October 14, 2010, Politico.com – “A federal judge in Florida will allow parts of a multi-state lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the health care overhaul to proceed -- including a challenge to the controversial requirement that nearly all Americans buy insurance.”
Some good news at last.
There’s something faintly obscene in the term “Obamacare” because this is legislation that demonstrates how little Barack Obama really cares about Americans who reach the age where they can qualify for Medicare or Medicaid. In so many ways, it destroys Medicare and, indeed, health care in America.
Recently The Heartland Institute, a non-profit, non-partisan research organization headquartered in Chicago, published a guide, aptly titled “The Obamacare Disaster” by Peter Ferrara. You can download it for free and it will not require that you spend a lot of time reading it.
Ferrara has been involved in health care and entitlement issues for three decades. He was a staff member in the White House Office of Policy Development under President Ronald Reagan and was an associate deputy attorney general under President George H.W. Bush. He’s been an associate professor of law at George Mason University School of law and received an undergraduate degree in economics magna cum laude from Harvard College and a J.D. cum laude from Harvard Law School.
Because we live busy lives, here’s a brief synopsis.
1. Obamacare is a government takeover of health care in the nation. It creates more than 150 new bureaucracies, agencies, boards, commissions, and programs that will authorize bureaucrats to tell doctors and hospitals what is quality care and what is not. It mandates exactly what health insurance workers and employers must buy, what benefits they will get, and imposes a fine on anyway if they do not comply. It is the antithesis of freedom.
2. It will cause health care costs, not just to rise, but to soar. This is why more than a hundred U.S. companies that already offer low cost health care insurance to their employees have already requested waivers. If Obamacare’s intent was to destroy the health care insurance business—and it is—it has succeeded.
3. In an effort to anticipate and prevent rising health care costs, it institute a system of rationing. It does this in part by cutting $3 trillion in Medicare cuts over the first 20 years. In practical terms, this will kill people forced to wait for services.
4. Obamacare discourages private investment in the development of medical technologies and drugs. This is the very reason U.S. health care is the envy of the world and why it will be effectively undermined.
5. Obamacare imposes new taxes and increase tax rates starting in 2011, adding up to $500 billion over the first ten years. This, of course, contradicts Obama’s promise not to raise taxes on anyone earning less than $250,000.
6. Medicare and Medicaid are already famous for the billions in fraud in these two programs. Obamacare sharply expands Medicaid. The Congressional Budget Office reports the Act will increase federal spending by almost $1 trillion over the first ten years. With full implementation, starting in 2014, it will increase spending by $2.4 trillion, making it the most expensive legislation ever approved by Congress and signed by a president.
7. Obamacare will ensure higher deficits as far as the eye can see, adding $2-to-$3 trillion over the next twenty years.
8. Obamacare inflicts lower quality health care on Americans, particularly for the most vulnerable such as premature babies and the elderly, and those suffering from cancer and heart disease.
9. It will negatively impact jobs, wages, and economic growth. It effectively punishes creating new jobs or paying higher wages. It will double that marginal tax rates in the income tax code for low, moderate, and middle-income workers.
At a meeting of the National Association of Counties on March 9, 2010, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.” This is the same person who thinks that Food Stamps are good for the economy.
And now you know why Peter Ferrara calls it a disaster.
© Alan Caruba, 2010
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