“There’s something in the 2,000 pages for everyone to hate,” said Jane M. Orient, M.D., AAPS Executive Director, co-signatory of the letter. “It’s bad medicine, and bad public policy.”
The letter states:
“The heart of this proposal is compulsory insurance: it forces Americans to buy a product they would otherwise reject, thereby subsidizing the very corporations that are being justly criticized from both the left and the right. This should be unacceptable to all, including both single-payer and free-market advocates…..
…..The current proposal is like giving a patient an injection of 2,000 ingredients–some untested either alone or in combination, some known to have serious adverse effects, and some to be concocted later by an administrative agency. It is bad medicine, and bad public policy.”
Moveon.org is also advocating rejection of the health care bill in its current form. Check out this funny sock puppet video of Senator Joe Lieberman holding health care hostage for his list of personal demands:
No president has ever come as close as Barack Obama is today to moving the nation toward universal health coverage; no universal coverage bill had ever before passed the House, nor has one ever advanced as far in the Senate as the bill now under debate. For Dean to insist that Senate Democrats start over after that grueling struggle is a little like suggesting that American troops on the outskirts of Berlin in 1945 should have retreated back to France because D-Day wasn’t choreographed just right.
and Howard Krugman also supports passing the bill, even in its current form. Krugman says:
There’s enormous disappointment among progressives about the emerging health care bill — and rightly so. That said, even as it stands it would take a big step toward greater security for Americans and greater social justice; it would also save many lives over the decade ahead. That’s why progressive health policy wonks — the people who have campaigned for health reform for years — are almost all in favor of voting for the thing…
December 18, 2009 at 3:42 pm by Jonathan Kantrowitz
This claim, by Mark Barnhart, director of community and economic development for Fairfield, seeemed absurd on the face of it. (I have some experience in these matters, as I was Barnhart’s predecessor in the job, and was promised the permanent post by First Selectman Ken Flatto before he snatched it away and gave it to Barnhart.)
Our vacancy rate is about 10 percent. It has gone up. We have some 10,000 to 11,000 square feet of space. The office market here is relatively small, compared to larger markets like Norwalk and Stamford,” he said, estimating that rental rates for Class A office space range from the low $20s to the low $30s per square foot.
10,000 to 11,000 sq. ft? Ridiculous. Here’s just some of the space available in Fairfield:
777 Commerce Drive, Fairfield, CT 06430 16,622 SF $29.50
1499 Post Road, Fairfield, CT 06824 11,285 sq. ft. $35
1 Post Road, Fairfield, CT 06825 9,215 SF $25
2150 Post Road, Fairfield, CT 06430 8,500 sq ft. $?
1657 Post Road, Fairfield, CT 06824 7,000 sq.ft. $35
1248 Post Road, Fairfield, CT 06824 1,992 sq ft. $24
December 18, 2009 at 3:40 pm by Jonathan Kantrowitz
The federal government levies three types of taxes on transfers of wealth:
* An estate tax on the net value of assets transferred to other individuals when a person dies,
* A gift tax on the value of gifts that a person gives to others during that person’s lifetime, and
* A generation-skipping transfer tax on some transfers of wealth at death to certain heirs.
The Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 (EGTRRA) reduced revenue from the estate tax relative to previous law beginning in 2001, primarily by increasing the amount of an estate that is effectively exempt from taxation and by reducing the top marginal tax rate (the rate that applies to the last dollar of an estate). Under that law, the effective exemption amount rose from $675,000 in 2001 to $3.5 million in 2009, and the top marginal tax rate dropped from 55 percent to 45 percent. In 2010, the estate tax is temporarily repealed. Starting in 2011, the estate tax is reinstated with an exemption amount of $1 million and a maximum marginal tax rate of 55 percent (plus a 5 percent surtax on taxable transfers between $10.0 million and $17.184 million, which was also in effect in 2001).
Estate and Gift Tax Collections
Since 1977, less than 2 percent of adults who die each year typically leave estates large enough to be taxable. Because of recent increases in the amount of an estate that is exempt from taxation, a relatively small percentage of estates are taxable today. Federal transfer taxes have historically made up a relatively small share of total federal revenues—accounting for 1 percent to 2 percent of total revenues in most of the past 60 years.
Under current law, revenues from estate and gift taxes will total $420 billion, 1.2 percent of revenues, over the 2010–2019 period, CBO forecasts. About $364 billion (87 percent) of that total is from estate tax receipts, and the remaining $56 billion (13 percent) is from gift tax receipts. Estate and gift tax receipts as a percentage of total receipts will drop over the next two years and, because of the changes currently set in law, the pattern of receipts will be irregular.
Estate and Gift Tax Receipts As A Percentage of Total Receipts, Fiscal Years 1945-2019
Receipts from estate taxes will decline in 2010 and almost disappear in 2011, before rising to about $32 billion in 2012, CBO estimates. In contrast, gift tax receipts will probably surge to a very high level in 2011, reflecting the scheduled decline—in 2010—of the top rate for gift taxes from 45 percent to 35 percent. After the enactment of EGTRRA in 2001, taxpayers cut their taxable giving of gifts by more than half, partly in anticipation of the repeal of the estate and generation-skipping transfer taxes and the reduction in the tax rate on gifts to 35 percent in 2010. CBO’s forecast of gift tax receipts reflects the reversal of that behavior in 2011, when the tax on gifts given in 2010 will be due.
Policy Options for Changing the Taxation of Wealth Transfers
The repeal of the estate tax in 2010 followed by the reversion to a $1 million exemption amount has led many policy makers to seek changes to current law. The House-passed legislation (H.R. 4154) would permanently retain the estate and gift taxes at the parameters in place for 2009.
“The fine print of the Senate health reform bill would deliver yet another of the insurance industry’s top agenda items — pre-emption of state patient protection laws,” said Jerry Flanagan, Health Care Policy Director for Consumer Watchdog. “With the apparent elimination of the public option and the Medicare buy-in for those over 55, coupled with these pre-emption provisions, health reform has shifted from patient protection to insurer profit protection.”
Section 1333, beginning on page 219, of the Senate bill, HR 3590, would allow insurers to form “health care compacts” (page 219) and “nationwide plans” (page 222) which would only be subject to the health benefit mandate laws and regulations of the state in which the policy was “written or issued.”
Assuming that the proposed new national minimum benefit guidelines (page 102, section 1302) would apply to the compacts and Nationwide plans, these national minimums would become default rules because insurers would certainly choose to be regulated by the weakest state.
An amendment proposed by Senator Snowe (R-ME) and Senators Landrieu (D-LA) and Lincoln (D-AR) would eliminate a state’s ability to “opt-out” of allowing nationwide plans to be sold.
Insurance companies have long demanded the right to sell nationwide and multi-state plans to small businesses and individuals, arguing that the premiums would be cheaper if the plans did not have to obey state laws. However, patients would soon find that maternity care, reconstructive surgery after cancer and even HIV/AIDS testing, among many other benefits, were not covered. Regulators in all but the state in which the policy was issued would have their hands tied, with no power to compel any coverage or treatment.
17 states, which currently have more than 50 health benefit mandates in state law, have the most to lose under the pre-emption provisions. Those states, representing 54% of the U.S. population, include: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, Minnesota, New Mexico, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas, Virginia and Washington. (Source: Craig Bruce & J.P. Wieske, “Health Insurance Mandates in the States 2009,” Council for Affordable Health Insurance,” page 4 (2009)).
The Congressional Budget Office found that five of the state coverage mandates considered by insurers to be the most expensive have in fact only a marginal impact on premiums, ranging from 0.28 to 1.15 percent. Massachusetts, which has among the strongest state mandates, calculated the total net cost on premiums to be only 3 percent to 4 percentcompared to the 25 percent to 27 percent of premiums that insurers spend on overhead and profit.
December 17, 2009 at 4:16 pm by Jonathan Kantrowitz
for
S. 1733, the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act is the current Senate version of Cap and Trade legislation. (The House version is discussed below.) S. 1733 would make a number of changes in energy and environmental policies largely aimed at reducing emissions of gases that contribute to global warming. The bill would limit or cap the quantity of certain greenhouse gases (GHGs) emitted from facilities that generate electricity and from other industrial activities beginning in 2012.
Under the bill, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would establish two separate regulatory initiatives known as cap-and-trade programs—one covering emissions of most types of GHGs and one covering hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). EPA would issue allowances to emit those gases under the cap-and-trade programs. Some of those allowances would be auctioned by the federal government, and the remainder would be distributed at no charge. The legislation also would authorize the establishment of a Carbon Storage Research Corporation to support research and development of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology. Funding for the corporation would largely be derived from assessments on utilities enforced by the federal government.
CBO and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation estimate that over the 2010-2019 period enacting this legislation would:
* Increase federal revenues by about $854 billion; and
* Increase direct spending by about $833 billion.
In total, those changes would reduce budget deficits (or increase future surpluses) by about $21 billion over the 2010-2019 period. In years after 2019, direct spending would be less than the net revenues attributable to the legislation in each of the 10 year periods following 2019. Therefore, CBO estimates that enacting S. 1733 would not increase the deficit in any of the four 10-year periods following 2019.
The legislation also would authorize appropriations for various programs to be operated by EPA, the Department of Energy (DOE), and other agencies. If those funds were appropriated, CBO estimates that implementing S. 1733 would increase discretionary spending by about $29 billion over the 2010-2019 period. Most of that funding would stem from spending auction proceeds associated with the HFC cap-and-trade program.
Differences Between S. 1733 and H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009
S. 1733 is similar to H.R. 2454, which was passed by the House, but there are some significant differences that result in lower estimates of revenues and direct spending under S. 1733. Specifically, several energy-related provisions in H.R. 2454 that CBO estimated would increase direct spending (such as the renewable-electricity standard and the establishment of a Clean Energy Deployment Administration) are not included in S. 1733. Also contributing to lower spending under the Senate bill are the different amounts of proceeds from allowance auctions that are not spent. (See CBO’s cost estimate for H.R. 2454 as passed by the House on June 26. CBO and JCT estimate that over the 2010-2019 period, the House bill would increase federal revenues by about $873 billion and increase direct spending by about $864 billion, reducing budget deficits over that period by about $9 billion.)
In addition, differences between the two versions of the legislation would result in higher allowance prices under S. 1733. CBO estimates that prices for emission allowances would be about 15 percent higher under S. 1733 than under H.R. 2454, as passed by the House, because S. 1733:
* Contains a more stringent emissions cap in 2014 and between 2017 and 2029;
* Contains different allocations for distributing emission allowances and auction revenues; and
* Places greater restrictions on the amount of international offsets that can be used towards an entity’s compliance obligation.
Sec. 53a-181a. Creating a public disturbance: Infraction. (a) A person is guilty of creating a public disturbance when, with intent to cause inconvenience, annoyance or alarm, or recklessly creating a risk thereof, he (1) engages in fighting or in violent, tumultuous or threatening behavior; or (2) annoys or interferes with another person by offensive conduct; or (3) makes unreasonable noise.
Because of this:
appeared in court today..
He told me this:
“Filed defense as protected speech under the 1st Amendment. Trial set for January 28th.”
