Progressive Health Care Mandate (ACA) Hides Billions for HHS

With ObamaCare fast becoming the largest mandated program in our history, bigger the Social Security and Medicare combined, and worse, many of the general public haven't taken the time to investigate it's total encompassing nature, and as a result of their ignorance, will find themselves crushed under it financial burden and it's attack on their personal freedom. This will become effective January 1,2014 if we move to stop it, but how is the question.

Wait, I know how to stop this from destroying our country, vote for more progressive socialist Democrats.

The past four years has been just a winner for everyone, right? What we need now is more winning agendas like green energy, bailing out GM labor union and trillions more in stimulus money, that we don't have, spent on more local governments to keep union members employed to make sure they all vote Democrat.

What a good way to spend our tax dollars, making sure the car of state headed for the cliff has someone behind the wheel pressing on the accelerator but ready to bail out at the last minute before the car goes over the edge.

ObamaCare Bill Includes Lobbying Funds
Source: Stuart Taylor, "ObamaCare's Slush Fund Fuels A Broader Lobbying Controversy," Forbes, May 30, 2013.
June 11, 2013

A rarely noticed part of President Obama's Affordable Care Act channels some $12.5 billion into a vaguely defined "Prevention and Public Health Fund" over the next decade. That money is going for everything from massage therapists who offer "calming techniques" to groups advocating higher state and local taxes on tobacco and soda, and stricter zoning restrictions on fast food restaurants, says Stuart Taylor, a nonresident senior fellow of the Brookings Institution.

The program, which is run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), has raised alarms among congressional critics, who call it a "slush fund" because the department can spend the money as it sees fit without going through the congressional appropriations process. The sums involved are vast.

• By 2022, HHS will be able to spend $2 billion per year at its sole discretion, in perpetuity.
• What makes the Prevention and Public Health Fund controversial is its multibillion-dollar size, its unending nature (the fund never expires), and its vague spending mandate: any program designed "to improve health and help restrain the rate of growth" of health care costs.

Republicans in both the House of Representatives and Senate have complained that much of the spending seems politically motivated and are alarmed that some of the federal money went to groups who described their own activities as contacting state, city and county lawmakers to urge higher taxes on high-calorie sodas and tobacco, or to call for bans on fast food restaurants within 1,000 feet of a school, or total bans on smoking in outdoor venues, such as beaches or parks.