Pet Tax Return

I thought I'd share this with you all for fun...My 1st or 2nd cousin once removed or however that works out...(my mom's 1st cousin)....She sent this to me. I think many of you all would love to fill one of these out. If you click on the image it should open it up into another page making it bigger and much easier to read.

Anyways I'd really like to call your attention to check box after the label at the top. "Pet Election Campaign" It doesn't say a designation of a particular candidate but I'll go ahead and say feel free to write in my name should you feel compelled to mark that box and make a donation to my campaign.

Hope you enjoy

Back to the 2010 Budget - Department of Health and Human Services

Here's the link to the part of the budget specific to Health and Human Services. It's only 4 pages so I think it's worth a read.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/assets/fy2010_new_era/Department_of_Health_and_Human_Services1.pdf

But if you can't bring yourself to read 4 pages, here are the highlights provided on page 1.
Funding Highlights:
• Accelerates the adoption of health information technology and utilization of electronic health
records.
• Expands research comparing the effectiveness of medical treatments to give patients and
physicians better information on what works best.
• Invests over $6 billion for cancer research at the National Institutes of Health as part of the
Administration’s multi-year commitment to double cancer research funding.
• Strengthens the Indian health system with sustained investments in health care services for
American Indians and Alaska Natives to address persistent health disparities and foster healthy
Indian communities.
• Invests $330 million to increase the number of doctors, nurses, and dentists practicing in areas
of the country experiencing shortages of health professionals.
• Supports families by providing additional funding for affordable, high-quality child care,
expanding Early Head Start and Head Start, and creating the Nurse Home Visitation program
to support first-time mothers.
• Strengthens the Medicare program by encouraging high quality and efficient care, and improving
program integrity.
• Invests over $1 billion for Food and Drug Administration food safety efforts to increase and
improve inspections, domestic surveillance, laboratory capacity and domestic response to
prevent and control food borne illness.

First of all, I don't support government funded research of diseases. People don't need to be compelled to give to research, they will do it as they see a need. I highly encourage private efforts to raise funds for research. Look at how successful St. Jude's is at raising money for research and treatment of kids with cancer. But I shouldn't jump on this one since it's unpopular to oppose government funding of diseases.

Here's what the highlights don't tell you but the website does. The budget establishes a reserve fund of $630 Billion over the next 10 years to "finance fundamental reform of our health care system that will bring down costs and expand coverage." If you think $630 Billion over 10 years is enough to provide universal health care, you're crazy. It will cost more than that a year most likely. And that creates health care rationing. Ask Canada or England or any other country with it. It might not be too bad for routine care, but what are you going to do if you get a life threatening disease or a pain causing condition or need a knee or hip replacement. Do you want the government telling you when you can get it taken care of? How would you like to have to live with pain unnecessarily for years before it gets treated? The older you are the further down on the list you go because you're expendable. How's that for a violation of your civil rights?

Pharmacy's have already started a solution to the problem with their generic drug programs thanks to the leading of the oh so evil Walmart. And I thought Walmart only hurt people. Now for doctors and hospitals to follow suit. Actually in essence they do. If you go to a hospital most if not all of them will offer you a self pay discount to pay up front if you don't have insurance, which is equal to or greater than the discount provided by membership to an insurance network. (The discounts very by negotiated rates with various insurance providers). If you don't choose this option and you go through the emergency room, they will set up a payment plan. Many doctors will also negotiate with you if you ask them.

Do you want to know what's driving up the cost of health care other than uncompensated care? I'm going to tell you whether you want to or not. Insurance companies have become the middle man between patients and providers. They are not non profit companies. They are for profit. So now two entities are trying to make a profit from providing you a service. Since you are the only one paying money, who do you think is paying for the profit to the insurance company and the doctor? You are, or your company is. The insurance company has to pay people to process and pay your claims and the doctors and facilities have to pay people to file claims to insurance companies including Medicare and Medicaid offered by the supposed cost saving government. What if patients and providers got together to eliminate the middle man for routine care? You wouldn't have to pay insurance premiums which you could now save to pay cash for your health care. Providers would now be competing for your business on price and quality of care. Perhaps they could create their own premium based care where you pay them $X/month and they agree to see you and treat you as needed. They could tailor levels of care/cost to your age, family history, or desires.

Step two is encourage health savings though health savings accounts like are available now. I hate to use the term "mandate," but this would be an acceptable alternative in my mind. Only rather than losing any unspent money, it should be able to roll over to the next year in an effort to save for additional unexpected medical emergencies that can arise in our lifetime that may fall outside of routine care. If a balance gets to a point where it exceeds a certain cushion amount, a person can take that money out tax free for educational use, or be rolled over to a 401k or traditional IRA. (This is working under the assumption that the Fair Tax isn't implemented)

This may not be a perfect plan but it's a start and it's a better and more cost effective alternative to government run health care.

Here's a reminder/plea for you to write your congressmen and let them know what you think about the budget. I believe they are supposed to vote on it later this week. Email them, Call them!!! Do it now!!!

So You Think England is What America Should Be...

Have you heard or seen the speech given by Daniel Hannan to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown? Check it out. He was on Sean Hannity tonight and had a discussion about their oh so wonderful health care system that so many Americans seem to think is the ideal. Basically he said with their health care system the patients lose, the doctors lose, and the taxpayers lose. He experiences it first hand. By the way, he apparently supported President Obama's candidacy. Check out his speech.

The House Passes a 90% Tax Rate...Are You Concerned Yet?

Check out the following Time article.
http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1886748,00.html?xid=rss-politics-cnn

Thursday after little debate the House passed a bill which would impose a 90% tax rate not only on the AIG bonuses that everyone is furious about, but on the majority of bonuses paid from the beginning of the year on bonuses to all employees making more than $250,000 a year working for companies that received more than $5 billion in TAR money.

Do any of you have a problem with this? What's to stop them from just imposing the same rate on every other company that didn't receive TARP money? What do you think would happen? Are you thinking that since you don't make $250,000 you don't care?

The article goes on to say that it will likely be modified in the senate to 70% on bonuses of $50,000 or more to companies that received $100 million. So this potentially broadens the number of people they will get but lowers the tax rate. I don't really know which is worse.

Here's my first problem. Everyone is so focused on these bonuses and how outrageous they are. Where is the outrage at congress for passing these bailouts to begin with that didn't exclude the bonuses. Where is the outrage that they didn't bother to read the whole bill before voting on it? Now that the country is on the hook for this money against the will of at least half of the people, maybe more, don't we need AIG and all these other companies that got TARP money to make money so they can "pay us back?" Or do we expect them to turn things around with executives and people that are worthless? What's to keep the people with the ability and know how to turn things around from going to another company that will pay them for their talent? You can't expect them to work for free. You wouldn't.

Of course the people that are part of the problem in these companies should be let go, but do you know which ones they are? I surely don't.

Are you concerned at all that congress would pass a 90% or 70% tax rate? Both sides of the aisle are on board with this. Are you? Are you aware that people that make over $250,000 a year generally employ other people through purchasing more services that they don't want to do themselves. They help keep those of us making anywhere from $15,000-$100,000 or more employed. Do you care? What happens to our salaries if theirs suddenly get sucked up in taxes? Do you think they'll stop paying for those services that they used to pay for? I do. But what do I know? I'm just a dog.

Are you upset? Do you care? And if you don't care, my question is Why Not? Do you think we should keep throwing good money after bad?

The New Budget!!! - EPA

Ok so I had to make a correction because while the budget passed for the rest of 2009 with a load of earmarks, all of my links and my comments relate to the 2010 budget being proposed. So there's still time for all of you to get pissed off and write your Representatives and Senators. In case you're curious though, here's how your Senators voted. You can also find the language of the bill. http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=111&session=1&vote=00096
And here's how your Representatives voted. http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2009/roll086.xml
Now you know who to hassle.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/

I find the words "A New Era of Responsibility" to be sad because it doesn't mean personal responsibility as was touted in the campaign.

For the purposes of this post I will focus on the budget for the Environmental Protection Agency. Check it out here.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/assets/fy2010_new_era/Environmental_Protection_Agency1.pdf

In short a 34% increase in the budget over the 2009 enacted level. REALLY 34% INCREASE!!! How is that responsible? I'd like you to pay special attention to the 2nd page of that section that discusses the enactment of cap and trade in an effort to "reduce greenhouse gas emissions."

Before you jump on how terrible our air is how polluted this country is, I want you to get on a plane and go to Brazil. I say Brazil because I have been there. I'm guessing China and India will work too and just about anywhere in South America. Then tell me just how terribly dirty and disgusting our country is.

Cap and trade is the sneaky way of raising your taxes by increasing the costs to companies. But we learned in economics 101 that corporations don't pay taxes, people do. The ultimate end customer pays taxes. So your electric bill goes up because the cost of electricity goes up. You have 2 choices pay more or turn off the heat or air conditioner. I'm sure they'll love just how much money they get from us in the south. Don't worry the oil companies are evil too so they can't leave them out of the equation so those of you that don't ride your bicycle everywhere will get hit too.

Don't worry those are just 2 ways your monthly expenses will go up. I'm sure there are more. After all they have to pay for that 34% budget increase somehow, along with the deficit.

I'm tempted to start a petition for Texas to secede from the union. We've got plenty of land so anyone holding US citizenship will be welcome to relocate here if they wish.

The EPA part of the budget is just scratching the surface. Check it out. Get informed. I'll take a look at other parts to come. Write and call your Senators and Representatives to keep this from going though. This is bad for all of us regardless of what party you support if there's even one in Washington that you support anymore.