Healthcare is Buy-Partisan

The Senate healthcare bill has a cost of $2.5 trillion. So what does that buy us and for who?

Some of the known bribes and kickbacks are as follows:
- $300 million "Louisiana Purchase" for Sen. Mary Landrieu's vote
- $100 million "Cornhusker Kickback" for permanently paying Nebraska's medicaid costs for Sen. Ben Nelson's vote
- $500 million for Massachusetts medicaid costs
- $600 million over 10 years for Vermont's medicaid costs for Sen. Bernie Sanders' vote
- $10 billion program to create free medical clinics across the country, also for Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont's vote
- $100 million for a Connecticut hospital for Sen. Chris Dodd’s vote
- Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida won a provision that allows 800,000 Florida seniors enrolled in private Medicare Advantage plans to keep their extra benefits.

However, this all pales in comparison to the buying spree that Obama and Reid have snuck into the bill as they ran amok with America's credit card. The Senate healthcare bill contains $370.2 billion in taxes! Taxpayers will have to start paying for these in 2010, but won't be getting the alleged benefits of such payments until several years from now, if at all.

Since the bill also mandates the plan to taxpayers, and contains penalty taxes for this provision, this will cost Americans an additional $36 billion in taxes.

The bill contains at least a dozen new taxes, all impacting the middle class, such as a 40 percent excise tax on "high value" health care plans of over $8,500 per single and $23,000 per couple. These costs are not "high value". They are the average cost of a plan.

With all the taxes, the CBO estimates that the bill still leaves the DEMs $868 billion short, far from deficit neutral. This is contradictory to Obama's lie told yesterday declaring a savings of $1 trillion.

Since there isn't any cost savings, it is no surprise that there were no Republicans supporting the bill. When they had trouble getting their own side to vote yes, they resorted to all the bribes and kickbacks to buy other DEMs votes and they plan to buy our freedom with the exorbitant taxes. That is not Bipartisan, it is BUY-Partisan.

The irony is the that the bill is called the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (H.R. 3590)". The bill is certainly not affordable, and I don't think any American is going to feel protected. In fact, I think we need to protect ourselves from the federal government. They are robbing us blind.