Here are the real costs of Obamacare

“The Obama Care Health Care Reform Plan or Health Care For America Plan will cost the average American around $70.”–obamacarefacts.com

By BOB LIVINGSTON | PLD | NOVEMBER 19, 2012

First of all, allow me to disabuse you of the notion that Obamacare has anything to do with “health” care. Obamacare is not about health. It’s not about lowering the cost of health insurance. And it’s not about ensuring that everyone is insured.

It is about locking more Americans into the clutches of the Big Pharma/Medical Industrial complex, providing more customers for Big Insurance and confiscating more wealth from individuals and businesses.

The American healthcare system should properly be called “sickcare.” It’s a subtle and esoteric system of population control with prescription drugs issued at the public expense by the drug cartel — the conglomerate of pharmaceutical houses.

They commit population control under the pretense of “healthcare” and make people pay for it. And this medical cartel has no legal liability. It is forced — or at least deceptive — medication. And most doctors don’t have a clue. They write prescriptions based on falsified data and kickbacks — from speaker fees and ghostwriting glowing medical reviews — without regard to whether their patients will benefit.

Health costs nothing. Sickness care has us in bankruptcy. If the medical establishment, insurance companies and Obamacare writers wanted Americans to be healthy, they’d promote healthy eating, healthy lifestyles, vitamin D supplementation, natural supplements and alternative health choices rather than toxin-laden vaccinations, body-destroying cancer treatment drugs, harmful symptom-rather-than-cause-attacking heart, statin and diabetes drugs, and carcinogen- and GMO-laced processed foods.

Now Obamacare’s devastating financial effects are coming to the fore. They can be seen in the rising costs of health insurance, layoffs, cuts in employment hours, rising prices and looming tax hikes. Obamacare will send unemployment numbers skyrocketing and force workers — who find their hours cut back below the “full-time” threshold of 30 hours — to try to find multiple part-time jobs to make ends meet. Or they’ll give up working altogether and join the rising numbers of wards of the state: 49.7 million in poverty, non-farm employment at 2005 levels, 46.7 million on food stamps and 9 million leaving the workforce and joining the disability roles. The Congressional Budget Office predicts Obamacare will cost 800,000 jobs by 2020-2021. It will be much worse than that.

With jobless numbers already high and manufacturing and mid-level white collar professional service jobs leaving the United States never to return, most new jobs come in the healthcare, social assistance (ambulatory healthcare services) and food service industries (waiting tables and tending bar).

But the medical device and food service industries are being hit hardest by Obamacare, as business owners seek ways to remain profitable and competitive once the provisions kick in.

During the International Franchise Association convention in Washington, D.C., in September, franchisers learned just how hard Obamacare would hit them. David Barr, a Taco Bell and Kentucky Fried Chicken franchiser, told the group how Obamacare will cut his profits and probably theirs as well — in half. Their only choice is to slash employee hours so they aren’t eligible for company-paid health insurance or stop offering insurance and pay the $2,000 per employee fine.

Barr has 23 stores with 421 employees, 109 of whom are full-time. Of those, he provides health insurance to 30. His total cost is $129,000 per year and his employees pay $995. Under Obamacare, he’ll have to provide health insurance for all 109 full-time employees at a cost of $444,000 per year. The $315,000 increase is more than half his annual profit, after expenses. If he chose the fine instead, his healthcare costs would still increase by $89,000 per year.

Darden Foods, the world’s largest casual dining company — it includes Olive Garden, Red Lobster and LongHorn Steakhouse — was one of the first to announce it would be limiting worker hours to avoid healthcare requirements. Papa John’s CEO John Schnatter said the cost of his pizzas will rise between 11 and 14 cents and worker hours will be reduced. He expects the law to cost his company between $5 billion and $8 billion annually.

In July, McDonalds Chief Financial Officer Peter Benson said Obamacare will cost his company $420 million in new healthcare costs even though the company received a waiver from the Administration of Barack Obama. His menu prices will increase as a result.

Florida-based restaurant owner John Metz, who owns 40 Denny’s restaurants and the Hurricane Grill & Wings franchise, said last week he would be tacking a 5 percent Obamacare surcharge on his meals and reduce employee hours. He says it is “the only alternative. I’ve got to pass the cost to the customer.”

Look for other restaurants faced with a choice of becoming unprofitable by absorbing the costs or uncompetitive by raising their menu prices if they insure their employees and pass the cost to consumers to also cut worker hours.

Wal-Mart recently raised its health insurance premiums as much as 36 percent, putting coverage out of the reach of many of its employees. Its executives say employee hours will be cut. Likewise, the Kroger grocery chain is also reducing employee hours.

Other companies that have announced Obamacare layoffs include:

• Welch Allyn: A medical diagnostic equipment manufacturer, Welch Allyn will lay off 250 employees, or 10 percent of its workforce, over the next three years because of the Medical Device Tax mandated by the law.

• Dana Holding Corp.: A global auto parts manufacturer, Dana Holding Corp. will cut its workforce of 25,500, citing $24 million in additional healthcare expenses over the next six years.

• Stryker: One of the biggest medical device manufacturers in the world, Stryker will close its Orchard Park, N.Y., facility, eliminating 96 jobs in December. The company will also eliminate about 5 percent of its remaining workforce — about 1,170 workers.

• Boston Scientific: CEO Ray Elliot recently announced that Obamacare taxes will force him to lay off between 1,200 and 1,400 workers and shift investments and jobs to China.

• Medtronic: The medical device maker cut 500 jobs this past summer and will eliminate another 500 in 2013 because of Obamacare taxes.

• Smith & Nephew: 770 layoffs.

• Abbott Laboratories: 700 layoffs.

• Covidien: 595 layoffs.

• Kinetic Concepts: 427 layoffs.

• St. Jude Medical: 300 layoffs.

• Hill-Rom: 200 layoffs.

And then there are the looming taxes.

The undocumented alien and chronic White House liar (see the ever changing Benghazi narrative, among others) has repeated ad nauseam that he will not raise taxes on those making less than $250,000 ($125,000 or $200,000 or whatever his story is today). But here are some Obamacare taxes kicking in beginning in 2013, most of which will hit both the so-called “rich” and the poor either directly or indirectly.

• The Obamacare Medical Device Tax is a $20 billion tax increase. Obamacare imposes a new 2.3 percent excise tax on gross sales — whether the company makes a profit or not. This will increase the cost of medical devices like pacemakers, prosthetics and wheelchairs.

• The Obamacare “Special Needs Kids Tax” is a $13 billion tax increase. It hits the 30 million to 35 million Americans using a work-based Flexible Spending Account (FSA) to pay for basic medical needs by having money removed from their paychecks before taxes, which reduces their taxable income and helps them save on their tax bill. It faces a new cap of $2,500 (currently the accounts have no cap). There are 7 million families in American with special needs children who need care that far exceeds the $2,500, many of them the working poor.

• The Obamacare Surtax on Investment Income is a $123 billion tax increase. This is a new 3.8 percentage point surtax on investment income earned in households making $250,000 or more ($200,000 for single filer). This will increase the tax on capital gains from 15 percent to 23.8 percent. Capital gains include profits on the sale of a home. In other words, when you sell your house for more than you paid for it, which all homeowners hope to do, you will pay 23.8 percent on the value difference when you sell. It also includes gains made on savings and retirement accounts. The rate paid on dividend income increases from 15 percent to 43.3 percent, as does the rate on other investment income.

• The Obamacare “Haircut” for Medical Itemized Deductions is a $15.2 billion tax increase. Currently, Americans facing high medical expenses are allowed a deduction if expenses exceed 7.5 percent of adjusted gross income. The “haircut” raises the threshold to 10 percent. This will most harm those near retirement age and those with modest incomes but high medical bills — like those with special needs children or dealing with catastrophic illness.

• The Obamacare Payroll Tax Hike is $86.8 billion tax increase. The Medicare payroll tax rate on individuals earning $200,000 ($250,000 for couples) will see their payroll tax increase from 2.9 percent to 3.8 percent. This is a direct marginal income tax hike on small-business owners, who are liable for self-employment tax.

And even more Obamacare taxes kick hit in 2014.

The bottom line for the average family, according to Forbes.com, is an additional annual cost of $1,261 for the average family, or a diversion of 2.5 percent of the average household’s income in taxes alone. And this doesn’t factor in the additional costs resulting from rising food and product costs and loss of income due to worker hour reductions and job losses.

Obamacare sycophants glommed on to the progressive, government-growing, insurance industry-profiting healthcare reform effort largely because they believed Big Insurance was screwing them over by raising premiums and not paying for certain conditions. Yet those hated insurance companies wrote the law and made sure that those who disdained health insurance — either because they were young and felt they didn’t need it or were financially able to go without it — were forced into the plan, ensuring Big Insurance a whole host of new customers, guaranteeing themselves a large profit and a government treasury to make sure the bills were paid. And those sycophants are just delighted with that outcome.

But if they thought they were drawing the short straw when corporate profits were on the line, wait until they see what they get now that the sociopaths in the dysfunctional government bureaucracy are involved.

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A Pandemic of Corruption, not H1N1

Dr. Margaret Chan standing next to the WHO's flag bearing the Caduceus.

By Luis R. Miranda
The Real Agenda
June 7, 2010

There is no need to say it; it is almost redundant and repetitive to tell about the corruption that brought about the H1N1 false alarm last year.  However, it is never excessive to point out massive corruption when it is detected and identified so clearly.  Many independent sources have denounced the corruption that runs rampant in the World Health Organization.  One of them, the European Health Council, studied and published a report that revealed the gigantic corruption scheme within the WHO and between its workers and the pharmaceutical industry.

Now it is the turn of the British Medical Journal to denounce and publish its findings.  The highlight of the report states that highly positioned scientists who ‘convinced’ the heads of the WHO to declare the pandemic, held tight financial relationships with the pharmaceutical companies that loaded up their coffers with the sale of the vaccines.  The WHO scientists received direct financial compensation from the vaccine manufacturers. During and after the fallout, the WHO denied requests to disclose information on conflicts of interests between its top advisers and the drug companies.

Perhaps the biggest victim after the thousands of patients who died of the side effects the vaccine produced, those suffer from irreparable neurological disorders -also as a consequence of the vaccine- and others who will die and get sick in the future, is the WHO itself.  The very little credibility it still held has completely dissipated and nothing that comes out of its loudspeakers can be trusted.  Now, the only way the organization -a branch of the United Nations- can enforce any of its maddening policies is through the puppet governments that follow any of the guidelines it may issue in the coming months and years.

* The Caduceus is an appropriate choice to represent modern medicine. In antiquity, it was the guide of the dead and protector of merchants, shepherds, gamblers, liars and thieves.

The findings revealed by Deborah Cohen, editor at the BMJ, and Philip Carter, a journalist who works for the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London, were not only not denied by the head of the WHO, Dr Margaret Chan, but also defended and justified.  Chan said the secrecy was necessary to protect the integrity and independence of the members while doing critical work and also to ensure transparency.  In other words, it is not necessary to carry out honest work at the World Health Organization so long people do not suspect or discover corruption.  However, if corruption is discovered, it is absolutely fine to cover it up while the WHO investigates itself to determine if there is or not wrongdoing in its operations.

The British Medical Journal is not the only organization that found corruption at the heart of the WHO.  As mentioned before, the European Health Council’s investigation also determined that the declaration of the H1N1 Pandemic was based on politics and not science.  It says the way in which the WHO handled the supposed pandemic was “a waste of large sums of public money, and also unjustified scares and fears about health risks faced by the European public at large.”

The reaction from the pharmaceutical industrial complex could not come fast enough.  The drug lords said the WHO did not have other option but to declare the pandemic due to the fact vaccines are the only ways to prevent and cure disease.  This of course are lies.  Vaccines do not treat or cure disease; they prolong them and produce them.  On the other hand, natural production of vitamin D3, for example, is a proven way to prevent and cure disease such as Influenza and others like cancer more effectively than any vaccine ever could. How many times do you hear any doctor or WHO scientist recommending a patient to take sunlight so the body can produce the necessary vitamin D or D3?  The answer is never.  The reason for that is that both the pharmaceutical industry and the WHO pretend to perpetuate the sick care programs that currently have more people than ever in drugs.  Anyone heard of drug or pharmaceutical dependency?

Studies in North America, South America and Europe have shown that a 40-60 nanograms of serum per mililiter hydroxyvitamin D (100-150 nanomols per liter) of  blood is lethal to disease, including 10 different kinds of cancer, diabetes and of course influenza.  The details of the studies and what Vitamin D and D3 are capable of doing to prevent disease as well as to decrease the chance of many medical problems to recur, can be seen here.  So one of the keys to prevent disease is to find out what’s the level of serum in your blood, and to intake vitamin D or D3 if there is a deficiency.  The cost can vary from free (exposure to sunlight 10-15 minutes a day between 11 am and 1 pm when there is less UVB radiation) to about five cents of a dollar a day (using supplements).  Don’t let any doctor confuse you with “no one knows what is the right dosage of vitamin D”, because that is exactly the wrong question to ask or try to answer.  But if you are someone who feels more comfortable with measuring your daily intake, 2000 IU per day is a recommended dosage.  Again, the details can be seen in the video cited above.

As Mike Adams writes “People were kept ignorant of natural remedies, in other words, to make sure more people died and a more urgent call for mass vaccination programs could be carried out.  A few lives never gets in the way of Big Pharma profits, does it?”.  That is exactly my point, too.  A few thousand lives don’t mean anything to an industry whose only goal is to profit every single year based on lies, scare tactics and corruption.  This is precisely what Dr. Margaret Chan meant with her statement.  Corruption is tolerated.  Experimenting with humans is all right.  Looting the public coffers is also fine.  And when people find out the lies, they themselves decide whether there was wrongdoing or not.

But how is it that the World Health Organization mixes, brews and carries out the corruption cocktail we are talking about?

Over-blow the supposed risk: The WHO and pharmaceutical companies classify the risk as very high and create imaginative levels of chance of mortality.  This time, the WHO created a 6th stage which it then declared we were all in.  At this time, when very few cases of H1N1 had been confirmed around the planet, the simple intake of Vitamin D and D3 -either through sunlight or supplements- would have done away with the virus.

Demand that nations purchase vaccines: The WHO asked and then demanded that countries bought vaccines from the biggest manufacturing houses: Sanofi and Glaxosmithkline; in order to prepare for the supposed pandemic.  They then raised the risk level to one of “public health emergency”, which made the countries carry out massive vaccination campaigns against the unsuspecting public.

Loot the public coffers: Nations -both in developed and underdeveloped regions of the world- spent billions of dollars purchasing  H1N1 vaccines while the virus never even reached a significant level of risk.  As it turned out, what did get indeed gigantic was the bank accounts of the pharmaceutical companies as they collected the money.

Payoffs to corrupt scientists: While the world was falling victim of the panic and interacting with anyone on the street was seen as risky, -masks popping out everywhere- scientists at the WHO pocketed kickbacks from the pharmaceutical  manufacturers. Those monies were intentionally kept secret; as the head of the WHO, Dr. Margaret Chan admitted.

Instigate and increase fear: As a way to keep the profits from the sale of vaccines growing, the WHO as well as national and local health departments called on people to vaccinate themselves and their relatives.  Vaccinating, they said, was the only way to be saved from the deadly H1N1 virus.  How many of the people who allegedly died from H1N1 died due to the virus?  Very few.  Most of them died of health complications related to previous medical problems that were aggravated with the influenza virus.  The vaccine did not prevent or treat those complications.  In fact, many of them were triggered by the vaccines themselves.

The question that comes to mind then is: Why do governments and its health departments continue to follow guidelines from the WHO given the blatant corruption schemes that govern its actions?   And more important:  Will they continue to obey the directives from the WHO in the future?  Probable yes.  Bureaucracy is an equal opportunity offender and it does not distinguish whether it is a local, regional, national or international organ.  So the decision to reject the WHO’s corrupted rules and to take responsibility for your health is in your hands.  So when the next ‘pandemic’ comes around remember:  The scientists that advice the WHO are in the payroll of the pharmaceutical companies and they will always hype a virus and turn it into a monster with 5 heads if that is what it takes for them to turn a profit. And one more thing:  there has never been an independent scientific study that confirmed that vaccines prevent, treat or cure any disease.  Vaccines are the biggest scam of modern medicine.  All medical studies carried out which claim that a vaccine prevents, treats or cures disease were either conducted by vaccine manufacturers or paid by them so universities and laboratories  “independently confirmed”  they are effective.

If there is anything positive left from the WHO’s imaginary H1N1 pandemic is that now more than ever we can be sure neither the WHO nor the pharmaceutical industrial complex have your interests at heart.  Their only interests revolve around the idea of filling their pockets with money and in the process depopulate the planet a little bit more every time.

* W. Burkert, Greek Religion 1985 section III.2.8; “Hermes.” Encyclopedia Mythica from Encyclopedia Mythica Online. Retrieved October 04, 2006.