Examiner Editorial: Obamacare will provide less at greater cost

Washington Examiner ^ | 7/24/2012

[markomalley]

"To say that the Individual Mandate merely imposes a tax is not to interpret the statute but to rewrite it," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in her dissent to the Supreme Court's June health care ruling. She attacked Chief Justice John Roberts' Obamacare decision, noting, "Judicial tax-writing is particularly troubling."

We have found a rare point of agreement here with Justice Ginsburg. No court, especially not the Supreme Court, should impose new taxes on the American people. By choosing to rewrite Obamacare, Chief Justice Roberts has done exactly that.

Yesterday, the Congressional Budget Office released a new cost estimate for Obamacare incorporating the Roberts opinion, which upheld the individual mandate as a tax. Previously, the CBO estimated that some 27 million Americans would pay some $54 billion in penalties through 2022, and still go without health insurance. Yesterday, the CBO updated the numbers, predicting that some 30 million Americans will pay $55 billion in taxes and still go without health insurance.

In addition to the $1 billion tax hike on some 3 million Americans, the vast majority of whom make far, far less than $200,000 a year, Roberts' decision also increased the likelihood that employers will face penalties for not complying with Obamacare's employer mandate. Previously, the CBO estimated that employers would have to pay $113 billion in Obamacare penalties through 2022. Yesterday, they raised that number to $117 billion.

All told, the CBO estimates that, thanks to Roberts, Americans will have to pay $5 billion more in taxes while providing health insurance for 3 million fewer Americans.

Taking a step back, according to CBO's new estimate, Obamacare spends $1.68 trillion over the next ten years and only manages to reduce the number of uninsured Americans from 60 million without the law, to 30 million with it. Keep that in mind the next time someone tries to convince you that Obamacare accomplished universal coverage.

And that's not all. Remember when Obama promised that Obamacare would lower your family's health insurance premiums? Thanks to costly Obamacare mandates -- like coverage for adult children up to 26 years of age and free birth control SEmD premiums shot up 9 percent in 2011, nearly three times the rate of inflation and the most since 2005. And according to the CBO, Roberts' decision only made the problem worse. It estimates his ruling will hike premiums by an additional 2 percent, or about $400 per family.

Meanwhile, CBO's estimates for Obamacare's costs have nearly doubled since the bill passed in 2010.

The mandate-regulate-tax-spend approach to health care, epitomized by Obamacare, was never right for America. There is only one way for the country to escape Obamacare's ever higher tax and spending spiral: full repeal.

[markomalley]

Per the CBO Estimates:

[jtal]

Ginsberg dissented? Am I reading this right?

[Adder]

All of a sudden the CBO is to be believed? They lied to get it passed, they continued to lie and this is most likely false too. Zerocare will be far worse than anyone is letting on.
I got history of virtually every government program that ever was...what you got, CBO?

[The Antiyuppie]

More cost, less value. I’m wondering why anyone is even slightly surprised. It DOES involve the government, correct?

[PapaNew]

It's a no-brainer. As always with government programs, MOST of the money will go to feed the ever expanding, voracious bureaucracy that Obamacare will create.

People know that in theory and in historical fact, Socialism is a failed, poverty-stricken system. But they go for it anyway because something makes them think that government will fix the problem better than the free market.

[pepsionice]

From a business stand-point...it might have been acceptable to have 200 patients a month show up and get minimum service for a heavily discounted fee (Medicare patients)...say thirty percent less than regular customers. You’ve built your model and can say that this works. The old folks all have generally the same issues anyway.

But then one day....the new group of Medicare folks arrive at the door, and want to be regular patients. Instead of 200 patients a month at the Medicare rate...you now have 400 patients who want the heavily discounted rate. You look at this, and after four months....you realize it just won’t make your small one-to-two doctor operation work. You try to back off and set a limit of 200 Medicare patients a month.

Down the road....this twelve-man medical clinic opens up with a high number of lesser qualified nurses...and start a cattle-funnel operation, where a vast number of Medicare patients walk through and get four minutes of service...with a charge going against Medicare every single minute of the day. Lesser quality visits, but they can generate four million dollars in Medicare payments each month. They’ve got the right business model and don’t care if they really screw up or not....the malpractice insurance will cover screw-ups.

In the end, the majority of Americans end up with lesser quality, but free healthcare (the old guys and the poverty folks). They will each blame Congress, and demand more money to go into the program. So the only solution (if you think about it)....is more taxes about five to ten years down the road. Mix in some corruption, and you can figure most of our tax income in thirty years....will just go toward medical care.

[Monorprise]

A factual error on the writers part understandable given the many factual errors on Chief injustice John Robert’s part.

I know Ginsberg rejected the tax argument later on but nonetheless voted with the other 4 leftist traitors(The chief injustice included).

I’m afraid I’ve already shed all my tears over the Federal Constitution of civil government & republic they utterly destroyed. Nothing else really matters.

[ballplayer]

Just Reported on FOX that the woman who wrote the report from The CBO is a Obama supporter who wrote him a Check for 26 Grand and was On the Phone with him a Number of times during his Campaign. Stuart Varney says that this position is Supposed to Be NonPartisan,Another BS report Folks

[PapaNew]

Your scenario is the latest a long line throughout the history of sad, disastrous, bankrupt socialism. No matter. The uninformed and ungodly will still flock to see government "fix" the problem and continually fail (the program requires coercion, of course, so B (government) can force A to pay B for the benefit of C (& B) and of course after it fails, it is never the government's fault - as you point out, "the program just doesn't have have enough money"). The government itself is like a giant ponzi scheme that keeps going until nobody has any more freedom or money.

Yet people still trust "government solutions" rather than allow the free market's "invisible hand" to meet the demand within the economic principles of supply and demand through voluntary cooperation. At some point, however, some will risk their lives trying to escape the poverty and oppression of socialist tyranny if there is just one beacon of the light of freedom somewhere. America was that beacon - a miracle in the history of a world that with few exceptions has been ruled by tyranny and oppression. We are witnessing first hand why this is so.

Lesson? Man is unable to justly and rightly rule himself (personally or corporately) in any sustained long-term fashion. That's one reason why Jesus, the King of kings and Lord of lords who is also the Prince of Peace, will return soon. God Himself will establish the peace and tranquility that man has always craved without God but never attained. What a day that will be.