Category Archives: government shutdown

OBAMACARE IS A WELFARE PROGRAM THAT IS REDUCING THE QUALITY AND AVAILABILIITY OF HEALTHCARE AND HARMING BUSINESS AND THE MIDDLE-CLASS

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Obamacare is a multi-trillion dollar welfare program that makes health insurance available to 30 million previously uninsured Americans. It requires insurance companies to disregard pre-existing conditions. The inevitable affect is to raise the rates of required Obamacare policies. Most importantly, it makes Medicaid available for free to the poor and offers large premium subsidies to lower income individuals. It also offers other benefits to selected individuals, such as, allowing students to stay on their parents healthcare plan until age 26 and elimination of the doughnut hole in Medicare drug plans.

Why do Americans not like Obamacare if it helps so many people? Americans are discovering what the draftsmen of Obamacare knew, or should have known, that businesses, middle-class and healthy individuals are going to have to pay, directly or indirectly, for a substantial portion of the increased costs mandated by Obamacare. They will not be paying for improved insurance coverage for themselves, but to provide free coverage for the poor and reduced or subsidized premium costs for people with pre-existing conditions and low income individuals. Obamacare is designed to advance liberal Democrats acknowledged goal of improving the lot of the poor by taking money from the rich individuals and businesses who they think have more income than they need. To make matters worse it is destroying the availability and quality of healthcare and is giving too much responsibility to bureaucrats at the IRS.

Liberal Democrats do not seem to care that it will cost hundreds of billions of dollars a year to make such insurance benefits available. They fraudulently claimed, that when Obamacare was adopted and became effective it would enable everyone with insurance to keep their policy and receive the same benefits from the same doctors and healthcare providers, at reduced costs. We are only beginning to recognize how fraudulent those claims were. The draftsmen hid the true cost of purchasing healthcare under Obamacare by including large deductibles and co-pays that significantly raise aggregate healthcare costs. The availability and quality of care are declining. Doctors are leaving the profession and hospitals are reducing staffs. Medicare benefits are being reduced. President Obama repeated the false claims about Obamacare during the re-election campaign and now unashamedly claims that voters supported his views on Obamacare. The Obamacare discussion during the 2012 campaign focused on women’s rights issues, not the disastrous financial consequences of Obamacare.

Democrats, who rammed through the passage of Obamacare withhout a single Republican vote, knew that because our country was in the midst of the Great Recession, the federal and state governments couldn’t afford to pay for a new gigantic welfare program. They therefore devised an extremely complicated plan relying on a hodge-podge of new taxes and rules and regulations applicable to Medicare, Medicaid and health insurance to provide for funding the costs of Obamacare and to limit benefits and payments to providers. They gave it the misleading name of “The Affordable Care Act”. They didn’t care, or negligently failed to realize, the secondary affects of the new taxes including the negative impact they would have on young people looking for jobs and the middle-class who are losing good full-time, tax-paying jobs and existing insurance coverage.

Businesses seek to maximize profits. They have for years been seeking ways to limit increases in employee healthcare expenses. Outrageous Obamacare requirements encourage businesses to rethink their providing of healthcare benefits for employees. They are modifying business plans in ways to minimize or eliminate their health insurance costs. Some employers will save money by requiring their employees to purchase their own insurance from the state exchanges. Some will pay penalties to avoid paying for expensive Obamacare policies. Aggregate payrolls are being controlled by not hiring or laying off full-time employees and hiring additional part-time employees. Retired employees and spouses are losing healthcare coverage.

Obamacare is based on tens of thousands of pages of laws and regulations which are extremely difficult to understand and interpret. It requires the filling out of forms that make the practice of medicine and the delivery of healthcare more stressful and less profitable. Liberal Democrats who proposed Obamacare deliberately ignored pleas of doctors about the outrageous cost of purchasing malpractice insurance because of out of control claims and excessive jury awards. Why would we expect them to do otherwise? Tort lawyers are major contributors to Democrats. Obamacare was promoted to gain votes for Democrats. It is turning into a train wreck which may cost them votes.

The draftsmen of Obamacare tried to hide the cost of giving the new benefits by adopting a variety of new taxes on the middle-class and the rich and requiring businesses and individuals to purchase insurance. They knew that taxes on medical products and drugs, not only drive business off-shore and reduce research and development efforts to produce new products, but also, are inevitably passed on to the consumer. They knew that, if they told the truth about Obamacare, young people, middle-class workers and their employers would object to paying larger insurance premiums or penalties to pay for the new welfare benefit for the poor and those with pre-existing conditions. That is the reason they adopted penalties for businesses and individuals if they failed to buy insurance. They did not anticipate many of the adverse consequences that have surfaced as businesses and individuals have learned about the requirements of Obamacare. Now they are trying to get people to purchase Obamacare policies by claiming it is the patriotic thing to do to help your fellow Americans. Why should young people, strapped with student loans or working in part-time jobs as a result of Obamacare, do so?

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DEMOCRATS WANT A SHORT GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN

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A federal government shutdown for a few days will do little damage to the US economy, but will inconvenience and scare many Americans. Democrants  want the shutdown to enhance their chances of gaining control of the House in the 2014 elections. They are goading Republicans into a fight over the funding of Obamacare to give President Obama the opportunity to claim Republicans have forced a shutdown. Polls show that any shutdown will cause great political harm to Republicans who are being wrongfully attacked by President Obama as extortionists. 

Regardless of whether it was adopted based on false promises, Obamacare is the law of the land. Like it or not, many of its provisions will become operative on October 1, with, or without, US government funding.  It is irrelevant that Obamacare is a new welfare program that is causing great damage to our economy. The poor and low-income people it is designed to help  will line up to enroll for the free or highly subsidized insurance policies, with no pre-existing conditions. President Obama has committed to spend billions of marketing dollars to convince Americans that they will love Obamacare in a few years after we make some corrections and to get young people to purchase policies.

Republicans, led by Senators Cruz and Lee, are publicizing many of the negative aspects of Obamacare. They should continue to make their case before the Senate over the next few days.  However, it is inevitable that the Senate bill will be passed without the provision to de-fund Obamacare. When it returns to the House, Republicans should permit the Democrats to prevail. The best that Republicans can accomplish is to get an agreement for the appointment of a joint Congressional committee to consider the modification or repeal of Obamacare. Any attempt to de-fund or delay the effectiveness of Obamacare merely runs time off  the clock before the potential government shutdown.  Republicans will have an opportunity to expose the terrible consequences of Obamacare, including the harm to the middle-class, in the 2014 Congressional campaigns.

Obamacare, even if further modified, will remain a horrible law and hodge-podge of regulations rammed through Congress, without a Republican vote, during the Great Recession. It changes Medicare, Medicaid and almost every aspect of healthcare. It mandates federally approved insurance to be purchased by or for everyone. The poor and low-income taxpayers get free or highly subsidized coverage. To expand the class of beneficiaries, they threw in benefits for children living at home until age 26 and eliminated the doughnut hole from the Medicare drug plan. Our federal and state governments couldn’t afford to pay for it. They, therefore, adopted all kinds of new taxes and penalties on businesses and individuals to pay for their new welfare program.  Our economy, businesses and the middle-class are suffering from the confusion and increased costs. Obamacare is slowing hiring and capital investment and Is is leading to an increase in undesirable part-time  jobs, while causing the loss of full-time, tax-paying jobs.  It is increasing insurance premiums and causing the loss of coverage for many who had insurance. It is harming doctors, hospitals and other healthcare providers and reducing the availability and quality of healthcare. It taxes the gross sales of medical equipment suppliers and drug companies. Such taxes
(unless passed on as increased healthcare costs that will add to the burden being placed on the middle-class) will confiscate the cash needed to support research and development efforts that have placed the US in the forefront of life saving and enhancing equipment and medications. Some of the manufacturers will become unprofitable or will be unable to raise capital, and go out of business. It puts the IRS in control of major healthcare decisions.  Based on recent experience this assures that healthcare subsidies and availability will become politicized and allocated unfairly.  It is so complex that years after its adoption our governments are not prepared for it to become effective.

Why does President Obama like it? It gives the government greater control of our lives and  takes from businesses and individuals who have and gives to those who have not. It adds to his base of people who benefit from handouts. It is unlikely that President Obama and his liberal cronies realized, when it was adopted, how much damage it would do to the economy and the middle-class. As the problems have surfaced, he has made changes in the law and granted waivers without Congressional approval. He talks of further adjustments in the law to work out the kinks. He may not have yet realized that  Obamacare is so conceptually flawed that it is irreparable and should be repealed so that we can go back to a free market solution. Of course that would require taking away or reducing the new welfare benefit. Why should the poor expect to get the same or better healthcare benefits for free than will be available for middle-class people who work to earn the insurance or who may lose their benefits or have to pay for them? Why should we harm business and eliminate or prevent the creation of middle-class jobs, to create another welfare benefit, while the economy remains in a weakened state?

With all the hull-a ballo over Obamacare and the  potential government shutdown, it has gone virtually un-noticed that the disastrous Sequester cuts are retained in the proposed government funding proposal. President Obama and the liberal financial press have been effective in misleading  voters into thinking that the economy is improving  because unemployment is falling and the federal deficit is shrinking. They disregard the large number of people who have left the work-force, the great increase in the number of part-time jobs (largely as the result of Obamacare),  the reduced government spending as a result of the Sequester and the increased revenues from the 2013 tax increases. As a result, and because he refuses to discuss un-funded long-term entitlement (largely Medicare) liabilities, he is in no position to be insisting on necessary increases in defense and infrastructure construction spending to stimulate the economy, provide homeland security  and create full-time, tax-paying jobs. The Obamacare mess makes it highly unlikely that our economy will grow satisfactorily during the remainder of the Obama term.