Well, they did it. They rammed it through. Nancy Pelosi knew what she had to do. Keep her members in Washington ... keep them away from angry constituents until they were ready to do her will. The polls clearly showed that the people in this country didn't want it .. but the door has, as Nancy Pelosi says, been "kicked in" and we are well on our way to nationalized medicine ... socialized medicine ... call it what you will, but we're on our way to a society where each and every one of us will be dependent on the government - on politicians and unelected bureaucratic hacks - for our healthcare.
This will be somewhat of a "stream of consciousness" effort ... but here's the way I see this playing out over the coming years.
Taxes, of course, go up immediately. How much in new taxes? Try one trillion dollars. A huge portion of these taxes will hit America's small businesses ... our jobs creation machine. There will be increases in Social Security Taxes and Medicare taxes. There will be new taxes for something called CLASS ... a long term in-home health care program. Then there will be a new 3.8% (What the hell ... call it 4%) tax on investment income. Just what our economy needed at a time when unemployment is rampant ... new taxes on the very sector of our economy that creates jobs.
Businesses will hunker down even more than they have been. Business planning is a long-term affair .. and businessmen will know that in a few years 50 will be the magic number when it comes to government health insurance mandates; and this includes part-time employees. So you will see businesses with just over 50 employees starting to cut back. People will lose their jobs so that the business can stay under the threshold. New business start-ups will alter business plans to make sure that they don't meet or cross that threshold when the mandates kick in.
Younger Americans with health insurance will drop their policies. Sure, they know that they will have to pay a penalty when they file their taxes, but that penalty will be much less than the cost of a health insurance policy ... costs that will be going up. Besides ... because insurance companies can no longer discriminate against people with preexisting conditions, there is absolutely no reason in the world to go out there and buy an insurance policy until you really become ill.
Since health young Americans will be dropping insurance, or staying out of the market if they never had insurance in the first place, the insurance companies will find more and more that their customers are among the unhealthiest of Americans. This means more benefits paid, of course, which will result in higher premiums. What's more, there will no longer be a lifetime cap on benefits. Even a government-educated ObamaSycophant could understand that this, too, will lead to increased premiums. But wait! There's more! Children will be able to stay on their parent's policies until age 26. What does this mean? Increased payouts on their parent's policies. How can you not see where this is all going?
Let's just take a quick look at what happened to Anthem .. a health insurance company in California. Recently Anthem hiked its insurance premiums by ... what? Something like 38 or 40%. You could hear the screaming all the way to Nancy Pelosi's office. But did anyone try to figure out just why Anthem had to increase premiums? Here's your explanation. California brought millions of citizens into its own state version of Medicaid. These millions of people started swarming into hospitals and to doctors for their "free" medical care. Trouble is, California also cut back on payments to health care providers at the same time. The health care providers then shifted their costs over to actual paying customers ... customers insured by Anthem. There go the premiums.
With so many more people added to the insurance rolls - people who are not paying for their policies out of their own pockets - there will be a huge increase in people seeking medical care they don't really need. Just check Boca Raton, Florida and the Medicare recipients down there. Do you remember the investigative report which showed the Boca Medicare crowd treated their weekly doctor's visits as a part of their social life? They didn't necessarily need care, they just wanted to see their friends and the doctor's waiting room was the meeting place. Now that each and every American will have a medical care entitlement, not just the Boca Biddies, you can look for a huge increase in the demand for medical services. And guess what? This huge demand will hit at a time when doctors are deciding to hang it up. They didn't sign on to work for the government, and the passage of ObamaCare is their signal to start making their escape plans.
As the demand for medical services increases exponentially, the money to pay for those services will dry up, even with the increased taxes. The inevitable result, then, will be the rationing of health care. There are no words to adequately describe the base ignorance and stupidity of any American who does not realize that rationing is on the way.
As health insurance premiums rise - as people start clogging doctors offices - as the quality of care gradually declines - there will be more and more cries from the dumb masses for the government to "do something." The political class will be ready to do something all right. Politicians will start telling the dumb masses that the private insurance companies have shown themselves not to be up to the task. They were given the chance, and they blew it. So now it's time for the government option ... its time for the government to offer its own health insurance product.
The new cure-all - the so-called "public option" - will not have any of the constraints placed on it that private insurance companies have to deal with. The government insurance plan will be able to draw from an inexhaustible supply of government grants and bailouts. Instead of raising premiums to cover benefits, the government plan will simply borrow more and more money. Net result: Slowly but surely government competition will force private insurance out of the marketplace. You simply cannot compete with an entity that can lose hundreds of millions of dollars a year without ever having to go into bankruptcy.
Politicians have always known that the government option would work this way. It has never been anything less than a method to be used to destroy the private health insurance marketplace. What's next? The magic Democrat wet dream ... "single payer."
Single payer simply means that one entity will write all the checks. Whether it's for a doctor's visit, a prescription, physical therapy ... whatever, the payments come from one source, and that source is the government. If the government is the only entity that is legally permitted to render payment for health care services ... then that puts the government in complete and absolute control of all healthcare. If you don't think that the person who controls your healthcare controls YOU ... then you've never been really, really sick.
I would be very interested in hearing from someone - anyone - who disagrees with Boortz' assessment, and why they feel this way. Please refrain from name-calling immaturity. I'm really very sick of it. Just because you don't agree with conservatism doesn't mean it's evil. And just because I do not believe Barack Obama is a competent President, this just make me racist.
My experience, however, teaches me that this is a favorite tactic of the Left. If you don't agree with me, then I have no right to speak my mind. That's bullshit and goes against the old tenets of America - "I may nit agree with you, but I will fight for your rights to say it." The far-Left would do well to learn that lesson - especially on college campuses.
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