Is healthcare money being used to promote a Sales Tax increase?

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Proponents of M15 hard at work

J-Ellis wrote a great column today about how the healthcare industry in SD is pushing to promote a sales tax increase that will pump up to $85 million into their coffers;

Well, the U.S. House advertising won’t win any awards. But on the horizon comes the long-awaited campaign from the people who hope you’re going to vote to raise your own taxes. According to documents collected by Argus Leader reporters and reporter David Montgomery’s account, the people running Moving South Dakota Forward are preparing to spend more than $250,000 in October on television ads.

We won’t know until the campaign reports donations, but it’s a safe bet that the effort will be bankrolled by the major nonprofit hospital systems in South Dakota. And by major nonprofit hospital systems, you can count those on one hand, even if that hand happened to lose a couple digits in a blender accident.

The two hospital goliaths in Sioux Falls spent a good chunk of change to help win voter approval of a new events center last November. One of them, and this is no place to name names, subsequently has spent more money to secure the partial naming rights for said facility. That same nonprofit hospital system is building a fancy sports complex of its own, thanks in part to a generous tax subsidy.

So let’s assume the hospitals are the major contributors to the IM 15 campaign. It won’t be lost on a lot of voters that the hospitals stand to make a lot of money if IM 15 passes. After all, they see a lot of Medicaid patients, and injecting $85 million a year into Medicaid certainly would mean higher reimbursement rates for the professionals and organizations that provide those services.

Few campaigns are perfect. IM 15 asks the state’s voters to sacrifice more of their money in the name of children, the poor and the elderly. That will be a tough sell.

But the sales job will only be tougher if voters think that by opening their wallets, they are only contributing more to the coffers of the nonprofit hospital systems.

Remember just a few years ago the same organizations pumped thousands of dollars into newspaper advertising to help kill Medical Marijuana Measure 13 which was polling well until the ads came out, crushing M13. Of course the healthcare industry had a lot to lose if M13 passed. They want you to use and buy their expensive narcotic painkillers instead of a natural, less expensive, more effective drug like marijuana. They will use the same tactics this time around to suck more money out of us. And they will probably use the tired old argument that if we don’t increase sales taxes there will be an income tax. Hogwash. As long as Republicans run Pierre (which will probably be for the next 1,000 years) there will be NO income tax in SD. Remember also, if this tax increase is approved by voters, this will just give the state the go ahead to spend the other 4 pennies on whatever they want, like refunds and bailouts to companies and corporations that want to locate here. Tune out there message as much as possible and vote NO on M15, unless of course you like subsidizing Sports Complexes and Entertainment facilities.

 

 

Thune agrees, Obamacare is killing people (H/T – Helga)

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I’m amazed that our local media never picks up on this stuff;

Unimpressed by the timeline, Hewitt pressed Republicans to move faster. He compared the urgency of repeal to Congressional action in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and argued that people are already “dying” from the law. Thune seemed to agree with the sentiment:

HEWITT: Yeah, the reason I balk a little bit is only because I know people are out there dying under the burdens of this thing.

THUNE: Yeah.

HEWITT: And they expect, you know, the light speed for Congress is like molasses for the rest of the real world.

THUNE: Yeah.

HEWITT: And so it just seems to me that after 9/11, you guys moved fast, and I would hope it would happen again.

Like I have said in the past, I don’t agree with everything in the healthcare bill, but it certainly isn’t ‘killing’ people. That is the Republican’s plan. Ironic Johnny is famous for calling the kettle black.

As Helga pointed out to me;

“Apparently people are dying right and left because of “Obamacare.”  Even though it hasn’t gone into effect yet, only portions have gone into effect, Thune says “yeah” people are dying. It appears, surprise, surprise, he doesn’t give a shit about the people of South Dakota, the people who need healthcare the most. But why should he care, he has his healthcare.”

I have often said that is the motto of rich powerful Republicans, ‘F’ck U! I got mine!’

 

So some think the healthcare law is unconstitutional . . .

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Yet it is perfectly legal to force people to have car insurance . . . hmmm.

According to Jackley the Supreme Court upheld the individual insurance requirement because it declared that the penalty for not having coverage by the deadline in 2014 can be collected as a tax.

Jackley says it violates individual and state constitutional rights and puts a burden on small businesses.  He says they might not be able to offer the same type of coverage for families.

So forcing me to insure my car is constitutional? Give me a break. While I have mixed feelings on forcing people to get health insurance (It is just a bailout for the insurance companies) I am opposed to the healthcare bill for other reasons. I think if you cannot afford private insurance the government should insure you through medicare with a payroll deduction. I think taking out the single-payer option was the worst thing for this bill. It gave the insurance companies what they wanted, a monopoly.