Congratulations to President Obama and the Democrats for pushing health care reform through the House Of Representatives. Now they will use reconciliation to push The House "fixes" to the bill through the Senate, and then the President can sign it into law. What a "victory for the American people," as the Prez said yesterday.
The "victory" came about when our President realized that by forcing all Americans to buy health insurance, he could solve the problem of some Americans not having health insurance. The man is a genius, I tell you ! His Harvard education certainly didn't go to waste. Who knew the government could make people do things by forcing them to do things ? Next, perhaps our President can solve the poverty problem by forcing all poor people to make more money ! In fact, if the government just forces people do to anything and everything the government wants them to do, we could solve EVERY problem. The possibilities are endless. Maybe we could even form a perfect utopian society where the means of production and private property are all controlled by the government, and could be equally distributed by the state, in order that everyone would get an equal share. That would be fan-freaking-tastic ! No more of those filthy rich people making more than the rest of us workers. No more inequality. We'd all big one big communi…ty. It takes a village, you know.
But I don't want to get ahead of myself, so I'll return to the incremental step known as ObamaCare. The President got the pro-life group of Democ-rats led by Bart Stupak to agree to ObamaCare by promising to issue an executive order that would ban federal funding of abortions. That put ObamaCare over the top. It passed the House by a 219-212 vote. Stupak said Obama's promise was all he needed to vote for ObamaCare, somehow, even though an executive order doesn't override Congressional legislation, and therefore carries no meaning. If it did, Obama could have passed the entire health care reform bill by executive order, not that I want to give him any ideas. He couldn't do that, of course. Democrats are on record as being against the notion of a unitary executive (or at least they were during the Bush years), and I'm pretty sure the U.S. Constitution has something in it about a separation of powers, not that we use the Constitution much these days. It certainly wasn't consulted to pass ObamaCare, except for the occasional mention of some Constitutional "blind spot" by our President, who took an oath to uphold the Constitution when he was sworn into office. Our Prez, what a jokester.
The first "victory" the American people will see with ObamCare is….their taxes will go up. Then, a few years down the road, the benefits kick in to address the health insurance crisis that Democrats claim is killing 40,000 Americans every year (by their own estimate, the Dems will let 160,000 more people die before the benefits kick in in 2014. Go figure).
If you listen to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), though I have no idea why anyone would, ObamaCare is going to create 700 bazillion jobs, or something (maybe it was only 4 million). Yesterday, I heard officials from the Caterpillar company say that ObamaCare would cost them $100 million in the first year alone, which seemed to fly directly in the face of Pelosi's dream-state job claims, but it's not like the American people have been buying the blue-sky fantasies of the Democrats regarding ObamaCare in the first place. We all know the cost estimates are smoke and mirrors (10 years of taxes to pay for 6 years of benefits in order to not increase the deficit). We all know ObamaCare adds 14-16 milllion to Medicaid and passes those costs along to the states, when the states already can't figure out how to pay for their existing Medicaid recipients. We all know doctors don't even want to take existing Medicaid patients, because the reimbursement rates are even lower than with Medicare. Many doctors don't even want to take more Medicare patients. We all know the government will create a Medicare rationing board that will restrict care to the elderly who need it the most. We all know ObamaCare is a redistribution of wealth to the working poor and the young at the expense of the middle class and upward. We all know the middle class and upward will pay higher insurance premiums. We all know ObamaCare will cost FAR more than the estimates. We all know you can't insure 32 million more people and have it cost only $950 billion. That comes out to about $3,000 annually to insure each one of those 32 million. We all know you can't give comprehensive insurance to people at that rate, especially when you remove pre-existing conditions and recessions. The cost estimates of ObamaCare are a pipe dream, a joke. We also know there's no such thing as a "right" to health insurance, any more than there's a right to own a Mercedes Benz or a right to own a 4-bedroom house in the suburbs. There is no right which forces another person to provide it for you at their expense. Such a thing is not a right, it's welfare (for the perpetually confused, you don't have a "right" to welfare either).
On a personal note, I'm almost certain I will not be able to keep my current health insurance, in spite of our President's many statements to the contrary, because my insurance does not cover all the things ObamaCare says it should cover. Even if I can keep it, it will not be the same insurance, and it will no doubt cost much more than I pay now. My insurance rate already went up 12% last week, due to the fact that it now covers pre-existing conditions, which I did not ask for or want. I only say I'm "almost certain" I will not be able to keep it because, let's face it, the actual details of the costs and coverages of ObamaCare are not really known by any of us, in spite of the President's constant claims of transparency. The ObamaCare bill has recently grown to nearly 3,000 pages. We don't know all of what's in it. I can think of no other major piece of legislation passed in this country that was demagogued with the same blizzard of bs as this one.
But we're very close to finding out what ObamaCare will mean if it isn't reversed. If it stays in effect, here's my prediction – 10 years from now the health insurance companies will implode under the weight of government regulation and bureaucracy, health care costs will continue to go through the roof, we'll have trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see, a shortage of medical services, the dollar will be extremely devalued….and the Democrats will cite it all as proof that the free market doesn't work. The government NEVER blames the government for anything. Then the Dems will call for the government-run universal single-payer health care system they've always wanted, with Americans paying 50-60% of their incomes in taxes. The Dems will repeat the exercise with housing, food, banking, energy, and anything else they can dream up.
In the end, utopia is achieved….and with the little money we have left in our pockets, we'll buy what we can on the black market.
Or, we can vote these idiots out of office and make sensible changes to the health care system. The choice is yours, America.
