The Pennsylvania Coalition of Taxpayer Associations, with 64 member groups statewide, has a plan to do just that. In simplest terms, the property tax replacement plan will replace school property taxes with a broadened 6 percent sales tax. The plan will not increase the sales tax rate, but simply broaden the base to include more services and items such as gum, candy, magazines and dry cleaning.

The sales tax was enacted to fund our schools; not property taxes. The property tax should be replaced with the most broad-based tax available so that everyone contributes. This heavy tax burden should not lie solely on the homeowners of Pennsylvania. This simple plan can work to ensure more equitable school funding and fairness for taxpayers and schoolchildren.

The plan has been vetted against numbers provided by the House Appropriations Committee and other economic entities and has been proven to work.

Do not let your legislators tell you that replacing the school property tax is too difficult. It's just not true. They just need the political courage to do what's right: replace the property tax!

For details on the plan, please go to www.ptcc.us. If you agree with the plan, contact your legislators (representative, senator and Gov. Corbett) and tell them you want them to replace the unfair property tax now. No tax should have the power to leave you homeless.
MARGIE LAVIN
EAST HOPEWELL TOWNSHIP http://www.ydr.com/letters/ci_18979709