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19 January 2010

Tuesday Tidbits

The Horrible Truth Behind Health Care Reform





Democrats continue to insist on pushing through “something” that changes health care. They know they have too much invested in it to take the humiliating step of acknowledging that it was an ill-conceived notion. Many voices on the far left are calling for a scrapping of the Bill because it doesn’t do enough. Many on the right want to scrap anything put forward by the Obama administration. All these people are entirely missing the point. It was not simply an “ill-conceived notion.” It is designed to perform a very specific function. The Health Care Bill is far more pernicious and dishonest than any of them think.

Why do you think that the Dems were willing to trash the Public Option? To hamstring the exchange requirements? To provide special deals for drug companies, exemptions for private insurance, and promises of increased medicare/medicaid payments to physicians? It’s because none of these aspects were the core functions of the Bill. These are easily addressed in the next Congressional session by 10-15 page bills that will be written and passed with virtually zero media coverage. Pharmaceuticals were given a sweetheart deal to keep them quiet in the larger debate? Not to worry—a little bill next year will remove restrictions from re-importing drugs from Canada and those companies will be screwed right along with the rest of us.

The core functions of the Bill are to put in place a huge federal bureaucracy to oversee health care and to push the price of health care up. These two functions are very closely intertwined.

In order to completely take over health care in this country, the government needs a new and independent bureaucracy. There are huge, grossly inefficient and corrupt bureaucracies already in place to manage medicare and medicaid. But they can’t quietly re-order and re-organize these institutions without riling up large amounts of concerned stakeholders. Enter the Health Choices Administration, a new medical care management office established by the new Health Care “reform,” complete with tens of thousands of new federal employees (bureaucrats, not health care workers) and its own cabinet-level appointment. Even though the final bill does not have the public option that the HCA was to administer, it still establishes the department , funds it, and created scores of new committees and research and administrative functions. Why?

Because the bill also deliberately raises the prices of health insurance. Requirements are placed on insurance companies that prevent them from charging much more for obvious health risks (chain smokers, morbidly obese people) than low risk patients. This cripples the actuaries’ ability to under-write risks and spread the costs of those risks according to the sources of the risk. Furthermore, insurers cannot even “consider” pre-existing conditions in establishing premiums. Insurers cannot charge the elderly more that 50% more premiums than young and hale payers, even though the elderly represent over 80% of the payouts. The requirements of maintaining coverage are also strengthened, and the “dependent” age was raised to 27 years of age. All this expands the number of people covered without increasing the number of payers and at the same time decreasing the ability of the insurer to to spread the risks effectively. The inevitable result is huge, if incremental, increases in the cost of health insurance for everyone across the board. It’s planned and deliberate.

Why would they do this? Because eventually health insurance will represent 15, 20, then 25% of annual income, with ever-increasing taxes to go along with it. The jacka$$es in Congress will be able to blame the evil profit-mongering health insurance companies, even though it is Congress that deliberately pushed the costs up. The plan is that this cost will overcome the visceral, gut-reaction aversion the American people have to government run “free” health care and force the people to demand that the government intervene. And lo and behold—thanks to the Patriot Protection and Affordable Care Act (the Health Care Bill), there already exists a fully staffed bureaucratic institution to step up and administer the transition of 1/6th of the nation’s economy into a government function every bit as corrupt, inefficient, and catastrophically unfunded as Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and pretty much everything else the Federal Government “manages”.

That’s the plan. That’s what’s really at stake here. Tax money for abortions, care for illegal immigrants, public option or no public option—they’re all peripheral. The central, core “reform” that the liberals are trying to force through against the will of the American people is a pernicous, intellectually dishonest, and potentially catastrophic attempt to manipulate and engineer the way health care is provided in order to completely incapacitate the private sector from doing it, enable the government to force citizens toward a single payer government based system, and render it virtually impossible for the middle class to pay for their own health care.

How do I know this? I read the Bill. I know what I’m talking about. Anyone who reads the Bill straight through will see it precisely for what it is. That’s why it’s 2000+ pages long and written in nearly indecipherable legalese. The are counting on the fact that nobody will read it. I guarantee not one democrat in Congress will read it. There may be a few Republicans who will, but the vast majority won’t bother. I guarantee Obama won’t read it. I really think that many democratic Senators and Congressmen truly want to vote for it because they trust Obama and his minions and they assume that the bill has the best interests of the nation in mind. These people are naive. Sincere, but naive. The kernel of underhanded schemers is probably fairly small—but I guarantee that at the heart are Harry Reid, Obama, and his health Czars. They are doing this in order to forcefully “care” for an American society that just is not, in their mind, intelligent, competent, or enlightened enough to know what’s best for them. They do not have the interests of the American Economy, the quality of health care, or the concerns of small businesses, the middle class, taxpayers, or even the un-insured in mind. And if you think I’m wrong or ideologically blinded, I defy you to read the Bill and come up with a different conclusion.



1 comment:

Corrie Howe said...

Well....I wouldn't call this a tidbit...it's an entire meal to take in and digest. ;-)

Thanks for the thoughtful post today.