15 Obamacare Facts the President doesn't want you to know

15 Obamacare Facts the President Doesn’t Want You To Know

§  Roughly six million of the 19 million people with individual health policies will pay more. Single adults age 21-29 will be walloped with a 46% increase.

§  Three million people will lose their insurance altogether, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects.

§  Six million will have to pay the individual tax mandate penalty in 2016 because they don't want or won't be able to afford coverage. 

§  People that have insurance via an employer could have their plan dropped as a result of increasing rates. By 2019 (five years into Obamacare), an estimated 12 million people who would have had an offer of employment-based coverage under prior law will lose their offer, the CBO reports.

§  Health insurers will need to increase premiums between 1% and 9%.

§  Premiums for families will increase by roughly $2,100.

§  Premiums plus out-of-pocket costs are forecast to increase 12.4%.

§  Obamacare will increase the long-term federal deficit by $6.2 trillion, according to the Government Accountability Office.

§  Some $1 trillion middle income tax increases are buried under Obamacare, including the 0.9% payroll tax and the new 3.8% tax on investment income.

§  Obamacare drains $716 billion out of Medicare, leaving it to grow at only half the rate of health care in the rest of the country. The outcome: one out of seven hospitals will leave Medicare over the next seven years.  

§  With 30 million new people entering the healthcare system, expect limited access to health care, longer patient wait times, fewer face-to-face doctor visits, and more doctor refusal of patients.

§  Emergency rooms will become more overcrowded. As more people attain coverage, they will be less afraid of going to the ER for even minor ailments.

§  Doctor shortages will worsen. A recent Physicians Foundation survey of 13,575 doctors found 77% are pessimistic about medicine's future under Obamacare.  Many are prepared to sell their practice and take early retirement.

§  Businesses will cut employees and employee hours in order to comply with the law. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says 10 million involuntarily underemployed part-timers will be affected. 

§  Obamacare kills small business. "If [employees] are thrown out of their medical plans now, where they're covered in a good plan and thrown under the bus, they're going to be destroyed," The Home Depot Inc (NYSE: HD) co-founder Bernie Marcus said on Newsmax TV. "If, in fact, they don't stay as full-time employees but go to part-time employees, they're going to be destroyed. People have to understand that the villain is not their employer; the villain is the U.S. government.

 

Prayer

This Sunday’s readings are all about prayer and conversing with God.  First Abraham has a conversation with God and bargains with Him to spare the few good people in Sodom and Gomorrah.  Then, Psalm 138 repeats the refrain, “Lord, on the day I called your name, You answered me.”  And in the gospel, when asked how to pray, Jesus gives the apostles the Our Father, and follows it up with, “ask and you will receive, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you.”  (Luke 11:8).   The gospel reading ends with:

“If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children,
how much more will the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?”              (Lk 11:13)

Notice that Jesus does not promise that we will receive exactly what we ask for, but that the Father will “give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him.”  In a world wracked by ever-increasing stress and an epidemic of anxiety and depression, prayer offers the antidote to despair.  Instead of feeling the weight of the world on our shoulders because we feel responsible to solve all the problems we confront on our own, God offers to send us the Holy Spirit.

Prayer will not and cannot change God, but it certainly can and will change us, if we enter into it sincerely and make it an important part of our daily life.   My old RCIA lesson plan for teaching about prayer suggests a format for prayer that is summarized by the acronym ACTS (Adoration, Contrition, Thanksgiving and Supplication).   This is essentially the structure of the Our Father, and serves to put us in the right frame of mind for conversing with God, by prioritizing adoration and contrition first.  If we start our prayer with a litany of requests, or suggestions for how God could improve the universe, and specifically our lot in life, we are missing the whole point of prayer.  If you need something from a friend, would you blurt out your request at the beginning of a conversation?  Prayer that starts with petitions (supplication) is self-centered, rather than God-centric, and does little to improve our outlook or relieve our anxiety.  However, prayer that starts with adoration, contrition, puts us in the frame of mind that God is awesome and we are indeed fortunate to be alive and in possession of so many miraculous gifts.  This alone will relieve stress, reduce anxiety and improve our attitude toward life and its vicissitudes.  By offering thanks before making any petitions, we are reminded of the many gifts already in our possession before making a request of God.  This also puts our petition in better perspective.

If you’ll indulge me for a minute, allow me to share a recurring prayer I use at the end of each day before falling asleep.  It goes something like this:

“Dear God, Almighty Father, I adore and worship you.  You alone have created all that exists in the universe and all life, including my own, and those I love.  You are the source of all knowledge and understanding.  If not for you, I could not think or communicate.  You are the font of all love; without you, and the example of your Son Jesus, we would be incapable of knowing and experiencing love, your greatest gift which lies at the center of the mystery of human life. 

You are all merciful, forgiving even the most grievous of sins.  Please forgive me for a life of selfishness and pride that has resulted in my overlooking the needs of others, especially my family.  

Thank you for the beauty and mystery of all creation, and for the miracle of human life, especially the lives of my family.  Please help me become your faithful servant in every respect, and grant me the courage to be a reliable witness to the truths you have revealed and imbedded in creation itself.”

In the end, no matter what we think are our needs, God will reward our prayer by sending us His Holy Spirit.  If we pray fervently, God will indeed be with us, giving us courage, strength, patience, and whatever else we may need to suffer through the trials and tribulations of human existence.  Attempting to get through life relying solely on ourselves, without God, or with a God we call upon only when things don’t go our way, is all but futile.  Jesus prayed frequently, and it must have strengthened His resolve to accept the will of His (Our) Father.  Like the Mass, prayer should not be entered into only because we want to get something from God.  First and foremost, it should be an act of worship, and its reward is the most precious thing imaginable: God Himself entering into our lives, comforting us, reassuring us that in the end we are His beloved children and despite what may happen in this life, we are destined to spend all eternity with Him.  If that doesn’t ease your anxiety, nothing will.

The Wisdom of God's Law as Written in our Hearts

Sunday’s first reading explains that God’s law is written in our hearts:

“For this command that I enjoin on you today is not too mysterious and remote for you.
It is not up in the sky, that you should say, ‘Who will go up in the sky to get it for us
and tell us of it, that we may carry it out?’ Nor is it across the sea, that you should say,
‘Who will cross the sea to get it for us and tell us of it, that we may carry it out?’
No, it is something very near to you, already in your mouths and in your hearts;
you have only to carry it out.”    (Deuteronomy 30:11-14)

This law, natural law, is readily accessible to us by the use of human reason.  God has revealed the truths about life and our human nature, in every aspect of the created universe.  We are surrounded by these truths if only we open our eyes and our hearts to observe them.  It is visible to us in the very substance of life, in the way in which our bodies have been created, in the seasons of the year, in the passage of time, and especially in our consciences, which are continually drawing us back to God, despite our apathy and sinfulness.

When Pope Francis addressed world leaders who came to his installation ceremony, he stated that, “There can be no peace without reference to the moral truths imbedded in the world and in us – truths that are accessible to everyone by the use of reason.”  Coincidentally this year is the 50^th anniversary of Pope John XXIII’s encyclical, “Pacem in Terris” (Peace on Earth), written just before the Cuban missile crisis.  The power and wisdom of Pacem in Terris is that it laid out a moral vision of a just and peaceful political order at both national international levels, rooted in service to the common good, based on respect for the rights and duties of every person as well as every State.

Most of the countries embroiled in civil war and violent conflict, are those in which natural law is being disregarded.  As Pope Benedict XVI pointed out in is Regensburg address, there can be no peace unless there if respect for human dignity and the right of people to practice their religious beliefs.  Islamic nations that have outlawed all other religions are among the most violent places on earth.  Countries that have outlawed religion and attempted to control population growth through forced abortions and sterilization, are now on the verge of a demographic catastrophe in which there are not nearly enough young people to work and support their economies.  Nations in which socialism removed the incentives for creativity and hard work, have seen their economies falter as more and more people abrogated their personal duties in favor of support from the welfare state.  Now these nations are resorting to simply printing money to keep their economies temporarily afloat, amidst growing massive debt and unfunded liabilities for government welfare and pension plans which they can no longer afford.

Clearly, when God’s law, natural law, is violated, the common good is negatively affected.  Yet, our own nation seems determined to do just that.  The redefinition of marriage is in direct contrast to the nature of our bodies, and the needs of our society to encourage and promote families in which children are raised by a father and mother, living out a permanent commitment to one another, and to their children.  Human reason validates this, if only by noting that the recipe for poverty is to have children out of wedlock, raised by single parents, or without a father.  Moreover, these families become entrapped in the welfare state, wherein their duty and responsibility to get and education, learn a trade, and work for a living, are replaced by benefits that are worth far more than entry level wages.

When freedom of religion is removed, and the State dictates that people violate their conscience by paying for contraceptives, abortion-inducing drugs, and surgical sterilization, we are not contributing to the common good, but rather, blithely heading down the path to a demographic disaster.  Under the current HHS rule, just “modified” last week, even Catholic Charities and Catholic Universities will be required to provide these services in their self-funded benefit plans.  Failure to comply is no small matter, since the fine is $100 per employee, per day.  For a college with 1400 employees, that’s nearly $1 million a week in fines.  For a large Catholic University with 10,000 employees, the fine is $1 million a day!

Sunday’s gospel concluded with Jesus telling the parable of the Good Samaritan.  If we are to follow God’s law as written in our hearts, we must find the courage to respect the dignity of every human being, and that includes respecting their right to practice their faith, whether it be Christianity, Islam or Atheism.  This is the moral basis of peace, not the secular morality now being imposed by our government which seems determined to imitate the Islamic countries where only the State-approved morality is allowed.  Let’s pray not only for our first freedom, the freedom to practice our religious beliefs, but also for the greater use of human reason to see the wisdom of God’s law, as written in our hearts.