Sunday, March 28, 2010

Truth Has Fallen & Taken Liberty with It


It's hard not to feel sorry for a great athlete who continues to play long after he should have retired. This article by Paul Craig Roberts shows that, if this is his final good-bye, he retires in his prime.

Because of its importance, Truth Has Fallen has appeared in numerous sites throughout the Web. For that reason I do not cite any, choosing only to mirror it here in the hopes it will reach and awaken still more people.

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March 24, 2010

Good-Bye

Truth Has Fallen and Taken Liberty With It

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

There was a time when the pen was mightier than the sword. That was a time when people believed in truth and regarded truth as an independent power and not as an auxiliary for government, class, race, ideological, personal, or financial interest.

Today Americans are ruled by propaganda. Americans have little regard for truth, little access to it, and little ability to recognize it.

Truth is an unwelcome entity. It is disturbing. It is off limits. Those who speak it run the risk of being branded “anti-American,” “anti-semite” or “conspiracy theorist.”

Truth is an inconvenience for government and for the interest groups whose campaign contributions control government.

Truth is an inconvenience for prosecutors who want convictions, not the discovery of innocence or guilt.

Truth is inconvenient for ideologues.

Today many whose goal once was the discovery of truth are now paid handsomely to hide it. “Free market economists” are paid to sell offshoring to the American people. High-productivity, high value-added American jobs are denigrated as dirty, old industrial jobs. Relicts from long ago, we are best shed of them. Their place has been taken by “the New Economy,” a mythical economy that allegedly consists of high-tech white collar jobs in which Americans innovate and finance activities that occur offshore. All Americans need in order to participate in this “new economy” are finance degrees from Ivy League universities, and then they will work on Wall Street at million dollar jobs.

Economists who were once respectable took money to contribute to this myth of “the New Economy.”

And not only economists sell their souls for filthy lucre. Recently we have had reports of medical doctors who, for money, have published in peer-reviewed journals concocted “studies” that hype this or that new medicine produced by pharmaceutical companies that paid for the “studies.”

The Council of Europe is investigating the drug companies’ role in hyping a false swine flu pandemic in order to gain billions of dollars in sales of the vaccine.

The media helped the US military hype its recent Marja offensive in Afghanistan, describing Marja as a city of 80,000 under Taliban control. It turns out that Marja is not urban but a collection of village farms.

And there is the global warming scandal, in which NGOs. the UN, and the nuclear industry colluded in concocting a doomsday scenario in order to create profit in pollution.

Wherever one looks, truth has fallen to money.

Wherever money is insufficient to bury the truth, ignorance, propaganda, and short memories finish the job.

I remember when, following CIA director William Colby’s testimony before the Church Committee in the mid-1970s, presidents Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan issued executive orders preventing the CIA and U.S. black-op groups from assassinating foreign leaders. In 2010 the US Congress was told by Dennis Blair, head of national intelligence, that the US now assassinates its own citizens in addition to foreign leaders.

When Blair told the House Intelligence Committee that US citizens no longer needed to be arrested, charged, tried, and convicted of a capital crime, just murdered on suspicion alone of being a “threat,” he wasn’t impeached. No investigation pursued. Nothing happened. There was no Church Committee. In the mid-1970s the CIA got into trouble for plots to kill Castro. Today it is American citizens who are on the hit list. Whatever objections there might be don’t carry any weight. No one in government is in any trouble over the assassination of U.S. citizens by the U.S. government.

As an economist, I am astonished that the American economics profession has no awareness whatsoever that the U.S. economy has been destroyed by the offshoring of U.S. GDP to overseas countries. U.S. corporations, in pursuit of absolute advantage or lowest labor costs and maximum CEO “performance bonuses,” have moved the production of goods and services marketed to Americans to China, India, and elsewhere abroad. When I read economists describe offshoring as free trade based on comparative advantage, I realize that there is no intelligence or integrity in the American economics profession.

Intelligence and integrity have been purchased by money. The transnational or global U.S. corporations pay multi-million dollar compensation packages to top managers, who achieve these “performance awards” by replacing U.S. labor with foreign labor. While Washington worries about “the Muslim threat,” Wall Street, U.S. corporations and “free market” shills destroy the U.S. economy and the prospects of tens of millions of Americans.

Americans, or most of them, have proved to be putty in the hands of the police state.

Americans have bought into the government’s claim that security requires the suspension of civil liberties and accountable government. Astonishingly, Americans, or most of them, believe that civil liberties, such as habeas corpus and due process, protect “terrorists,” and not themselves. Many also believe that the Constitution is a tired old document that prevents government from exercising the kind of police state powers necessary to keep Americans safe and free.

Most Americans are unlikely to hear from anyone who would tell them any different.

I was associate editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal. I was Business Week’s first outside columnist, a position I held for 15 years. I was columnist for a decade for Scripps Howard News Service, carried in 300 newspapers. I was a columnist for the Washington Times and for newspapers in France and Italy and for a magazine in Germany. I was a contributor to the New York Times and a regular feature in the Los Angeles Times. Today I cannot publish in, or appear on, the American “mainstream media.”

For the last six years I have been banned from the “mainstream media.” My last column in the New York Times appeared in January, 2004, coauthored with Democratic U.S. Senator Charles Schumer representing New York. We addressed the offshoring of U.S. jobs. Our op-ed article produced a conference at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. and live coverage by C-Span. A debate was launched. No such thing could happen today.

For years I was a mainstay at the Washington Times, producing credibility for the Moony newspaper as a Business Week columnist, former Wall Street Journal editor, and former Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. But when I began criticizing Bush’s wars of aggression, the order came down to Mary Lou Forbes to cancel my column.

The American corporate media does not serve the truth. It serves the government and the interest groups that empower the government.

America’s fate was sealed when the public and the anti-war movement bought the government’s 9/11 conspiracy theory. The government’s account of 9/11 is contradicted by much evidence. Nevertheless, this defining event of our time, which has launched the US on interminable wars of aggression and a domestic police state, is a taboo topic for investigation in the media. It is pointless to complain of war and a police state when one accepts the premise upon which they are based.

These trillion dollar wars have created financing problems for Washington’s deficits and threaten the U.S. dollar’s role as world reserve currency. The wars and the pressure that the budget deficits put on the dollar’s value have put Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block. Former Goldman Sachs chairman and U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson is after these protections for the elderly. Fed chairman Bernanke is also after them. The Republicans are after them as well. These protections are called “entitlements” as if they are some sort of welfare that people have not paid for in payroll taxes all their working lives.

With over 21 per cent unemployment as measured by the methodology of 1980, with American jobs, GDP, and technology having been given to China and India, with war being Washington’s greatest commitment, with the dollar over-burdened with debt, with civil liberty sacrificed to the “war on terror,” the liberty and prosperity of the American people have been thrown into the trash bin of history.

The militarism of the U.S. and Israeli states, and Wall Street and corporate greed, will now run their course. As the pen is censored and its might extinguished, I am signing off.

Paul Craig Roberts was an editor of the Wall Street Journal and an Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. His latest book, HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST, has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com

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Wednesday, March 24, 2010

The Lies Won't Stop

I received this mistitled email from Congressman Patrick Murphy. My responses are in brackets.

March 23, 2010

Mr. Rick Lutz
Levittown, PA 19057


Dear Mr. Lutz,


Yesterday, we passed one of the most important bills in a generation.

[One of the most destructive.]

Despite the confusion and outright lies that have surrounded this bill, make no mistake: health insurance reform will provide crucial protections to ensure that Americans get the healthcare that they and their children need.

[This is, of course, one of the biggest lies. Promoters have been making myriad wild claims about the benefits of this “plan,” but, no one can say honestly if this will provide any benefits at all. As I pointed out in my post “Healthcare Obamanation,”, it's just the skeleton that will be fleshed out by bureaucrats and healthcare dictators. The very “envelope” this email came in was a lie. It was titled “Reply From Congressman Patrick Murphy.” To my shame, I never sent an email to the Congressman (Gauleiter?), although I don't know what good it would do since he has already said he doesn't care what his constituents want. I did write a letter to the editor of the local rag.]

Forty million American families and four million small businesses will benefit from the largest middle-class healthcare tax credit in history. Barbara in Feasterville worked hard for forty years before losing her job at the age of 58. Overnight, Barbara was facing $1,300 in monthly premiums - more than her pension and more than she can afford. Her healthcare plan? Hope that she doesn't fall seriously ill before she qualifies for Medicare. This tax credit protects Barb, and millions like her, by ensuring access to high-quality and affordable insurance.

[More benefit lies coupled with the vilest form of demagoguery--sob stories designed to deflect rational thought with emotion. I have several from the other side in my collection. These tell of the hardships of those living under similar government run healthcare programs who are forced to leave their homelands to seek care in the U.S.A. I was above using them in my blog.]

Small businesses are not required to purchase insurance but will get tax credits if they do. Insurance reform provides $40 billion in small businesses tax credits to help companies cover up to half the cost of providing insurance for their workers.

[More than likely small businesses will find themselves driven under as has so often been the case with government “reform.” Their businesses will be absorbed by the giant chains and corporations.]

Seniors will see stronger and improved Medicare benefits. And you don't have to take my word for it: AARP has endorsed the bill stating that it "cracks down on insurance company abuses and protects and strengthens guaranteed benefits in Medicare, the program millions of our members depend on and in which millions more will soon enroll."

[I was a member of AARP for maybe a year. I joined to get discounts that might be voluntarily offered by businesses I deal with. I soon started receiving mail from AARP touting some lobbying efforts they were making to get more from the taxpayers for “seniors.” I quickly concluded they were nothing but a bunch of socialist gimme gangsters out for what they could steal. I dropped my membership. An endorsement from them is hardly a confidence builder. BTW, you can find the AARP in the list of corporate members of the CFR, Americas Ruling Party, in my americasenemies blog.]

Tony in Levittown needs an expensive medication to treat his thyroid condition and is pushed into the Medicare Part D donut hole earlier and earlier each year. Tony, along with 11,200 other seniors in Bucks County, will benefit from lower prescription drug costs, as the Part D "donut hole" is closed. And seniors' Medicare program is put on a stable financial footing, ensuring this vital program will be there to serve seniors today and those of future generations.

[Many of us who are “seniors” now may not be alive to see the eventual “fruits” of this bill, or rather of the plan that will be written by the Healthcare Commissioner and the Secretary of Health and Human Services, if it hasn't already been written, as I suspect, by the largest insurance companies in the nation and maybe the world. I do believe that those of future generations will be able to confront Murphy with “Liar! Liar! Pants on fire!]

Insurance companies no longer have free reign over our health insurance system, as we prohibited the egregious practices they've gotten away with for far too long. Insurers can no longer turn people away, or charge more, because someone has arthritis, diabetes, is a cancer survivor, is pregnant - or has any other "pre-existing condition." And they can no longer pull the rug out from families by taking away their coverage just when someone gets sick and needs coverage the most. These important changes will benefit everyone and those on the frontlines of our healthcare system agree: the doctors, nurses, and hospital associations have all endorsed the bill.

[Egregious is a good word to apply to both the demagoguery and ignorance of the insurance business displayed by this paragraph. Insurance companies not covering pre-existing conditions has been a big part of “Uncle Tom” Obama's inflammatory rhetoric. If the politicians understood how insurance works they would know that insurance companies can't cover pre-existing conditions. The whole idea behind any insurance program is shared risk. We buy insurance to cover things that might happen to us that could be financially ruinous and hope we never have to use it. Some people decide to take the risk and spend their money on other things. If insurance companies are forced to take people who wait until they have a problem to get insurance, then there is no incentive for anyone to buy insurance. All anyone would have to do is wait until they're sick. This would ruin the insurance industry. It simply couldn't operate that way. I would ask the Congressman and Obama this, if I die tomorrow, and my wife applies for a $250,000 life policy on me the day after tomorrow, can the insurance industry refuse to write the policy on the grounds of a pre-existing condition? But maybe that's the reason for the police-state mandate that all must have health coverage. Incidentally, I've yet to find a doctor, nurse, pharmacist or any other healthcare worker who thinks this is a good plan. More than likely the "leadership" of their associations has been bought.]

And children will be able to stay on their parents' insurance until they are 26 years old, helping out recent high-school or college graduates like Valerie from Dublin who is unable to find a job that offers benefits.

[Poor Valerie! If only she could have grown up in a free society where the economy had not been destroyed by big government she might have had other options than flipping burgers or, if she has her masters, managing a flipping location for a burger chain.]

When my two kids grow up, they will know that their dad stood up to the special interests to fight for Barb, Tony, and every middle-class American family whose wallets are being stretched thin by crushing healthcare costs. They will be able to look upon yesterday as the day Congress stopped kicking the can down the road and finally tackled one of the greatest challenges of our day.

[Why you hypocritical windbag. Our wallets have already been emptied by you big spenders in Washington who toady to those special interests while ranting about fighting them. You who have already looted our wallets, pockets, closets, and anywhere else we might have hidden a dime to transfer it to those special interests through bailouts and cap and trade. I would imagine your benefits package for serving Daddy Big Bucks will include health benefits for your whole family – maybe for life. When you've crushed healthcare for the rest of us, you'll probably still be able to get care in special hospitals not open to us peons.]

If you'd like to learn more about what this bill means for you and your family, I encourage you to visit my website at www.patrickmurphy.house.gov. There you can read the legislation, find detailed summaries of the bill, and find out more about what's in it for you. Also, please do not hesitate to contact me if I can help in any way. You can reach my office in Washington at (202) 225-4276, or either of my district offices in Doylestown at (215) 348-1194 or Bristol at (215) 826-1963.

[Thanks, but I'll opt out of the extra helping of meadow muffins at your website for now. However, if you are sincere about helping me in anyway, how about this:

  • return some of the money the Federal government has stolen from us over the years

  • cut the government in half (as a starter) to permit business, especially wealth producing businesses like manufacturing, farming, construction and the like to flourish once again

  • restore Republican principles, not the principles of the Republican party which I know is as unprincipled as the Democratic, but the principles of representative government

  • end special privileges for collectives such as corporations and unions and treat all citizens equally

  • kill the leader principle that you and the Democratic party seem to have embraced so that it might finally be buried as it should have been in 1945 along with The Leader*

  • restore the Constitution as the supreme law of the land]

*[To be fair, despite all of the fanfare about opposition when they knew, as we did, that it would pass, the Republinazi party was no better under Adolph Bush than is the Demonazi party under Adolph Obama.]


Sincerely,


Patrick J. Murphy

MEMBER OF CONGRESS

PJM/lm


Was the Congressman ”replying” to this letter to the editor or was his email just labeled that way to keep it out of the spam folder where it belonged?


Editor
Bucks County Courier Times


Dear Editor:


John W. Whitehead's commentary on Tuesday points to similarity between the willingness of the German people to follow “The Leader” and the willingness of the American people to accept, almost without question, the dictates of an overblown and uncontrolled government in Washington and to follow our “leaders” like sheep.


A guest opinion in the same issue praises Patrick Murphy for leadership and for “fighting for us.” If “us” is the money powers, then his votes for bail-outs, cap and trade, and the healthcare obamanation supports the latter assessment. I can attest to the accuracy of the former. He has said it was his “duty” as a “leader” to vote as he chooses despite the wishes of his constituency. He has rebuked the republican principles on which our country was founded and embraced the leadership principle that destroyed Germany. Murphy should be reminded he is elected to represent us and not to lead us.


Sooner or later we must decide if we want Congressmen to represent us or Gauleiters to lead us. The decision may soon be out of our hands...if it isn't already.



Rick Lutz
Levittown, PA 19057


I plan to list all who voted for healthcare ruination in my americasenemies blog. Murphy has earned special mention in that post.


[A copy of this post, less this comment, will be sent as an email answer to the Congressman.]


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Friday, March 19, 2010

HEALTHCARE OBAMANATION


I started to write this several months ago, but I have been having difficulties with motivation for about five months. When I do sit down to write, I have difficulty. The reason I'm saying this is because a number of changes have been bounced back and forth since I analyzed the bill myself, but I'm confident the changes made little material difference.


My experience with counter-political groups in the past, particularly with their legislative committees, leaves me little concerned that any significant change has taken place. In cases of “controversial” legislation like this, laws the people don't want but the money powers do, a great show is usually made about changes being made to the bill and different versions being sent back and forth between committees and between the Senate and the House. These changes are usually cosmetic, but they give Senators and Representatives (Gauleiters?) an opportunity to go back to constituents with claims that they fought hard to stop the bill in its original form. In the end, they “compromised” and voted for this “improved” plan as the only means to stop the original. This show also makes it extremely difficult for those of us who have lives to lead to keep up with those minor changes. It gives those pushing the bill a chance to attack opposition on insignificant “errors” in their analysis created by those minor changes. Knowing fully that I will be vulnerable, I'm still publishing this based on my original analysis of an earlier house Bill with some updates from other sources.


A lot has been written by both sides of the argument about “Obama's” healthcare plan. Each side tries to analyze it from its own perspective and explain what is in it and what it will do. All is futility.


The plan, as represented by the Bill passed by the House of Representatives*, can't be analyzed in terms of content or effect. It is a grotesque skeleton that will be fleshed out later by the new monstreaucracy it creates and by the courts that will hear what is likely to be a storm of lawsuits to try to limit or to expand its meaning and scope.


Much of the job of fleshing out; that is, actually creating the “health care” system falls on two people and the massive bureaucracy that will by necessary to do the actual work. When I first examined this atrocity, I thought it set up what was, in effect, a Health Care Dictator. A “Health Choices Commissioner” is created and is mentioned over 200 times, usually establishing his/her considerable powers, discretions, and dutes. However, as I delved further into the bill, I found that the Commissioner, while having incredible power in his own right, may be subservient to a higher level dictator – the “Secretary of Health and Human Services.”


Again, the “Health Care Commissioner and his duties are mentioned over 200 times in the bill. Among those duties are:

  • defining what a “dependent” is, - the bill doesn't even define something as basic as a dependent

  • establishing rules for Exchange-participating health benefits plans

  • establishing a “grace period” whereby, for plan years beginning after the end of the 5-year period beginning with Y1, an employment-based health plan in operation as of the day before the first day of Y1 must meet the same requirements as apply to a qualified health benefits plan [so much for not effecting your current plan]

  • specifying age categories wherein limited age variation [premium] is permitted

  • specifying, in consultation with State insurance regulators, variations permitted by premium rating area [note that it requires such consultation but doesn't require the Commissioner to listen to the State regulators – it will probably be left to the courts to settle any jurisdictional arguments]

  • specifying conditions for family enrollment variations (such as variations within catagories and compositions of families) as specified under State law and consistent with rules of the Commissioner [no specification in the bill as to which takes priority creating an area for ongoing legal battles]

  • defining a “medical loss ratio” that must be met by a qualified health benefits plan


This is just a very small sampling. The defining, establishing, and specifying, not to mention requiring reports and, in turn, writing reports, goes on for most of the 200 plus times the Commissioner is mentioned.


As regards reports required of the “qualified health benefits plans,” I found this section fascinating.


The Health-care Commissioner is charged with establishing standards with which a “qualified health benefits plan” must comply “for the accurate and timely disclosure of plan documents, plan terms and conditions, claims payment policies and practices, periodic financial disclosure, data on enrollment, data on disenrollment, data on the number of claims denials, data on rating practices, information on cost-sharing and payments with respect to any out-of-network coverage, and other information as determined appropriate by the Commissioner. The Commissioner shall require that such disclosure be provided in plain language.” According to the bill, “plain language” means “language that the intended audience, including individuals with limited English proficiency, can readily understand and use because that language is clean, concise, well-organized, and follows other best practices of plain language writing.”


I find this section fascinating for several reasons:


  • Firstly, the number and nature of things the plan providers, and presumably, the health care providers must keep statistics on and report to the Commissioner. How can anyone even guess what the cost of this record keeping and reporting is going to be? Estimates of the cost of this bill have ranged from $800 million to $2 or 3.5 trillion. Is that just for the medical coverage or does it includes this massive record keeping and reporting? Is it only for the record keeping and reporting? I doubt that even the people who made the estimates could tell us.

  • Secondly, and this I find both fascinating and enlightening, is that “plain language” is defined as language that an intended audience which would include those whose English no so pretty much good. Would that include illegal aliens? Is ability to speak English not a requirement for naturalization? It must not be for the users of the system. What use would most patients have for such statistics? Is it intended for the health care providers? Maybe they've already anticipated driving all American doctors from the field and having to replace them with foreign doctors. On the other hand, maybe this is just a smokescreen to hide the inability of the bureaucrats and elected officials who are promising to “reform” health care and the insurance industry to speak the language of either.

  • Finally, and this should be good, the Commissioner is charged with developing and issuing guidance on best practices of plain language writing. Isn't that a kicker? These people, famous for unintelligible bureauese, will be providing “guidance” for plain English writing. Of course they might be planing to subcontract the writing to technical writers in China or India. You know—the ones who wrote the manuals for your computer, home appliances, and the items you bought that said “some assembly required.” Maybe they're planning to make Henry Kissinger Secretary of Plain English.


The “Secretary” is mentioned close to 1100 times. Again, when mentioned, the bill does not give detailed instructions to the “Secretary,” rather, as in the case of the “Commissioner,” it specifies the powers and duties of the “Secretary” which again entail considerable discretionary latitude.

A couple of examples:

  • the Secretary is given the power to define and develop methodology for “Interim Rules for determining how to calculate the medical loss ratio which will subsequently be built on by the Commissioner

  • receives recommendations from the Health Benefits Advisory Committee on benefit standards [Behold! A bureaucracy within a bureaucracy!]


There are then several paragraphs regarding the Secretary accepting or rejecting the recommendations which he apparently must do as a package. If he/she doesn't accept, the package is sent back to the committee for revision. Most of those paragraphs is written in “plain English” I suppose, so I have no idea what they are saying. But finally, we get to this:

  • the Secretary shall, through the rulemaking process consistent with subsection (a), adopt an initial set of benefit standards. [anyone want to guess what the “rulemaking process” is?]


There have been many articles written on this subject. I'm afraid if I try to summarize the ones I have it will be months more before I publish this. I'll just include this summary of a Fred Lucas article in cnsnews. Lucas debunks many of Obama's claims.


According to Obama, abortions would not be funded, but according to Lucas, the House bill mandates that government-run insurance exchanges provide at least one plan that covers abortion. Even if this interpretation is not correct, a number of amendments that would have specifically excluded abortion from government (taxpayer) subsidies have been rejected.


When asked if her amendment added to a Senate version of the bill would fund abortion , Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-Md) replied, “It would provide for any service deemed medically necessary or medically appropriate.” Apparently, all it would take is for a “doctor” to say carrying a child to full term would have adverse affects on the mother's mental and/or physical health and, regardless of how strong your religious beliefs may be against the unnecessary taking of a human life, you will be forced to be an accessory through your tax dollars.


Then there is the Obama claim that the “healthcare” plan will be “deficit neutral.” The Office of Management and Budget has estimated the bill and the bureaucratic monstrosity it creates will add over a trillion dollars to the budget over the next ten years. Since that estimate, OMB has reduced its projection to some 800-900 billion. Supposedly, this is due to some changes in a possible compromise bill.



But, not content to let one lie stand alone, it now claims a deficit reduction will occur. I think I recall a number in the 1 to 2 hundred million. If that's the case, then Congress should try to expand the bill to create a ten year cost in thousands of trillions of dollars. In ten years our national debt could be wiped out.

Back to reality. It is highly unlikely Obama plans to cut spending in other areas, so the only way to avoid added deficits to fund this outrageous program is to increase taxes. Obama said from the beginning of his campaign that he wanted change. I have said that his predecessors, Republican and Democrat alike, have stolen all of our dollars. Now Obama wants our to steal our change to fund his scheme.


Lucas points out that Obama claims of the number of uninsured Americans are overstated and gives evidence to support his contention. Interestingly, in a town meeting in Portsmouth NH in August, Obama said “nearly 46 million Americans don’t have health insurance coverage today,” but also said “46 million of our fellow citizens have no coverage.” Given that Obama, questions of birth certificates aside, said in Berlin that he is “a citizen of the world,” the two statements may not be synonomous.


Obama also claims that charges that illegal aliens will receive benefits are false and, in fact, the bill does exclude illegals, but attempts to introduce amendments to require verification of legal status have been rejected.


Obama also gave this half-truth to assure people that they would not have to change plans if they liked what they have: “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor,” Obama said. “If you like your private insurance plan, you can keep your plan. Period.” While it is true that the bill does not coerce change, Lucas says that it does provide incentives to employers to change their plans covering their employees. You can read the entire article at:

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/53695



Just a couple of more points:



I regret I can't give credits for this. I received it in an email that did not give the source.














From the Bucks County Courier Times
Friday March 12, 2010


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