Obamacare: Seeking Greater Inefficiencies

Normally, when the government gets involved with business, we see poor performance.  We see greater inefficiencies but we’re not surprised.  What does surprise us is when the politicians admit it.  In a speech given by Obama at the Childrens National Medical Center in Washington, he said the following.

“The reforms we seek would bring greater competition, choice, savings and inefficiencies to our health care system”

Obama now wants to add Long Term Care

Obama, once again, is trying to expand the role of government.  The article states it best.

Moving to broaden the scope of the proposed healthcare overhaul, President Obama threw his support yesterday behind the creation of a program to help families struggling with long-term care costs.

The voluntary insurance program, sponsored by Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, would pay a modest daily cash benefit of at least $50 that people could use for a range of in-home services or nursing home expenses.

If you do the math, this could cost tax-payers $18250 per person per year.  Once we offer a benefit like this, we won’t be able to take it away.  Now how much do you suppose the government is going to charge for such a benefit?  A measely $780 per year.  And I bet there’s a provision in there that if you can’t afford to pay that, you won’t have to pay anything at all.

Obama is expanding the welfare society.  I always thought that social security was supposed to take care of these types of things.  Most retirees collect about $18000 to $24000 a year from social security.  The purpose of social security was to be social insurance to protect people from financial hardship.  Why do we need another bill that does the exact same thing?  If you’re disabled, you get disability from Social Security.

How viable is this plan?  It’s not viable at all. Look at the example we have in Social Security.  It’s completely underfunded.  If Obama pushes for this Long Term Care proposal, it will also be underfunded.  Like all politicians, Obama over promises and will under deliver.

Since the government version would only cost $780 per year per person, it is much less than private insurance which is currently around $2000 to $5000 per person per year.  What else does that tell us?  It means that the government is not collecting enough to cover the costs.  The only reason they give us the low price tag is for all of the sheeple to say, “Oh, there is an affordable solution.”  The problem is that it’s just not sustainable.

Obama continues to weaken the economy.  He’s taking a very micro-economic approach.  He needs to look at the macro aspect.  He is hurting business, and in turn, hurting individual people.  He may think he knows all, but he’s just dumb.

Obama’s Forced Healthcare

This country was founded on freedom. Freedom of speech, freedom of religion. Freedom to do pretty much whatever we want. With our government becoming more socialistic, we are losing freedoms every day. The loss of freedoms has been gradual over many years. You have to pay taxes. You have to have car insurance. You have to submit to the harassment of the TSA at the airport. The latest in the long line of rights lost will be the requirement to purchase health care.

Under the Senate’s new proposal, those that refuse to sign up for health insurance will be fined $1000.  What happened to personal responsibility?  What happened to freedom of choice?  If someone doesn’t want health insurance, they should be able to take care of themselves.  They should accept any consequences of their actions.  Instead, we have the government, once again, playing nanny to the public.  Here is a quote from the article.

In a revamped health care system envisioned by senators, people would be required to carry health insurance just like motorists must get auto coverage now. The government would provide subsidies for the poor and many middle-class families, but those who still refuse to sign up would face fines of more than $1,000.

The details were unveiled Thursday in a health care overhaul bill supported by key Senate Democrats looking to fulfill President Barack Obama’s top domestic priority.

What if I want to self-insure?  Do people like Warren Buffet really need to have health insurance?  They can pay for it themselves.  It should be an individual choice.  With the push for required health care, the government might as well require other things.  Why don’t they require that congress spend within it’s mean?  That is the kind of legislation we need.  Legislation that promotes responsibility rather than enslavement to the state.

Obama challenged on Healthcare

During Obama’s 75 minutes of primetime coverage, he was questioned by some doctors regarding a scenario on what he would do if his family became sick.  Would Obama make a pledge to use his own plan and go with the public option?  His response:

“…if it’s my family member, if it’s my wife, if it’s my children, if it’s my grandmother, I always want them to get the very best care.

In otherwords, no.  He wouldn’t use his own plan.  Like everyone else, he wants the very best.  That means use of private insurers.  With a government regulated health plan, they’re going to cut cost by limiting what treatment can be done.

The GOP Senators also have a concern.

“At a time when major government programs like Medicare and Medicaid are already on a path to fiscal insolvency, creating a brand new government program will not only worsen our long-term financial outlook but also negatively impact American families who enjoy the private coverage of their choice,” the senators wrote.

“The end result would be a federal government takeover of our health care system, taking decisions out of the hands of doctors and patients and placing them in the hands of a Washington bureaucracy.”

Obama responds by saying that they’re wrong.  Obama has no executive experience.  He has no business experience.  How can he say they are wrong?  Obama claims that the public option would have lower administrative costs.  That’s a bunch of horse pucky.  Since when has government ever had lower costs?  It never has.  Take Congress as an example.  Congress can’t even live within it’s means. Now Obama is promising that a public run health care system will cost us less?

Obama continues on to say that:

he didn’t understand those advocates of the free market who constantly say the private sector can do things better and are yet worried about this plan.

He also said:

that the private sector might not necessarily be better, point out that users of Medicare and Veterans Administration hospitals constantly rate “pretty high satisfaction.”

The reason that he doesn’t understand is because he is dumb.  He apparently doesn’t remember the VA hospital fiasco a couple years back.  The only reason Medicare and the VA have “pretty high satisfaction” is because they have unlimited money through tax dollars.  If the public plan is to compete and ofter the same great service, we will spend more than the promised “low administrative costs.”

And the only reason the administrative costs “might” be lower is because the costs is subsidized by the government.  Since the private sector uses the free market, that is how much the services are worth.  When government offers something for less, they have to subsidize it.  It ends up costing more.  How ever much we “save” on administrative costs are collected through taxes.

Obama to borrow trillions, proposes “pay as you go”

Obama has told congress to use the “pay as you go” rule for funding of future projects and tax cuts.  In short, “Congress can only spend a dollar if it saves a dollar elseware.”  This is a change in fiscal policy but I beleive it’s just a bunch of lip-service.  Politicians don’t have the backbone to stand up for what is fair, just, and right for the American people.  The only exeption to this rule is for health-care.

According to the article:

It would carve out about $2.5 trillion worth of exemptions for Obama’s priorities over the next decade. His health care reform plan also would get a green light to run big deficits in its early years. But over a decade, Congress would have to come up with money to cover those early year deficits.

This is an example of Obama’s “do as I say, not as I do” mentality.  He believes the rules do not apply to him.  I’d like to seem him follow his own advice.  How his he going to pay for this plan?  So Congress is supposed to come up with money to cover the early year deficits?  I don’t think that is going to happen.  If Congress can barely aford to cover the costs of every day projects, how and where are they going to come up with the money for this dumb idea?  Most likely they won’t.  They’re going to raise taxes and interest rates and reduce any likelihood of an economic recovery.

As of now, our deficits will continue to run huge.  Washington is out of control.   The Congressional Budget Office predicts the deficit will average nearly $1 trillion a year over the next decade.  We’re currently at $11 trillion.  When Obama is done with us, we’ll be over $20 trillion.  We won’t be able to service the interest on this debt.  Obama is destroying this economy and this nation.

We all thought Bush was bad.  Obama is worse.

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