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I was asked by a member who is currently without a computer to post this report he got. Thanks for reading.
Health Plan Threatens to Feed Your Gun-related Data Into a National
Database
--- And charge you $10,000 a year for the privilege
Gun Owners of America E-Mail Alert
8001 Forbes Place, Suite 102, Springfield, VA 22151
Phone: 703-321-8585 / FAX: 703-321-8408
Thursday, April 2, 2009
In a year when trillion dollar bailouts have become routine, many
Americans have become almost numb to our acceleration towards socialism.
But gun rights activists aren't in that crowd, and so GOA has to inform
you of yet ANOTHER threat to your privacy, the Second Amendment, and
even your wallet.
It is called an "individual mandate" or, alternatively, the
"Massachusetts plan." And over the weekend, both the
Washington Post
and the New York Times worked hard to build momentum for it.
First, a little history.
We alerted you a few weeks ago to the gun control provisions in the
stimulus bill that President Obama signed in February. Our government
will now spend between $12 and $20 BILLION to require the medical
community to retroactively put our most confidential medical records
into a government database -- a database that could easily be used to
deny veterans (and other law-abiding Americans) who have sought
psychiatric treatment for things such as PTSD.
Currently, gun owners can avoid getting caught in this database by
refusing to purchase health insurance or by purchasing insurance with a
carrier that has not signed an agreement with the government to place
your records in a national database.
But that's all about to change. A budget resolution -- to be voted on
this Friday in the Senate -- will be the first domino in a process that
could FORCE you to buy government-approved insurance, thus making it
impossible to avoid the medical database.
Put another way: If you do not have health insurance -- or,
potentially, if you do not have the TYPE of health insurance the
government wants you to have -- the government will force you to
purchase what it regards as "acceptable" health insurance.
And, in most
cases, you will have to pay for it out of your own pocket.
What would all this cost? Based on comparable insurance currently on
the market, it could cost $10,000 a year -- or more.
If you were jobless, the socialists would probably spot you the ten
grand. But if you are middle class and can't pay $10,000 because of
your mortgage payments, your small business, or your kids' college
education, you would be fined (over $1,000 a year currently in
Massachusetts). And, if you couldn't pay the confiscatory fine, you
could ultimately be imprisoned.
Scary, you say. But why is this a Second Amendment issue? Under the
Massachusetts plan, your MANDATED insurance carrier has to feed your
medical data into a centralized database -- freely accessible by the
government under federal privacy laws.
So... remember when your pediatrician asked your kid if you have a
firearm in the home? Or when your dad was given a prescription for
Zoloft because of his Alzheimer's? Or when your wife mentioned to her
gynecologist that she had regularly smoked marijuana ten years ago?
All of this would be in a centralized database. And all of it could
potentially be used to vastly expand the "prohibited persons" list
maintained by the FBI in West Virginia.
How serious a threat is this?
If it gets into the budget resolution the Senate will consider on
Friday, it will be almost impossible to strip out later. It will be as
much of a done-deal as the stimulus package was.
We have asked senators to introduce language to prohibit such an
individual mandate for socialized medicine that would violate the
privacy of gun owners. In the absence of such an amendment, we are
asking senators to vote against the budget resolution.
ACTION: Write your U.S. Senators. Urge them to vote against the budget
resolution if it does not contain language prohibiting a mandate that
Americans buy government-approved health insurance against their will.
Health Plan Threatens to Feed Your Gun-related Data Into a National
Database
--- And charge you $10,000 a year for the privilege
Gun Owners of America E-Mail Alert
8001 Forbes Place, Suite 102, Springfield, VA 22151
Phone: 703-321-8585 / FAX: 703-321-8408
Thursday, April 2, 2009
In a year when trillion dollar bailouts have become routine, many
Americans have become almost numb to our acceleration towards socialism.
But gun rights activists aren't in that crowd, and so GOA has to inform
you of yet ANOTHER threat to your privacy, the Second Amendment, and
even your wallet.
It is called an "individual mandate" or, alternatively, the
"Massachusetts plan." And over the weekend, both the
Washington Post
and the New York Times worked hard to build momentum for it.
First, a little history.
We alerted you a few weeks ago to the gun control provisions in the
stimulus bill that President Obama signed in February. Our government
will now spend between $12 and $20 BILLION to require the medical
community to retroactively put our most confidential medical records
into a government database -- a database that could easily be used to
deny veterans (and other law-abiding Americans) who have sought
psychiatric treatment for things such as PTSD.
Currently, gun owners can avoid getting caught in this database by
refusing to purchase health insurance or by purchasing insurance with a
carrier that has not signed an agreement with the government to place
your records in a national database.
But that's all about to change. A budget resolution -- to be voted on
this Friday in the Senate -- will be the first domino in a process that
could FORCE you to buy government-approved insurance, thus making it
impossible to avoid the medical database.
Put another way: If you do not have health insurance -- or,
potentially, if you do not have the TYPE of health insurance the
government wants you to have -- the government will force you to
purchase what it regards as "acceptable" health insurance.
And, in most
cases, you will have to pay for it out of your own pocket.
What would all this cost? Based on comparable insurance currently on
the market, it could cost $10,000 a year -- or more.
If you were jobless, the socialists would probably spot you the ten
grand. But if you are middle class and can't pay $10,000 because of
your mortgage payments, your small business, or your kids' college
education, you would be fined (over $1,000 a year currently in
Massachusetts). And, if you couldn't pay the confiscatory fine, you
could ultimately be imprisoned.
Scary, you say. But why is this a Second Amendment issue? Under the
Massachusetts plan, your MANDATED insurance carrier has to feed your
medical data into a centralized database -- freely accessible by the
government under federal privacy laws.
So... remember when your pediatrician asked your kid if you have a
firearm in the home? Or when your dad was given a prescription for
Zoloft because of his Alzheimer's? Or when your wife mentioned to her
gynecologist that she had regularly smoked marijuana ten years ago?
All of this would be in a centralized database. And all of it could
potentially be used to vastly expand the "prohibited persons" list
maintained by the FBI in West Virginia.
How serious a threat is this?
If it gets into the budget resolution the Senate will consider on
Friday, it will be almost impossible to strip out later. It will be as
much of a done-deal as the stimulus package was.
We have asked senators to introduce language to prohibit such an
individual mandate for socialized medicine that would violate the
privacy of gun owners. In the absence of such an amendment, we are
asking senators to vote against the budget resolution.
ACTION: Write your U.S. Senators. Urge them to vote against the budget
resolution if it does not contain language prohibiting a mandate that
Americans buy government-approved health insurance against their will.
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