Come November

[sirs]

If the House Democratic majority passes Obama's health care proposals, one of two things will happen by Election Day, 2010 -- and neither one will be healthy for the Democrats seeking re-election.

Either
- the Medicare cuts will take effect
or
- they will be postponed by a terrified Congress.

If they take effect, physicians' fees will be slashed 21 percent and hospital reimbursements for Medicare patients will be cut by $1.3 billion. Tens of thousands of doctors and thousands of health care institutions -- hospitals, hospices, outpatient clinics and such -- will refuse to treat Medicare patients.

Entire cities will be without one doctor in important specialties who will take care of the elderly on Medicare. Particularly in fields like G.I. care or arthritic and joint pain, doctors will simply refuse to accept the low reimbursement rates they are being offered and hospitals will refuse all but emergency care to Medicare patients. In effect, the elderly will experience a doctors' strike against Medicare patients.

Congress, faced with this massive revolt coming right on the verge of the election, may back down and postpone the cuts. Originally, doctor reimbursement rates were scheduled to drop on March 1 of this year, but Congress postponed it until the fall. Now the Democrats in Congress will face not only cuts in doctors' fees but in all forms of Medicare reimbursement -- the so-called "market basket" of cuts programmed into Obamacare.

Congress, being Congress, will probably seek to postpone the cuts until after Election Day. But in doing so, they would expose the deficit-reduction and cost-containment features of Obama's bill for the fraud that they are. The news media headlines would blare that Congress just voted to add tens or hundreds of billions to the deficit, and the big-spending, high-borrowing image of Congress will worsen. All pretense that Obamacare is not a reckless spending bill will be stripped away, and we will be face to face with the reality that it will add hugely to the deficit.

All this will come at precisely the time that House and Senate Democrats are scrambling to rebut the attacks of their Republican challengers over these very issues. If Congress votes to postpone the Medicare cuts, as a former secretary of health and human services predicted to me, they will have to answer for their fiscal irresponsibility right before the election.

Either poison -- the cuts or the deficit -- will be enough to eradicate an entire generation of House and Senate Democrats.

And these cuts will take place against a backdrop of
- continuing increases in health insurance premiums,
- no expansion of coverage (it doesn't kick in until 2013)
- and no tangible benefit from the Obama bill.

This is the prospect the House and Senate Democrats who vote for Obamacare will face in the fall of 2010. This is the record they will have to defend.


Or, they could save their political lives and vote no




Or, they could save their political lives and vote no.

[sirs]

Apparently they decided to throw the switch.  Looking forward to Nov now.  Especially when I can reference how anything the GOP does is justified as it's the will of the "duly elected representatives"

[sirs]

We?ve been reminded many times that elections have consequences. Yesterday we saw the consequence of voting for those who believe in ?fundamentally transforming? America whether we want it or not. Yesterday they voted. In November, we get to vote. We won?t forget what we saw yesterday. Congress passed a bill while Americans said ?no,? and thousands of everyday citizens even surrounded the Capitol Building to beg them not to do it. Has there ever been a more obvious exhibition of a detached and imperious government?

In the weeks to come, we can expect them to try to change the subject, but we won?t forget. Don't let them move on to further ?transformational? steps while forgetting what Congress just did against the will of the people. Though Obamacare will inflict billions in new taxes on individuals and employers, at least it creates some jobs: the IRS might have to hire as many as 16,000 new employees to enforce all the new taxes and penalties the bill calls for! And that doesn?t include all the other government jobs from the 159 new agencies, panels, commissions and departments this bill will create. As the private sector shrinks, we can count on government to keep growing along with the deficits needed to keep it all afloat. (Is this the kind of ?change? Americans asked for?)

In the end, this unsustainable bill jeopardizes the very thing it was supposed to fix ? our health care system. Somewhere along the way we forgot that health care reform is about doctors and patients, not the IRS and politicians. Instead of helping doctors with tort reform, this bill has made primary care physicians think about getting out of medicine. It was supposed to make health care more affordable, but our premiums will continue to go up. It was supposed to help more people get coverage, but there will still be 23 million uninsured people by 2019.

Though they?d like us to forget, we will remember the corrupt deals, the corrupt process, the lack of transparency, the deceptive gimmicks to game the CBO score, and the utter disregard for the will of the American people. Elections have consequences, and we won?t forget those who promised to hold firm against government funding of abortion, but caved at the last minute in exchange for a non-binding executive order promised by the most pro-abortion president to ever occupy the White House.

All along we?ve said that we want real health care reform, but this isn?t it. We mustn?t be discouraged now. We must look to November when our goal will be to rebuke big government?s power grab, reject this unwanted ?transformation? of America, and repeal dangerous portions of Obamacare that will bury us under more Big Government control.

This is just the beginning of our efforts to take back our country. Consider yesterday?s vote a clarion call and a spur to action. We will not let America sink into further debt without a fight. We will not abandon the American dream to government dependency, fewer freedoms and less opportunity. Change is made at the ballot box. If we work together, we can renew our optimistic pioneering spirit, revive our economy, and restore constitutional limits.

Stand tall, America. November is coming!

- Sarah Palin


Goodbye, Democrat majority