From the Palatine Tea Party…
(Palatine, Illinois) – In response to the letter Melissa Bean wrote to the constituents in district 8 dated April 16, 2010. We will respond to each of her statements Melissa Bean made based on emotion with factual responses where she stated the following:
“After deliberate review of the final legislation in relation to (the concerns of the people of the 8th district) I supported it (the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act) because it will provide the health care security, affordability and choice families and businesses seek, while utilizing the private market-not a government takeover-and yielding a significant federal deficit reduction of $1.3 trillion…”
The new legislation cuts Medicare spending by more than $500 Billion in order to finance the new health insurance purchase subsidies for families making up to $88,000 a year. So you see, this new legislation is not about cost CUTTING, it is instead about cost SHIFTING. In fact, there are very few, if any measures in the bill that tackle the $760 billion in ANNUAL waste and fraud that ALREADY exists in our health care system.
Why would we cut more than $500 billion in Medicare spending, which directly affects our senior citizens who have paid in to the system their entire life? When we can simply cut the $760 billion in annual waste and fraud in our current health care system. In fact, if we just cut HALF of that annual waste we could buy EVERY ONE of the 45 Million uninsured a gold plated health care plan.
You refer to the 45 Million Uninsured in your letter. Whilst that number is correct. The question that should be asked is who COMPRISE the 45 Million Uninsured? Thanks to the U.S. Census Bureau we know EXACTLY who they are. HALF of the uninsured are TEMPORARILY uninsured for an average of 4 months. 38% of the Uninsured CAN AFFORD to purchase Health Insurance coverage but they CHOOSE not to do so. 18 million make more than $50,000 a year and 10 million of those make more than $75,000 a year. 12 million can not possibly be Uninsured Americans because they are ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS.
Then there’s the Statistic that’s probably most disturbing: 14 Million are poor and low income American’s who are FULLY eligible for Federal and State entitlements and CHOOSE NOT TO ENROLL! The saddest part is that another 5 Million of the uninsured are children who go without, only because their parents have not enrolled them. So how many American’s are TRULY chronically uninsured? About 8 Million. Think we can insure them for less than $1 Trillion? YES WE CAN!
This entire legislation was predicated upon “everyone paying their fair share.” How is it fair that 51.3 million tax returns filed last year paid NO INCOME TAX? Some of these filers made as much as $50,000 a year. Maybe we should have addressed “reforming” the convoluted tax code that allows for such abuse so that everyone ACTUALLY DOES pay their fair share before creating a $1 Trillion new entitlement.