ObamaCare

The Democrats' most recent answer to the question of how they will pay for their trillion-dollar healt-care reform was just announced by Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel. He wants to impose a surtax on incomes over $280,000, which would be a staggering blow to small businesses that create most jobs.

Another option floated by the Democrats is to tax employer-sponsored health coverage. Obama-supporter and union boss James P. Hoffa (name sound familiar?)calls this "a bitter pill for middle-class wage earners," and has vowed to fight it.

The real purposeof Obama's health care "reform" is to seize control of another major industry (health care) and move rapidly into Socialism. This is a big move because health care accounts for one dollar in every six spent in this country. The Democrats' plan involves mandates to force individuals to buy insurance, employers to provide insurance, and private insurance to offer an expensive list of benefits. If Obama is serious about allowing private plans to continue, he needs to back off. When the government dictates, there is little left that can be called private.

Instead of allowing insurance to compete by offering different benefit packages, the Democrats are considering insurance mandates to cover exotic benefits that individuals may want to buy such as in-vitro fertilization, hair transplants, rehab services, hearing aids, sex-change operations, prescription drugs, abortions, mental health, and substance abuse programs. If wanted to design the most expensive health care system in the world all over again at twice the cost, this is it.

The Democrats intend to prohibit low-cost policies for catastrophic are. This is the one option that keeps current health care affordable for some families. But that's okay; throw the baby out with the bath water. They want to bar you from buying cheap insurance in other states.

The Democrats intend to impose community rating on a federal level, which means all customers regardless of age, obesity, smoking, or other lifestyle differences. How many want to pay for your neighbors smoking-induced emphysema or lung cancer? How many want to pay for those 40% of Americans who run up billions in medical are cost because of their gluttony? This forces young people and those who choose a healthier lifestyle to subsidize older patients and those who are are the cause of America's epidemic of obesity. Is this the right kind of incentive for a healthy lifestyle?

The Democrats intend to launch a government-subsidized "public option" to compete with private insurance. Public competition with private business used to be anathema in this country. No private company can compete successfully under those circumstances so Obama's plan is clear: drive them out of business. That gives all of his promises about people being able to retain their private plans a hollow ring. This is just a milepost on the way to the single-payer government run plan the neolibs want.

Obama promised that if you like your current insurance plan you can keep it. Hard to do if the company is forced out of business! Your employer could cancel his company's paid insurance because only the government plan would enable him to take advantage of taxpayer subsidies. Scrub another private insurer.

The CBO estimates that the bill worked on by the Senate Finance Committee will cost $1.6 trillion. A private consulting group, Health Systems Innovation Network, estimates the cost of this bill at $4 trillion. Personally, against the backdrop of a ton of failed government cost and revenue estimates, I would opt for the higher estimate just to be on the safe side. Remember you read it here.

More people will buy insurance after the government subsidy rises to those with incomes five times the poverty rate, or $110,000 for a family of four. How many out there are earning that much? In LBJ's day, the focus was on the poverty level itself, now we have begun to multipliers of 2, 3, 4 and 5 times the poverty level making poverty level utterly meaningless.