The August recess -- which was supposed to be all health care, all the time -- ended up being about anything and everything but health care. For a few tense days outside President Obama's town halls, it became about gun rights. Then abortion. For weeks, the focus was grandma and euthanasia. And now, Republicans are intent on making it about me.
The New York Post, with an assist from its ally Fox News Channel, reported last week that I had quietly snuck into the health care bill new provisions cracking down on taxpayers who make honest mistakes on their tax returns. That's quite an inflammatory scoop, even for the Post. It's also entirely made up.
The relevant provisions apply to wealthy individuals and corporations that engage in abusive tax shelter transactions, and they have nothing to do with taxpayers who err in good faith on their tax returns. They certainly aren't new. These provisions have passed both the House and Senate in the past, enjoyed bipartisan support, and were included in the president's budget. And they certainly weren't snuck in. These provisions were considered by the full Committee on Ways and Means during a public markup, and materials describing them have been public for months. Under this bill, the IRS will continue to waive penalties for taxpayers who err in good faith, and claims to the contrary are part of a continuing effort to undermine the health care bill by raising unrelated issues.
Our objective here is quite simple. We are attempting to provide health care for the millions of American families that cannot afford it, to end the discriminatory practice of denying coverage based on preexisting conditions, and to effectively lower costs by introducing competition and choice through a public option. This is not an attempt to fund abortions with taxpayer dollars or a secret attempt to hoist end-of-life decisions on America's elderly. This bill isn't a tax-penalty bill dressed up to look like a health insurance reform bill. It actually is a health insurance reform bill. That's it. The GOP would disingenuously have you think otherwise.
Republicans have decided the business of killing health care reform and upending a potential Obama victory is too important not to exploit anything that sticks, including an Ethics Committee investigation I myself initiated last fall. A spokesman for Minority Leader John Boehner echoed the Post's faulty reporting about tax penalties, knowing full well no such language exists in the bill. The partisan attacks have had no impact on my effectiveness as Chairman. I am proud that the Committee on Ways and Means was the first committee in Congress to report out a truly comprehensive health reform bill, one with a strong public option that most represents the principles set out by President Obama. We did this by bringing the members of the Committee together for over 80 hours of spirited and detailed debate over the direction of reform.
The spectacles we've watched over the month of August have diverted attention away from our work and onto various distractions. Opponents cannot sideline health care reform on the merits, particularly when they lack a plan of their own, so they have resorted to unrelated wedge issues that serve to fire up the base but do little to advance actual reform. Folks responded by showing up to town halls with loaded firearms, burning public officials in effigy, making Nazi comparisons, and shouting down those with opposing viewpoints. But they forgot to bring something far more helpful: Facts. Solutions. Truth.
We have had our fill of sideshows in August. In September, we get back to the real work of providing health care reform to Americans who need it.
Different judgments about the intentions of Bush senior in the transition period can be reached. In the sequel, however, it is becoming ever clearer that Bush junior is devoting his last days in power to a final orgy of cronyism.
Man up and RESIGN ALREADY !!!
Charlie Rangel should certainly know from sideshows. If he told me the sun was shining, I'd have to look up and double-check. The tax evasion (he's chairman of Ways & Means, which writes the tax code, and he doesn't understand it?), the taxpayer-funded Caddy, the four rent-stabilized apartments - his greed, arrogance and hubris is positively boundless. I can't believe HuffPo even gives him a platform. I'm a New Yorker, but I don't live in his district; I hope the voters there come to their senses and vote the bum out next election.
Unfortunate that many can't separate this man's work on health care reform from his personal issues. Whatever the man's personal financial issues are they shouldn't cloud the issue about health care reform. A public option and focus on preventive medicine will help our citizens while helping to rein in spiraling costs.
The establishment should now be our parents. They will give us an allowance.
They will hold our hand when we are sick and take care of the bill as well.
Vietnam. Long forgotten as we the people who were in power during Vietnam?
And escalated Vietnam into a war now has become warmongers. In a country that not even Alexander the Great could conquer
How and why did they change?
Reading the article linked below, I learned that the history of health care began for the most part in the 1920s by Baylor Hospital in Dallas. The administrator created a system that eventually evolved into Blue Cross. Blue Cross was essentially a non-profit health insurer with no restrictions that served a community in exchange for a tax break. In the 1940s, commercial insurers entered the field. Private insurers accelerated when businesses wanted to compete for labor by contracting with insurers to get around a wage control.
Truman proposed a national health care plan but was defeated by opponents because the nonprofit sector was doing just fine. Yet, as the private insurers entered the business, they rejiggered premiums by calculating relative risk, and avoided the riskiest potential customers. To survive, the Blues evolved into a for profit corporation as well.
I learned from the article that a socialist system became a capitalist system where CEOs are now making millions while cutting corners for profit. Those corners are lives. I agree with the author, capitalism cannot deliver decent health care. This country needs a single payer insurance program.
The following article by Tim Noah discusses Jonathan Cohn's new book.
http://www.slate.com/id/2161736/
CEO info
http://sickforprofit.com/ceos/
http://sickforprofit.com/
Become disabled from it, Watch my mother die screaming "make them stop !" in hospice, & have the University of Buffalo New York Dental School mutilate my mouth after 25 years when my Professor & friend died with NO RECOURSE.
No one would help, or even talk to me in person. I could file no malpractice or wrongful death suits. I have watched friends & family die or become disabled from misdiagnoses all around me.
Well, I have news for you. I'm a fitness consultant & I healed Doctors who didn't have a clue about what I knew about healing. And your health care stinks too.
You let Chemical Pharma Companies put poison in your bodies instead of healing or curing you. As long as Doctors are not allowed to "cure" , just treat symptoms & cut you up with surgery, you have NO health care. You have disease care. You are not addressing the problems, you're pandering to big
money. And you're killing yourself & your loved ones in the process.
Healing is a honor, not a for profit.
Tort reform is another smoke screen by big business. States that have passed tort reform have received zero (nothing, zip, no gain) gain from doing so. Rates have increased (malpractice insurance rates) at the same rate as in states that have not passed tort reform. Additionally, lawsuits and litigation represent approximately 2% of the costs to such insurance providers.
When ever you see someone screaming for tort reform, it is a good bet it is someone paid by an insurance company.
More importantly, Chairman Rangel, you would not remember me but I was a tax lobbyist for many years and we met on numerous occasions. You are a great guy personally, but evidently you are a tax cheat. Don't blame the republicans for going after you, just man up, resign from the Chairmanship and let someone with credibility take over.
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/2006-releases/press05102006.html
The vast majority of suits are not frivolous, ... and those that are, are weeded out before they go to trial. Tort reform would remove what little recourse exists now for patients and families injured by incompetent physicians.
As for Rangel, ... I'm hard pressed to understand the connection between his status as a taxpayer and his comments on Healthcare Reform, ... but then your purpose was not to point that out at all, was it Doc?
The only way the government can reduce the cost is by restricting access and treatments, I cannot understand why people think a government plan would automatically be less expensive when everything the government does costs more.
I know, I know, this time it will be different!
He needs to man up and leave the House now!
What are you in college and wanting to make sure you have a job when you get out
I would also like proof of yoru fiugures
Not a textbook form 1979
PAY YOUR TAXES....
Maybe all the Congress should be checked to see if anyone of them
owe taxes for whatever reason.
Maybe this would help out national debt or help pay for the new
insurance plan.