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The Conservative Reader:
Iowa

Running with scissors, bungy-jumping, lion-training don’t hold a candle to these two items…

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Republicans appear to be doing well, very well, scary well. So what’s to be done about it? Republicans need to work harder, get more engaged, get more yard signs up, knock on more doors!

Why, you may ask, would I think that?

Because early poll successes:

  1. Are deceiving. In Politics, scientific polling lacks integrity because there are so many factors and inconsistencies, including the fact that they reflect a point in time, which is not election day
  2. Are open to interpretation. The complexities and meaning behind poll answers can be interpreted multiple ways… sometimes the answers mean something different than what we think.
  3. Can lead to complacency. Accepting that your candidate is going to win hands down can lead to voter apathy and before you know it, everyone that said they were going to vote decides to stay home election day or just forgets to vote.

It’s great to feel good about these polls… I’m very enthused about our prospects here in Iowa. But polling can cause us to take our eye off the ball… we need to stay focused on the message, on getting it delivered to the people that need to hear it most, and make sure we get everyone out to vote come election day.

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Did you think that maybe ObamaCare wouldn’t impact you directly for a while? Think again.

New rules from the IRS issued earlier this month, based on the Affordable Care Act now require that those who pay for over-the-counter (OTC) medications (such as Claritan, Robitussin, etc.) FSAs or HRAs, beginning January 1, 2011, to get a prescription for these medications to get the reimbursements. Flexible Spending Account (FSAs) Health Reimbursement Accounts (HRAs) setup for medical expenses not normally covered by insurance, using untaxed dollars. On top of this, patients will have to submit the prescription information along with the receipt to their account program adminstration instead of using the more convenient (and appropriate) debit cards most of these accounts now provide.

It may seem like a small thing, but doctors don’t typically hand out prescriptions of any kind without a visit, which will cost the patient and/or their insurance provider. Add to that the new paperwork burden, and you’ve impacted many Americans enough that they will (rightfully so) choose to abandon the use of the untaxed (or pretaxed) dollars and instead reduce their FSA/HRA use (or eliminate it) and just pay for these medications with taxed dollars.

Yes this is for real, and yes I think it’s stupid. This is the result of just a small piece of the gargantuan legislation passed by a Congress bent on making us miserable. I’m convinced of that now. Give them 2 more years and they will find a way to ensure that the Government will simply pay for these medications (with an appropriate prescription) instead of just going back to a system that worked fine, therefore making us even more dependent on the government.

And the best part is, you can still use these accounts like you always did for any other medical supplies that don’t require a prescription. You will have to get a prescription to get a, frankly small, tax advantage.

Government savings, none… I can pretty much guarantee that the new taxes recovered will barely pay for the paper used to print this stupid bill. More likely we will see substantive costs go up, either in government or for insurance companies, to support this idiotic requirement.

Sometimes it just seems dangerous to get up in the morning.


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