In our 4th installment of the Health Care Reform series, I interviewed holistic health practitioner, political activist and author/teacher Rayna Gangi. In her podcasts, Gangi has gone over the Health Care Act line by line to inform her listeners just what is in there, and quotes page numbers and sections. I was quite surprised listening to the details, so I wanted to share them with you as a resource. As you'll find in the interview below, Ms. Gangi is quite passionate about this issue. It's important we listen to all perspectives and sort out the facts for ourselves. I encourage you to keep listening/reading and to share your input. If you think there is a perspective missing from this conversation, please let me know.
Click the graphic above to read what the White House has to say about health care reform.
Here is a list of the other posts in this series:
Tick Tick Tick - Health Care Reform is Coming
Health Care Reform - Medical Perspective
Beginning to Understand Health Care Reform
And now, Ms. Rayna Gangi:
kim: Welcome Rayna. Can you fill us in on your background?
Rayna: My background is diverse, but as far as healthcare is concerned, I’ve been a holistic health consultant and therapist for more than 35 years. I stayed involved with alternative/complementary health because approaching the body and health holistically is like “an apple a day.” It keeps the doctor away.
kim: Is it true you’ve combed through every page/line of the Health Care Reform Act? What prompted you to do so?
Rayna: As soon as the health care bill became available, I went through it line-by-line a dozen times. We had already been hit with TARP and a stimulus bill that was obviously the wrong step to take to mend the economy. Many of us had said “no” to those programs and seeing the inherent costs and the amount of government control written into the bill basically enraged me, and many others. Many of us(over a million) went to D.C., believing that Americans marching in dissent of such a travesty would make a difference. It didn’t. Then, Nancy Pelosi’s statement that we have to “pass the bill to see what’s in it,” got me even more involved. I studied the history of those “czars” responsible for this bill. By the way, amazing so many thousands of pages could be written so quickly, right? Well, I compared Hillary Clinton’s failed health care reform bill to this one and found many pages just copied. Then Sebellius and others inserted many phrases that basically gave them carte blanche control over every aspect of our bodies and health.
kim: What is the biggest impact that Americans will see from this bill?
Rayna: Hard Question because this impacts many sectors and groups. In general, health care premiums will rise, and this is on purpose. The government would like to put the individual insurance companies out of business while also causing economic pain on individuals and families so they can eventually announce Single Payer health which puts healthcare in the government’s hands permanently.
Young people under 25 of voting age wanted this bill because they can stay on their parent’s health plan until age 26. This is also on purpose to secure the Democratic vote through the end of Obamas second term.
$65 billion dollars was taken from Medicare to help pay for the initial implementation, so those on Medicare already see in increase in their premiums, that money coming from Social Security payments. Because the baby boom generation will be hitting retirement age for the next 15 to 20 years, the government wants those premiums, not to pay for Medicare and Senior healthcare, but to pay for the so-called 47 million people who don’t have healthcare. Most of those are illegal aliens, and if amnesty goes through, the cost for the hundreds of thousands granted amnesty with their families will be $6.9 Trillion over the next 10 years. Seniors will be paying for some of this at the risk of their own health and lives.
The so-called “death panel,” touted as a rumor and joke, is no joke. The administration has not yet put the civilian panel in place to make decisions on whether our ailments are worthy because they need more money to pay them.
Those people working both in small businesses and corporations will either see more taken from their paychecks, their jobs eliminated, or their full-time status reduced to part-time so the employer can afford to keep them.
There are many more impacts, but the overall impact is exactly what Democrats are now calling it. A train wreck. Doctors will stop seeing patients and/or leave their professions, hospitals will charge more for care, Seniors may have to wait to be see, and when all those young people reach age 27 and up, they’ll have a rude awakening as healthcare costs, single payer or not, will be too high for most to afford.
This is the reason Congress, Unions and special interests who lobbied for the bill want to be exempted from compliance, and more than 3000 groups have gotten that exemption.
kim: Can you give us a short list of the highlights? What changes are coming down the pipeline?
Rayna:
- Those with individual health insurance will see an average premium increase of 32-40%
- Obamacare imposes $165 billion in new taxes and fees on health plans, drug manufacturers, and device makers
- The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says that these taxes will be passed on to consumers through higher premiums.
- Obamacare includes 21 new or higher taxes that will cost taxpayers roughly $1.1 trillion over the next decade
- 20-65 million Americans could lose their employer-sponsored health insurance.
- 70% of small businesses have cited Obamacare as an obstacle to job creation
- The CBO estimates that Obamacare will decrease the labor force by 800,000 over the next decade.
- These changes are already in the pipeline, and there are more than 20,000 new regulations added recently with more to come.
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