Massachusetts continues to raise new revenues by increasing taxes and taking advantage of increased federal assistance to prop up the failed plan – the underlying model in the national health insurance bills. Important programs for seniors have been cut several times along with aide to cities and towns. The number of state workers has been reduced, and cost sharing for state employees’s health insurance has increased. All of this trickles down to each of us in an adverse manner and only exacerbates our current problems. The same will happen across the nation if this model is signed into law.

It is also highly unlikely that states will be able to handle the expansion of Medicaid as this consistently mediocre insurance plan has always been subject to significant cuts due to constraints in federal funding and the need for states to maintain budget neutrality.

The MA plan and bills in Washington represent an expensive, bureaucratic morass that is not synonymous with the access and delivery of quality health care for all Americans – individuals, families, those who are self-employed and small business owners.

Punishing those who cannot afford to take on the cost of health insurance that the government has decided is affordable by threatening them with a costly tax penalty enforced by the IRS is an inhumane way to treat hard-working Americans.

Americans who are found eligible for the expanded Medicaid – income limits were increased, age was increased up to 64, childless adults will be eligible, and the asset test was dropped – will have no other choice under the national plan except to purchase insurance on the open market which Congress knows is not doable for low-to-modest income taxpayers. In one of the bills, these people may be auto-enrolled.

Obama said all Americans will have choice. Are low-to-modest income Americans not deserving of choice? Is the uniquely American health insurance plan a class-based system? Will Obama and members of Congress have choice?

Most office-based doctors refuse to take Medicaid patients. This means that depending where you live, you may not find a doctor, you may find only substandard doctors and you may no longer be able to see doctors who have been treating you.

Furthermore, Medicaid contains a federally-required estate recovery program stipulated by OBRA 1993. This means that all Medicaid members who are 55 and up – in some states the age is lower – are subject to this taking of assets. States that receive Medicaid funding are required to recover assets for all hosptial and RX but can recover for any and all medical care. Some states take the minimum, some the maximum, and some take a mix. Most people think that estate recovery is only for those entering long-term care institutions. Now you know that there is another side to this.

Obama said mandated health insurance, not a mandated LOAN!!!

All of this is blatant discrimination and exploitation of this segment of the population which is growing by leaps and bounds in this jobless, rotten economy.

When you contact your U.S. rep and senator to say the national plan discriminates and exploits people, you may be told that their job was not to revamp Medicaid. That is clearly incorrect – as mentioned above – they DID revamp Medicaid including DROPPING the ASSET TEST. They just did not remove the estate recovery requirement so that no states are required AND no states are allowed to take assets.

Don’t let ‘em bamboozle you!!

btw, the plans in the Exchange also discriminate and exploit b/c they are based on income. In MA, the cheapest state-approved plan is expensive and not affordable to use. People have had to drop coverage to pay for food, car repairs, heat, etc. and are now facing costly tax penalties.

The plans in the D.C. bills are worse, and you will be found eligible and assigned a cost the gov’t says you can afford based on your prior year income. The penalty in the House bill is 2.5% of your MODIFIED adjusted gross – modified means that the IRS code was changed so your tax exempt income accrued of received in a taxable year is counted. In the draft of the Baucus bill (Senate) I read, the modified adjusted gross is used to determine if you are eligible for a subsidzied plan and the cost they decide you can afford.

There is much more in these bills. Be very afraid and pay attention. You might also check out the recent lawsuits in MA by Boston Medical Center (July 2009) and five others (Dec 2009). This is a forewarning of what will be happening across the nation. Yet, the MA U.S. reps and senators look the other way as they march in lockstep with leadership. How very, very sad. They have no integrity.

Call it what you will, but this national plan is something else in the disguise of health care reform!

I do not want government in my health program.

The less government in my life, the better.

Please, all of you Blue Dogs stand together against Pelosi, Reed and Obama and vote down this health care bill. It is too large, too random, gives medicare to illegal aliens with Pelosi’s blessing and isn’t doing American’s any good at all! Illegal’s already get free medical at the expense of the taxpayer. Our jobs are going and now our freedoms! The Second Amendment is being stomped down by our President with the blessings of most of our elected officials! We don’t want a socialistic government run by a racist Kenyan who wasn’t born on US soil! He went to Occidental College in CA as a ‘non-American citizen’ under the name of Barry Soetoro – his step-father, Soetoro, adopted him so, therefore, the use of his ‘real’ last name and his ‘real’ citizenship wasn’t USA!

Please continue to stand tall in front of your Legal American Constituents instead of pandering to Obama’s wish list of removing our rights, shoving socialism and racism down our throats and destroying our Proud Nation!