Overweight People, Smokers Face Fine Under Health Bill

Overweight People, Smokers Face Fine Under Health Bill

The Senate Finance Committee approved an amendment to the healthcare bill Wednesday that would allow employers to charge workers with unhealthy lifestyles more for their insurance coverage.

The amendment would permits employers to adjust premiums as much as 50 percent according to the level of workers’ health habits, up from 20 percent now.

“Weight gain and unhealthy lifestyles that focus on smoking and lack of exercise have skyrocketed our healthcare costs," Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said in a statement cited by Politico news service.

Ensign, who sponsored the amendment along with and Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., said, "These costs could be lowered by focusing on what makes us healthy — through weight loss programs, smoking cessation and preventive care. Voluntary employee participation in these areas should naturally be reflected in lower healthcare costs.”

Opponents, including the American Cancer Society and the American Heart Association, counter that the new rule may spur insurers and companies to keep basing coverage decisions on pre-existing conditions, even though the bill itself prohibits that.

A consortium of healthcare advocacy groups wrote in a letter: “While we appreciate the amendments’ intent to encourage healthy behaviors, we believe that allowing employers to vary premiums by up to 50 percent of the total cost of employee coverage could lead to discriminatory practices and make health coverage unaffordable for those who need it the most.”

Sen. John Barrasso, a Wyoming Republican who is a doctor himself, says premium differences are important.

“Americans want simple, practical, affordable changes now. . . Changes that offer reductions in premiums for making healthy lifestyle choices,” he wrote in the Little Chicago Review.

By: Dan Weil – Newsmax

Polls Show Details Killing ObamaCare!

The Latest Rasmussen Poll - 56% Opposed To ObamaCare!!!! Other polls as high as 63 opposed to ObamaCare

Only beteween 39 and 41% Favor Government Health Care Takeover - A New Low!

Fox News reports that the bill "has no Republican support and moderate Democrats say the Senate will never go along", but pressure from the White House and Democratic Leadership is tough.

We are starting to win but we need to kill off this beast. Healthcare in America can be improved but what Obama wants to do was wrong and he continues to lie and mislead Americans.

Watch This U-Tube and Then Call White House Monday Oct 5th to tell the president you don't want him controlling your healthcare

Keep up the Pressure!!

Call the United States Capitol switchboard today... every day at (202) 224-3121 until ObamaCare and Cap and Trade our defeated!

Senators from your State.

Call the White House at 202-456-1414 and tell President Obama you have had enough!

Posted: Knowledge Creates Power and cross-posted: Daily Thought Pad

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Stop Paying the Crooks

The Healing of America

A Personal Message from Michelle Malkin

I'm thrilled to announce that my new book, Culture of Corruption, is #1 on the New York Times bestseller list for the fourth consecutive week!

If you haven't read it yet, let me give you just a little taste:

Phew. Janitors in newsrooms across America worked overtime in the halcyon days after Barack Obama won the presidency. It wasn't easy cleaning the drool off laptops and floors in the offices of journalists everywhere. New York Times columnist David Brooks praised Team Obama's "postpartisan rhetoric" and "practical creativity." Awestruck Good Morning America anchor Robin Roberts echoed the conventional wisdom: "Some would say it's a team of rivals, Ã la President Lincoln, or is a better comparison a team of geniuses as FDR did?"

I wrote this book to give you the exhaustive answer that President Obama's gyrating media harem doesn't want you to read.

Obama's team is a dysfunctional and dangerous group of business-as-usual cronies. The corruption stretches from wealthy power brokers Rahm Emanuel and Valerie Jarrett, to pay-to-play-tainted Michelle Obama and Joe Biden, to ethically challenged, bailout-bungling money men Larry Summers and Tim Geithner at Treasury, crime-coddling corporate lawyer Eric Holder at DOJ, to the crooked Service Employees International Union, and the ever-expanding swamp of Washington lobbyists.

This book pulls together the familiar and not-so-familiar pieces to force Obama hagiographers to confront an alternate narrative. A reality-based narrative. A narrative of incompetence, nepotism, influence-peddling, and self-dealing that defies the stubborn myth that Barack Obama is the One True Agent of Hope and Change.

In short: This is a government of the crony, by the lobbyist, and for all the well-heeled, well-connected people Barack Obama spent his entire campaign demonizing.

In the era of "new politics," judge him as you would judge other mere mortals. Judge him not by the company that preceded him. Judge him by the company he keeps.

Thanks for your time. If you've already bought Culture of Corruption—thank you! If not, use one of the links below to buy it online today.

Sincerely,

Michelle Malkin

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Posted: Knowledge Creates Power

Michelle Obama is Building Her Boot Camps For Radicals with Tax-Payer Money

Here is the Latest on AmeriCorps scandal via Michelle Malkin:

Your AmeriCorps grant dollars at work

Barack Hussein Obama broke the law he sponsored when he was a senator. He fired an Inspector General who was coming too close to uncovering the corruption in Obama's Brown Shirts program.

Now Senator Grassley -- co-sponsor of the law Obama broke -- wants to know more about the firing of the IG and Michelle Obama's involvement.

What is Michelle Obama's role in this?

Michelle's Boot Camps For Radicals - INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Thursday, September 04, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Above article is dated September 04, 2008 folks.

I did post about it within two days:

Obamas’ Liberal Re-Education Program for American Youth

You see the partisan media, now wholly owned by the state that is ruled by Barack Hussein Obama who is working to turn this country into a third world tyranny, covered all this information. Most Americans are fooled by a guy who won't even bother to show us his birth certificate.

Now King Obama and his Queen Michelle who sports $540 sneakers want to use tax-payer money to re-educate and radicalize our youth. You better not stand in their way. We are not far from the dark days of communist soviets when sons and daughters turned in their parents for being against the regime. Is this the Hope and Change Crap you voted for?

I just cannot close this post without mentioning the sheer stupidity of Republicans in Congress who voted for Obama's brownshirts’ bill.

51 Comments | 7 Trackbacks

Photoshop credit: Leo Alberti - Thanks Micelle Malkin.com

Community service, Obama-style

Info Source: MichelleMalkin.com / NonStopSite.com

Posted: Knowledge Creates Power

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At What Point Does the Hope and Change Begin??

Yesterday President Obama the man who ran on the promise of being a new kind of politician who was going to change the way Washington does business including earmarks quietly signed the massive $410 billion omnibus spending bill, laden with earmarks, on the heels of the recently-passed "stimulus" package. The overall total for both bills exceeds more than $1.6 trillion of taxpayer money, including interest. After signing the bill without cameras the president gave a speech about how this was the last time this would happen; that from here on out things would change, including the earmark situation, but after he had first justified the need for earmarks in certain situations. He also repeated that this was last year’s business. Excuse me… This is a new year; he is a new president and it is this year’s money! The budget didn’t pass last year because President Bush wouldn’t sign it and it has now doubled and tripled in size and earmarked projects, but Obama had no problem signing it.

‘I will stop earmarks and review the bill next time’ and ‘this is the last time I sign a bill like this’ is like an alcoholic saying I’ll stop drinking next time and I am just taking this one final drink. If President Obama was really the type of leader and politician that he promised during the elections he needed to veto this entire bill or go through it line by line and use his power of line item veto. Instead what he did prove again is that he is not the leader that his followers had hoped for and that the signs of change that we have seen have not been for the positive.

We have a man in the White House preaching to the Average American about practicing personal restraint and responsibility during these tough times who can’t stop smoking while essentially living in a non-smoking building and who can’t stop spending long enough to breathe and take account of what is going on around him.

This is not the hope and change that Obama’s followers voted for or that the American people in general hoped he would bring.

By:  Marion Algier - Ask Marion

Source:  the Daily Thought Pad