Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Analyzing "Obama-care"

In my previous post I picked 10 accusations made against what has come to be known as Obama-care and compared them to the exact verbiage within the bill that they are drawn from. After doing so, I have also had a chance to better look over this bill and analyze it for myself.

In a word, I am scared-particularly after hearing on a national news program today that Mr. Obama intends to push this bill through with or without the support of the Republican party.

What scares me is that, on close analysis there is both covert and overt intent on the part of our current congressional and presidential leaders to control us and our lives from birth to death. Not only does this bill have the feel of personal control over our daily lives, but it also explicitly looks to direct involve the Federal Government into both our Health Care system by telling us how much and what kinds of care we can have under this bill, and by attempting to reset the standard of health care both by what small and medium sized businesses will offer to their employees and the level of services and care provided under the plans which will be available outside of “Government Healthcare”.

Worse still is that the Fed looks to punish those businesses who do not take on the Government plan by taxing them between 2-6% of their gross payroll’s and further punishing those healthcare providers who do not adjust their plans to comply with the standard set by the Government or which do not join a so called “Health Insurance Exchange”, the purpose of which is, at best, hard to understand.

Regardless of how you feel about our Federal Government becoming even further involved in our Healthcare systems, one of 2 things are going to happen to businesses if this bill makes it through Congress and becomes law: Firstly, if businesses choose to keep their own health insurance, thereby taking on up to an additional 6% tax on their gross payrolls, their prices are going to have to increase to cover that new expense.

For businesses who choose to take the Government option, they can be assured of losing their best employees due to what will be, without question, a far inferior health care plan for themselves and their family. This could also result in many people simply avoiding being employed by companies whose healthcare is that of the federally provided variety because it won’t be too long before it’s known that “Obama-care” is barely care at all.

As far as the bill itself goes, it has many terrible aspects to it.

Healthcare under this bill is limited to only $10,000 per year per family or $5000 per year for one person. Considering that a fracture to just about any limb of the body could max this coverage out in just one visit to the hospital, it’s more than obvious that this plan is horribly inefficient. Compounding the issue of coverage is that under this plan, those doctors and hospitals which are deemed as “eligible” providers are not allowed to invest in or expand upon the places which they work; doctor’s wages are also set to some degree under this plan. These 2 things combined will force young, would-be doctors, into other fields due to the financial incentives being stripped of the profession-e.g. who is going to want to spend 10 years of additional schooling and not be able to be properly reward themselves once they are finished, all the while acquiring $10’s of thousands in debt. This scenario will eliminate the best and brightest among us from ever pursuing a career as a doctor, thereby dumbing down the profession and, in the long wrong, making our health care the worse for it.

Even the auspices under which this bill came into being were false: that our health care system is failing, too expensive, and that nearly 40 million Americans cannot afford health care. As always, the truth wills out in these situations and once the numbers were broken down, the reality of it is that only 10-12 million Americans cannot “afford” health care, and of those who do have health care, a recent study found that 80% of them were happy with the quality of the care they receive.

As for the cost of our health care, there is little question that there is a problem there, but that is more due to the fact that it is law that hospitals provide care to anyone who walks into an emergency room-which they have health insurance or the money to pay or not-and the chronic suer-suee problem we have in this country forcing idiotic lawsuits on people whose insurers end up paying the costs for and then passing that expense down to their policy holders. It’s needless to say that there are better ways to confront the cost of health care in our country than to have the Fed get more involved in “the game”, so to speak.

Then of course there is the cost-which is pointless to bring up because everyone knows that, as a nation, we simply cannot afford the mass providing of Federally subsidized health care.

In sum, “Obama-care” is a horrible idea. Fortunately, most people are aware of the horrors which await us if this bill some how passes and American’s all over the country are speaking out against. The problem right now is that our so call President seems hell bent on passing this bill. Just today it was reported that he will get this bill passed with or without the approval of Republicans. Not only does this speak to a man drunk with power, but also to one on the verge of dictatorial leanings, and if this turns out to be the case with Mr. Obama, then this health care bill is only the beginning of our problems.

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