Two More Obama Care Insults - Will The Insults And Waste Never Stop?

Recently we summarized the many reasons why Obama Care, the political class disastrous legislation that is supposed to fix the our health care cost crisis, is doomed to failure and likely to cause severe economic problems as it heads for its eventual doomed demise. These reasons include the following errors in judgement and logic:

• The biggest problem is that those who developed and wrote the legislation did not understand the root causes of our high health care costs. These root causes include the facts that Americans eat too much of the wrong kind of food, they do not exercise enough, they tend towards obesity, and they smoke too much. These root causes need to be addressed as public health issues. The political class approach, which resulted in Obama Care, is nothing more than a government bureaucracy and taxation approach, both of which do not address the underlying drivers of high health care costs. Wrong diagnosis and wrong medicine results in the wrong solution.
• Although many states have successfully reduced their sky high health care costs by reforming their medical malpractice tort processes, Obama Care devotes virtually no resources and legislation to repeating those same state successes at the Federal government level. Proven solutions ignored by the legislation, how insulting is that?
• America is getting older as the baby boomers move into the golden years. Unfortunately, those same Americans are likely to endure innumerable cases of dementia, Alzheimer's disease, and other aging diseases, putting unprecedented cost and expense pressures on the nation's health care system. Simple root cause analysis, an analysis that received short shrift in the legislation. If you do not devote serious energies, research, and funding to address these dementia-like diseases, the bureaucracy and taxation processes that Obama Care has called for will have absolutely not impact relative to the aging of America and the related high health care costs.
• The fourth insult to our intelligence is the poorly written section of the legislation that makes it much less expensive for companies to drop health care insurance for their tens of millions of retirees and employees than to continue their health care insurance programs. How can a law that is supposed to increase the number of Americans that have health care insurance be so inept that it results in tens of millions of Americans to lose their health care insurance?

Four major insults to our intelligence of why Obama Care is a failure. But we have covered all of these insults in detail in previous posts, naively thinking that all of the insults had played out. What other insults could the political class responsible for this atrocity possibly heap onto the country?

But, alas, two more insults have just surfaced this week. The first new insult comes for the Solicitor General of the United States. The Solicitor General is the government's top litigator in cases involving the Supreme Court. He is the chief legal advocate for the Federal government's legal stances. Neal Katyal is currently the acting Solicitor General and earlier this month he was arguing the legality of Obama Care in front of the Court Of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati.

The judges were conducting hearings on the legality of one of Obama Care's more obnoxious components, the fact that the law forces Americans to purchase health care insurance. The obvious concern is that if the government and the politicians that run it can force you to use your own wealth to purchase a product or service they want you to have, where is the limit on the power of the political class to force citizens to buy other products and services? For example, could politicians use this slippery slope to force citizens to purchase products or services from companies who are big campaign donors to politicians?

On a freedom level, this component smacks down the notion of liberty and freedom. Anytime the government "forces" Americans do to something, for better or worse, freedom suffers. This forced purchase requirement was the main topic of discussion at this judicial hearing.

According to a report by Phillip Klein reporting for the Washington Examiner, the arguments eventually got around to the "hardship exemption" in the health care law and applies to people who cannot obtain health insurance for less than 8% of their income. Kaytal responded to questioning by the Appeals judges by discussing the fact "that there's a provision in the health care law that allows people to avoid the mandate."

Kaytal went on to state: "If we're gong to play that game, I think that game can be played here as well, because after all, minimum coverage provision only kicks In after people have earned a minimum amount of income. So it's a penalty on earning a certain amount of income and self insuring. It's not just on self insuring on its own...someone doesn't need to earn that much income."

At this point one of the judges interrupted Kaytal: "That wasn't in a single speech given in Congress about this. The idea that the solution if you don't like it [mandatory purchasing of insurance] is to make a little less money."

Brilliant, way to encourage the American work ethic and expand the economy. Work less, earn less money and by doing so you will fall below the income threshold and force the government, and other harder working Americans, to pick up your health insurance tab. Imagine what would happen if everybody followed the Solicitor General's advice and strove to work less and earn less money in order to get a government handout for health care insurance.

This is truly a callous insult to us all. Don't like the provision and it's impact on freedom? Well, too bad, tough luck, adjust your life and family and your wealth to the law, just earn less money. Sounds like the "let them eat cake" attitude all over again from the political class.

The second new insult comes form an Associated Press article that appeared on June 21, 2011. Apparently this legislation was so long and so complicated that it resulted in a situation where millions of Americans could end up getting free government sponsored health care even though they have the resources to buy it themselves. According to the article, Obama Care has a provision that would allow several million middle class and upper class Americans to get nearly free insurance meant only for America's poor.

The article goes onto say that this loophole was discovered only after the legislation was passed, given further credence to the belief that no one in Congress read or understood this bill before it was passed. Up to 3 million Americans could qualify for Medicaid because, as a result of Obama Care, Social Security payments would no longer be counted as income for determining eligibility for free Medicaid insurance.

How bad is the likely outcome if nothing is changed? The top Medicare actuary stated in the article that the situation keeps him up at night and "I don't generally comment on the pros and cons of policy but that [this Medicaid situation] just doesn't make sense." Even Obama's people realize the major screw up, according to a HHS spokesperson: "We are concerned, as a matter of law, some middle income Americans may be receiving coverage through Medicaid which is meant to serve only the neediest Americans."

Brilliant, a law that was supposed to reduce the Federal government deficit is likely to widen the deficit even more by providing government health care insurance resources to people that do not need it and who would not have gotten it without the passage of Obama Care. How stupid and insulting is this little wrinkle to American taxpayers: hey, we are going to waste more of you tax dollars by giving it away to your neighbors who do not need the help.

The real problem with this money drain and waste is how to fix it. Given that it is in the law already, until that law is amended, the atrocity and waste will continue. But you can be sure that Obama and the Democrats are not going to want to reopen any discussion on Obama Care since the Republicans will try to expand the discussion to defund, gut, or totally terminate the law. As a result, this insult is likely to go into effect and widen the deficit tremendously when you give free government health care insurance to an additional three million Americans.

What a piece of garbage this legislation is turning into. It will not reduce high health care costs, it will not address and fix the underlying root causes of high health care costs, it continues the political class contempt for Americans by telling them in a condescending manner that if we do not like the law, than just earn less money and affect your entire way of life, and it will give away billions and billions of dollars to citizens that do not need the money for health care coverage. Insult upon insult coupled with stupidity. Certainly no way to run a country or its government.




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