Posted on 09/12/2009 1:10:50 PM PDT by Graybeard58
"If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride." English proverb.
Many people who sat through President Obama's address Wednesday night came away thinking it would be wonderful if they, too, could wish away economic laws so their dreams might come true.
He seems to believe if he ignores reality and wishes hard enough, he can be the last president to have to wrestle with health-care reform. For example, he would require insurance companies to cover everyone, forbid them from canceling policies or reducing coverage, force them "to cover, with no extra charge, routine checkups and preventive care," and require them to pay a greater share of people's out-of-pocket medical expenses. And he wishes these "consumer protections," together with the rush of 46 million newly insured Americans in a health-care system that strains to meet existing demand, will bring about lower premiums and medical costs.
But unlike Medicare and Medicaid, insurance companies can't soak the rich, borrow to the hilt, amass $70 trillion in unfunded liabilities and stick our grandchildren and great-grandchildren with the bill. Insurers must balance expenses and revenues. So if the government prohibits them from capping annual and lifetime benefits, and orders them to insure people with highest medical risk, create standard policies that cover most conditions and therapies, and pay a greater share of Americans' out-of-pocket health-care expenses, they must be able to raise premiums across the board. But if the government forbids that, as the president seems to be saying, then insurers must lose money and eventually go out of business or be absorbed by the government. Which, we suppose, is the whole idea.
President Obama also offered a downsized version of his "not-for-profit" — read: black hole for tax dollars — public option, which wouldn't be available until 2013 only because he wants to keep the (lowball) 10-year cost of Obamacare to only $900 billion. But the option also is timed to sweep up the millions of Americans who would lose their insurance once their employers realize it's cheaper "to chip in" an 8 percent payroll tax than to continue to pay insurance premiums. So much for Americans not losing the coverage they have. Further, by defunding the Medicare Advantage program, he would drive tens of thousands of senior citizens out of private insurance and into Medicare.
In the meantime, the government would establish a self-sufficient program that would make "low-cost coverage" available to the highest-risk people. But that's an oxymoron because the premiums would have to be astronomical to cover the costs. Too, his promise that Obamacare won't cover illegal aliens or abortion is more wishful thinking because if those elements aren't hidden in the bill that eventually becomes law, they will be added in due course through legislative incrementalism or judicial activism.
Most of all, he wishes Obamacare would pay for itself, plus all prescription-drug costs for senior citizens, with "money already being spent" on "waste and fraud" in Medicare and Medicaid, with the elimination of the pesky "overhead" of capitalism, and with new "fees" (taxes) on capitalism. In fact, he has no real plan for reducing costs, and everything he proposes only will add to them and to the burgeoning federal bureaucracy. As it is, congressional bean-counters say Obamacare would add $239 billion to the deficit over 10 years and many times that amount in each successive decade, and it comes with built-in unfunded liabilities of at least $9 trillion.
And as if his rhetoric wasn't estranged enough from reality, he proclaimed "I will make sure that no government bureaucrat or insurance company bureaucrat gets between you and the care that you need." Until government's costs are so out of control that it reduces coverage for the elderly, the veterans, the disabled, the poor and eventually everyone else through rationing of care and "end-of-life" counseling.
So if anything, the president's speech only added to Americans' confusion and skepticism, and his combativeness and belligerence only raised their cynicism and distrust. He knows many other ways exist to reform health care and inject more competition into the market —there were at last count 35 Republican proposals advancing those ideas in the congressional hopper (read them at http://rsc.tomprice.house .gov/UploadedFiles/ SC_Health _Care _Bills_Compilation—Sept2009—FINAL.doc). He claims to be open to alternatives, but he made abundantly clear Wednesday night he's wedded to his Big Government solution.
It's wishful thinking, but wouldn't Americans be better served if he and Congress started from scratch with a sensible plan that jettisons the bankrupting costs, and inherent threats to personal liberties and people's health and well-being, of Obamacare socialism?
Ping to a Republican-American Editorial.
If you want on or off this list, let me know.
In addition to all of the disastrous consequences that the article mentions, there would be thousands and thousands of jobs lost if insurance companies went out of business.
Considerably more would be gained in the government sector than lost in the private sector. Of course it's not like those who lose their jobs would move right into gov jobs, those jobs would go to friends of the liberals, such as ACORN types.
Thanks for the ping Graybeard.
I saw some study that says every government job costs the economy 2.2 private sector jobs
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