There appear to be quite a few major downsides to the health care plan currently being debated.
1) As noted in my earlier post, not having coverage will essentially become illegal. You will be fined and enrolled against your will in the government-run plan if you don’t carry coverage. This will be called “helping you.”
2) Medicare will be cut. Seniors are going to be very unhappy with this.
3) Medicare payments to doctors will increase. This $245B bribe to the AMA makes the already dubious claim of reducing costs (which can only be done by reducing innovation, underpaying, or rationing) an outright lie.
4) The middle-class will be taxed. Obama has signalled his openness to this.
5) The deficit will increase substantially. An Obama handler “clarified” that #3 above is “not part” of his pledge not to increase the deficit with the health care bill.
6) The economy will suffer. In addition to the middle-class tax hikes here will be a massive tax hike on the wealthy, and that means less investment, less incentive to produce, lower GDP.
7) Many people will be dumped off of their employer health plans and into government-run health care, because employers are being given financial incentive to do so. Estimates run as high as 120 million people. You will not get to keep your doctor or your insurance, contrary to what Obama is claiming.
8 ) There will be few beneficiaries, and many people hurt by this. The 7% of people they are insuring are mostly young and healthy anyway, while many people who currently have real insurance will find themselves dumped into government-run health care and paying higher taxes to boot.
All this probably explains why an increasingly skeptical public now disapproves of Obama’s performance by 51-49. Team Barack should be worried; those who strongly disapprove of him are 8% higher those who strongly approve (those are the people who will donate, organize, etc.), and at this rate of decline he’ll be in the 20s overall by this time next year.
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Now you see why Obama and his cohorts are pushing for such a speedy vote. Just like the Cap and Trade tax, this bill gets uglier the more you look at it.
Let’s see how many of Obama’s “promises” this current bill breaks:
1. Transparency. How long will we get to look at this bill on the White House website before it passes? Zero days?
2. No tax increase on anyone making less than $250,000 a year.
3. Won’t make you change your insurance. (Um, what if I DON’T HAVE insurance?)
4. Examining bills with a line-by-line budget review. (Obama has admitted he is not familiar with the actual bill itself)
I’m sure there’s tons more. No doubt he’ll put in a few signing statements on this as well.
What is really funny is that you would think Obama would have learned a lesson by letting Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid write the “Stimulus” bill. But nope, here we are going down that same path again.
By the way, Nancy Pelosi is now saying that she’ll call for a vote on this bill over the objections of members of her OWN PARTY.
That’s leadership you can respect and unity you can appreciate.
Remember how Obama was supposed to restore bipartisanship to our government? LOL, he’s redefined “triangulation” by creating THREE groups that hate each other now.
Every day watching this administration just gets more fun at the same time that it gets more frightening.
I may be a minority of one on this issue, but I don’t think every important policy debate should migrate towards a critique or defense of the President.
That said — this health bill is looking like a big, bloated turkey.
Obama should sponsor a formal prime-time debate: Pick the 3 best proponents of his plan; while the opponents pick their 3 best — hire Jim Lehrer as a moderator, and have at it.
–HB
Hank:
When the President makes a bill the central issue of his administration, I’m going to comment on the President when discussing the bill. This bill is all about Obama, and I’m not only saying that because he said it WASN’T all about him. This is nothing but him.
If Obama was remotely interested in the sort of compromise approach you seem to think is reasonable, he wouldn’t have approached this bill this way. Ramming this thing down the throats of the American people is key to Obama achieving his ideological goals. Compromising with Republicans is not remotely on his agenda.
Obama should sponsor a formal prime-time debate: Pick the 3 best proponents of his plan; while the opponents pick their 3 best — hire Jim Lehrer as a moderator, and have at it.
Hank, you cannot possibly be that naive.
I’m juss idealistic, old man.
–HB
What about state costs for these programs? SCIP, CHIP, medicare, medicaid all have state funds used. Increasing coverage will increase the cost to the states. So not only will we have increased taxes on the national level but also on the state level.
The freedoms you’d lose in health care reform
1. Freedom to choose what’s in your plan
2. Freedom to be rewarded for healthy living, or pay your real costs
3. Freedom to choose high-deductible coverage
4. Freedom to keep your existing plan
5. Freedom to choose your doctors
http://money.cnn.com/2009/07/24/news/economy/health_care_reform_obama.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2009072410
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