Obama: Health Care and Taxes

Here's an eyeopener: House Health-Care Proposal Adds $600 Billion in Taxes

Health-care overhaul legislation being drafted by House Democrats will include $600 billion in tax increases and $400 billion in cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel said.

Democrats will work on the bill’s details next week as they struggle through “what kind of heartburn” it will cause to agree on how to pay for revamping the health-care system, Rangel, a New York Democrat, said today. The measure’s cost is reaching well beyond the $634 billion President Barack Obama proposed in his budget request to Congress as a 10-year down payment for the policy changes.

Asked whether the cost of a health-care overhaul would be more than $1 trillion over a decade, Rangel said, “the answer is yes.” Some Senate Republicans, including Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, say the costs will likely exceed $1.5 trillion.

...Obama has pledged that health-care changes won’t add to the deficit. To accomplish that, he’s proposed getting about $600 billion by reducing tax deductions available to the wealthy, and by trimming Medicare payments to insurance companies.

That won’t be enough to cover the overhaul costs. Obama said this week he plans in the coming days to disclose more proposals for raising “additional sources of revenue.” In a letter last week to Senate Democrats drafting legislation he said he will be proposing between $200 billion and $300 billion in further Medicare and Medicaid cuts.

Obama plans to give a speech Monday in Chicago to the American Medical Association as part of his campaign to build up support for what could be the biggest changes to healthcare policy since Medicare was established in 1965.

Rangel said that while House Democrats will likely release more details about health policy changes in their legislation next week, the package of offsetting tax increases and spending cuts likely will come later. Democrats, he said, want to put forth the more-positive aspects of an overhaul first. Rangel also wants to let lawmakers have time to study and weigh in on proposed offsets.

“We have a problem in not wanting to attract enough negative attention to the bill in terms of the pay-fors,” he said. “Let them get a good feel for the coverage.”

I hope Americans are paying attention. It's summer and people are preoccupied with other things, but what could be more important than health care?

Remember Obama's campaign promise:

"And I can make a firm pledge: under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase - not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes."

Obama has broken that pledge already and he's certain to confiscate even more of the earnings of American families making less than $250,000.

What Obama and the Democrats are planning to do will touch each of our lives.

DISASTER!

Rationed care, and higher and higher taxes.

It makes me sick.

No to ObamaCare.
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Speaking of disaster: Badger State Taxes Getting Ugly