House Will Vote on Pelosi Health Plan this Week!

Eagle Forum: Last week, liberal Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) introduced her "new and improved" plan to facilitate a government takeover of the best health care system in the world, which just so happens to make up one-sixth of the U.S. economy.  After months of witnessing an American uprising to oppose Congress' first health care proposal, famously remembered as H.R. 3200, liberals in Congress are now pushing a twice as long, yet almost identical bill under the guise that it is a new compromise that won't push America further into bankruptcy.  But, Americans will not be fooled.

Pelosi's "new" bill, the Affordable Health Care for America Act (H.R. 3962), has been scheduled to go to the House floor for only a few hours of debate this week!  Debate could begin as early as Thursday, November 5^th, and a vote could occur shortly thereafter.  Pelosi's goal is for this bill to receive as little attention and scrutiny as possible before the vote, so please be aware that once this bill goes to the floor, it will move fast.  We need you to continue sounding the alarm and urging opposition to this 2,000-page monstrosity of massive new bureaucracy, redistribution of wealth, and rationed medical care. 

Nancy Pelosi's H.R. 3962 contains the following provisions:

• Permits federal taxpayer funding of abortion services, above and beyond the status quo of current law.
• Provides for a "health care czar" called the Health Choices Commissioner, who could forcibly enroll individuals in government-run insurance and whose tasks include requiring random compliance audits on Americans' health benefits plans.
• Allows for "community organizations" like ACORN and Planned Parenthood to assist the Health Choices Commissioner in enrolling individuals in the Health Insurance Exchange.
• Encourages identity fraud for illegal immigrants seeking to gain taxpayer-subsidized health benefits through inadequate citizenship and legal status verification standards.  Page 255, Section 345 of H.R. 3962 includes language requiring verification of income for individuals wishing to receive federal health care subsidies, and while the bill currently does include a requirement for applicants to verify their citizenship, it does not include a similar requirement to verify that person's identity, a key component of effective verification.
• Provides for 13 new and different tax increases, including an employer mandate excise tax.
• "Grandfathers" out of existence individual health insurance coverage.
• Retains the "death panels" by providing for bureaucrats working for a new comparative effectiveness institute funded by a tax on health benefits.  The institute could publish the protocols needed to deny patients access to life-saving treatments on cost grounds.
• Contains NO ban on federal promotion of assisted suicide and/or health care rationing of treatments.
• Facilitates leftist, social engineering policies such as rewriting current tax law to allow domestic partners to be treated as "spouses." 
• Retains both the individual and employer mandates to purchase health insurance or else face a financial penalty, and compliance to this mandate will be enforced by the IRS.
• Imposes a 2.5% tax on an individual's modified adjusted gross income if they fail to purchase "acceptable" health care coverage.
• Imposes a surtax, starting in 2011, on "high"-income people - that is, couples with adjusted gross income over $1 million and individuals over $500,000.
• Fails to hold Members of Congress to the same health care system requirements that Americans will have to live by under the public health insurance option.
• Prohibits states from using tort reform to reduce health care costs.
• Mandates that all health insurance companies accept all applicants, that they cannot deny anyone for pre-existing conditions, and that they cannot increase the monthly premiums for less healthy, more costly consumers.
• Accommodates "whistleblower" provisions for trial lawyers to bring suit against employers.
• Slashes Medicare payments to providers by more than $400 billion.
• Creates dozens of new bureaucracies (111 to be exact) including the Health Benefits Advisory Committee and the Health Choices Administration.
• Encourages people to drop their insurance in favor of the public option as it provides for underpaying medical providers, who will in turn jack up their rates for those patients who have private insurance, driving more people to the cheaper, government plan.
• Authorizes Medicare to pay doctors for providing advice to patients on end-of-life care.
• Grants the authority to negotiate drug prices for Medicare beneficiaries to the Secretary of Health and Human Services.
• Considers individuals to be treated as "children" up to the age of 26 for the purpose of remaining on their parents' insurance plan.
• Imposes an excise tax on medical devices.
• Cuts $170 billion from the Medicare Advantage program.
• Institutes $729.5 billion in job-killing tax increases on all Americans, fines those who can't afford to purchase government-forced insurance, and cripples businesses by taxing health benefits.

If all of this weren't enough, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) even predicts that the public option's premiums will end up being quite high because it will attract less healthy people, who are more costly to the insurer.  But, with a government-run plan, the government is the insurer, so higher cost projections for the government really means higher costs to American taxpayers.

In addition to all of this bureaucracy, taxation, and theft of individual liberty, the very same CBO has estimated the 10-year cost of H.R. 3962 to be a whopping $1.1 trillion, and that doesn't even include the "Doc Fix" legislation, which seeks to lump $245 billion of Medicare reimbursement payments into the national debt.  The exclusion of the healthcare-related "Doc Fix" legislation into the overall pricetag of H.R. 3962 is nothing more than a Washington numbers gimmick, intended to deceive the American people about the true cost of the liberals' plan.  So, now is the time to pick up the phone and demand the defeat of a government takeover of health care! TAKE ACTION!

The clock is ticking.  The vote WILL occur at the end of this week.  We will keep you updated everyday with the latest details, but there are only a few short days to do all you can to contact your Representatives and to make your voice heard in opposition to this bill.  Phone calls are best, so please try to phone both your Representative's Capitol Hill office and his/her district office at least once a day, everyday this week.

For your convenience, here is our list of crucial target Members of Congress. These Members need extra pressure to stand up to Nancy Pelosi and vote NO on H.R. 3962 this week. If your own Representative is solidly opposed to this bill, please phone one of your friends or family members who lives in a district who has a Representative on the fence or who may be leaning toward supporting it, and encourage them to get involved in this fight!

You stopped Congress from steamrolling forward on this legislation last summer, so it's time to do it again this week!

Capitol Switchboard: 202-224-3121

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