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Dear Newsmax Reader:
You helped play a huge role in a major victory.
As Dick Morris explains, the recent Senate bill means that the public option is dead.
This is a very significant victory for our efforts at the League of American Voters.
As you know, we have focused our efforts on exposing the dangers of Obamacare and the public option in key states among key Senators.
That effort paid off big time.
Now, Obama's plan of using the "public option" to put private insurers out of business is D.O.A. This means complete control of government healthcare won't happen under this bill.
But, as Dick explains, there remain real dangers we still need to expose in both the Senate and House bills. Both will still add 30 to 50 million new patients to government healthcare -- at a cost to you of $1 trillion or more.
Both bills will add over a 100 new government agencies to interfere in your healthcare.
Both will gut Medicare by over $500 billion.
We at the League believe that is simply wrong.
We are shocked that many in Congress would take away healthcare benefits from citizens who worked hard and paid in all these years -- in favor of adding tens of millions of new patients -- including illegal aliens to the public rolls.
Our fight with Obamacare is not over. We have demonstrated your support for us is working. We need you to help us finish the job!
Please donate today as we are continuing to run ads in key states and read Dick's column below.
Please Donate Here Now
Thank you.
Bob Adams
Executive Director
We Scored Huge Victory,
We Have Them on the Run!
By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
Faced with a massive center-right uprising, the Obama liberals have been forced to abandon a public option. But in doing so, they are throwing the Medicare program under the bus.
Already, we have been asking how you can treat a growing number of elderly with a Medicare program that this bill cuts by $500 billion dollars. Now, by adding tens of millions of people 55-64 to the program, it makes it even more financially untenable.
Nonetheless, a brief congratulations to all on having seemingly killed the public option. Without our efforts, it would be en route to becoming law. Now there will not be a government owned, government run and government subsidized insurance company that will put all others out of business.
But the current proposal Reid is loudly trumpeting is horribly flawed as well.
It has all of the old flaws (minus the public option) in that the government, through the Secretary of Health, will decide who gets what treatment at what cost and will force rationing through an artificial scarcity on all people, particularly the elderly. And it still has such high premiums for young uninsured people that it will compete with student loans for the honor of being their number one headache.
But the compromise itself is flawed. Here's why:
1. By breeching the historic dividing line between private and public plans now at 65, it opens the door for an expansion of Medicare to become just the single payer we are trying to stop.
2. How can you expand Medicare, potentially to tens of millions more people while cutting it by $500 billion?
3. The cuts in doctor and hospital reimbursement rates written into this bill will force hundreds of thousands of medical providers to refuse to treat Medicare patients. By applying these low reimbursements to patients 55-64, now, you are driving doctors out of the profession and discouraging others from entering it. A permanent scarcity of doctors will be the inevitable result.
4. The expansion of Medicaid to 150% of the poverty level imposes huge new financial burdens on states. It will cost Texas $3 billion, Pennsylvania $2 billion, California $2 billion, and Florida $1.3 billion. It will cost Arkansas and Louisiana $500 million each. This is net of federal aid and only counts the 10% share of expanded Medicaid costs the states must pay.
The federal purchasing program that solicits bids from insurance companies and offers the policies to members of Congress actually functions quite well. It does tend to widen coverage and hold down costs and, at least in its current form, does not pretend to be an insurance company, just a kind of broker.
If the program is unchanged in the new law, its work could be valuable in helping consumers choose adequate and affordable insurance. But who knows whether Reid will try to ramp it up to be a government run and owned insurer?
The strategic message from all of this is that we have them on the run! We have forced Obama to retreat from a very dangerous excursion into socialism. Our pressure is working and we must keep it up.
Please CLICK HERE to donate to roll them back further.
Thanks,
Dick Morris | 
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