Published in the New York Post on September 21, 2009
The elderly were the first group to turn against President Obama’s health-care pro posals, alienated by the plans to cut $500 billion cut from Medicare. The young and the uninsured may be the next to jump ship — out of worry over about the huge premiums they’d have to pay.
Requiring everyone to buy insurance will impose a massive tax on all who now are uninsured. The Congressional Budget Office projects that it would force the middle-income uninsured to pay on average more than 15 percent of their income.
The poor will still have Medicaid. But for those earning more, the required premiums will be worse than any tax increase. For example, CBO estimates that when the program is fully implemented — by 2016 — an individual earning $32,400 a year would have to pay $4,100 in premiums before getting any subsidy. With deductibles and co-payments, he’d have to shell out $5,600 a year, or 17.3 percent of his income. A family of four, making $80,000 a year, would have to pay about $10,500 in premiums alone — with deductibles and co-payments, up to $15,000 or just under 20 percent of income.
And if they don’t buy insurance, they’ll face federal fines that begin to approach these same premium levels. They won’t be able to buy what they truly need — catastrophic-only coverage at a lower premium — that won’t satisfy ObamaCare’s “minimum insurance” mandate.
The young and uninsured will catch on: This bill is designed to force healthy people who don’t have health insurance — and may neither need nor want it — to buy it anyway, in order to raise the money to subsidize those who do need it.
Obama has pledged only to increase taxes on the rich. But his program essentially taxes the core of the middle class (those making $30,000 to $80,000). It will make them overpay in order to pick up the slack for others who need the extra coverage.
In other words, health-care “reform” is a health-care tax dressed up as a program to cover the uninsured.
No matter how Democrats get the money to cover those who need insurance, they offend supporters that they need to pass the bill:
* If they get the money from more Medicare cuts, they alienate the elderly still further.
* If they get it from raising the deficit, they lose moderates.
* If they hike taxes to do it, they lose the “Blue Dog” Democrats who’ve gone on record as opposing such increases.
* If they don’t increase the subsidies, they lose the uninsured themselves.
The latest data from Scott Rasmussen’s poll of those who lack health insurance indicates that they’re starting to turn skeptical about the Obama plan. It’s supposed to help them, yet they back it by only 58 percent to 35 percent — and only 30 percent support it strongly.
More to the point, only 35 percent feel it will improve the quality of their health care — and, by 41-26, they feel the cost of their care will go up, not down, under the plan.
Having the uninsured — the stated object of Obama’s compassion — turn against his reform would be the most lethal cut of all.
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Comments
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Once again Dick Morris has the ability to see through the political fog and keeps everything focused (even providing on the O’Reilly show that the Clintons wanted to increase the deficit to fund healthcare but Obama blew it on the stimulus package).
Obama has changed messages so often that he has lost all credibility and the only ones buying the song and dance are the elite media who are so deep into this administration they cannot escape the gravitational force of rhetoric and innuendo.
To me, it is quite obvious that Obama is hung up on himself and he apparently would rather use speechmaking and television appearances with softball questions as a replacement for real governance. As Harry Truman once said, ‘the buck stops here’ and the idiom ‘you have to take the good with the bad’ is a shoe that fits any leader. Obama seems only to want the good and passes the buck whenever he can.
Changing the fabric of America has turned out not to be quite as easy as simply clicking the ruby slippers together three times because talking about being president is easier than actually having to govern.
I believe President Obama lives in a world that he desperately wishes existed that he probably talked about while smoking a cigarette at the water cooler in college which is actually different than what the world actually does.
I have always felt that the biggest mistake the Democrats made was not realizing that many people who voted for Obama did so with a great deal of skepticism and that unless he actually produced (i.e., fix the economy) that initial support would erode quickly. I think that is what we are seeing happening in this country and his words are starting to have a hollow ring to it. As the old saying goes actions speak louder than words.
I believe that Dick Morris is right when he speaks of the healthy people being used to subsidize the cost of the sick people’s health bills.
I had a chance to debate my congresswoman, D-NY Rep. Louise Slaughter, on a local PBS radio show. She did something that is all too common with liberals, went for the hit below the belt with something that was not true, in an attempt to divert the topic of conversation.
But, in that which she chose to falsely claim, I believe that she may have given something away. I believe that she may have given away that she believes that a person who is against this bill, wants AIDS patients to die. Here, listen for yourself: http://www.debrajmsmith.com/090809HL2.html –Click on that or copy/paste it into your browser.
Debra J.M. Smith
of
www.InformingChristians.com
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how does Obama keep imposing all the things on us that we don’t want. He acts like a king. His speaking is intolerable–I can’t understand what he is saying.