Leftist LUNC of the Week: March 2013

Like most everyone, liberals care about the sick and afflicted, particularly people who may have been or may still be unable to get much-needed medical treatment, and/or who have lost homes and life-savings because they couldn't afford adequate health insurance. For this they shouldn't be criticized, but honored and applauded.

However, their solution is socialized medicine, or here in the U.S.: Obamacare (the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act)--which was designed to decrease medical costs and make certain that more people will have health insurance without raising the deficit even a dime during these times of economic crisis.

Unfortunately, though not unexpectedly, the resulting Leftist LUNCs of Obamacare have already been and portend to be just the opposite. The Obama "cure" is worse than the "disease," and the people most likely to be negatively impacted by the Obamacare LUNCs are those who can least afford it--i.e. the elderly, sickly, and poor.

Seniors, like my mother, who have been insured through Medicare Advantage plans, will likely see those plans phased out soon or by the end of the decade, exposing them to increased insurance premiums and less coverage because funding for those plans have been raided to pay for Obamacare. (See HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE)

The sickly may be ill-effected because of Medicare re-admission penalties (which may force non-profit hospitals to drop Medicare patients) as well as rising medical costs due to a number of economic factors. (See HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE)

People in the low and lower-middle income brackets, particularly young men, will be worse off because they will be disproportionately impacted by the increased taxes, medical and insurance costs, and they are the ones most vulnerable to being laid off, have their work hours cut, or not employed because of employment freezes due to Obamacare regulations, and who will most probably lose corporate insurance and be forced into state-run insurance exchanges (assuming they are available in every state), or they may fall above the exemption levels for uninsured penalties. (See HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE)

And, it isn't just the most vulnerable who will be hurt by Obamacare. Contrary to what was intended, the cost of insurance for most people will go up rather than down. (See HERE) Because of Obamacare, and contrary to its intent, people are now losing insurance coverage, potentially to the point that there may be less people insured than before Obamacare was instituted. (See HERE)

The best indicator of the undesirability of Obamacare is, the very people who voted for the bill (without reading it), along with their staff, have now been exempted from the plan. (See HERE) Even some of Obama's staunchest supporters are calling for the repeal of Obamacare: "President of LIUNA Union: If Obamacare Cant be Fixed, it needs to be Repealed." Even an editorial in the liberal Chicago Trubune indicates that Obamacare is a Mess.

And, it turns out that "municipalities are going to push their employees into the exchanges as a means of eliminating the health care benefits promised to their employees. Anyone remember how in 2009 the Republicans warned that this would happen?" (Rick Ockerman, facebook 8/7/13--see HERE)

Not only has and will Obamacare do just the opposite from what was intended, and create more problems than is solves, but it has and will harm our struggling economy and, contrary to what was promised, be paid for by borrowing against our children's future to the tune of trillions of dollars. (See HERE and HERE and HERE)

The negative effects of Obamacare on the economy are already being realized in the disturbing shift from full-time to part-time jobs across America (see HERE), presumably in reaction to the employer mandates. (See HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE)

Unfortunately, though, as Senator Mike Lee has noted (see his facebook page for 8/7/13), small businesses may discover too late that the strategy of shifting workers to part time may backfire. (See HERE))See also HERE)

Worse yet, it greatly expands federal and state governments, increases taxes (contrary to what was promised), and it puts life-and-death healthcare decisions in the hands of the entity that can't rightly fix potholes or deliver the mail on time (there is already increasing indications that Obamacare has been and will be a failure and poorly administered--see HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE, and HERE, though of course the failures will be blamed on Republicans--see HERE and HERE). And, with the recent scandals, it is unsettling to know that the IRS will be the go-to collection agency.

Then there is the matter of forcing insurance companies to take patients with 'preexisting conditions.' For patients, this creates an incentive to drop insurance and wait until we have serious medical problems before signing up, and then drop the coverage again after being treated. In other words, ironically the very government program intended to expand insurance coverage contains a provision encouraging dropping coverage until it is needed. Consequently, this spells an economic disaster for private insurance companies, forcing them to fold, only to be replaced by a mandatory, single-payer system that we were also promised wouldn't happen. (See HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE)

Dr. Bellar sums it up this way: "We are going to be gifted with a health care plan that we are forced to purchase, and fined if we don’t, signed by a president who smokes, with funding administered by a treasury chief who didn't pay his taxes, by a government which has already bankrupted Social Security and Medicare, all to be overseen by a surgeon general who is obese, and financed by a country that’s broke.” (see HERE)

Steven Horwitz says: "Obamacare’s approach to fixing the very real problems of U.S. medical care is exactly backward. It undermines the market-driven parts that are working, and expands government control that is not." (See HERE)

Leftist LUNC of the Week

The Purpose of This Bl;og

Friday, March 1, 2013

Obamacare