End the tax-deductibility of employer-provided healthcare. Allow every citizen, except those enrolled in Medicare or in a military health plan, to receive a refundable tax credit to purchase Health Savings Accounts (HSAs). The key thing is that people should have a choice of plans. The tax credit should be available not only to those who purchase HSAs. Some people, for instance, have higher medical costs, so they may prefer a more comprehensive policy. But we could encourage more widespread use of HSAs by raising the cap on the amount of money that people could put in them. Also, owners of HSAs should be allowed to purchase health insurance in any state in the country. The money should be applicable to those employer-sponsored plans still available or to any healthcare plan an individual or family chooses, thus allowing product competition. Unused money in each account should be rolled over in succeeding years, and whatever money remains in each account should be part of an account holder’s estate upon death….
Also let us have tort reform. Reckless malpractice lawsuits account for at least half a trillion dollars in wasted healthcare expenses annually, through jackpot lawsuits and the unnecessary tests prescribed by doctors fearful of the reach of trial lawyers.
Finally for those who are impoverished and unable to pay for healthcare, let the government give them vouchers to pay for their medical expenses up to a certain amount annually.
Whatever the consequences of the Democrats’ 2009 healthcare monstrosity, conservatives should redouble their efforts to repeal its archaic collectivist requirements, if they ever become policy.
Nobody expected the special election to fill the remainder of Kennedy’s term to even be close. Certainly, Attorney General Martha Coakley didn’t. She cruised to victory in the Democratic primary based on name recognition and then hoped the “D” after her name on the ballot would take care of the rest. Her only goal in the campaign was to make sure that Massachusetts voters knew libertarian-leaning independent candidate Joseph Kennedy wasn’t man from Citizens Energy and descendant of Camelot.
Barack Obama didn’t expect to have to fly to Boston for a last-minute get-out-the-vote rally on Coakley’s behalf. He won Massachusetts by 26 points in 2008. His bill expanding the federal government’s role over the American health care system was supposed to be the culmination of Ted Kennedy’s life work. This was, as he put it, a simple choice “whether we’re going forwards or backwards” — between Obama’s change we can believe in or the bad old days that came before.
Well, it took George W. Bush five years to bring his party to the brink of electoral disaster. It has taken Obama one year. That’s change, all right.
Obama continues to refer to this as a “fee.” This is just a fancy was of saying “tax.” We are taxing the very institutions that we want increase loans and stimulate our economy. But Obama insists that “We want our money and we’re going to get it back.” But wait? Haven’t these banks and financial institutions already paid that money back? Well .. what does that matter.
He is just playing into wealth envy, folks. Pure and simple. I would sure like to see Obama answer a few questions ….. like why he doesn’t plan to limit executive compensation at institutions like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which took $100 million in taxpayer money, never intend to pay it back and are in fact still losing money for the taxpayers.
Republican Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas gets to the point: “To think that banks will loan more money if you tax them is beyond economic ignorance.” That’s because this tax has nothing to do with economics and everything to do with wealth envy and politics. Easy as that.
The US has released the leader of an Iranian-backed Shia terror group behind the kidnapping and murder of five US soldiers in Karbala in January 2007.
Qais Qazali, the leader of the Asaib al Haq or the League of the Righteous, was set free by the US military and transferred to Iraqi custody in exchange for the release of British hostage Peter Moore, US military officers and intelligence officials told The Long War Journal. The US military directly implicated Qais in the kidnapping and murder of five US soldiers in Karbala in January 2007.
“We let a very dangerous man go, a man whose hands are stained with US and Iraqi blood,” a military officer said. “We are going to pay for this in the future.”
The US military has maintained that the release of members and leaders of the League of the Righteous is related to a reconciliation agreement between the terror group and the Iraqi government, but some US military officers disagree.
“The official line is the release of Qazali is about reconciliation, but in reality this was a prisoner swap,” a military intelligence official said…
“This was a deal signed and sealed in British and American blood,” a US military officer told The Long War Journal. “We freed all of their leaders and operatives; they [the League of the Righteous] executed their hostages and sent them back in body bags. And we’re supposed to be happy about it.”
