Ok...small business here in The Villages MUST insure or pay a fine/tax whatever.

IF they stay in business, who do you think will pay that extra cost ????

I have children that run small businesses (20-30 employees each)
 

none are illegal. Several have insurance due to a spouse or they are single with their head screwed on right.

We did an estimate if half needed to be insured...then just arbitrarily took a private policy and cut the cost in half (just for the sake of calculation). On the owner would pay 72% of the premium, the overall expense increase to the business ranges from 20-30%.

How would you deal with a 30% increase in your monthly living expenses?

This is not corporate America where they have the ability to swallow or off set the expenses to maintain their profitability.

These are small....SMALL...businesses most of which are less than a million $$ in revenues. These are the businesses that account for a very large share of total jobs in this country.

Two more observations. The kids have heard via their respective feed backs in their businesses, that some employees can't wait for the new law to pass so they can cancel their insurance and get if for 22% of what they used to pay (the business gets stuck with the rest).
Small businesses will get hurt. Many will have to cut expenses and for small businesses that means JOBS!!!!!!!!

As far as somebody else helping pick up the tab so others won't be burdened with paying for those that today do not have.....hopefully I didn't misinterpret that one is in favor of the new reformed health care for the don't haves, as long as somebody else pays the bill?

The only advocates for the bill are Obama, the media and those who stand to gain from it's passage.

I still don't know why the majority have not picked up on the fact their coverage is going to change. That you will be paying more to keep or get the equivilent of what you have today.

If anybody is for the reform, then they are in favor of paying their share to provide for the have nots and those who will figure how to exploit the new provisions.

I view the information available to make a good decision is about as useful as the dimensions of a passing cloud!!!!!!!!!!!!! And it will stay that way ala the recent bail out "clouds"!

btk

The impact from adding more reporting and overhead requirements on small business could be the death knell for many businesses.

Folks can come to their own conclusions about the good-bad-ugly of additional government requirements to small business owners. The link here is to the most recent Small Business Administration's Economic Report to the President (July 2009) - http://www.sba.gov/advo/research/sb_econ2009.pdf The textual commentary is edited by political appointees of this Administration (that's the way it is), but that has not changed the bleakness. The statistics speak for themselves.

So, with our exports and overseas markets shrinking due to non-competitiveness, and domestic markets shrinking to foreign (mainly from socialist nations) product-dumping, is there any wonder why jobs are evaporating?

Regardless of the moral outcry, is this a good time to add more of a burden on domestic businesses without some kind of commercial offset (e.g., tariff increases) to balance the scales? The last thing we especially need now are more domestic businesses deleting jobs or going bankrupt because one more nail in their competitive coffin has been added.

If you only want to add americian citizens -ok but what about all the illegal aliens he wants to include in the plan -if its so good why is congress and the pres not included in it-its their "good" plan for all isn't it

Yep, seems to me that if you add 50 million to a system and do not increase the amount of doctors, you will obviously have to do some serious rationing. They will do triage based on the patient's age and statistical life expectancies. For instance, people who need a knee replacement will be put on the list. Who do you think will get their knee replaced faster? A 50 year old or the 70 year old? Their statistical software will determine that the 50 old goes higher on the priority list because he will have more years to be in the work force. When they add another to the list the 70 year old goes further down the list.
But don't worry, they may issue the 70 year old a walking cane and prescribe an aspirin for the pain.

VK, Your observations are correct, but we need to ask 'Why?' My son, now in his thirties, has been in the home construction business for years. A few months ago, we were playing some old home movies that included a few shots of our lawn having new sod laid down after the chinch bugs killed the old lawn. He broke out laughing - "White men laying sod!!!" That could never happen today. We have bought into the nonsense that the illegal immigrants are doing jobs that American citizens won't do. This is pure BS. What is true is that American citizens will not do the jobs for a sub-minimum wage.

My son observed that his drywall crews in particular were all Mexican citizens, here illegally. A number of them would share a shack, drive together to work in an overcrowded, uninsured car and send as much money to Mexico as they could. They are great workers, but they are filling jobs that Americans can and have done up until about twenty years ago.

As I noted, the car is uninsured, so when they are in an accident, the American citizens have to pay, they have no health coverage and when they get sick, once again we get to pay, they compromise 30% of the Federal prison population, and I can go on and on. Costs to house, costs to educate, costs attempting to control the Mexican Narco Gangs, etc. Costs to American citizens for having these criminals, and yes they are criminals, is conservatively estimated to be in excess of $300 billion per year. If you want to know where we can find the money to fund health care for American citizens, I suggest we start here. We would also go a long way towards reducing the unemployment of American citizens and balancing our state budgets. Our President has already committed to providing health care for children here illegally. Does anyone think it will stop there?

We Don't Want Immigration Reform
 

BBQ, you and I are in complete agreement. But the illegals are here, working in jobs Americans could do and having their education and healthcare paid for by us BECAUSE WE WANT THEM HERE!

Your son might be a good person to ask about this. Ask if the illegal Mexicans were suddenly not available to do his drywalling, how long would it take him to get Americans to do the job? Could he ever expect to get Americans to work as hard as the Mexicans for the same wage? (The free market has set the value of labor for drywalling houses in your son's area--it's what he's paying the Mexicans!)

My guess is he'll answer that there's no way he could get Americans to do the work. Even if he could find them, they wouldn't work as hard, they'd probably be less reliable and they'd certainly expect a higher wage.

Multiply that scenario by hundreds of thousands of employers and that's why we have so many illegal immigrants flooding across our borders. They could be stopped, for sure. But there would be lots and lots of small--and large--businesses which would feel the effect, maybe even going out of business. That's why there has been so little attention paid by Congress to immigration reform. The politicians are hiding behind the debate for or against amnesty. All that is a delaying tactic so that they don't really have to address the issue of securing our borders.

Business certainly doesn't want reform, and if the truth be known, the general public is also pretty comfortable with the work done for them by illegal labor and wouldn't want to "trade up" to American workers who would not work as hard, be less reliable and cost more.

The bottom line is WE DON'T WANT IMMIGRATION REFORM.

That being the case, the chances are pretty high that, like it or not, we'll keep paying for the "fringe benefits" (education, healthcare and the cost of crimes done by the criminals that cross our borders with those that want to work honestly) that the businesses who employ illegal workers are responsible for, but who don't pay for. When you think about it, the situation is not an awful lot different from when the floods of European immigrants came into the U.S. 70-80 years ago. They did work that Americans here wouldn't do, for wages less than Americans would accept, and under working conditions that were even criminal. We paid for the education of their children and their healthcare back then and we still are. Not much has changed, has it?

If there was ever a subject near-and-dear to my heart, it's the topic of immigration, especially the why-and-how of illegal immigration.

We could all remember when many professions (e.g., meat-packing, the building trades, etc.) were decent-paying union jobs. Now, many of those working these jobs are doing so in sweatshop conditions with communities which claim to "care about people" turning a blind eye to the OSHA-less working conditions and child labor exploitation.

I could go into all of the "why" these folk are within the US, but the pro-abortion folk won't want to accept the fact that these folk are replacing that missing portion of the population pyramid which should be 18+ years old and doing the semi-skilled labor. Just follow the abortion and illegal immigration curves, and they overlap, but that's a reality most vote-hungry politicians don't want to admit, so they play all sides against each other.

Illegal immigration fulfills the economic principle of "supply and demand." There would be no "supply" if there was no "demand." And there would be no "demand" if the work force which traditionally filled entry-level and manual-skilled labor existed in sufficient numbers. But, they were killed off for the sake of convenience, and now this unintended consequence (illegal immigration) is here to fill the gap.

The myth that the illegals fill those jobs Americans won't do is just that a myth. The real line is Americans won't do many of these jobs at slave wages, so the illegals are exploited instead. With a close-to-10% unemployment rate, the illegals are finding themselves now competing with Americans for the jobs illegals have been doing for the last 20 years.

There are already visa categories in the law for temporary and unskilled/semi-skilled labor, and the number of folk who can receive these visas are determined solely by Congress (within the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), as amended). All Congress has to do is amend the visa numbers, reinstate what used to be Sections 212(c) and 245(i) of the INA, and the majority of the "illegal" population issue is fixed. It IS that simple, and the law is maintained. Any private immigration attorney will agree to that, and most government immigration attorneys will admit that simple fixes to today's laws will suffice to resolve most immigration issues.

But, why fix things with a simple "molehill" approach when you can turn it into a political mountain?

Your joking of course, huh? I always thought that the people who came here 70-80 years ago tried and did assimilate into our society and they wanted to be Americans. They tried real hard to learn our language. And they certainly were not so arrogant as to steal jobs. On the contrary, we used to put out signs that said Irish Need Not Apply. Also, during the great Depression, jobs went to citizens of the United States and there was a pride here.
Also, what history doesn't advertise very much is how many illegals were shipped back to where they came from. Alot of them voluntarily because they didn't want to or could not adjust.
Also, there was no welfare office for people to get free handouts like they do today. Everybody pulled his weight. If you took the free-loaders off the government payrolls and sent the illegals home...yoiu would see many jobs open up.
Starving does funny things to people....kinda makes them want to get a job so they could eat. Many people would chop your firewood for a handout. Today, a person "In Poverty" has a car, television, food stamps, cell phone, microwave, washer-dryer etc. etc. All paid for by you and me. Tell me again how the War on Poverty is working out???

Counter Intuitive
 

That's a statistical description that would be easy to accept. But the chart of the population doesn't seem to bear it out. Here...

http://i275.photobucket.com/albums/j...stribution.jpg

The chart seems to be counter-intuitive. Certainly, the number of abortions and the trend of both family formations and the birth rate has been declining. Why, then, is that not reflected in the chart?

Data available from the Center for Disease Control (http://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealt...s/Abortion.htm) and the Office of Immigration Statistics, DHS (http://www.dhs.gov/files/statistics/publications/) provides the numbers. Of importance is the period of time from 1992 onward, as the DHS data shows a tripling of the rate of illegal information from that point. 1992 is 18 years after Rowe v. Wade, when the first of the aborted population would have started entering the work force. The chart seems to corroborate it.

Health Care Still the Best
 

http://www.newmajority.com/americas-...m-still-works/



http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArti...32723342557746

Accuracy Please?
 

I don't see how the stats from PBS bear out the statement that "81%" of those who have no health insurance are foreign born.

It's also time, once again, to remind our anti-immigration friends that there is a vast pool of undocumented workers- who have no interest in becoming American citizens- whoi only want to make money to help feed their families in their native countries. Those countries, due to corruption, poverty or lack of opportunity, pay individuals pennies a day. So $6 bucks an hour for backbreaking work is a gold mine.

Illegal immigration- those who want to live here without following the rules, or the law- is a completely different longer-term problem. It's easier to throw darts at an inflated dartbord.

That doesn't provide a solution to health care costs- but at least stops pundits from lumping in all in one place.

Some Thoughts
 

Yes, I support a radical re-thinking of health care in America:

Honesty: We do NOT have the best healthcare system in the world- not even close, if you look at morbidity rates, percentage of individuals (citizens or other) who cannot afford even basc care, etc.

Honesty: We have among the BEST specialized health care services in the world. People come here from all over the world not to treat a sprained ankle or sore throat, but for the highly specialized treatments in which we excel.

Honesty: According to the Pew Foundation, 55% of all health care dollars are expended by 5% of the population. These are commonly terminal illnesses and geriatric illnesses. Illegal immigrants are not an issue.

Factor: Our pharmaceutical companies run rampant with high-costs. This is not an issue of what the "free market" will bear, since these medicines are held by monopolies, and real competition, as in overseas versions of the same drugs are prohibited for import. Thank you lobbyists & Congress.

Factor: Health insurance may have been "competitive" for larger employers at one time, but like all else in the recent orgy of non-regulation, now there are only two or three companies where many may have been involved before.
Blue Cross, United Health and others have had to pay BILLIONS in penalities for market-area price-fixing- not exactly a competitive spirit, is it?

Factor: We, as a culture, especially older folks, have been indoctrinated by religious forces and the medical industry, to think that: 1. We are invulnerable to death; 2. All conditions are curable, and, 3. most importantly, "Pulling the Plug" in any situation is murder (see T. Schiavo). I have worked in hospitals where families, usually older members, refused to allow their spouse to die with diginity under any cirsumstance, even when the sufferer is in great pain. The health care costs involved with this mentality have over-whelmed our system.

Factor: As long as the hospital can get reimbursed, they can continue these end-stage marathons when the family so chooses. The costs of this are passed on in dangerously high insurance hikes, which can create situations where the self-employed (ME!) cannot obtain insurance.

Factor: Although tort liability is becoming the law in may states (including Florida), malpractice insurance rates continue to skyrocket, some doctors won't even carry it, and there's no coherent or cost-effective system to protect good doctors or malpracticed patients.

Factor: The so-called insurance for the self-insured is oftentimes a scam, as described vividly by Consumer Reports last year about "Assurant Healthcare." These companies do not cover "pre-existing" illnesses. Big Problem.
In fact, these companies also write these policies for six months at a time. If you get sick in March, when your "new" policy kicks in in June, you now have a non-covered "pre-existing" illness. Bigger Problem. Solution, Pay big bucks to a lawyer to fight individually for your health care. Who's got that kind of money? I could worsen or die before the case is settled. I may not fall into an extreme enough case that warrants a legal battle, etc.

Example: I have suffered from chronic kidney stones for more than 30 years. With my good company-offered insurance in the past, I have been able to have every test under the sun, every dietary possibility explored, and have had once-miraculous, now routine, lithotropsy 3 times. Several times I've also had to go to the emergency room for pain relief and extraction. Good Enough.

But now, although I'm through with testing, etc., if I get a chronic attack, I cannot even find insurance that will cover that. Forget the "2 year rule." Doesn't apply to individual purchasers.

Example: Catastrophic Insurance? Cost for self-employed me? $890.00 a month! And it isn't even tax deductible- And I pay 1 & 1/2 times your social security taxes as well. Solution? I cannot find decent insurance, and cannot afford catastrophic insurance. So I pray I stay healthy, I use Walgreen's prescription program, and I avoid going to any doctors for any reason.

Ladies & Gentlemen- There's your health crisis. Between the obscenely profitable insurance industry, high costs of virtually all medical services and the monopoly of the drug lobby laws, and the cost of malpractice insurance to practitioners, the old "go slow and ignore it" mentality is going to crush individuals AND the country.

Conclusion: If you notice the PBS Insurance chart, one very telling factor about health care is that on 1.2% of seniors don't have health insurance. Why? Medicare and Medicaid of course. But what if a coherent system could be put in place that cuts costs, makes efficient use of resources, limits tort issues, helps to prevent illnesses through preventative care, and the like. So WHAT if it's operated by the government!? Is the private sector really doing such a great job?

Spiraling costs and deficient health care have been issues since Harry Truman was president. Government employees and the military have benefitted from government-run health plans for centuries.

If you hear someone taunting with the words "socialism" or "loss of choice" or "boondoggle" you are listening to the people who would really rather spin a lie tham acknowledge that a major part of our government's responsibility to ensure that all Americans have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is to keep people alive.

For once, just once, please don't assume that the vitriole of radio talk hosts and politicians, interested more in creating a political Waterloo than in creating workable health care system, are interested in anything remotely discussing the common good for all Americans.

Yea right, womb to tomb. Our government's responsibility to ensure that all Americans have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is to keep people alive? I don't think so. The government will protect us from enemies so you can pursue those things.

Americans do not need nor can we afford the Nanny state. And yes, I hope that this attempt at Socialized medicine is B Hussein Obama's Waterloo. Maybe we will be able to get new blood in there in 2010 and save this Nation like we did in 1994.


http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/gop-tou...-to-obamacare/