They are all over the place, and for the most part I don't think they are doing anything illegal. What I am saying is not that some guy earned x amount on stock tips or under the table, I'm saying the future promise of high paying positions or large re-election campaigns are where most of the money in politics is. I'm not trying to call out anyone specific, I think it's far more insidious than something one guy here or there does, I think it's become how the system operates, and you simply have no chance of getting to a fairly high office if you don't operate in this manor.
What I'm saying is the law is bad, it's set up to have policy dictated by dollars over conscience. No matter what, there will be people who break the law and trade their votes for new decking on their houses, but most people, even politicians I believe follow the law. There are simply huge holes in the laws that allow money to dictate policy.
Oh, and from what I know, I like Defazio, but I don't know too much. Just heard him in some interviews and read his name in the paper from time to time. He could be a scumbag, but I haven't seen any evidence of that.
Peter was down here in Bandon talking to us in early 2009. Several of us were skeptical of this healthcare thing and he said he was too, he would watch it closely. Then all the sudden he is all for it and votes for the thing.
I'll be damn if he didn't find away to get a couple million richer at the same time. That quite a feat simultaneous with studying that healthcare bill.
I mailed him this shortly after I found out that myself and a 140,000 other former employees of a once great American company would no long provide us Healthcare.
This after 52 years and now it's legal thanks to the ACR and prompted by this same act specifying the company pay a tax for each person covered with health care.
Dear Peter,
How can it be when you voted for this ACA that you didn't know that people covered by their employer
or former employer in the case of retirees, would be dropped by the employer?
The law contains a Tax on the employers for each person that they would continue to cover.
Why was this tax implemented? It can not be to obtain revenue to cover other people.
If it was, that was very dumb as well as totally unfair to the employers as well as the employees and
retirees.
It sure looks to me like the tax was intended to encourage employers to drop retirees and spouses
to force more people into the exchanges.
MarAzul
Response (Notice he didn't address the questions at all).
Dear Mr. MarAzul:
Thank you for contacting me in favor of repealing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in its entirety. I appreciate hearing from you.
As you know, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was upheld by the Supreme Court. The court ruled that the individual mandate requiring all Americans to either purchase health insurance or pay a tax is constitutional.
If you already have private insurance the individual mandate will not affect you. If you have Medicare, VA health care or Medicaid the individual mandate will not affect you. If your income is under 400% of the poverty level, which is currently $44,680 for an individual or $92,200 for a family of 4, you will receive a discount on private health insurance. If you do not fall into any of these categories, and still wish to remain uninsured, you can pay a tax penalty and continue to be uninsured.
Every Oregon family who buys insurance is paying an extra $1,400 in premiums every year to cover the small group of individuals who refuse to insure themselves. The emergency room is required to treat uninsured people. These uninsured patients often do not pay their bills. The hospital passes the cost on to insurance companies, and insurance companies pass the cost on to you. The individual mandate helps to make sure that these people get insurance so that you don't have to pay for them anymore.
There are many aspects of the bill that need to be repealed or reformed, like the burdensome 1099 tax provision that was repealed with my support. There are many others that, I believe, most Americans can agree on.
If the entire health care bill is repealed-
Insurance companies would be able to deny you care because of a pre-existing condition- 316,000 people in Southwest Oregon could be denied care for having had conditions as common as high blood pressure or cholesterol.
Your insurance company would be able to rescind your entire insurance policy on a technicality if you get sick, even if you had paid into that policy all of your life.
Insurance companies would be able to place a cap on how much your policy will pay for medical care each year and over your life. Once you hit the cap they would not pay anything, no matter how much you had paid in premiums.
Your insurance company would be able to kick your kids off of your policy the day that they graduate college.
And if you are one of the 14,600 seniors in Southwest Oregon who fall in the dreaded "donut hole," your prescription drug costs would go up.
All of these were legal practices of the insurance industry prior to being outlawed by the Affordable Care Act. I have many objections to provisions in the Affordable Care Act, and I have heard many concerns from my constituents, but I have never heard anyone say that they want to bring back these abusive practices that only benefit insurance industry profits.
One thing that almost every Member of Congress and constituent that I have talked to has agreed on is my proposal to repeal the health insurance industry anti-trust exemption. The insurance industry has operated beyond the reach of America's anti-trust laws since the McCarran-Ferguson Act was passed in 1945. With this exemption health insurance companies can, and do, collude to drive up prices and exclude people from coverage. This is anti-competitive and anti free market. The Consumer Federation of America has said that repealing this exemption could save consumers 10% to 25% in insurance premiums.
I was able to get a provision to repeal the health insurance industry's anti-trust exemption into the House-passed version of the Affordable Care Act, but the Senate stripped it out. In 2010 the House again passed a repeal of the anti-trust exemption, this time with over 400 bipartisan votes. The Senate again failed to act. I refuse to give into pressure from the insurance industry. Earlier this year I offered an amendment to repeal the anti-trust exemption. Despite the overwhelming bipartisan vote last year, the Republicans did not allow a vote on my amendment. If we are going to fix the healthcare problems in this nation, we need to get beyond rhetoric and move forward with common sense bipartisan solutions such as repealing the health insurance industry anti-trust exemption.
The Affordable Care Act is far from perfect, but I believe that the bill should be reformed rather than repealed. I will be working with my colleagues on both sides of the isle to pass bipartisan reforms, and to remove burdensome provisions and wasteful spending from the existing bill. Thanks again for writing to me on this important issue. Please continue to keep in touch.
Sincerely,
Rep. Peter DeFazio
