Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Obamacare; what is next?



      The next phase of the war over the “Affordable Care Act” (ACA) will be strictly political and horrifyingly the Republicans will snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. I hope and pray that my forecast is wrong, but my instincts and history tell me nothing will change in the ACA and Republicans will stay mired in this stupid shortsighted fight over a website that doesn’t, and won’t work before 2014. The results will be no changes to the law and a humungous explosion of cost. There is no way around it. About a year ago I tried to boil the ACA down for the limited info folks like this:  How do you insure 30M new people without the cost going up for the other 300M people? Answer: you can’t. The ACA tries to fix this dilemma by telling doctors how much they can charge for services, resulting only in fewer doctors willing to stay in the federal insurance industry game. Also ask yourself, if we expand Medicaid (free healthcare for the poor), how can we freeze the cost to the rest of America? Answer: you can’t. Medicaid already restricts how much a doctor can be paid for service. I certainly believe we have passed the tipping point, where those paying for federal entitlements far exceed those receiving federal entitlements now that the ACA is kicking in. The only way to fix that problem is to reduce the number of takers and increase the number of makers. A liberal will tell you not to worry about it. Simply listen to Democrats explain away the rising cost of Obamacare insurance by claiming “these people will receive generous subsidies”. Pundits, media types and yes even Republicans, never follow up that comment with this question; who is paying for their subsidy? The money does not grow on trees and even now Sen Reid is trying to start up the “revenue must be on the table” mantra.

       The FED prints $85B dollars a month of seemingly free money, however, at some point that bill will come due in the form of inflation, job loss, and dollar devaluation.  Think about this for a moment; according to the brilliant website builder HHS Sec we need 7M healthy young people between 18 and 39 to sign up for Obamacare to pay for all the free people and sick people. Since “kids” can stay on their parents plan until 26, and there is about a 20% unemployment rate amongst young people, and subtract the poor who go on Medicaid; who the hell is left to foot that bill? Answer: the same people being gauged by the Obamacare taxes; you and me. This maybe the death knell sounding for the American middle class. The liberals are attempting to make many arguments against changing the ACA, one of which is particularly egregious and it sounds like this:  “well some portion of 5% of the population is having their insurance dropped and the vast majority of people will see no impact”. Less than 5% affected, so it’s no big deal right?  Consider these small numbers of people being impacted and how liberals respond;

The inaugural result of a new Gallup question shows that 3.4% say "yes" when asked if they identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender.” (http://www.gallup.com/poll/158066/special-report-adults-identify-lgbt.aspx)

Or

About 11.1 million illegal immigrants were in the U.S. in 2012. US has about 330M people, which makes about 3.5% of the population illegal. (http://washington.cbslocal.com/2012/12/06/number-of-illegal-immigrants-in-us-drops-first-time-in-over-decade/)
Or
The total number of discrimination charges filed (not prosecuted or sustained, simply filed) is 99,412 for FY2012. (http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/statistics/enforcement/charges.cfm)

      My intent is not to dismiss or discount the small number of LGBT people, or ignore the illegal immigrant problem, or poo poo discrimination. My point is the hypocrisy of liberals who claim, it’s “only 5%” of the population being affected negatively by the ACA, as if it means nothing to them and the end justifies the means (a long time liberal standard). Make no mistake; the exact same thing will happen for the rest of us who have employer health insurance, as soon as their 1 year delay runs out. The only fix at that point is to increase the deficit, taxes and debt continuously on our way to a single payer system. The inept opposition party will flail about complaining about the launch and the website, etc; all the while the clock ticks on a financial time bomb know as Obamacare.

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