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ObamaCare explained

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Let me get this straight. We’re going to be “gifted” with a health care plan we are forced to purchase and fined if we don’t,
written by a committee whose chairman says he doesn’t understand it, passed by a Congress that hasn’t read it but exempts themselves from it,
to be signed by a president who also smokes,
with funding administered by a treasury chief who didn’t pay his taxes, to be overseen by a surgeon general who is obese,
and financed by a country that’s broke.

What the hell could possibly go wrong?

The Fraud of Obamacare

Clarice Feldman on American Thinker details the terrible week experienced by our ruling class. An excerpt from his post deals with the fraud of Obamacare:

Professor Jacobson at Legal Insurrection summarizes the work if Mary Katherine Ham and Guy Benson, in cataloguing the President’s ,Pelosi’s and Reid’s lies about ObamaCare, lies the public understood  to be so almost from the moment they were made:

“Mary Katherine Ham and Guy Benson have a guest post at HotAir setting forth 10 key false promises by Barack Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats about Obamacare, ObamaCare: The sum of all fears. The post is long, but worth the read.

Here are the 10 false promises:
  • Promise #1: If you are satisfied with your existing health care arrangement, you can keep it.
  • Promise #2: Reform will lower America’s health care spending.
  • Promise #3: Reform will lower Americans’ health care premiums.
  • Promise #4: Obamacare will not lead to a doctor shortage, or escalate the primary-care physician shortfall.
  • Promise #5: There will be no government rationing of medical care.
  • Promise #6: “The firm pledge” – Ninety-five percent of Americans will not see any form of tax increase because of Obamacare (or anything else).
  • Promise #7: Health care reform won’t add “a single dime” to the deficit-and will actually cut it.
  • Promise #8: Health care reform will help businesses-employers and employees, alike.
  • Promise #9: Obamacare will not allow for funding of abortions with taxpayer money.
  • Promise #10: Obamacare will not only satisfy each of the promises above, but satisfy all of them at the same time with virtually no downsides.”

The Economics of Obamacare and Obama

The article below was posted by An Objectivist Individualist. It is interesting on two levels. First, it clearly shows the adverse impact of ObamaCare on your future health care.

Second, while dealing with healthcare, it is a perfect example of what incentives and disincentives do to individuals.

Every rule and regulation that Obama imposes affects someone — doctors, businessmen, consumers, etc. When some of this legislation is over 2000 pages long and not read by the legislators, there is no telling what is buried within. Let the unintended consequences begin.

The threat of future legislation also affects incentives and behavior today.

The reason why this economy will not hire or invest is contained below, at least for the medical profession. Try to imagine these same kinds of reactions in other labor markets and industries.

The damage done initiative in this country is devastating. It is easily remediable — repeal all this nonsense!

Many Doctors Do Not Want to Be Obama’s Slaves

Grace-Marie Turner wrote a good summary of doctor’s reaction to the onslaught of ObamaCare for The Orange County Register.  Here is a summary of her summary:

  • 28% of seniors had trouble finding a primary care doctor in 2008 compared to 24% in 2007.
  • Only 38% of primary care doctors in Texas will take a new Medicare patient.
  • The Mayo Clinic has stopped taking Medicare patients at several locations.
  • The postponed 21% cut in doctor payments, will now have to be 30% in January.
  • The American Osteopathic Association says only 40% of doctors will be able to continue seeing Medicare patients after the cut occurs because they will lose money on each patient.
  • ObamaCare requires a big investment in information technology.
  • ObamaCare requires more paperwork and cookbook medicine, eliminating individual tailoring.
  • A simple error can result in a $10,000 fine.
  • 70 million Baby Boomers are about to go on Medicare.
  • The American Association of Medical Colleges projects a 150,000 shortfall of doctors by 2025.
  • Longer waits for treatment and more emergency room visits will result.
  • There is no increase in the number of residencies to train more physicians.
  • 13% of internists will not treat Medicare patients at all.
  • A financial planner with many doctor clients says half of them want to retire in 2013, just before the worst of ObamaCare takes effect in 2014.

This is just as one would expect.  Why would highly educated and dedicated professionals submit to the Obama slavery?  Would you really want one of the physicians who would accept slavery to perform an operation on you?  I would much rather have a proud professional, so when the time comes, I will just have to scrape up the money to pay one of the doctors who will not take Medicare patients.  There just isn’t a free lunch when it comes to quality medical care.

Well, maybe there sometimes was when the doctor had the freedom to donate his services for people really in need, but now that everyone simply plans to take advantage of him with the ObamaCare thugs pointing a gun at him, it is not likely he will be feeling charitable.  All you proud and capable doctors have little choice but to refuse Medicare moocher patients.  Better to refuse them than to spit on them.

Of course, if we are not a nation of voting fools, we will so throw the rascals out of Congress and the White House that we can repeal the ObamaCare nightmare with all its intended slaves and moochers.

Posted by Charles R. Anderson, Ph.D. at Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Healthcare – What could go wrong?

“Now, let me get this straight….We are going to pass a health care plan
written by a committee whose chairman says he doesn’t understand it, passed
by a Congress that hasn’t read it but exempts themselves from it, to be
signed by a president who also hasn’t read it and who smokes, with funding
administered by a treasury chief who didn’t pay his taxes…all to be
overseen by a surgeon general who is obese, and financed by a country that’s
nearly broke. What could possibly go wrong?”
– Anonymous, quoted in Carpe Diem blog, http://j.mp/7ThoJM

Probable Next Futile Government Moves

While one can never be certain about how this economic crisis will play out, most of us have various probabilities of certain events happening and use these to develop forecasts.

John Mauldin (see writeup here) recently explained how difficult such forecasts are because of a complex chain of interdependent variables.

Politicians know only one way — stimulate. Because the world is overly concerned about U.S. deficits, surreptitious QE will be tried first (it is likely that it has already begun). As the economy continues to sink, QE  will become an overt policy.

Unfortunately large monetary easing will not produce a recovery. Another fiscal stimulus package (probably before the election so as to “buy” votes) will be implemented. Other than the possible vote-buying aspects, it will also fail.

We have gone well past the point where the government can effectively stimulate the economy via either fiscal or monetary policy. The economy is overdosed on both forms of medication. More will likely kill it or change its character in such a manner that no one will be happy.

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