Which brings us to Dr. Donald Berwick, Obama’s radical choice nominated to run Medicare and Medicaid. If confirmed, Berwick would bring his far leftist ideas to these government programs—which is especially bad news for the elderly. I’m not the only one who sees problems with this pick. The New York Post describes Obama’s choice as “A fervent ideologue” who “puts social engineering ahead of the individual patient’s needs” because in his Triple Aim plan, Berwick “laments that US health care is ‘designed to focus on the acute needs of individual patients’ He argues for a different focus, social justice.” What’s more, Obama’s nominee has praised the British National Health Service (which is a disaster of the highest order) for its “central planning, frugality, wealth redistribution and rationing.”55
The last thing America needs is a doctor like this in the house.
Too Damn Bad
Not only will ObamaCare create widespread trickle up poverty within the middle class, it is designed—yes, designed—to take away your freedom of choice. Not one or two freedoms, but dozens of them. The Doctor of Truth is in and I’ll break down several of them for you this way. Let’s say you’re a young person, you’re healthy, you jog, eat right, take vitamins, drink plenty of water, and don’t feel the need or want to pay for health insurance at your stage in life.
Too damn bad.
Section 5000A of ObamaCare requires you to maintain minimum essential coverage or pay a $750 fine or 2 percent of your income—whichever is greater.
Here’s one for the single guys. Let’s say you have no plans to get married any time soon. Let’s say you’re 28, 48, or 88, and have no projected need for pediatric services. So you’re in the market to buy a health coverage plan without an option to insure children in order to enjoy lower premiums.
Too damn bad.
Let’s say you’re a woman and you’re medically incapable of having children. Furthermore, you have no plans to pursue adoption so you want a lower-cost policy without maternity or newborn care.
Too damn bad.
Section 1302 forces you to cover it anyway.
What if you prefer to go to a physician-owned hospital because they feel more personal, especially in the doctor-patient decision making process—rather than the larger, more bureaucratic, corporate-owned hospitals?
Too damn bad.
While the current limited supply of physician-owned facilities will be allowed to exist, new physician-owned projects will not be able to receive reimbursement for Medicare and Medicaid patients under Section 6001. Without those payments, it will be difficult for a hospital to be financially viable. In short, ObamaCare bans the development of new physician-owned hospitals while throwing roadblocks in the way of expanding old ones.56
Prior to ObamaCare, one of the “perks” of employment was an employer-sponsored “gold plated” insurance plan, which represent about the top 20 percent of health plans enjoyed by millions of Americans. In the past, employees were not taxed on that benefit. If you were happy with that arrangement and you would like to keep it that way, guess again.
It’s too damn bad.
Section 4980I now imposes a 40 percent excise tax on “gold plated” plans—whether your employer pays for the coverage, or whether you, as a self-employed person, pay for it out of pocket. Obama is saying it’s a sin to provide a generous healthcare plan for your family. Is it any wonder why the Dems in Massachusetts lost their seat in the Senate? We know the election of Scott Brown was as if a tsunami hit the White House. But the reasons why Brown won aren’t necessarily obvious on the surface. It takes insight to break it down. Here’s what was really going on.
The people of Massachusetts already have the sort of socialized medicine championed by Obama. They got stuck with it from Mitt Romney. At the time Romney’s administration proposed it, it sounded like a good idea. The people voted for it—and now they’ve watched their premiums soar through the roof while service decreased. As FORTUNE magazine has documented, Massachusetts now faces a number of undesirable side effects after launching Romney’s health care reform program. Topping the list is the ever-increasing price tag. According to this report:
When Massachusetts launched its reform program in 2006, it already had the highest medical costs in the nation. Today, the burden is still rising far faster than wages or inflation, from those already lofty levels … Costs are rising relentlessly both for families and for the state government.57
What accounts for the spike in costs and premiums in The Bay State?
Two primary reasons: the adoption of “guaranteed issue” (a law requiring insurance companies to offer coverage regardless of the medical condition of the applicant) and “community rating” (the practice of charging everyone a comparable premiums regardless of the actual cost associated with their risk factors). These factors create a perfect storm for rising costs, as the FORTUNE report points out:
The result is that prices rise steeply for young, healthy customers, who must pay far more than their actual costs. It also give them a strong incentive to drop insurance; then they can “game the system” by signing up any time they need surgery or get diabetes.58
Even though “guaranteed issue” and “community rating” are driving the costs of health care through the roof, both are features of ObamaCare.
Another reason the people of Massachusetts are sick over their new health care plan is because “low-to-medium earning families often suffer financially if they get a raise, work overtime, move to a higher paying job—or if a spouse rejoins the workforce.” Why do they “suffer financially” if they earn more money? For starters, a family making less than $33,000 can get health coverage through Commonwealth Care for free. But, let’s say they’re a growing family and have more financial needs. If they work harder or longer hours and bring home $46,000, the state requires them to pay approximately $2,400 in health care premiums. As this report points out, “That’s an effective tax rate of 18.5% on that $13,000 raise. A pay increase of $44,000 to $46,000 is mostly erased by higher premiums alone.”59
The “free” care actually encourages workers to earn less, not more.
Once again, ObamaCare offers a similar disincentive to work harder and prosper due to higher health care taxes. FORTUNE points out the scenario in which “a $55,000 earner contributes $4,400 a year towards insurance. At $65,000, the bill is $6300; so the family is paying a ‘tax’ of $1,900 or 19% on that $10,000 raise. After payroll taxes, those Americans would face a marginal rate of around 35%, a number that’s heretofore been the territory strictly for high-earners.”60
Did I mention that illegal aliens also receive free health care in Romney’s state? This, of course, is what happens when the government imposes socialized medicine. So the people, angered by this reality, voted their first Republican Senator into office in fifty years. What happened in Massachusetts with high premiums and inferior coverage is about to happen in all fifty states.
There’s more bad news buried within the bill. For you parents whose kids have finally left the house and who thought you would no longer have to underwrite their expenses, guess again. President Obama has redefined when childhood ends (previously considered to end at age 18 or 19 depending on the state) and gives parents the “option” to pay for health care coverage of “dependent children” through age 26 (Section 2714).
While the law calls this an optional feature, it doesn’t specify what will happen if you refuse to pay for your twenty-six-year-old slacker who insists that you cover him even though, by any reasonable definition, he is old enough to provide for a family of his own. No doubt the IRS Healthstapo will come knocking.
If you recall, one of the much-touted accomplishments of ObamaCare was to be the end of the “pre-existing conditions” clause for children. If that’s what you think happened, guess what? It isn’t in there. The Associated Press reports, “Under the new law, insurance companies still would be able to refuse new coverage to children because of a pre-existing medical problem, said Karen Lightfo
ot, spokeswoman for the House Energy and Commerce Committee, one of the main congressional panels that wrote the bill Obama signed into law.”61
There’s plenty of bad news for business owners, too.
In the past, large employers (those with at least 101 employees on the payroll) had a choice of how to compensate and provide for their workers. On one hand, they could elect to offer health coverage as an incentive to attract employees. Or, they might decide against that because their business model wouldn’t sustain such a costly outlay. It’s their business, their choice, right?
Wrong.
Employers with as few as fifty employees must provide healthcare coverage or pay a fine per employee. According to House Minority Leader, John Boehner, “The new law imposes a tax of $2,000 per employee on employers with more than 50 employees that do not provide health insurance. These new taxes on employers are sure to be passed on to workers in the form of lower wages or reduced hours, and will undermine job creation as well.”62
If you believed the president when he pledged not to raise taxes on the middle class—”not one dime”—for those making less than $200,000 if single, and $250,000 if married, your faith was misplaced and it’s too damn bad. Dave Camp, Ranking Member of the Committee on Ways & Means Republicans, cites a dozen ways Obama has raised your taxes indirectly or directly, several of which I’ve touched on:
A “Cadillac tax” on high-cost plans
An individual mandate tax on Americans who do not purchase government-approved health
An increase in the 7.5 percent AGI floor for medical expense deductions to 10 percent
Limits on Flexible Spending Accounts in cafeteria plans
Increased penalties for nonqualified HSA distributions
Other restrictions on Health Savings Accounts, Health Reimbursement Accounts, and Flexible Spending Accounts
A tax on tanning services
An employer mandate tax
A sales tax on medical devices
A tax on health insurance premiums
A tax on prescription drugs
A tax on insured and self-insured health plans63
There’s yet another downside to this boondoggle of a bill. David Hog-berg of Investor’s Business Daily says ObamaCare will result in “physicians leaving the field in droves, making it harder to afford and find medical care.” Why such a dire prediction? Here are two of Hogberg’s compelling reasons:
• If you are a physician owner and you want to expand your hospital? Well, you can’t (Section 6001 (i)(1)(B)). Unless, it is located in a county where, over the last five years, population growth has been 150% of what it has been in the state (Section 6501 (i)(3)(E)). And then you cannot increase your capacity by more than 200% (Section
6001 (i)(3)(C)).
• If you are a physician and you don’t want the government looking over your shoulder? Tough. The Secretary of Health and Human Services is authorized to use your claims data to issue you reports that measure the resources you use, provide information on the quality of care you provide, and compare the resources you use to those used by other physicians. Of course, this will all be just for informational purposes. It’s not like the government will ever use it to intervene in your practice and patients’ care. Of course not. (Section 3003(i)).64
What’s more, analysts warn that there are simply not enough doctors and nurses to treat the tens of millions of newly insured patients. The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) reports, “at current graduation and training rates, the nation could face a shortage of as many as 150,000 doctors in the next 15 years.”65 This translates into limited access, longer waits, and inferior service as doctors are stretched thin to handle the influx of new patients. How long will this bleak picture last? The AAMC’s chief advocacy officer, Atul Grover, predicts “It will probably take 10 years to even make a dent into the number of doctors that we need out there.”66
Are you beginning to get the picture? You’re losing your freedoms. You’re losing your choice.
You’re losing your access to the best healthcare system in the world.
Of course, the ever-arrogant Barack Obama dismisses all such talk. One week after ObamaCare passed, Obama publicly chided journalists for citing polls demonstrating that America is bitterly divided over what just went down. Obama wagged his finger in the face of his critics, saying:
Every single day since I signed the reform law, there’s been another poll or headline that said, ‘Nation still divided on health care reform.’ It just happened last week! It’s only been a week! Can you imagine if some of these reporters were working on a farm and you planted some seeds and they came out next day and they looked—‘Nothing’s happened! There’s no crop! We’re going to starve! Oh no! It’s a disaster!’ It’s been a week, folks.67
In one respect, Obama is right. The economic damage and the trickle up poverty that will come once his wrecking ball hits the healthcare industry will take some time to bear its ugly fruit. The full force won’t be felt overnight. Why? Many of the draconian measures don’t kick in until 2014 and beyond. Even so, plenty of weeds are sprouting in Obama’s garden of healthcare paradise. Within a week of its passage, three hundred companies screamed bloody murder. Among them, 3M Corporation, AK Steel, AT&T, Caterpillar, Deere & Company, Valero Energy, and Verizon said the new law “will make it far more expensive to provide prescription drug coverage to their retired employees.”68
AT&T screamed the loudest. The company announced its plan to take a $1 billion charge against their earnings due to the new tax provisions in ObamaCare. Likewise, the executives at “Deere & Company announced a $150 million charge, Caterpillar a $100 million charge, and 3M a $90 million charge.”69 The result for these and numerous other companies is to stop providing prescription drug coverage altogether.
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
ObamaCare was going to improve medical benefits not harm business.
Which is why Linda Douglass, Communications Director for the White House Health Reform Office, remains in denial. She said of these cuts, “We’re confident that the benefits are going to accrue and strengthen business’s bottom line.”70 What does she or Obama or Pelosi or Reid or any of the Obamocrats on the hill know about running an international corporation? Nothing.
They don’t live in the real world. They never even ran a hotdog stand.
Of course, the rapid negative response by corporate America to Obama-Care makes Henry Waxman angry. As Chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, Waxman issued a decree from this Lilliputian throne summoning executives from these evil, money-hungry corporations to appear before him in Washington, D.C. Why? Waxman refuses to believe these companies are just doing their best to survive after being sucker-punched by their own government. Waxman wrote:
The new law is designed to expand coverage and bring down costs, so your assertions are a matter of concern … To assist the Committee with its preparation for the hearing, we request that you provide the following documents from January 1, 2009, through the present.71
Waxman went on to demand a far-reaching list of confidential, internal documents, e-mails, accounting methods, and other company correspondence in what is clearly a heavy-handed act of government intimidation. Representative Michael Burgess, of the Energy and Commerce Committee, questions Waxman’s tactics:
The timing of the letters and the hearing and the scope of information requested looks an awful lot like an attempt to intimidate and silence opponents of the Democrats’ flawed health care reform legislation.72
And so the battle over health care heats up.
Barack Obama and Nancy “The Hammer” Pelosi may be gloating today, but the passage of socialized medicine in America is a blunder of major proportions. Businesses will have to reduce or cut benefits to remain solvent—or move jobs abroad. Period. We’re already seeing businesses making changes in order to survive the spike in additional health care costs. In fact, three short months after ObamaCare passed, the
White House “outlined broad new rules designed to prevent employers from dropping health insurance benefits for their workers or shifting huge new costs onto them.”73 Yes, ObamaCare is a blunder—and the worst is yet to come. All that Pelosi and Obama have accomplished is artificially to increase the “demand” for health insurance by forcing everyone to be covered or suffer financial penalties. What they fail to see is this simple equation: High demand + limited supply = higher prices.
That’s Economics 101, which Obama must have missed while studying Marxism 401. The consequences of ObamaCare might not hit middle-class earners overnight, but very soon there will be little relief from the rate hikes we’re all about to receive.
Obama has won. Your pain has just begun.
Seizing Control
Rather than be a pragmatic centrist, as the compliant media insists on portraying him, Obama is an ideologue. His actions during his first year and a half in office demonstrate that he is hell-bent on turning America into a socialist land with an impoverished citizenry dependent on the government. Regarding the passage of ObamaCare, he pursued his agenda with an almost maniacal flare—even at the risk of badly damaging the Democratic Party. And, while Obama was the front man, Nancy “Mussolini in a Skirt” Pelosi was the fixer. The most hated woman in America has pushed this country to the brink of communism.
It wasn’t easy. It was an impressive act of chicanery.
First, she had to design a bewildering, convoluted bill spanning 2,074 pages because she wanted to make sure even a speed-reader wouldn’t have time to go through all of it—nor fully understand it if they did. Second, she chose the end of the week to release the details of the bill because she knew that this would prevent the handful of media members who weren’t already on the side of socialized medicine the barest minimum of time to find out what was in it or, in turn, have time to tell the public about it.
Trickle Up Poverty: Stopping Obama’s Attack on Our Borders, Economy, and Security Page 17