Posted on 01/15/2009 8:57:04 AM PST by Nachum
There can be little doubt that Barack Obama's promise to fix the U.S. health care system was an important ingredient in his recent triumph over John McCain. However, while a majority of voters obviously favor some sort of reform, it isn't at all clear that they understand what the President-elect and his health advisors have planned for them. Indeed, a recent Zogby poll suggests that the President-elect's supporters have managed to remain remarkably innocent about his history and proposals.
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
There, fixed it.
Obamacare could kill you...Obama’s terrorist friends could kill you, thugs set free by Obama could kill you. Lock and load people.
” remarkably innocent “, another way of saying “completely clueless”. all these idiots know, and care about, is that someone else is going to pay the bill.
Try to eat healthy, don’t over indulge in fats, junk, carbs, alcohol etc. Exercise, walk and workout safely when you can. Keep moving. All of these suggestions can help us stay healthier longer and perhaps keep us from having to enudre a lot of medical care or non care.
The vast majority of U.S. citizens have health insurance. Of the remaining citizens, many have opted out voluntarily or are temporarily uninsured. Some need an alternative, but it is not worth dismantling the entire system to help them.
IOW, the system is not broke. But it will be once the RATS get done with it.
It’s a given that Dasshole, and the rest of the supreme beings wont be getting redistributed health care. Congress has their own health care system, since they are the ones who matter.
Watch out for two key terms in the coming days:
“We want market based reform”
“this is an investment”
(implying one time spending, similar to a bailout or new highway construction.
This video should be seen more, in regards to the UK system refered to in the article. While is has pluses, it simply won’t work in the US.
http://www.nahu.org/media/singlepayervideo.cfm
He’ll “fix” health care just like Hilary is going to use “Smart” power. Meaningless or worse.
Obama did say he was going to address the Social Security shortfall. Now we know how, kill off everyone over 62 years of age.
ironically,
the older people that voted for the promise of free healthcare will be the ones rationed out of it because of their age and health gives a lower bang for the buck than treating a younger person.
Have to laugh or I would cry. What you wrote is 100% accurate but lots of Americans believe the lie that Obama is going to give them “free” health care. They literally do not understand they are going to be paying for “free” health care for others plus paying for their own and finding their health service options limited.
On second thought I will cry.
No, I expect the BATF will kill me first.
“...They literally do not understand they are going to be paying for “free” health care for others plus paying for their own and finding their health service options limited.”
Aren’t we already paying for others? That might explain my $725 monthly insurance payment which is absolutely obscene. Our healthcare system is in serious need of reform. When people like me who can afford health insurance start to feel the strain of the premiums, we have a big fat problem here.
Obama’s Plan Would End Private Health Insurance in Under a Year. Of course, that isn’t what he is saying, but that is exactly what would happen.
Obama’s plan has two parts:
1. If an employer currently has a health care plan for their employees, the government will leave them alone.
2. If an employer does not have a health care plan for their employees, the government will fine the employer and cover the employees under a government health insurance policy.
The fine is the key you should focus on.
It costs employers somewhere in the ballpark of $1,000 a MONTH ($12,000 a YEAR) to provide health insurance for employees. Sit back and look at those numbers again, and you’ll realize that even with tax incentives, providing health insurance for employees eats up a huge chunk of the bottom line for most companies.
Let’s talk about that fine again. Who thinks the fine per employee will be anywhere near $12,000 a year? When an employee that earns minimum wage only makes about $12,000 a year, the government isn’t going to levey a $12,000 fine. Plus, that just isn’t fair. Why should the fine be the same for someone making minimum wage as it is for a person making $250,000 a year (you know, those rich people.)
My guess is it will be a payroll tax similar to the social security tax (a percentage of the employee’s gross pay.) My educated guess is it will start out as 5% of gross pay (a number high enough to sound like real money, but not so high that it draws cries of being punitive for small employers.) Now lets run a few numbers.
Annual Pay - Annual Health-Tax
$12,000 (minimum wage) - $600
$21,800 ($10 an hour) - $1,040
$30,000 - $1,500
$50,000 - $2,500
$75,000 - $3,750
$100,000 - $5,000
$150,000 - $7,500
$200,000 - $10,000
Anyone notice something obvious here? None of the fines are more than $12,000. In fact, the fines for most employees are not even close to $12,000.
Pretend for a moment you are the CEO of a large company (let’s say Wal-Mart.) You have 2 million employees, 80% of which work in your retail stores and earn $8-$15 dollars an hours. Providing those employees with full health coverage (at $12,000 each) would cost you $19,200,000,000. Letting the government cover them would cost you $2,400,000,000.
$19.2 billion vs. $2.4 billion.
Wal-Mart would save almost 17 billion dollars by dropping their health insurance and paying the fine. How long after Obama signs the legislation into law do you think it will be before Wal-Mart does exactly that? Months? Weeks? Days? More likely Minutes.
The numbers for most other employers in the US will work out the same. It will be significantly cheaper for them to pay the fine than to provide health insurance for their employees. We’ll see wave after wave of companies turning their health coverage over to the government in the first year of this plan. It simply won’t make economic sense fo them to do anything else.
What do you think will become of health insurance companies like Blue Cross/Blue Shield after 80-90% of their business customers drop their private coverage for government coverage in the first year? They will disapper. They just won’t have the customer base to stay in business anymore. That will be the final nail that creates the “single payer system” in the US. Canadian style government health care will be a reality in the US.
Hillary concentrated on how the system would work. She bluntly proposed a plan that destroy private health care in the US and replace it with a Canadian style government run system. That was too big a jump for most Americans.
Obama has learned from Hillary’s mistakes. He understands that the form the future government health care system takes can be worked out later. What is important is establishing the system in some form now. That’s why he says he isn’t going to do anything to current private health care plans, and why the government insurance plan will be “exactly the same as government employees get now.” I’m 100% sure it will be, for now.
But what will happen five years from now, when everyone is on the government health plan and we realize that (just like in Canada and England) there isn’t enough money to pay for the current government health plan that is “exactly the same as government employees”? We’ll be talking about how we need to change the health system in the US, but with private insurers having long ago gone out of business and no longer a viable alternative, the discussion will be all about government health care. What form it should take, how it should be paid for, what it should cover, what it should provide to everyone, and what should be rationed.
I give it a year till private health insurance disappears in the US.
Yes it needs reform. One would be allowing you to pay for a doctor’s visit and save insurance for the expensive stuff. Do you use $750 in medical services every month? My understanding is catastrophic coverage only, is not allowed and def will not be under the dem plans. If anything they will force more care to be covered.
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