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Posts tagged ‘Medicare’

Sunsetting Federal Spending Programs Is A Fantastic Idea


BY: DAVID HARSANYI | FEBRUARY 09, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/02/09/sunsetting-federal-spending-programs-is-a-fantastic-idea/

Rick Scott
Why do Americans have to live with legislative decisions made nearly 90 years ago?

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When Joe Biden accused Republicans of planning to “cut” Social Security and Medicare during his State of the Union address, it was — like virtually all the other things he said — a lie. His claim was tantamount to accusing Democrats of supporting a “plan” to shut down air travel because Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez once proposed it.

The president was referring to Rick Scott’s ill-timed “12 Point Plan to Rescue America,” which included, among numerous other nonstarters, a proposal to sunset all federal spending programs every five years. The proposal, contra Biden’s contention, had no support from Republicans and nothing to do with the debt ceiling fight.

None of that means that asking Congress to reauthorize federal spending bills every few years isn’t a great idea. Why would stalwarts of “democracy” oppose revisiting spending decisions made by legislators nearly 90 years ago? No living person has ever voted on them. And though “liberals” are generally more protective of Social Security than the Bill of Rights, entitlement programs aren’t foundational governing ideas, they do not protect our natural rights, nor are they at the heart of the American project. Government dependency is, in fact, at odds with all of it.

Every year, hundreds of thousands of private-sector establishments go out of business, and yet not a single federal government program ever does. While nearly every facet of society embraces cost-saving efficiencies, the federal government perpetually grows. It is madness. Simply as a function of good governance, it would be reasonable for Congress to review the efficacy and cost of existing federal programs, and then make suggestions for reforms or elimination or — yikes — privatization. Forget entitlements. Is there any reason we shouldn’t revisit the billions spent on the obsolete Natural Resource Conservation Service (created in 1935 to help farmers deal with soil corrosion) or the Rural Electrification Administration (created in the same year, when large swaths of rural Americans did not have electricity) or the counterproductive Small Business Administration or the subsidy sucking Amtrak corporation?

Indeed, there is widespread support for Social Security — a Bismarckian import, first championed nationally by corrupt populists like Huey Long to augment retirement. One suspects this is largely because Americans have been compelled by the state to pay into the pyramid scheme. Many people build their retirements around the program. They have no choice. Compulsion is a hallmark of leftist policy, from entitlements to Obamacare to unionization to public school systems. And by forcing participation, we’ve created a generational trap. Voters have been fearmongered into believing that any reform means something is being stolen from them, when no serious proposal has ever cut existing benefits.

In the 1970s, Biden supported re-upping federal spending authorization every four years and requiring Congress to “make a detailed study of the program before renewing it.” Obviously, Biden hasn’t stuck to a single principled position in his entire career. But it is worth noting there was plenty of bipartisan support for sunsetting bills from 1970 through the 2000s — including from Ed Muskie, Jesse Helms, liberal “lion” Ted Kennedy, and George W. Bush.

Until very recently the center of both parties also agreed entitlement reform would be necessary to keep Medicare and Social Security solvent. In today’s Idiocracy, we have a president who argues that a $5 trillion spending bill costs “zero” dollars, so we’re about a zillion lightyears away from responsible governance.

If Social Security is so deeply popular — and everyone saw cowardly Republicans promise Biden they wouldn’t do anything to fix these programs that are bankrupting the country — what’s the problem? Even with the highly remote chance of a sunset law, the chances of reform would be still more remote. Look at how Washington almost perfunctorily lifts the debt ceiling. The only shared principle in D.C. is risk aversion.

Still, if Congress were automatically impelled to vote on existing law, it would create more political space to at least suggest changes and perhaps revisit mistakes. If nothing else, Congress would be marginally more “productive” if it was forced to occasionally deal with existing problems rather than concocting new ways to create them.

David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist, a nationally syndicated columnist, a Happy Warrior columnist at National Review, and author of five books—the most recent, Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent. He has appeared on Fox News, C-SPAN, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, ABC World News Tonight, NBC Nightly News and radio talk shows across the country. Follow him on Twitter, @davidharsanyi.

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In The Wake of Roe’s Demise, Democrats Are Doing All They Can to Thwart Democracy


BY: JOHN DANIEL DAVIDSON | JULY 22, 2022

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2022/07/22/in-the-wake-of-roes-demise-democrats-are-doing-all-they-can-to-thwart-democracy/

Merrick Garland

Democrats say they love democracy, but when it produces laws they oppose, they’ll use all their power to undermine it.

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Democrats love to talk about democracy — mostly about how it’s under threat from Republicans and “Christian nationalists” and anyone who opposes their agenda. But at least on a rhetorical level, they seem to cherish democracy and rightly think that a government of the people, by the people is the surest safeguard against tyranny.

In practice, though, they hate democracy and will use every tool at their disposal to subvert and destroy it. Hardly a day goes by that Democrats don’t proclaim as much by their actions. Just look at their response to the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade last month, which triggered laws in more than a dozen states banning or placing new restrictions on abortion. Voters in those states elected the people who passed these new laws, which in many cases are broadly popular. By overturning Roe, the court breathed new life into the democratic process, returning an issue to the American people that an earlier Supreme Court had snatched away from them.

But Democrats don’t really want democracy when it comes to abortion, which they consider sacrosanct. They have no qualms about protecting it from regulations by state lawmakers through the raw exercise of federal executive power, if need be. This week, Attorney General Merrick Garland threatened to sue states that have outlawed or restricted abortion since the end of Roe, and he also said the Justice Department would try to get a judge to toss a Texas lawsuit that would block newly issued rules from the Biden administration’s U.S. Department of Health and Human Services forcing doctors to perform abortions in emergency rooms.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Garland’s DOJ said last week it had launched a special task force to “evaluate state laws that hinder women’s ability to seek abortions in other states where the procedure remains legal or that ban federally approved medication that terminates a pregnancy.” The task force will also “oppose state efforts to penalize federal employees” who perform abortions “authorized by federal law.”

What could that mean? Well, take a look at the lawsuit Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton just filed against HHS. The administration is trying to use the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) to force ER doctors to perform abortions, even if it contravenes state laws outlawing the procedure. EMTALA was passed in 1986 as a way to prevent “patient dumping,” or turning away people who couldn’t pay, and it requires hospitals that receive Medicare money (which today is all of them) to treat people who show up at an ER in need of emergency treatment.

The Texas lawsuit argues the Biden administration is trying to “use federal law to transform every emergency room in the country into a walk-in abortion clinic,” and that “EMTALA does not authorize — and has never authorized — the federal government to compel healthcare providers to perform abortions.”

Garland and HHS claim that EMTALA preempts state law, but it’s unclear what that means in the context of the new HHS rules. If a state legislature passed a law saying that emergency rooms are prohibited from treating patients who have no health insurance, then yes, EMTALA would preempt that.

But as Paxton’s lawsuit rightly notes, the law says nothing about abortion, nor does it say anything about which specific treatments a hospital ER must administer. It only states that Medicare-participating hospitals have to provide “stabilizing treatment” for “emergency medical conditions,” and it specifically defines both of those terms in the statute. 

For Democrats, though, laws passed by representatives of the people don’t carry as much weight as rule by administrative fiat. On July 11, the Biden administration’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued “guidance” purportedly reminding hospitals of their obligations under EMTALA. But the guidance was much more than a reminder, and it was accompanied by a letter from HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra that amounted to an abortion mandate for hospitals, asserting powers under EMTALA that simply don’t exist anywhere in federal law.

First, Becerra’s letter claims that if an ER doctor determines that “abortion is the stabilizing treatment necessary to resolve [an emergency medical condition as defined by EMTALA], the physician must provide that treatment.”

But this is nothing more than a cheap word game. Abortion isn’t a “stabilizing treatment,” and nowhere in federal law is it construed as such. Becerra is conflating Democrats’ loose rhetoric about abortion — that it’s “reproductive healthcare” or “women’s health” — with the straightforward reality of the federal EMTALA statute, which says nothing about abortion and, to the contrary, specifically includes a mention of an “emergency medical condition” as one that threatens the life of an unborn child. 

Second, Becerra’s false claim that EMTALA preempts state abortion laws is contradicted by the plain language of the law itself, which says it doesn’t preempt state law “except to the extent that the requirement directly conflicts with a requirement” of EMTALA. But abortion is not a requirement of EMTALA and doesn’t even fit the law’s definition of “stabilizing treatment” for an “emergency medical condition.”

In a decent country, Texas would easily win this lawsuit — and the Justice Department would never step in to try to get it thrown out. But Democrats are committed to subverting the democratic process at both the state and federal level in order to preserve some shred of their abortion regime. They’re trying to preempt state laws they don’t like by twisting the meaning of federal laws that don’t have anything to say about abortion.

Remember that the next time you hear President Biden or some other leading Democrat talk about “threats to democracy.” They don’t care about democracy, they care about power. And they will use every ounce of it they have to advance their policies — the will of the people be damned.

John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.

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Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco


Your Money and Your Life

URL of the original posting site: http://comicallyincorrect.com/2017/09/18/your-money-and-your-life/#BOL0B0Wv61DWx5du.99

Bernie Sanders wants single payer Medicare for everybody on earth because it’s a right, and America pays for it.

Political Cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2017.

To see more Legal Insurrection Branco cartoons, click here.

A.F.Branco Coffee Table Book <—- Order Here!

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Obamacare Regulation Pressures Insurers to Cover Sex Change Operations


waving flagBY: May 13, 2016

URL of the original posting site: http://freebeacon.com/issues/obamacare-pressures-insurers-sex-change/

The Department of Health and Human Services issued a final regulation Friday that will pressure health insurers to cover sex change operations, which could then be subsidized by taxpayers through Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare.

The final rule comes the same day the Obama administration ordered schools to let children use whatever bathroom or locker room matches “their chosen gender identity,” or risk losing federal funding.

The agency released its final “Nondiscrimination in Health Programs and Activities” rule, which enforces Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act.pure socialism

The regulation “prohibits discrimination based on race, color, national origin, sex, age, or disability; enhances language assistance for individuals with limited English proficiency; and protects individuals with disabilities,” the agency said in a release.Leftist Socialist Propagandist News

Doctors and health insurers also cannot deny “health care or health coverage based on an individual’s sex, including discrimination based on pregnancy, gender identity, and sex stereotyping.”

In a fact sheet on the portion of the rule regarding sex discrimination, the government explains that health care providers cannot refuse to cover all services related to a sex change—such as hormone therapy, breast implants, and the surgery itself—as a matter of policy.

“Categorical coverage exclusions or limitations for all health care services related to gender transition are discriminatory,” the agency said.

The rule also includes a bathroom provision, stating that “individuals must be treated consistent with their gender identity, including in access to facilities.”Complete Message

Additionally, health care providers “may not deny or limit treatment for any health services that are ordinarily or exclusively available to individuals of one gender based on the fact that a person seeking such services identifies as belonging to another gender.”

The regulation will apply to virtually all hospitals, health care providers, and insurance companies.

“The Section 1557 final rule applies to any health program or activity, any part of which receives funding from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), such as hospitals that accept Medicare or doctors who receive Medicaid payments; the Health Insurance Marketplaces and issuers that participate in those Marketplaces; and any health program that HHS itself administers,” the agency said.engineering

The Obama administration praised the rule as a win for “civil rights.”

The regulation is the “first federal civil rights law to broadly prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex in federally funded health programs,” the agency said.

“A central goal of the Affordable Care Act is to help all Americans access quality, affordable health care,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell. “Today’s announcement is a key step toward realizing equity within our health care system and reaffirms this administration’s commitment to giving every American access to the health care they deserve.”pure socialism

The agency told the Washington Free Beacon that the rule does not force health insurance companies to cover sex reassignment surgeries, but companies cannot deny treatments related to a gender transition outright.

“The final rule does not require covered entities to cover any particular procedure or treatment for transition-related care, including gender reassignment surgery. However, it does bar a covered entity from categorically excluding from coverage or limiting coverage for all gender transition-related services,” an agency spokesperson said.

The rule itself could open the door for lawsuits by transgender individuals, who could claim that being denied a service related to a sex-change violates their civil rights because it is now illegal to deny care on the basis of gender identity.

Several states already had policies in place that ban private insurance companies and Medicaid providers from excluding services for a gender transition. California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Illinois, New York, Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia all have “explicitly prohibited private health insurance plans sold in the state from having exclusions for transition-related care,” according to the National Center for Transgender Equality. The final rule now essentially makes those laws national.

The Obama administration removed a ban from Medicare covering gender reassignment surgeries in 2014.

The average surgery cost for a man to become a woman is $23,000.Not okay

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Elizabeth Harrington

Elizabeth Harrington is a staff writer for the Washington Free Beacon. Elizabeth graduated from Temple University in 2010. Prior to joining the Free Beacon, she worked as a staff writer for CNSNews.com. Her email address is elizabeth@freebeacon.com. Her Twitter handle is @LizWFB.

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“What Did You Say Political Left Apologist?


According to a recognized Political Left spokesperson, the Romney/Ryan campaign is misrepresenting Obama Care. The Romney/Ryan campaign has stated that Presidents Obama’s plan takes half a trillion dollars out of Medicare to help pay for Obama Care. According to the apologist on Fox this morning, that half trillion dollars, in part,  comes from the “massive fraud and over payments to hospitals under the current Medicare System. “WHAT DID YOU SAY?”

Typical of all other interviewers, that answer went unchallenged. The next question should have been, “When did the President Obama administration solve this problem saving Medicare for a few more years?” Isn’t that what you want to know? If they have solved the problem, then why keep that silent?

If they have solved the problem, doesn’t the money put in Medicare from taxpayers income checks belong in Medicare and not put somewhere else? The administration claims they are concerned about ending Medicare as we know it, and blame the Romney/Ryan campaign of proposing just that. Yet, by taking funds from Medicare, funded by all American tax payers, and using it for its unintended purpose, aren’t they ending Medicare for everyone in 2024?

The Romney/Ryan campaign’s proposal DOES NOT END MEDICARE AS WE KNOW IT! Those 55 and older are no effected at all. For the younger American taxpayer, they will be given the choice of going on Medicare, or taking that same amount of money and acquiring a better policy. For those American taxpayers that can afford to pay more, they will be able to get the quality of coverage they want. Al others will be covered as written as established.

TO ALL NEWS MEDIA INTERVIEWERS. “Quit being concerned about the next question and listen to the answers. THEN base your next question based on that answer. That will make you an investigative interviewer. As a result, lies will by amplified, and the masked “Talking-Heads” will be revealed for what they are; Professional puppets spewing the rhetoric of their owners/employers/ideology groups. America is begging for such brave people in the media. Who will be the first?”

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