How did Mr. Gerlach vote on Medicare Part D?

Thanks for your leadership, Jim. For seven years, we’ve seen you go from what seemed like a pretty moderate guy to a lockstep Boehner-ite. Your elevated, canned rhetoric is no longer a surprise. The minute your eyes turned away from the 6th District for your own political ambition was the same time you made it very clear to your constituents it was time for a change.

This is kind of funny coming from the right wing of the GOP. Given their druthers, they would eliminate Medicare and Social Security.

As for his “charges” against the plan, the $500 million from Medicare is in waste and fraud. Gerlach voted for the war and the Bush tax cuts, which not only increased the debt, but the interest on that will likely exceed $400 billion.

As for the new IRS agents, first Gerlach claims it’s 16,000 then he claims it’s 12,000. Gee, it must be hard keep track of all those phony talking points the right wing makes up.

Would he vote to repeal health care or is this just rhetoric?

Gerlach wasn’t even in Congress when they voted to go into Iraq.

Gerlach’s argument is completely incoherent. He can`t allege that the bill both threatens the solvency of Social Security and Medicare while admitting that it is financed via new savings and revenues from within Social Security and Medicare!

Gerlach also writes about Medicare Advantage and the tax on medical device manufacturers. This is at least a coherent argument, but we should call it what it is: special pleading on behalf of the health insurance and biotech sectors. The subsidies provided to insurance companies under Medicare Advantage are an unconscionable waste of taxpayer funds that produce no measurable improvement in health outcomes. You would expect a real fiscal conservative to be opposed to government waste and tax breaks for politically favored industries. But Jim has to raise money for his re-election, doesn’t he? So much for principle.

MikeS-
I meant to say that he supported the Iraq war and tax cuts. He defended the GOP position during his 2002 campaign, but was actually in Congress in 2003 when the war started. He supported the Bush/Cheney policies down-the-line on these issues including the continued funding of the war without paying for it by repealing the tax cuts.

How Gerlach held on to his seat in the 06 and 08 Dem tidal waves is beyond comprehension. Let’s stick it to this guy in 10!

TB-
The district was constructed specifically for Gerlach.

You guys don’t understand. Gerlach gave us a puzzle. The object is to see how many lies or false statements you can find in what he wrote. The winner gets the coveted Pinnochio prize, which is a telescoping nose; but you have to share custody of it with Gerlach. He gets it on days when he talks.

I think this is a good example of how more and more things will be discovered in the bill that make it far less popular than at first seems.

He just wrote an article stating the facts. These are numbers pulled strait from the CBO. Lets face it this bill is setup to have people in the suburbs pay more money for things to give money to poor people. Seeing Jim doesn’t have a lot of poor people in their district he will win reelection. His argument only covers the medicare cuts, tax increases on medical equipment, and the forced purchase of insurance it does not cover the increased premiums that people and companies are going to pay. If you don’t think you are going to pay higher premiums you have no clue how medical insurance works. Company that continue to pay insurance (many will dump their coverage and pay the tax but that is another point) will pass I estimate 10% – 20% increase on their employees alone. This works out the following I pay $150 a pay check for insurance with the increased premiums I will pay $15 to $30 a pay check for insurance for a family of 4. That is $390 to $780 a year for my insurance. Before someone tries I am not one of those evil persons who makes more than $250 K a year in income just a middle class guy with a wife and 2 kids. So you might not call that a tax on the middle class, but it will hit them just the same.

You can try to spin this all you want but when it is all said and done it will be nothing but a bill that requires people with a job to buy health insurance for poor people who cannot afford insurance nothing more. So please if you agree with this just run with it. Stop trying to make facts that it is going to save people and the county money because it will not and you will look like a fool in 12 – 24 months. Much like the people telling use medicare part d is a good thing. You hit Jim on voting for medicare part d. You argument against Jim is that he passed and supported a bad bill so we have a right to pass a worse bill with more debt. Do you know how stupid this sounds. I give him credit for actually figuring out that we cannot afford new entitlement until we fund the one we already have. So make up your mind do you want fiscal responsibility or continued give aways to poor people. Can’t have it both ways. So stop trying to play it both ways and stick with what you have.

If Gerlach is pulling numbers from the CBO, then his assertions would be quite different from what they are on this bit of fallacy based bloggery.

If you look at the numbers there are the following:
(1) cuts to medicare for seniors
(2) cuts to medicare advantage
(3) a tax on medical equipment makers
(4) people 27 years and older will have to purchase insurance or pay a fine.
These are in the CBO estimates which is how congress pays for the increased coverage along with a tax on cap gains which he let out.
The part I was talking about the fact that no one is discussing that people who already have insurance will have their permiums go up because of this bill. People think that they are not going to have to pay for this but they will through higher premiums. That is not in the scoring because it is a cause of the bill not part of the bill. I was not including this in the CBO scores please try to pay attention.
Just embrace the fact that your bill is nothing but a hand out to the poor with other people’s money and stick to it if you feel this way. It is fine to believe this if it is what you believe. If you try to sell something different you will be proved wrong in the end.
If you don’t feel this way you need to read up and figure out how insurance works because you will feel very let down when the truths come out about this bill. Can’t wait for the comercial in 2012 when a person gets on TV to tell everyone that their company took away their health insurance becaue it was cheaper to pay the fine instaed of pay skyrocketing premiums which is what this bill will cause.
I will state it now by 2020 we will have single payer government provided insurance by default because there is no way businesses can continue to carry the burden of these costs and will kick everyone to the government roles which that is when the fun of government debts really starts to kick in.

Jeff-
Where do you get YOUR health insurance?

There are people, who could and would pay for insurance, if they weren’t denied coverage. These people will now enter the system, and bring with them premium payments. Insurance companies won’t have to spend 14% of premiums figuring out ways to deny people coverage.
Also, some insurance companies are going to be bringing down premiums and improving service to get into and compete in the exchange program.

BTW, the capital gains tax cuts of the Bush administration were irresponsible. It was ridiculous for millionaires to pay only 15% on earnings, while the rest of us were paying 25%-35%.

David again those people coming on that have conditions and removing the cap on peoples treatments along with having to pay for higher costs on the medical equipment are going to cost the insurance company more money so it is going to drive up premiums and I think people are not aware of this. When they see it they are going to go nuts that this thing doesn’t save them money it costs them more money. That is what I am saying. I agree that people should receive coverage and that there should be a cap. I am just not stupid enough to try and sell people on some BS line that it is going to save them money.

Again you are trying the Bush line of he did a bad decision (also by the way if you had cap gains you would only pay 15% not 25% – 35% these people also paid 25% – 35% on their income so cut the BS class warfare talking points and stick with facts)so this justifies a even dumber decision on our part. Is not going to work for you. These suburban candidates are toast in the fall because their spending is out of control and they sold the people in the suburbs a lie with this health care bill.

How many people did Pike pay to write comments on this blog? $100 per day?

Geez this guy throws money around like its nothing. Imagine what he’ll do with your tax dollars!!!!

All this chatter and scare tactics overlook one basic fact.

Health Insurance Companies, unlike almost all other business models, enhance their bottom lines by providing LESS in the way of service. How is that compatible with a healthy society? answer, it isn’t. Look how the U.S. stands as compared to other developed (and some not so developed) countries when it comes to broad-based health metrics such as life-expectancy, infant mortality, morbidity(days lost from work). Almost all the other countries have some sort of hybridized form of “single-payer”. When the March 31 campaign finance reports are released, let’s see how the insurance industry rewards toadies like Gerlach.

Gerlach himself is the ultimate hypocrite. He calld himself “pro-life”, but votes against SCHIP. I guess that makes him, at best, “pro-birth” because he surely doesn’t care about that child after it is born. The GOP claims that the Obama administration is not focusing enough on job creation, then Gerlach votes against the jobs bill that just passed. Trivedi is the perfect candidate to clean his clock!

Jeff-
I’m talking about the millionaires that make most/all their money from cap gains and investments.
We lost trillions in tax revenue from the rich, and that burden got passed onto the poor and middle class.

You don’t seem to mind wasting hundreds of billions each year on military operations that really aren’t saving as many lives as that money could save providing medical care.

Jeff-

You’re making these claims in the vacuum of not having the much larger pool of newly insured people, which will drive down the costs per person. So even with the people who have preexisting conditions being added to the pool, the cost6s come down. And besides, who would allow insurance companies to play God by denying people who are sick the opportunity to get treatments for their illnesses? Well, maybe Republicans would, but the rest of us see that as wrong.

With lower costs of health care coverage for businesses, this becomes a great way to see investments come to this country, as the U.S. having the highest health care costs (and ineffective care for many) was a barrier to companies that wanted to invest and provide jobs in this country.

Richard Saunders-

Good points about Gerlach’s votes against S-CHIP. And if they really want to lower the rate of abortions, then they should get on board with helping this country to get good paying jobs because when people have jobs and economic times are good fewer women get abortions. Instead, the GOP engineered the biggest financial implosion since the Stock Market Crash of 1929 and wrecked the economy through deregulation of the financial sector and a lack of oversight to see that fraud isn’t committed in the markets.

How Many-

If Gerlach is paying you for your comments, then he overpaid and got nothing for the money.

Ed – come talk to me in the fall after HR tells how much you will pay next year it will be more. I am just stating what is going to happen so don’t get angry with me. If you want to see the coming impact for employees start watching all the companies reports for the next few months and their next quarters filings. You will see all of them taking charges in the areas of hundreds of million of dollars up to a billion of dollars.
Look like I said it is a good thing to cover people, but there were much cheaper ways to accomplish coverage for all. I am just telling you that this will cost people a lot of money, will not be able to sustain the costs, and people are going to only get madder. So I am just stating how it is going to play out not bashing you for your views. You have your bill so go ahead and run with it, but I will cool it with saving money because it will not save money and you will look like a fool by trying to sell that fact.

The repeated mention of suburbanites subsidizing the poor – now that is really the crux of the matter to Gerlach, his colleagues and followers. They don’t see access to basic health care as a right. If you cannot afford it, too bad for you! What you need is the ability to “Purchase it across state lines.” That will solve the problem!

These same legislators turned their heads as big businesses left this country in droves in search of bigger profits.Too bad so many jobs disappeared, but Congress should have reduced their corporate tax rates and eliminated regulations that protect workers and drive up costs! Too bad if small businesses could no longer afford to offer health insurance to their employees. That’s just the free-market system setting prices. “Best healthcare in the world!!!” – for the shrinking number of people who can still afford it. Just the price you pay to have choices and be free.Right?

These very same upstanding people are proud to call themselves pro-life – as they support endless wars and vote against S-CHIP and subsidized school lunches, vote to further limit welfare, medicaid and unemployment The solution for everything? More tax cuts for the rich. If all this hypocrisy makes sense to you, then Jim Gerlachhhh is your man.

For the rest of us, Doug Pike or Dr. Trivedi will be a most welcome replacement! Please join me in getting out and knocking on doors to elect a Democrat to the 6th District seat.(No, I don’t work for a candidate. I’m just a committeeperson who cannot stand the thought of two more years of Jim Gerlach and his lockstep votes and chameleon like behavior around election time.)