UPDATE: The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obama Care) found to be unconstitutional by Florida Federal Judge.

Click here to see a copy of Judge Roger Vinson's ruling.

Obama's entire premise for health care reform, as stated by him, was that health care will bankrupt the country. His answer; the 2000-plus page health care bill.

OK let's look at this logically. If the cost of health care is the issue at hand --the current premiums are too high. How is a bill which mandates higher levels of coverage at current premium rates going to lower cost? The answer plain and simple; it won't.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Two of the central promises of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul law are unlikely to be fulfilled, Medicare's independent economic expert told Congress on Wednesday.

The landmark legislation probably won't hold costs down, and it won't let everybody keep their current health insurance if they like it, Chief Actuary Richard Foster told the House Budget Committee. His office is responsible for independent long-range cost estimates.

Not only is the health care legislation not going to lower costs and force people into new plans. It's going to jeopardize coverage for many people who currently have coverage. Take a peek at the list of companies that have been granted waivers (from the law) so they can continue to provide insurance for their employees. There is a total of 733 waivers granted for 2011 so far.

Helping Consumers Keep their Coverage

The Affordable Care Act is designed to provide Americans with affordable, high-quality coverage options – while ensuring that those who like their current coverage can keep it. Unfortunately, today, limited benefit plans, or “mini-med” plans are often the only type of insurance offered to some workers. In 2014, the Affordable Care Act will end mini-med plans when Americans will have better access to affordable, comprehensive health insurance plans that cannot use high deductibles or annual limits to limit benefits. In the meantime, the law requires insurers to phase out the use of annual dollar limits on benefits. In 2011, most plans can impose an annual limit of no less than $750,000.

Mini-med plans have lower limits than allowed under the Affordable Care Act. While mini-med plans do not provide security in the event of serious illness or accident, they are unfortunately the only option that some employers offer. In order to protect coverage for these workers, the Affordable Care Act allows these plans to apply for temporary waivers from rules restricting the size of annual limits to some group health plans and health insurance issuers.

Waivers only last for one year and are only available if the plan certifies that a waiver is necessary to prevent either a large increase in premiums or a significant decrease in access to coverage. In addition, enrollees must be informed that their plan does not meet the requirements of the Affordable Care Act. No other provision of the Affordable Care Act is affected by these waivers: they only apply to the annual limit policy.

If these 733 companies can only afford the "mini-med" plans now in 2011, how are they going to afford more expensive plans in 2014? You can't increase coverage and decrease cost. That's simply not possible. Insurance companies can't take on increased liability (resulting in more payout) without increasing rates.

Also consider; people who have health insurance which doesn't meet the new minimum requirements will not be able to keep their current coverage. The mini-med plans don't meet the requirements. There are also regular insurance plans which won't meet the new requirements. Nearly every insurance plan has an annual limit. The law mandates no annual limit. Do you see where this is going?

Not only will people not be able to keep their coverage, it is far more likely that many employers will simply drop coverage all together.

I don't think I'm the only one who has figured this out. I'm pretty sure the people who authored the Obama-care legislation knew this as well...

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I want everyone to pay very close attention to the use of the words "invest" and "spend". I went over this two years ago, take a peek...

Here are some of the examples of Obama’s use of the word SPEND.

Obama:

But given the problems that the financial bailout program has had so far -- banks not wanting to talk about how they're spending the money, the AIG bonuses that you mentioned -- why do you think the public should sign on for another new sweeping authority for the government to take over companies, essentially?

And -- and so what we're trying to emphasize is, let's make sure that we're making the investments that we need to grow to meet those growth targets, at the same time we're still reducing the deficit by a couple of trillion dollars, we are cutting out wasteful spending in areas like Medicare, we're changing procurement practices when it comes to the Pentagon budget, we are looking at social service programs and education programs that don't work and eliminate them.

Now observe Obama’s use of the word INVEST.

Obama:

It's with a budget that leads to broad economic growth by moving from an era of borrow and spend to one where we save and invest.

We invest in reform that will bring down the cost of health care for families, businesses and our government.

But it is -- it is going to be an impossible task for us to balance our budget if we're not taking on rising health care costs, and it's going to be an impossible task to balance our budget or even approximate it if we are not boosting our growth rates. And -- and that's why our budget focuses on the investments we need to make that happen.

And so what we've said is, look, let's invest in health information technologies.

See the difference? The truth, on the other hand, is the only way for any government to “invest” is to spend money. Funny how that works, isn’t it? We are currently borrowing and spending. Show me where the government is saving anything!

Polling data shows that people have a negative reaction to the word spend. People have a much more positive reaction to the word invest.

On a side note. I played a drinking game a few years back during a presidential debate between Bush and Kerry. Every time Kerry would say, "I have a plan" you had to take a shot. Needless to say, I couldn't really continue on the path I had set out. I beleive that the use of the word "invest" is going to be the "I have a plan" equivalent during this State of The Union Address.

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I find this to be an interesting subject. I find this screen shot of this website to me much funnier.

"A behaviour that has become typical may still express the problems that once caused us to see it as pathological," MIT professor Sherry Turkle writes in her new book, Alone Together, which is leading an attack on the information age.

Turkle's book, published in the UK next month, has caused a sensation in America, which is usually more obsessed with the merits of social networking. She appeared last week on Stephen Colbert's late-night comedy show, The Colbert Report. When Turkle said she had been at funerals where people checked their iPhones, Colbert quipped: "We all say goodbye in our own way."

Turkle's thesis is simple: technology is threatening to dominate our lives and make us less human. Under the illusion of allowing us to communicate better, it is actually isolating us from real human interactions in a cyber-reality that is a poor imitation of the real world.

Of course you are reading about this on the internet. And if you notice in the screen shot, you can send your friends links to this article on Twitter, Facebook or by email! It might just be too late for them though.

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This is another transparent attempt to confuse people.

Traditionally, Democrats and Republicans sit on opposite sides of the House Chamber for the speech, but this past week, Colorado's Sen. Mark Udall suggested the parties integrate the seating.

It's not a rule that parties have separate seating arrangements, Udall tells Weekend Edition's Liane Hansen, it's just a custom.

"It's a custom that's in some ways understandable," he says. But given the tragedy in Tucson and the elevated rhetoric of the last couple years, Udall thinks it's time for lawmakers to come together — at least symbolically.

First of all, no Republican should sit next to a Democrat based on the terms stated. Doing so would lend credence to the false allegations about political rhetoric being the cause of the Tucson shooting. The Tucson shooting had nothing to do with political rhetoric.

Aside from Democrats trying to make something out of nothing; none of this makes any sense at all. Unless you consider this; Obama is going to have to talk about health care during his State of The Union Address. Why, you might ask? The White House has said that the speech is going to focus on jobs and the economy right? Well Obama's entire pitch for health care reform was based on health care bankrupting the country. health care is going to be mentioned in the speech. The democrats don't want to go on record (in any way) when it comes to health care. We know that no democrats ran in support of health care during the most recent November elections.

Democrats want the seating to be staggered so that people tuning in to the speech won't be able to tell who is standing and who is sitting, Democrat or Republican. The obvious idea is to skew any response related to health care so that it appears that more people are in favor of it than really are. It will also blur the line so that most people won't know which side is for or against any particular subject.

If you ask me; this seating idea is so easy to see through that no Republican should fall for it.

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There are many on the left who are using the Tucson shooting as an opening to debate civility in political discourse. The only problem is that there is no political connection to the shooting. Jared Loughner is obviously mentally ill, he didn’t' commit mass murder with any particular political ideology in mind. That being said there are other problems with this this ridiculous civility debate.

There have been many polls since the November elections. These polls seem to show that there is growing discontent amongst Americans when it comes to partisan politics. I don't buy it. If Americans were simple disgusted with partisan politics there wouldn't have been landslide Republican victories. It's obvious by the election results that there was growing discontent for the way things are conducted in Washington. This opposition had little if nothing to do with political affiliation, but more to do with accountability. Washington ignored the will of the people multiple times. Some were even rude and arrogant about it.

I look at it like this. I'm going to use an auto repair shop as an analogy here. If you took your car in for repair and found out that two of the mechanics working on your car didn't get along too well, would you really care? If you take your car to the shop you want to get it fixed right? Does it really worry you that two of the employees don't get along? Of course not. You might be worried that you are going to get swindled, but that has nothing to do with shop squabbles. As a matter fact you might never know that there are any problems between employees at all.

I look at politics the same way. Most people I have spoken with are not worried about Democrats and Republicans getting along. As a matter of fact most people don't even know what's going on in Washington. Most people would assume that the people who are sent to Washington have American's best interest in mind, but that's not always the case. When it becomes evident that politicians are making decisions based on something other than their constituent's best interest; you have elections like the one in November.

All the noise coming from the news media is just that, noise. There never really was any debate about political discourse amongst the American people. They just went out on election day and voted for those who seemed the most likely to represent their beliefs.

Those on the left can't seem to come to grips with this, so they have to fabricate some irrelevant debate in an obvious attempt to silence their opposition. Have you heard any mention of “Progressive Talk Radio” or any progressive / liberal media outlet in the "debate"?

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