Health Care Timetable

The Health Care Monstrosity has passed, and President Obama is expected to sign it Tuesday. Even this survey reported in the New England Journal of Medicine, showing that a third to half of all physicians will leave the medical profession if health care "reform" passed, wasn't enough to prevent passage.

The Wall Street Journal has a list today of when the main parts of the bill take effect. Here are the first few years:

2010

Coverage

■Subsidies begin for small businesses to provide coverage to employees.
■Insurance companies barred from denying coverage to children with pre-existing illness.
■Children permitted to stay on their parents' insurance policies until their 26th birthday.

2011

Coverage

■Set up long-term care program under which people pay premiums into system for at least five years and become eligible for support payments if they need assistance in daily living.

Taxes and fees

■Drug makers face annual fee of $2.5 billion (rises in subsequent years).

2013

Taxes and fees

■New Medicare taxes on individuals earning more than $200,000 a year and couples filing jointly earning more than $250,000 a year.
■Tax on wages rises to 2.35% from 1.45%.
■New 3.8% tax on unearned income such as dividends and interest.
■Excise tax of 2.3% imposed on sale of medical devices.

Cost control

■Medicare pilot program begins to test bundled payments for care, in a bid to pay for quality rather than quantity of services.

There's more that follows. It is not a pretty picture. Hold onto your wallets, especially next year, and buy the drugs you'll need NOW, before that $2.5 billion fee on the drug makers kicks in. You know who's going to end up paying it, don't you? The customer will, and that would be you.

In response to the passage of this abomination, it's time to start working for a repeal. There's no way around it but to hand control of at least the House back to the GOP, as distasteful as that may be to some of us. But party matters, as evidenced by the way the Republicans--yes, even the hard-core lefty RINOs--hung together to try to stop this bill. At the very least, a Republican-controlled House can starve this thing of funding and prevent it from taking effect.

Hugh Hewitt has a list of questions for those of you with incumbent Democrats running for re-election:

1. Did the incumbent vote for Nancy Pelosi for House speaker?

2. Did the incumbent vote for the "stimulus" package?

3. Did the incumbent vote for "cap-and-tax"?

4. Did the incumbent vote for Obamacare?

5. Did the incumbent vote to protect the assault on the Constitution known as the "deem scheme" or "Slaughter Solution" when it was first challenged March 18 by Rep. Parker Griffith?

Let these questions help you decide if your incumbent is worth returning to office.

And Hugh's producer Duane Patterson has this three-year pledge that you might want to consider, if you're incensed about the jam-down of health care reform.

Meanwhile, the Democrat-controlled Congress isn't stopping for a minute to bask in the glory of their legislative victory. The Los Angeles Times reported today that the Senate has moved on to a major overhaul of America's banking system. The "fun" never ends...