The Devastation That Is Obama Care, Part 6: Fido's Medical Care Just Went Up And More Insanity

This is our sixth in a series of in depth analyses of why Obama Care is possibly the worst written piece of legislation ever written and how it is likely to be the most economically destructive piece of legislation in the history of the country. Today we will review more instances of how Obama Care will stifle jobs, economic activity, and wealth creation by Americans, how it is becoming so unwieldy as each of fifty states decide what medical services to cover, and how Fido will be affected by the law. Yes, Fido’s medical costs will also be rising.

1) We have already discussed the many companies in a whole host of industries that will be laying off workers, not expanding their businesses, and cutting workers’ hours because of how poorly Obama Care was written and conceived. Consider some more that were reported on by the Heritage Foundation in December:

• “We’ve calculated it will [cost] some millions of dollars across our system. So what does that say—that says we won’t build more restaurants. We won’t hire more people,” Zane Tankel, chairman and CEO of Apple-Metro, which runs 40 Applebee’s restaurants.
• “There’s no other way we can survive it, because we think it will cost us 50 cents a sandwich. That’s just the actual cost. If you have 40 or 50 employees at a restaurant, and the penalty is $2,000, and you’re going to pay $80,000 or $100,000 penalty, there goes the profit in your restaurant.”—Jimmy John Liautaud, founder of Jimmy John’s subs, who said he was considering cutting workers’ hours to come in under the Obamacare mandate threshold.
• “It’s a great concept. We want to have everyone insured. The problem is, who is going to pay for it and how are we going to accomplish this?” — John Metz, who operates roughly 40 Denny’s locations and five Hurricane Grill & Wings franchises in Florida, Virginia, and Georgia, and has said he may have to add an Obamacare surcharge to his menus.
• “New unit construction will cease if we have to allocate moneys for that construction to the [Affordable Care Act]. And building new restaurants is how we create jobs.” — Andy Puzder, CEO of CKE Restaurants, which owns Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr.

Driving businesses out of business, curtailing business revenue that could have been used to expand job opportunities and the economy, forcing employees to settle for fewer hours, this is all not going to end well.

2) Obama Care also has a “death by a thousand cuts” attribute that we have not talked about. According to a December New York Times article, states can determine what health care actions, treatments, and procedures can and cannot be covered by Obama Care insurance provisions in each state:

• Insurance plans will have to cover weight-loss surgery in New York and California, for example, but not in Minnesota or Connecticut.
• Infertility treatment will be a required benefit in New Hampshire, but not in Arizona.
• Whether or not Obama Care insurance programs will pay for hearing aids, foot care, speech therapy and various medications will vary significantly by state.
• Other options being considered for coverage on a state by state basis is chiropractor treatments, obesity treatments, podiatry treatments, dental treatments, services performed by nurses and not doctors, medical marijuana treatments, and others.

Some questions easily arise:

• With such wide discretion, who is to say Obama Care may not eventually determine where Americans live, in order to get the treatment they think the require? The Federal government should never have this power in a democracy.
• Given that the Federal government will have to operate health care exchanges in more than 60% of the states because these states realize how expensive Obama Care is likely to be, the difficulty of customizing these exchanges at the state level just got much more difficult and making the impossible (i.e. the Federal government being able to put this all together in ten months) if more impossible.

As more and more medical services’ lobbies get their services included in the Obama Care insurance basket, the cost of the legislation will get higher and higher, resulting in more and more astronomical national debt.

3) A small, interesting, and silly fallout from Obama care is the fact that veterinary bills and costs may also go up as a result of Obama Care. In early December, the IRS Internal Revenue Service declared that some medical devices used in veterinary practices will be hit by Obama Care’s 2.3% device tax since theoretically, these devices could also be used on humans. These manufacturers are likely to increase their customers’ prices, to cover the tax imposed on these pet products.

A depressing set of Obama Care ramifications from just the past two days. Tax and fee increases for half of America. Unbridled Medical criminal fraud that Obama Care will make much worse. Businesses cutting hours and jobs prospects. A death by a thousand cuts as the Obama Care implementation adds more and more secondary medical services that will cost more and more taxpayer wealth, wealth that will be spent in the most inefficient and criminally infested manner. And higher costs for Fido’s annual physical.

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