The VERY High Price of ObamaCare

If you would like to know the future of the Health care bill and the the future of health care in America watch this interview with Newt Gingrich then read the article by Dick Morris.



HIGH PRICE OF OBAMACARE
By Dick Morris 10.14.2009

Published on TheHill.com on October 13, 2009

Will a young, healthy, childless individual or couple buy health insurance costing 7.5 percent of their income, as required by Obama’s health legislation? Not until they get sick. Then they can always buy the insurance, and the Obama bill requires the insurance companies to give it to them. And if the premiums come to more than 7.5 percent of their income because they are now sick, no problem. Obama will subsidize it.


Instead, young, healthy, childless people will likely opt to pay the $1,000 fine (aka slap on the wrist) mandated in the bill. After all, even if they make as little as $50,000 a year, the fine is a lot cheaper than 7.5 percent of their income (or $3,500 a year)!

So…these young households will not contribute to the coffers of any health insurance company until they are sick and need the coverage. By then, their costs will come to vastly more than their premiums.

Who will subsidize the difference? We will.

The insurance industry estimates that the bill will drive up premiums for the average family by $1,700 a year. By the time the bill takes effect in 2013, it estimates that the average annual family health insurance premiums (now $12,300) will rise to $17,200 if the Obama bill is passed, but only to $15,500 if it is defeated.

And who do you think the voters will blame for the hike in their premiums? The Democrats who passed the bill.

Supporters of the bill are quick to counter that greater efficiency, etc., will hold down premiums. But they have little to answer the argument that, without higher fines, the young and healthy will not consent to pay an arm and a leg for insurance they don’t need.

Any lingering motivation to pay the premiums will disappear once the Obama bill requires insurance companies to cover them when they do, finally, limp in the door, desperately in need of insurance. Why pay now when you can always pay later? And, with a government subsidy, you gain nothing by paying for all those years when you don’t need insurance.

So Obama’s program turns out not to be one to spread insurance and thus spread the risk of costly illness, but one to make people pay 7.5 percent of their incomes once they get sick, with the government picking up their remaining premium and the health insurance customers paying for the medical expenses. Some deal!

So tote up the cost of this bill on the middle class:

• $1,700 more in insurance premiums for the average family

• Medical devices like wheelchairs and hearing aids get taxed

• Those who are sick must pay an average of about $600 more a year in income taxes because the bill raises the threshold for deducting medical expenses from 7.5 percent of income to 10 percent

• A $404 billion cut in Medicare

• Ending the subsidized Medicare Advantage insurance for costs over and above Medicare. Without Medicare Advantage, the elderly can only augment Medicare by buying Medigap coverage, for which no subsidy is available and whose premiums are higher (offered, conveniently enough, by Obama’s buddies at the AARP)

• No importation of Canadian medicines and no competitive bidding to hold down prescription drug costs (Obama’s deal to get Pharma’s support and advertising dollars)

• A shortage of medical personnel and equipment as 30 million new patients are added without any expansion of the population of doctors and nurses. This shortage will make rationing inevitable, even if it shortens life expectancies among the elderly.

And all of this assumes that the House bill, which imposes a 4.5 percent payroll tax (which will discourage new employment), does not pass.

…And that the cost estimates of this program prove realistic. Despite the Congressional Budget Office’s concurrence, one can’t help noticing that Massachusetts’s program was estimated to cost $200 million in 2005 and now costs $700 million!

This healthcare bill is, indeed, Obama’s first tax on the middle class.

READ THIS IF NOTHING ELSE!!! -- Health Care Bill

I have recently written emails concerning the Health Care Bill currently before Congress. I have only received two responses one positive and one threatening to report me (Can you imagine this happening in America, someone threatening to report a fellow citizen for disagreeing with their political beliefs? See:Fishy).

I have been concerned that Americans believed that they were either too busy to be bothered by all this hullabaloo over the Health Care Bill, or that they thought people like me to be some kind of Chicken Little proclaiming “the sky is falling.” Or worse yet that they agreed with the President and his minions on their Complete Lives System philosophy regarding health care in the United States of America.

Given the reaction in the Town Hall meetings across the country I no longer believe this to be true. But we have a long way to go before we defeat this boondoggle being rammed down our throats by very powerful forces aimed at complete revolution and restructuring of our nation from one of an American Republic to the Socialist States of America.

The American people are being sold a bill of goods via a Propaganda Campaign that would have made Joseph Goebbels proud. We are literally being asked to ‘drink the Kool-Aid’ of this Health Care Bill which is in reality an implementation of a social engineering policy to rid the system of those are deemed an unnecessary burden.

Dr. Ezekiel J Emanuel, brother of President Obama's Chief of Staff, and "Special Advisor for Health Policy" to the president presents a detailed proposal of how this allocation should be done.

He believes that a two-tier system is ethically acceptable and he wrote the following in an article in Lancet (a leading medical journal) in 1996:...

"The fundamental challenge to theories of distributive justice for health care is to develop a principled mechanism for defining what fragment of the vast universe of technically available, effective medical care services is basic and will be guaranteed socially and what services are discretionary and will not be guaranteed socially. Such an approach accepts a two-tiered health system-some citizens will receive only basic services while others will receive both basic and some discretionary health services. Within the discretionary tier, some citizens will receive few discretionary services, other richer citizens will receive almost all of available services, creating a multiple-tiered system."

Translation: If you are rich enough to buy your health care, buy it. But if you one of the common people you will have your care rationed so as not to be a burden to the system. Those who are young, OUR CHILDREN and those who are old, OUR PARENTS AND GRANDPARENTS will be LAST in line to receive the care they need!

Note the Chart below reflecting the Complete Lives System philosophy. I have nicknamed it “the dead elephant” due to its shape.

Using this philosophy one can justify providing care to a 20 year old illegal alien and deny that same life saving care to a 65 year old Congressional Medal of Honor recipient or watch a new born infant die from pyloric stenosis (requiring a simple surgery).

There is a line in the movie Doctor Zhivago (from a Russian novel by Boris Pasternak) when Dr. Yuri Zhivago is faced with a young officer in the Red Army whom he once knew but had since become ‘political’ where he says to him, “You are an idealist and I’m frightened by idealists.” I did not understand his meaning as a young man but as I’ve grown older I’ve come to understand his meaning. Karl Marx was an idealist, Lenin was an idealist, Hitler was an idealist, Mao was an idealist, Pol Pot was an idealist. Idealist scare me too, because in their attempts to create a heaven on earth they create a living hell for the rest of us!

Barak Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid et. al are idealists. Idealists scare me.

So, I am writing this blog in an attempt to inform and hopefully motivate you, my fellow citizens to action and get involved if you are not already and to keep up the good fight if you are already engaged. If we do then maybe, just maybe we have a chance to stop this culture of death from becoming the law of the land. If not, when you stand at your mother’s, or your child’s bedside and watch them die from a completely preventable condition left untreated due to the rationed care looming in our future; remember we told you so!

Soberly Yours,

John Myer