4/29/2011
Fuel prices are steadily climbing. Our government is encouraging Brazil to drill and providing help for that effort while failing to issue permits to drill for our own oil.
Food prices aren’t far behind oil prices. It costs more to truck supplies to your grocery store. Right now, we can buy from local farmers and trade produce with our gardening friends, but just wait until the so-called “Food Safety Act” is fully implemented. Remember to thank Sen. Richard Burr when you get upset about this one. I like much of what Sen. Burr does, but his vote for the “Food Safety Act” infuriated me.
Unemployment is rampant. Our government taxes and regulates our entrepreneurs (who could solve this problem if left unfettered) to the point of making it almost impossible to create a profitable venture. Government is growing. Free enterprise is shrinking.
Americans’ innate rights are being treated as a gift from the government. That same government is steadily eroding our rights and removing choices from us. What part of “...the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” is so difficult to understand? Why should I be forced to use light bulbs that are difficult to read by, make everyone look jaundiced, and can kill the baby and the puppy if a bulb is broken and the clean up isn’t handled properly?
Our government is treating our friends as enemies, and our enemies as friends. Why are we in Libya? How many of the rebels we’re supporting are jehadists who would like to kill us?
We seem to be going along with the United Nations in favoring Palestine over Israel. Why? Why is much of our media silent about the increase in attacks against Israel?
Health care costs are rising. Access to good health care is shrinking. Because of its design, Obamacare will cost more and more while providing less and less. Unions and Obama cronies can get exemptions. For the rest of us, implementation is going forward apace even though a judge has declared it unconstitutional. Goodness, I wonder why my rights are being ignored by a government that flouts the U.S. Constitution in the face of a court’s ruling; silly me.
We can fix this mess if we will. Our state legislators in North Carolina are taking steps in many good directions. I’m very grateful to them for it. Our biggest problems are on the federal level.
We need to drill in all the places America has oil reserves. We need to build refineries. We need to build nuclear power plants. Carefully, but build them. Americans will buy “green” and “alternative” sources of power of our own free will if and when they are perfected to the point of being convenient, reliable, plentiful, and priced to sell. Until that happens, let us choose what works for us using market solutions and common sense. The price of gas does NOT need to “necessarily skyrocket.”
We need to rescind the “Food Safety Act.”
We need to free ourselves from Obamacare.
We need to reduce the federal budget by 42 percent. Almost 42 cents of every dollar the federal government spends is borrowed. That’s got to stop or we’re headed for disaster. Can’t you just imagine a family trying to continue to live like that? Does the work “bankruptcy” come to mind?
We need to refuse to raise the debt ceiling.
We need to dramatically curtail the EPA and the FCC. They’re hurting our businesses and threatening our freedom. In the case of the EPA, much of the threat comes from acting as if unproven theories are facts.
We need to back out of entitlements.
We need to resign from the United Nations. Our sovereignty is too important to allow the U.N. to erode it. We need our autonomy. We do not need a world government. The more removed from the people a government is, the worse it tends to be.
The only war we’re appropriately fighting is the war against Muslim jihadist fundamentalists who insist that we must die or be converted to Muslims. Not acknowledging this will not stop the war. If we don’t stop them, the jihadists will keep attacking us and infiltrating our culture until we’re dead or wearing burkas. We must stop them.
Our friends in Israel are fighting a similar war. They are in an even more vulnerable position than we are. We need to declare quite plainly that “any attack on Israel will be treated as an attack on the United States of America.”
We need to carefully follow the United States Constitution. The powers of the federal government need to be contracted to fit within its design once again.
Raynor James, CCTA Chairman
New Bern, NC
© Copyright 2011 Freedom Communications. All Rights Reserved.
Showing posts with label costs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label costs. Show all posts
Monday, May 2, 2011
Sunday, August 22, 2010
THE HILL
Faced with rising health costs, large employers plan to shift burden to workers
By Mike Lillis - 08/18/10 11:46 AM ET
Faced with skyrocketing healthcare costs and new insurance rules under healthcare reform, more of the nation's biggest businesses are planning to hike premiums and cost-sharing measures on their employees next year, according to a survey of those companies released Wednesday.
Seventy percent of large employers said they will eliminate lifetime dollar caps on overall benefits, according to the latest annual survey conducted by the National Business Group on Health (NBGH), while 63 percent plan to increase premium rates in 2011, up from 57 percent this year.
Forty-six percent intend to hike maximum out-of-pocket costs for workers next year, up from 36 percent in 2010. Forty-four percent intend to increase in-network deductibles.
An additional 5 percent plan to drop retiree healthcare coverage in 2011, while another 60 percent are eyeing that strategy for the future, the survey found. That trend, NBGH said, is based on healthcare reform's gradual move to close the doughnut hole in Medicare's prescription drug benefit — a provision "making Medicare Part D benefits richer," the group said.
Business leaders say the benefit changes are necessary to keep companies profitable in the face of skyrocketing healthcare costs. Indeed, the surveyed companies expect their health benefit costs to jump an average of 8.9 percent in 2011, versus 7 percent this year.
"While the health reform law has forced employers to evaluate their health care benefit strategies and decide whether to comply with the law or lose grandfathered status, they haven’t lost sight of the fact that controlling rising costs remains one of, if not, their highest priority," NBGH President Helen Darling said in a statement. "They have to foot the bill, not the government."
"With cost increases expected to accelerate next year," Darling added, "many of the plan design changes employers are making are being done to help curb those increases, as they have to do every year."
The findings are sure to fuel the debate over the reform law's effects on healthcare costs, as the Obama administration continues to tout the consumer benefits surrounding the insurance reforms, and conservative critics continue to blast the changes as a burdensome intrusion into private insurance markets.
Among the other key findings:
• Twenty-five percent of large businesses plan to hike the co-pay or co-insurance costs for prescription drug benefits at retail pharmacies, while 21 percent have the same plan for mail-order pharmacy benefits.
• Twenty-six percent will remove annual caps on overall benefits.
• Thirty-seven percent plan to alter annual or lifetime limits on specific benefits, including dental, mental health and infertility benefits.
• Thirteen percent said they will eliminate pre-existing condition exclusions for youngsters.
The numbers were based on responses from 72 large employers representing more than 3.7 million employees, NBGH said. The survey was conducted in May and June of this year.
http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/health-reform-implementation/114823-faced-with-rising-health-costs-large-employers-plan-to-shift-burden-to-workers-
By Mike Lillis - 08/18/10 11:46 AM ET
Faced with skyrocketing healthcare costs and new insurance rules under healthcare reform, more of the nation's biggest businesses are planning to hike premiums and cost-sharing measures on their employees next year, according to a survey of those companies released Wednesday.
Seventy percent of large employers said they will eliminate lifetime dollar caps on overall benefits, according to the latest annual survey conducted by the National Business Group on Health (NBGH), while 63 percent plan to increase premium rates in 2011, up from 57 percent this year.
Forty-six percent intend to hike maximum out-of-pocket costs for workers next year, up from 36 percent in 2010. Forty-four percent intend to increase in-network deductibles.
An additional 5 percent plan to drop retiree healthcare coverage in 2011, while another 60 percent are eyeing that strategy for the future, the survey found. That trend, NBGH said, is based on healthcare reform's gradual move to close the doughnut hole in Medicare's prescription drug benefit — a provision "making Medicare Part D benefits richer," the group said.
Business leaders say the benefit changes are necessary to keep companies profitable in the face of skyrocketing healthcare costs. Indeed, the surveyed companies expect their health benefit costs to jump an average of 8.9 percent in 2011, versus 7 percent this year.
"While the health reform law has forced employers to evaluate their health care benefit strategies and decide whether to comply with the law or lose grandfathered status, they haven’t lost sight of the fact that controlling rising costs remains one of, if not, their highest priority," NBGH President Helen Darling said in a statement. "They have to foot the bill, not the government."
"With cost increases expected to accelerate next year," Darling added, "many of the plan design changes employers are making are being done to help curb those increases, as they have to do every year."
The findings are sure to fuel the debate over the reform law's effects on healthcare costs, as the Obama administration continues to tout the consumer benefits surrounding the insurance reforms, and conservative critics continue to blast the changes as a burdensome intrusion into private insurance markets.
Among the other key findings:
• Twenty-five percent of large businesses plan to hike the co-pay or co-insurance costs for prescription drug benefits at retail pharmacies, while 21 percent have the same plan for mail-order pharmacy benefits.
• Twenty-six percent will remove annual caps on overall benefits.
• Thirty-seven percent plan to alter annual or lifetime limits on specific benefits, including dental, mental health and infertility benefits.
• Thirteen percent said they will eliminate pre-existing condition exclusions for youngsters.
The numbers were based on responses from 72 large employers representing more than 3.7 million employees, NBGH said. The survey was conducted in May and June of this year.
http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/health-reform-implementation/114823-faced-with-rising-health-costs-large-employers-plan-to-shift-burden-to-workers-
Friday, August 20, 2010
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