Hey, Maria..
great link.. i actually enjoyed it ( aside from the monotonous delivery, the dude has to work on it ). Sending it to my wife too.

I am sending to my husband too. He was saying for years now how the lawyers meddling with the residents training really undermining the future of surgical specialty. All the preceptors of surgical residents are not happy seeing how this new rule is harming the training process.

Great article in Wall Street Journal

ObamaCare vs. Small Business

1. For decades small business owners have been telling anyone who wouldlisten that they need health-care reforms that lower costs. ButPresident Obama and his allies in Congress pushed through a law thatwill dramatically raise health-care costs and increase the overall costof doing business. What's more, the federal mandate requiring thatnearly all U.S. residents carry health insurance by 2014 seriouslythreatens our basic constitutional rights and individual freedoms.
Thisis why the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), onbehalf of small business owners nationwide, has joined the lawsuit with20 states mounting a constitutional challenge to this devastating newhealth-care law.

2.This law is death by a thousand cuts for small business owners.According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the overhaul willcost about $115 billion more than first projected, bringing the totalto more than $1 trillion. Small businesses will also now have to dealwith an onslaught of new taxes and burdensome paperwork.
Supporters say the law will significantly help small businesses,focusing on the much-talked about small business tax credit. But thereality is that the tax credit is complex and very limited becausefirms qualify based on number of employees and average wages. Thecredit, which is only available for a maximum of six years, puts smallbusiness owners through a series of complicated "tests" to determine ifthey qualify and how much they will receive. Fewer than one-third ofsmall businesses even pass the first three (of four) tests to qualify:have 25 employees or less, provide health insurance, and pay 50% of thecost of that insurance.

3. More importantly, the credit is temporary, but health-care costincreases are permanent. When the credit ends, small businesses will beleft paying full price. They'll also be forced to deal with all sortsof new taxes, fees and mandates buried in this 2,000-page law.
Oneof these new taxes is a so-called health insurance fee. It's a massive$8 billion tax (that escalates to $14.3 billion by 2018) on insurancecompanies based on their market share. This tax will be paid almostexclusively by small businesses and individuals because the lawspecifically excludes self-insured plans, the plans that most bigbusinesses and labor unions offer, from having to pay the tax.
Whilethe health insurance fee was designed to "go after" largehealth-insurance companies, the reality is that insurers aren't simplygoing to absorb this new tax; it will be passed on to customers.Specifically, it will be passed on to the plans that 87% of smallbusinesses and individuals buy.

4. A study by the Federal Policy Group published last October foundthat the amount of taxes passed on to the typical family of four couldbe $500 or more per year. Adding insult to injury, the law alsorequires all businesses to issue IRS 1099 forms to document everybusiness-to-business transaction of $600 or more. To someone who'snever run a business, this may sound like nothing. But Congress hopesto raise $17 billion in added tax revenues and fees from this newmandate. That's hardly nothing.
The burden of raising thatexpected revenue falls again on the backs of small business owners whoalready suffer under unmanageable federal paperwork burdens. What'sworse, this new reporting requirement has absolutely nothing to do withhealth-care reform. It was included to help pay for the nearlytrillion-dollar price tag of the bill. Why should small business ownershave to pay for a bill that causes them so much harm? They shouldn't,which is why NFIB is fighting against this law in court.

5. We also believe the health-care law is unconstitutional. Thecenterpiece of this law is an individual mandate requiring virtuallyall Americans to purchase health insurance or pay a fine. We stronglybelieve that the Commerce Clause of the Constitution does not giveCongress the power to force individuals to purchase a private productor face a fine. Requiring individuals to purchase something simplybecause they are alive is unprecedented. The military draft is the onlyexception to this, and Congress's authority to enact the draft isprovided for in the Constitution, unlike this mandate.
Theindividual mandate imposes unique burdens on those small businesspeople, including many NFIB members, who are sole proprietors and theleast able to afford it. These independent men and women rarely canafford to distinguish between their own "personal" resources and thoseof their business.

6. The mandate will now force them to spend money on insurance they maynot want, rather than using those funds to run and grow theirbusinesses.If this law is not overturned, then all citizensshould be prepared for the long arm of the federal government to reacheven further into how we choose to live our lives, spend our money andpursue our own definitions of happiness.
Health-care reform istoo important to be based on an unconstitutional mandate. Smallbusinesses need the judicial system—if necessary, the U.S. SupremeCourt—to overturn this law to protect them from having to pay for astatute that causes them more harm than good and ultimately infringeson all Americans' personal freedoms.




Mr. Danner ispresident and CEO of the National Federation of Independent Business(NFIB), a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that works to promote andprotect the rights of small businesses to own, operate and grow theirbusinesses.

A Rough Day for Socialism

1. Man, first it turns out that the only people who got jobs last month were temporary census workers, then it turns out that despite spending hundreds of billions on the Environmental Protection Agency over the years the Government can do nothing but twiddle its thumbs when an event requiring the protection of the environment happens. Then, the model system for nationalized health care began to crack.

NHS 'preparing to cut millions of operations': Patients will lose out to ensure ?20bn savings
Millions of patients face losing NHS care as bosses prepare to axe treatments to make ?20billion of savings by 2014, a top doctor has warned.
Among procedures being targeted by health trusts are hernias, joint replacements, ear and nose procedures, varicose veins and cataract surgery.

2.
I wonder if it ever occurred to them to make the cuts by laying off NHS medicrats and leasing out their lavish offices. 30% of new NHS spending (which exploded under the Labour Government) was for "administrative staff," a.k.a. bureaucrats. They also spent a ton of money on new buildings to house the new "administrative staff."
Moonbattery.com