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December 23, 2009
Day One: How ObamaCare Will Alienate Americans
DAY ONE: HOW OBAMACARE WILL ALIENATE AMERICANS
By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
Obama's health care bill, the poisoned Kool-Aid making its way through the Senate, will not confer any of its supposed benefits on Americans until 2013. But they will find themselves chafing at its restrictions and paying its taxes immediately after the law takes effect. Then, they will see no gain, but plenty of pain, for the next three years.
This odd juxtaposition of "suffer now, benefit later" is the byproduct of the Administration's sleight of hand in specifying ten years worth of cuts and taxes in the legislation, but deferring its benefits for the first four years. By comparing six years of spending with ten years of taxing, it managed to appear deficit neutral under the rules of the Congressional Budget Office. In fact, the annual revenues fall far short of covering any single year's worth of spending, adding to the deficit for each of the last six years over the next ten, but, viewing the decade as a whole, it appears deficit neutral.
Yet the political price is hardly neutral. Democrats who misguidedly vote for this monstrosity will face immediate political repercussions.
The harshest of these backlashes will come from the elderly who will suddenly visit their doctors and be told "no" when they ask for therapies or treatments. The rationing of medical care will start immediately on enactment and, one hopes, the outraged phone calls will start to descend on those whose votes enabled it.
The first "no" will hit the ten million elderly who now rely on Medicare Advantage to pay for the care Medicare itself does not cover. In a payoff to AARP, Obama gutted this program in his bill, ending over $100 billion in federal premium subsidies. These ten million voters will get the grim news that their premiums are going up and their benefits dropping early in 2010. The goal, of course, is to force them to drop Medicare Advantage and sign up, instead, for Medigap insurance -- offered, not coincidentally, by the AARP -- which provides less coverage at higher cost.
Young people without health insurance can expect to start writing $750 annual checks to Washington to pay the fines written into the bill. (And, after the Conference Committee finishes its work, the fines may be higher).
All Americans will soon find their insurance premiums rising as a result of the bill. The young, uninsured will not buy policies. Why should they? Why not just pay the $750 fines each year? Why pay between 2% and 10% of their household income before subsidies kick in? It makes no financial sense for anyone making more than $30,000 to pay for coverage. (And most of those under that threshold will be covered by Medicaid, not by private insurance).
There is no reason for the young to buy private insurance. The legislation requires that health insurers take all comers and not raise rates based on pre-existing conditions. So the young can get coverage when they need it, having only paid $750 per year beforehand.
The difference in cost will, of course, be borne by families throughout America who will see their health insurance premiums increase. President Obama and his Democratic rubber stamps may appreciate that they are not raising taxes on the middle class, just raising mandatory health insurance premiums, but the distinction is likely to be lost on swing voters.
From now on, any increase in health insurance premiums will become the political responsibility of the Obama Administration. As General Colin Powell once said of Iraq "You break it. You own it." Since these premiums have been rising by an average of 10% per year for more than the past decade, this is a legacy most politicians would sensibly avoid if they could.
Wild Thing's comment..........
The left politicians more then anyone else in politics don't care, they sure have shown us that. They have their own health care and their own retirement system. When they retire they’ll get a monthly paycheck equal to their ending salary for the rest of their lives. They will never want. And for decades they have been setting their own salary, and not getting any flak for it.
GRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!
....Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67
Posted by Wild Thing at December 23, 2009 03:40 AM
Comments
Nobody remembers the mandated auto insurance or that premiums quadrupled the first year or two. That was pocket change compared to this.
Posted by: Jack at December 23, 2009 11:32 AM
H/T my friend Sharon
Editorial: There Came a Pale Rider
Notwithstanding some minor tinkering, the U.S. Senate has now passed the government takeover of healthcare. And despite the fact that it may not contain all of the far left's extreme demands, it is almost impossible to overstate the nefarious effect of what has emerged.
As Barack Obama has rightly intoned, even as now written, without the "public option," the measure embodies the single most massive government entitlement program since social security. One-sixth of the economy will be summarily placed in the hands of federal bureaucrats. And the greatest health care system in the history of the world will be torn asunder.
Yet, as horrifying as all of that may be, it is just the beginning. Because like the Pale Rider of biblical prophecy, "hell will follow after it."
The Democrats have already made clear that the current bill is just the opening salvo of their all-out assault on every aspect of private health care. As Tom Harkin (D-IA) has said, "What we are buying here is a modest home, not a mansion. But, we can build additions as we go along … In the future, amending it and changing it isn't going to be as tough as passing it in the first place. We amend Medicare and Social Security all the time …That's what we will do in health care."
As Harkin and others have also made clear, a binding public option is inevitable. Full funding of abortions is simply a matter of some minor tinkering. And then, once the new law has inserted the federal government into every aspect of health care, a sprawling new "Department of Health" will be created, empowered to control who receives which medical procedure and – even more chilling – who does not.
And even that doesn't begin to address the full scope of the bill's malevolent intent. More than anything else, the government health care takeover is a sinister political move to insulate the Democrats in power for decades to come.
If the Democrats are allowed to implement their strategy of using the current bill as a foothold to gain a stranglehold, they will then use their newfound power to "redistribute the health" in order to establish a middle-class dependency on bureaucratic dictates and federal subsidies.
As the popular leftwing website TPM recently observed in its editorial "The Death of Conservatism": "[The bill] will re-legitimize middle-class dependence for 'security' on government spending and regulation. It will revive the reputation of the party that spends and regulates, the Democrats, as the generous protector of middle-class interests. And it will at the same time strike a punishing blow against Republican claims to defend the middle class by restraining government."
So, how do conservatives and/or Republicans fight back against this blatant power grab? They have two alternatives left.
First, the Republicans in both the Senate and the House must use any means necessary to prevent the bill's final passage. That may require the most expensive, extensive political ad campaign in TV history. It may also require the most aggressive – and, to some, acrimonious – public attacks in political history. And it will most certainly require the deftest parliamentary machinations in congressional history. In fact, it will likely require all three.
Then, should the bill pass anyway, political activists at the grassroots level must extract an Election Day toll on Senate and House members in marginal seats that will make wayward politicians shudder for decades to come. Even waiting until 2012 will be too late; the Democrat strategy of control and subsidize will already be too far advanced. The electoral pogrom must begin immediately.
The Senate has now passed the government takeover of health care over the objections of the vast majority of Americans. All that remains to be determined is whose hell "will follow after it."
Posted by: Jack at December 23, 2009 01:35 PM
I read yesterday, Max Baucus the architect of this POS bill claims, "We are not the first to try for this type of reform but will be the first to succeed at it."
Where does this asshole come from and why does he believe we all just fell off the turnip truck. Can anyone be that stupid to actually believe that this will work. The government in all of its stupidity has never managed anything, Nothing, Zip, Zero, Nada that has ever worked.
Starting with the Post Office, for what they do they are all over paid. Amtrak is broke and constantly running into other obstacles , like cars, trucks or other trains., Medicaid/Medicare are broke, the new drug program is broke. Social security is a joke.
HOw is it possible to get 60 complete friggin morons in one room at one time and they all buy into this crap. 304 Million people in this country and we got to pick the runts of the litter.
Posted by: Mark at December 23, 2009 02:59 PM
Posted by: Jack at December 23, 2009 04:05 PM
Jack, that is great and thank you for the link.
Also I love the Ray Stevens song/video.
Mark, thanks for that. I agree, can't these
people love our country, they don't and they
proved it by the 60 that voted for this
monster bill.
Posted by: Wild Thing at December 24, 2009 12:06 AM
