Obamacare: It's Even Worse Than You Think

President Obama's strategy to pass sweeping health care legislation rested on stealth and speed. The idea was to fill the conversation for months on end with vague talk about expanding coverage, "bending the cost-curve," improving quality, and rooting out waste, without showing the public how the plan would actually work or what it would cost. [...] By the time the details emerged, maybe momentum and being "closer than ever before" would be enough to overcome the torrent of objections that were sure to be raised when people got a real look at the nuts and bolts.

The centerpiece of Obamacare is a new premium subsidy program. In the House bill, families with incomes up to four times the poverty level would get a fixed cap on their insurance premiums, tied to their incomes. For instance, a family whose income is twice the poverty level would pay no more than 5 percent of its total income for insurance. But providing that guarantee to all such households in America would cost far more than even the Democrats are willing to propose. The plan therefore would make subsidies available only to households getting insurance through the new "exchanges," insurance pools set up in each state as a parallel system to job-based coverage. And full-time workers in all but the smallest firms would be barred from entering the exchanges, at least for a time, so they wouldn't have access to the new entitlement.

Meanwhile, it is becoming increasingly clear that Obamacare would involve not just rationed care but centrally managed and controlled care.

One truth stands out in the Obama health care plan.

Whenever the left gets involved with directing the lives of people, lots of people die. Since this is the United States, don’t expect the camps or moving the cities to the countryside for everyone to grow rice. No, we’re Americans. We’ll just slowly and even compassionately murder our elderly, putting them up in sweet little bungalows while government-mandated health professionals guide them into the cold earth.

The theme of a compassionate genocide appears with the an early federally-managed program, the reservation. After all, we weren’t killing the Indians off, really - they got a nice little 40-acre spread in the Indian Territory, and slowly they’ll fade away. (I’ve lived on the res, too - a hellhole of government compassion and understanding for the Native American.) Then comes abortion, with nice lighting and counselors and a soothing touch, and the pregnancy is over. (Sadly, I’ve actually seen this.) Now our elderly - all done with that worried look in the eyes and the shrug of the shoulder about the inevitability of it all. Millions more will join the aborted every year, hidden behind well-kept homes and gardens. We’re not Nazis, for God’s sake.

My best guess about the next group of people who will be asked for an early farewell based on some unsavory characteristic will be the very young disabled, brain-damaged, or otherwise damaged people. Maybe give the child up to one year to decide whether or not the ability of society to support him or her equals what the child will bring to others. No doubt there will be counselors.

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