Posted on 03/13/2010 10:23:46 AM PST by jazusamo
After a year of debate and legislative scheming, President Obama and congressional Democrats are making one last push for their ill-conceived health care plan. Fittingly, the endgame is as unseemly as the various maneuvers and backroom deals that got them this far. .
The procedural machinations are outrageous and embarrassing. But they are not nearly as bad as the substance of what the Democrats are pushing. Obama-care (like the public’s distaste for it) has not changed—and the sordid details of the desperate struggle to pass the bill must not cause us to forget its ruinous implications for the country. It is a sweeping and expensive plan to put the federal government in the driver’s seat of American health care. But no less important than the dangers it poses for American medicine are the ways it threatens to undermine the nation’s prosperity.
The heart of the Democratic plan is a promise to provide subsidized insurance coverage to some 35 to 40 million people. This will cost about $200 billion per year by 2019. And despite all of the talk of bending the cost curve, the Congressional Budget Office says the price will grow by 8 percent per year every year thereafter—which parallels the rapid cost growth of Medicare and Medicaid over the last four decades. In other words, the White House and congressional Democrats want to create another runaway entitlement program, piled on top of the unaffordable ones that are already slated to bankrupt the government.
Taxpayers recognize this. They see lawmakers running up debt at an unprecedented pace and understand it cannot go on much longer. As they watch the Democrats race ahead to put in place yet another long-term spending commitment, they fear when the next shoe will drop: Once Obamacare is locked in, it will only be a matter of time before the president and other Democrats argue that we must raise taxes to head off a debt crisis that their reckless spending helped to hasten.
Beyond taxes and spending, Obama-care would also wreak havoc on the labor market. Because employers would get penalized if any of their low- and moderate-wage workers ended up in the new subsidized insurance pool, they would avoid hiring such workers. Democrats claim they want to jam through health care reform so they can turn their attention to jobs, but the bill provides a strong disincentive for businesses to hire those who need jobs the most.
The plan would, moreover, trigger an inefficient and costly re-sorting of American labor. Under the bill, despite the enormous cost of subsidizing coverage in the new government-run “exchanges,” only 18 million people would be getting such subsidized coverage in 2016—even though there are 127 million Americans today with incomes in the targeted range of between one and four times the poverty rate. The vast majority of workers would still be in job-based plans and get no additional help. Gene Steuerle of the Urban Institute estimates that a worker making about $60,000 per year in 2016 would get $4,500 more in federal aid if he were able to get his insurance through an exchange rather than through his employer. That’s a powerful incentive for workers and firms to rearrange their operations to take advantage of the federal money. In time, the American economy would be divided into companies with low-wage workers getting government-subsidized health care and others with higher-wage workers who continue to get employer-based plans. This would make the labor market far less efficient (harming productivity), and it would mean that the subsidies themselves would cost far more than the CBO now estimates.
And for those workers who do end up getting federal subsidies for their insurance, the program is a trap. If they get a pay raise, they will lose some of their insurance subsidy. Indeed, the schedule of subsidy withdrawal is so severe that it will push many low-wage families into effective tax brackets of 60 percent to 80 percent, according to a CATO Institute analysis. Obama-care would thus provide a strong disincentive to work and so undermine the most successful policy initiative in generations: welfare reform.
The health care debate is not just about health care. The Democrats’ bill is so massive, so far-reaching, and so poorly designed that its implications for the larger economy (and especially for employment, which should now be Washington’s top priority) could be immense—and disastrous. For the sake of the economy, no less than for that of American health care, Congress should pause, think, and start over.
Obama doesn’t care. He’s agenda driven.
One of the better articles that articulates the link between job growth (or the lack thereof) and the health care bill. This is sharable with moderates as a convincing tool.
Agreed, they’re pretty much on the mark.
Even if the plan didn’t become socialized medicine as in Canada and UK, which it probably would, it would have a devastating effect on the economy, business and industry.
I think they don’t care about the economic devastation this would cause. Or, they do want that. It’ll deepen and keep the economic crisis going for future power grabs.
Obamacare would badly undermine America’s economic prospects.
Or as the PO__S Zero intends... a “twofer”.
NOT TO MENTION THE DOCTORS, NURSES and NP’s that will QUIT if this crapola goes through.
Defeat Obamacare call list: List now contains the new MAYBES culled from FR posts.
PLEASE CALL! DC OFFICE LOCAL OFFICE State District
Code Red” - House Target List on Health Care
The National Republican Congressional Committee has published a target list on health care. In addition to continuing to contact the five Tennessee Democrat Congressmen, you can go http://www.votervoice.net/link/clickthrough/ext/94697.aspx to contact some of these targets. Much of the talk following Obama’s announcement has focused on how to defeat this second bill through reconciliation, but that is misleading because the first step to defeating Obamacare is not by concentrating on defeating the “fixer” bill but by defeating the Senate bill in the House when it goes to the floor for an up-or-down vote on Thursday, March 18th.
Rep. Lincoln Davis 202-225-6831 Columbia office: 931-490-8699
Rep. Jim Cooper 202-225-4311 Nashville office: 615-736-5295
Rep. Bart Gordon 202-225-4231 Murfreesboro office: 615-896-1986
John Tanner (202) 225-4714, Union City, (731) 885-7070, Jackson Phone: (731) 423-4848, Millington (901) 873-5690 TN (MAYBE)
Rep. Steve Cohen 202-225-3265 Memphis office: 901-544-4131
Harry Mitchell (202) 225-2190 (480) 946-2411 AZ 5th District
Gabrielle Giffords (202) 225-2542 (520) 881-3588 AZ 8th District
Ann Kirkpatrick (202) 225-2315 (928) 226-6914 AZ 1st District
Jerry McNerney (202) 225-1947 925-833-0643 CA 11th District
John Salazar 202-225-4761 970-245-7107 CO 3rd District
Jim Himes (202) 225-5541 (866) 453-0028 CT 4th District
Alan Grayson (202) 225-2176 (407) 841-1757 FL 8th District
Bill Foster (202) 225-2976 630-406-1114 IL 14th District
Baron Hill 202 225 5315 812 288 3999 IN 9th District
Mark Schauer (202) 225-6276 (517) 780-9075 MI 7th District
Gary Peters (202) 225-5802 (248) 273-4227 MI 9th District
Dina Titus (202) 225-3252 702-256-DINA (3462) NV 3rd District
Carol Shea-Porter (202) 225-5456 (603) 743-4813 NH 1st District
Tim Bishop (202) 225-3826 (631) 696-6500 NY 1st District
John Hall (202) 225-5441 (845) 225-3641 x49371 NY 19th District
Bill Owens (202) 225-4611 (315) 782-3150 NY 23rd District
James Matheson Toll-Free Number 1 (877) 677-9743 (202) 225-3011Mike Arcuri (202)225-3665 (315)793-8146 NY 24th District
Dan Maffei (202) 225-3701 (315) 423-5657 NY 25th District
Earl Pomeroy (202) 225-2611 (701) 224-0355 ND At-Large District
Steven Driehaus (202) 225-2216 (513) 684-2723 OH 1st District
Mary Jo Kilroy (202) 225-2015 (614) 294-2196 OH 15th District
Zach Space (202) 225-6265 (330) 364-4300 OH 18th District
Kathy Dahlkemper (202) 225-5406 (814) 456-2038 PA 3rd District
Patrick Murphy (202) 225-4276 (215) 826-1963 PA 8th District
Christopher Carney (202) 225-3731 (570) 585-9988 PA 10th District
Paul Kanjorski (202) 225-6511 (570) 825-2200 PA 11th District
John Spratt (202) 225-5501 (803)327-1114 SC 5th District
Tom Perriello (202) 225-4711 (276) 656-2291 VA 5th District
Alan Mollohan (202) 225-4172 (304) 623-4422 WVA 1st District
Nick Rahall (202) 225-3452 (304) 252-5000 WVA 3rd District
Steve Kagen (202) 225-5665 (920) 437-1954 WI 8th District
Bart Stupak (202) 225 4735 MI (MAYBE)
Brian Baird (202) 225-3536, Vancouver, (360) 695-6292. Olympia, (360) 352-9768, (MAYBE)
senator mark begich (202) 224-3004 toll free. (877) 501 - 6275 just became a MAYBE
Jason Altmire 202-225-2565, Aliquippa, 724-378-0928,
Natrona Heights, 724-226-1304 (MAYBE)
On the Bubble (Major developments from the “yes” and “no” columns in the House)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2467046/posts
Congressional Dems on Twitter
http://www.arrghpaine.com/congressional-dems-on-twitter
Moreover, his agenda is to punish America, and in doing so, the rest of Western Civilization.
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