Congress is using “every budget gimmick in the book” to conceal hundreds of billions in healthcare-reform costs that will lead to “massive tax increases” and higher insurance premiums, one of the country's leading healthcare experts warns.

Dr. Robert E. Moffit, a senior official in the Department of Health and Human Services during the Reagan administration, who now directs the Heritage Foundation's Center for Health Policy Studies, tells Newsmax that taxpayers are about to be blindsided by a spiraling healthcare expenses.

Moffit says the sharp jump in costs will occur despite what he calls President Obama's “absurd promise” that that his healthcare reform proposals would bring sharp reductions in Americans' healthcare bills.

As a candidate, Obama pledged his plan would save the typical American family $2,500 a year in healthcare costs.

“We find his statements to be overly optimistic, misleading and, to some extent, contradicted by one of his own advisers,” the Annenberg FactCheck.org Web site reported at the time. “And it masks the true cost of his plan to cover millions of Americans who now have no health insurance.”

Masking the true cost of healthcare is exactly what Democrats have done, Moffit says.

“You're going to see higher premiums, you're going to have higher taxes, you're going to have higher premiums for Medicare,” Moffit tells Newsmax in an exclusive interview. “And you're not getting a bend in the spending curve, but rather a $1.3 trillion dollar explosion in additional spending over the next 10 years.

“So I don't know what the White House thinks we're drinking, but the truth of the matter is, none of this is believable,” he says.

Moffit says taxpayers' first installment on healthcare's hidden costs may come as early as next week, when the House is scheduled to take up the $210 billion “doctor's fix” bill.

The “doctor's fix,” Beltway insiders say, is a familiar congressional ruse. Members pass supposed Medicare “cuts” that make them appear fiscally prudent, but then later “fix” the funding to restore what was supposed to be trimmed. So the $210 billion payment enables Congress to avoid making good on an earlier pledge to trim the deficit by limiting Medicare reimbursements to doctors.

Majority leader Harry Reid recently suffered an embarrassing loss when he tried to pass a similar “doctor's fix” in the Senate. That bill was defeated in committee by moderate Democrats and Republicans, who didn't want their names attached to another spending bill.

Originally, the House's $210 billion “doctor's fix” was included in the healthcare reform proposal presented by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in July.

The Congressional Budget Office determined Pelosi's original bill would add $239 billion to the deficit over 10 years, however. That sent House Democrats back to the drawing board, and Pelosi simply removed the “fix,” introducing it as separate legislation.

During an interview conducted by Kathleen Walter of Newsmax.TV, Moffit said: “We've been through this as long as I can remember going all the way back to the Reagan administration. Banking serious healthcare savings on projected cuts in Medicare is folly. There is no ground for believing any of these cuts will ever ultimately materialize.”

Moffit likens the congressional shell game to keeping the balance low on one credit-card by shifting expenses to another. Sooner or later, taxpayers get stuck with the bill.

According to some Democrats, removing the $210 billion item from healthcare reform was legitimate because narrowing the gap between doctors' true costs and their Medicare reimbursements had nothing to do with healthcare reform.

“That's strictly true,” writes Peter Suderman, associate editor for Reason Magazine, “but I also think it was in the original House bill for a reason: It's the offering Democrats are using to buy the support of doctors, who don't want to see their Medicare reimbursements cut. By putting it in the original bill, I think Democrats signaled pretty clearly that they think the two are related — but now that CBO-certified deficit neutrality has become their major concern, they're trying to back away.”

Both the American Medical Association and the AARP have endorsed the healthcare reform bill passed by the House, which includes the controversial public-option run by the government. The reform bill also purports to cut Medicare costs.

Democrats in Congress, Moffit adds, are disregarding recent polls showing most Americans oppose the current reform proposals. Polls also show voters expect reform will increase rather than reduce their healthcare expenses.

Via–>NewsMax.com

Though findings of two new battlefield surveys are similar in several ways to the last ones taken in 2007, they come at a time of intense scrutiny on Afghanistan as President Barack Obama struggles to craft a new war strategy and planned troop buildup. There is also new focus on the mental health of the force since a shooting rampage at Fort Hood last week in which an Army psychiatrist is charged.

Both surveys showed that soldiers on their third or fourth tours of duty had lower morale and more mental health problems than those with fewer deployments. And an increasing number of troops are having problems with their marriages.

The new survey on Afghanistan found instances of depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress at about the same as they were in 2007 but double 2005's cases. That was 21.4 percent in 2009, 23.4 percent in 2007 and 10.4 percent in 2005.

That compares to a lower 13.3 percent in Iraq, down from 18.8 percent in 2007 and 22 percent in 2006. (Surveys have been done every year in Iraq, but were only done during three years in Afghanistan.)

The Afghan report also found a shortage of mental health workers to help soldiers who needed it, partly because of the buildup Obama started this year with the dispatch of more than 20,000 extra troops.

Efforts to get more health workers to Afghanistan were made a little harder by last week's shooting. The psychiatrist charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder was slated to go to Afghanistan. Some of the dead and wounded also were to deploy there to bolster psychological services for soldiers.

Still, officials told a Pentagon press conference that they expect to meet their goal next month of having one mental health worker for every 700 troops – workers that include psychiatrists, social workers, psychiatric nurses and so on. There were 43 in Afghanistan at the time of the survey, while 103 were deemed needed; and since the survey, there has been what Army Surgeon General Lt. Gen. Eric B. Schoomaker on Friday called an aggressive push to send the rest.

Read entire post–> Huffingtonpost.com

Rep. Joseph Cao (R-La), appearing on CNN, said that he cast his vote in favor of reform only after an amendment greatly restricting the coverage of abortions was allowed to come to a vote. Once that hurdle was clear, Cao said, “I called the White House and said I could possibly support the bill.”

The subject of a fierce, late-in-the-game, lobbying effort between Democrats and Republicans, Cao ultimately voted yea because, as he put it, “I had to make a decision of conscience based on the needs of the people in my district.”

“I had to make a decision and I felt that last night’s decision was the right decision for my district,” he added. “Even though it was not the popular decision for my party.”

The first-term Republican, who hails from a very Democratic district in New Orleans, insisted that he did not consider possible electoral ramifications before casting his votes. Asked whether he had offered his support to the White House in exchange for additional help in Hurricane Katrina reconstruction, he similarly dismissed the charge.

“The president and I, we have had a very good relationship, and I thank him and his administration for their hard work in helping me to rebuild my district after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina,” Cao said. “I’m pretty sure that if I were to vote no against the bill the president would still continue to work with me to address the needs of my district. But I felt it was important of me to support the president in this matter because, like I said before, based on my own conscience, it was the right decision for my district.”

Read entire post–>Huffingtonpost.com

Nearly 16 million people can’t find jobs even though the worst recession since the Great Depression has apparently ended. Many economists worry that persistently high unemployment could undermine the recovery by restraining consumer spending, which accounts for 70 percent of the economy.

The Labor Department said Friday that jobless rate rose to 10.2 percent, the highest since April 1983, from 9.8 percent in September. The economy shed a net total of 190,000 jobs in October, less than the downwardly revised 219,000 lost in September, but more than economists expected.

The jump in the jobless rate reflects a sharp increase in the tally of unemployed Americans, which rose to 15.7 million from 15.1 million. The net loss of jobs occurred across most industries, from manufacturing and construction to retail and financial. That tally is based on a separate survey of businesses.

The stock market edged up in early trading. The Dow Jones industrial average added about 10 points, while broader indexes also increased.

Economists say the unemployment rate could climb as high as 10.5 percent next year because employers remain reluctant to hire.

Counting those who have settled for part-time jobs or stopped looking for work, the unemployment rate would be 17.5 percent, the highest on records dating from 1994.

“It’s not a good report,” said Dan Greenhaus, chief economic strategist for New York-based investment firm Miller Tabak & Co. “What we’re seeing is a validation of the idea that a jobless recovery is perfectly on track.”

Via–>Huffingtonpost.com

For a president who likes always to convey confidence and cool, the returns will test his willingness and capacity for self-critique and self-correction.

So far, Obama’s White House has responded to the results — flaming defeats for Democratic gubernatorial nominees in Virginia and New Jersey, along with better news in the N.Y. 23 special congressional election — exclusively with self-justification.

Obama himself did not mention the elephant in the room Wednesday in public appearances in Wisconsin. His silence came even though he had immersed himself heavily in the New Jersey race in particular, only to see incumbent Gov. Jon Corzine lose a traditionally Democratic state.

National polls for months have shown deep unease among independent voters about Washington spending and about the expansiveness of Democratic proposals. So it was not fully a surprise when, in both New Jersey and Virginia, these voters swung wildly from Obama in 2008 to Republicans this time, according to exit polls.

White House senior adviser David Axelrod said Tuesday’s results do not suggest any need for political repositioning or policy reappraisal.

“The CW in town has focused on the governors’ races, but the most portentous event was the New York 23rd because it exposed a major fissure in the Republican Party.”

But what if independents abandon 2010 congressional Democrats the same way they fled Corzine and Virginia Democrat Creigh Deeds?

“If the Earth stops turning, we are all going to die, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to happen,” said Axelrod. Turning more serious, he said he would tell anxious Democratic candidates, “I understand that there might be some nervousness, and that’s understandable, but we are doing the right things. The best move politically is to show more and more success governmentally.”

Axelrod also emphasized that the winner of the New York House race, Bill Owens, “ran by embracing the president.”

In previous elections, he warned, embattled candidates have learned that “the history of running away from a president is not very good. … That’s the first thing I’d tell” Democrats in competitive seats this year.

The cheerful public line from the White House carried an echo of Obama’s immediate predecessor, George W. Bush, another president whose political operation reported sunny skies no matter the weather.

Uncertain for now is whether Obama and his political team actually believe their talking points. That will become clear only over coming days and weeks if Obama recalibrates his rhetoric or the substance and pacing of his agenda, particularly on his politically volatile proposals to overhaul health care and impose new regulations to curb greenhouse gases.

But whatever Obama decides, it is clear he must grapple with something new: a sharp divergence of views in his party about the significance of Tuesday’s results. Many activists said the problem was with Democrats such as Deeds who did not more fully embrace Obama.

Read entire post–>Politico.com

The GOP called for the check Wednesday night, having had enough of the fight over an extension of unemployment benefits that the party had held up for several weeks.While the Senate was stuck in parliamentary limbo, some 200,000 people actively looking for work lost their unemployment benefits.

The bill extends unemployment benefits for an additional 14 weeks across the country, and in some states with the highest unemployment the extension goes to 20 weeks. More on the bill here.The extension itself was not controversial and passed 98-0.

Getting there, however, was a Herculean parliamentary task that provides insight into just how hard it is to pass even popular legislation in the Senate with a minority party intent on opposing the majority’s agenda step by laborious step.Earlier Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid D-Nev. called for the third cloture vote on the bill to break a GOP filibuster. It passed 97-1. That would be one Jim DeMint R-S.C. as the lone Republican to object in public on this round.

At that point, the GOP could have elected to require 30 hours of debate, plus an intervening day, before moving to final passage — as they had insisted several times before, even after the pot had been sweetened for them. But later in the evening, they called it quits and agreed to move to a final vote.

Democrats charge that Republicans are chewing up the clock to oppose their overall agenda. But the Republicans say they weren’t opposing unemployment or any other Democratic priority, but were rather standing up for their rights as senators in the minority.

“What the Republican leader was objecting to was the Democratic leader picking our amendments. That’s what he insisted on doing and that’s why there was a hold up,” Sen. Lamar Alexander R-Tenn. told HuffPost.

“We believe that the essence of the Senate is the right to offer amendments. We understand about limiting amendments, making them relevant and agreeing to a time agreement so we can get our business done,” said Alexander, a member of GOP leadership.

Reid did, in fact, object to several GOP amendments aimed at ACORN and the financial industry bailout, arguing that the ACORN issue has been litigated to death and that the bailout amendment was an attempted distraction.

On Wednesday, Sen. Patty Murray D-Wash. said she simply couldn’t understand what constituency Republicans thought they were benefiting by holding up unemployment benefits.”Who are they representing?” she wondered.

Via–>GOP Folds On Unemployment Benefits Fight: 14-Week Extension Passes.

PHOENIX — A young Iraqi woman whose father allegedly hit her with his car because she had become too Westernized died from her injuries Monday after laying in a coma for nearly two weeks.

Noor Faleh Almaleki, 20, underwent spinal surgery and had been in a hospital since Oct. 20, when police say her father ran down her and her boyfriend’s mother with his Jeep as the women were walking across a parking lot in the west Phoenix suburb of Peoria.

The other woman, Amal Khalaf, is expected to survive.Faleh Hassan Almaleki, 48, fled after the attack but was arrested Thursday when he arrived at Atlanta’s airport, where he was sent from the United Kingdom after authorities denied him entrance.

Peoria police interviewed him and brought him back to Arizona over the weekend, but have declined to release what Almaleki said to them.At a court hearing over the weekend in Phoenix, county prosecutor Stephanie Low told a judge that Almaleki admitted to committing the crime.

“By his own admission, this was an intentional act and the reason was that his daughter had brought shame on him and his family,” Low said.

“This was an attempt at an honor killing.”Family members had told police that Almaleki attacked his daughter because he believed she had become too Westernized and was not living according to his traditional Iraqi values.

Almaleki, wearing a jail uniform, said only his name and birth date during the hearing. He has declined requests to be interviewed.

Almaleki had faced charges of aggravated assault, but Peoria police spokesman Mike Tellef said the charges will be upgraded in light of Noor Faleh Almaleki’s death.

Police said the Almalekis moved to Peoria from Iraq in the mid-1990s.

Via–>Huffingtonpost.com

But nobody in Washington is buying its contrition.

“The industry, I think, has a long way to go to demonstrate that they get it in terms of the harm they caused not just to world financial markets but individual families,” Sen. Bob Casey D-Pa. told POLITICO.

“It would be really helpful if they showed it by their actions,” said Sen. Jon Tester D-Mont..The PR campaign hasn’t been enough, lawmakers argue. They want the financial industry to stop fighting regulation and accept proposals like the consumer financial protection agency.

“I can tell you that the people that I represent aren’t sitting around, waiting for some sort of speech or statement of contrition,” said Sen. Ron Wyden D-Ore..

“People are looking for bottom-line changes, and one of them would be the consumer protection agency,” said Wyden, who added that his constituents have been asking if financial lobbyists are going to fight that proposal.“I said, ‘It remains to be seen. I know that I’m going to fight for you the consumer, and I’m going to insist that there be a consumer protection agency,’” Wyden recalled.

And House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank D-Mass. — who wields incredible influence over the regulatory reform process — has made no secret that the big banks’ persistent image problems are hurting them in the financial reform lobbying wars.

“All the money in the world doesn’t make them effective lobbyists right now,” Frank said in a recent CNN interview. “It can’t erase the record of irresponsibility, poor judgment and abuse of consumers that too many of the big banks have run up.”

But Wall Street leaders argue that this is all a huge disconnect. Top CEOs publicly, and regularly, claim responsibility for their missteps and are revamping internal procedures in response, they say. But the most explicit example of their atonement, industry officials said, is their embrace of the need for substantial regulatory reform — not the usual stance of any industry.

“Here’s an industry who’s saying, ‘Regulate us, please regulate us!’” said John Courson, president and CEO of the Mortgage Bankers Association, as he detailed how his member lenders have acknowledged their culpability and embraced rules they once fiercely resisted.

Courson, who took the helm of the MBA in January, said he deliberately spent his first public speeches and press events acknowledging “that lenders … ended up with borrowers getting into products that were not well-designed for them.”“We have not run away from the fact that there certainly is culpability in our industry,” Courson said.

Read entire story–>Victoria McGrane – Politico.com

Vice President George H. W. Bush confided in Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that he believed Ronald Reagan was an “extreme conservative” supported by “blockheads and dummies,” the former Soviet leader claims.

“In 1987, after my first visit to the United States, Vice President Bush accompanied me to the airport, and told me: ‘Reagan is a conservative. An extreme conservative. All the blockheads and dummies are for him, and when he says that something is necessary, they trust him. But if some Democrat had proposed what Reagan did, with you, they might not have trusted him,’” Gorbachev said in an interview with The Nation.

Gorbachev added that he had been informed that, following their first summit in 1985, Reagan reportedly described his Soviet counterpart as a “die-hard Bolshevik” — this despite the fact that Gorbachev would soon come to be known as a reformer who opened up the Soviet Union politically and ushered in an era of co-operation between east and west.

It’s no surprise that there were tensions between Reagan and the elder Bush. In 1980, the two politicians ran aggressive campaign against each other to secure the Republican nomination for president. During that campaign, Bush famously described Reagan’s economic policies as “voodoo economics.” Many historians believe Reagan picked Bush as his running mate after the primaries because of Bush’s popularity with some segments of the Republican electorate.

In his interview, Gorbachev had praise for Reagan, commending the president for coming to agreements with the Soviet Union on nuclear arms reductions despite large policy differences between the two countries, and some personal animosity between the two leaders.

Read entire post–>Raw Story