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Daschle, Gregg spar over individual mandate at AHIP meeting

The debate over the individual mandate rages on as ex-lawmakers offered opposing views about its sustainability during the AHIP Institute conference in San Francisco last week.

Jim O'Neil

There are 20 cases pending in the legal system that challenge whether Congress has the authority to legislate an individual responsibility. However, "there will be a mandate regardless of how the courts rule," former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) predicted. Past votes by the Supreme Court on similar issues were supportive to mandates, he noted.

Regardless of the mandate’s legality, Daschle said the industry can't support a personal responsibility without supporting a mandate. "You can't have it both ways," he said. If all individuals aren't required to take responsibility for their own healthcare, those who do take care of themselves will continue to pay for those who don't, he said.  "We all should have the responsibility to pay for ourselves and our own healthcare."

Jim O'Neil

Former Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), however, presented a completely different outlook. "The individual mandate is not likely to survive," Gregg said. He predicted that Congress will pass legislation ending the mandate before next year's presidential election. Daschle, however, believes President Obama will veto anything that comes across his desk that repeals the individual mandate.

Gregg asserted that a catastrophic coverage plan "makes more sense" than an individual mandate. That would allow, for example, a person in their 20s who doesn't want or need overall healthcare to still receive needed medical services if, for example, they break a bone.

The one thing both lawmakers agreed upon: This issue has legs. "There will be amendments to defund, amend, and repeal" the health reform law, they said. In other words, there will be no resolve for "some time to come," Daschle said.

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Comments

More Gregg hypocrisy regarding individual mandates and what he "mandated" for the elderly entering long-term care facilities.

This example is the GOP’s “One-Stop-Shop” of hypocrisy; the decimation of the middle class elderly.

Cheney/Gregg, the architects of the Deficit Reduction Act 2005 passed in RECONCILIATION, illegally with two different documents in the House and Senate, taxes the middle class elderly the total amount of their life savings if they need a nursing home. Most of these nursing homes are non-profit to boot, as it is in my parent's case.

In my parent's case this was a $600+ a day “tax” for 1.5 years to the nonprofit nursing home before MassHealth (yes, Massachusetts) would consider their application. So my parents paid out their total life savings @ $600 a day to subsidize all the others in the nonprofit nursing home who are already on Medicaid.

This is the Cheney/Gregg's method of reduction of the deficit…off the backs of W.W.II Disabled Vets (my parents) who remain alive long enough to need a nursing home, but too old to complain. If they passed away before they needed the nursing home their life savings would have been inherited tax free (less than 2M). No inheritance tax?! They’ll get your assets when you enter a nursing home ($300+ a day each)!!!!!!!!!

Now that their life savings has gone to the nonprofit and Medicaid has kicked in, my parents still have to pay the nonprofit their retirement income of $66,072 a year AS IT SHOULD BE…but only after Medicaid demands they continue to pay their Medicare and Federal Blue Cross insurance premiums of $6,505.20 (as of Jan. 2011) a year. They have prescription coverage under their Federal Blue Cross Blue Shield policy, but they still were forced to Medicare D. Think about that!

Why wasn’t their retirement income of $66,072 (as of Jan.2011, minus the premiums of $6,505.20 still required of them going to Medicare and Federal Blue Cross) enough for the nonprofit nursing home from the date of their admissions? Ask Cheney/Gregg.

Gregg says now… “We can all agree that no American should lose their life savings or their home because of illness or injury and that the rising cost of health care severely burdens individuals, families and businesses,” Gregg wrote in his letter to Obama this week. “Report after report also confirms that health care costs are a systemic risk to the long-term fiscal health of our nation.”

He apparently forgot about his Deficit Reduction Act 2005 he passed in reconciliation which does exactly this to the elderly needing nursing homes who have saved more than $2,000 in their lifetime and not hidden it.

Cheney/Gregg's DRA 2005 is the perfect example of how the GOP reduces the deficit off the backs of W.W.II Vets with a tax of $300+/day…the perfect storm of GOP, health care debate let them eat cake and GOP hypocrisy.

Medicare does not cover nursing homes. My parent’s life savings does. Watch Sen. Gregg "not" answer the hard questions about what he did here. And apparently once the nonprofit nursing home extracts all your assets from you and your family, no matter if it is in excess of services rendered, you will never get it back. It is used by the state to combat Medicaid fraud. THINK ABOUT THAT!!!!!

The Cheney/Gregg Deficit Reduction Act 2005, passed in reconciliation, is the largest case of Elder Middle-class W.W.II Disabled Vet Financial Abuse in History!!

The gentleman in the next room to my parents purchased long-term-care insurance to protect his assets. It turns out that this policy will not pay for his long-term care now (he was duped by the countless loopholes). So his and my parents’ life savings are paying for all the others in that nonprofit nursing home who hid their assets and/or are already on Medicaid.

They counted on the elderly to be and remain ignorant until they are admitted into nonprofit nursing homes…

*************** *************** *************** ***************

And… Apparently this 93-year-old W.W.II Disabled Vet (Member of Kearby's Thunderbolts; www.PacificWrecks.com) and his 90-year-old wife's… (who share two Purple Hearts and one burial flag)…warm and still-breathing bodies are for sale here in Massachusetts and nationwide because of the GOP's DRA 2005.

Unreimbursed medical expenses since their admissions to a NON-profit facility…$490+K…thanks to Cheney/Goldman Sachs Gregg’s DRA 2005!!!!!!!!!

Medicare and Federal Blue Shield premiums: $55,000+ (Forced to Medicare D on 08/01/08 with beginning of Medicaid even though FED BX covers prescriptions).

Legal Fees: $72,000

Why wasn't their retirement income of $66,072/yr (minus the forced Medicare D and BX premiums, $6,505, still required to be paid by them) enough for the nonprofit from the day of their admissions to a nonprofit nursing home on 01/11/07?..

Ask Cheney/ Goldman Sachs Gregg…the architects….

My parents have paid $495K in UME since Jan. 2007….
$200K more than it should have been but for the Cheney/Goldman Sachs Gregg Deficit Reduction Act 2005!!!

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