Tag Archives: Public Option

News

CBO says that Obamacare will require 1 trillion tax increase

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Story at the Weekly Standard. (H/T Weasel Zippers via ECM)

Excerpt:

…In its real first 10 years (2014 to 2023), the CBO says that the bill would cost $1.8 trillion — for insurance coverage expansions alone. Other parts of the bill would cost approximately $700 billion more, bringing the bill’s full 10-year tab to approximately $2.5 trillion — according to the CBO.

In those real first 10 years (2014 to 2023), Americans would have to pay over $1 trillion in additional taxes, over $1 trillion would be siphoned out of Medicare (over $200 billion out of Medicare Advantage alone) and spent on Obamacare, and deficits would rise by over $200 billion.

…the CBO says that health care premiums would rise… Nationwide health care costs would be $234 billion higher than under current law. How’s that for “reform”?

…The CBO estimates that, from 2015-25, private insurers would receive $1.0 trillion in subsidies from the American taxpayer — the insurers’ apparent price for giving up their freedom and being controlled by the government. Congress would mandate that Americans buy the insurers’ product and would redirect massive sums of taxpayer money to make that mandate more feasible.

That’s to freak out my fiscally conservative readers.

My socially conservative readers are already horrified that taxes collected from them will soon be used to pay for abortions. Obama doesn’t want people who are irresponsible about sex to be “punished with a baby”.

Videos

MSNBC anchor asks Democrat Congresswoman about choice and competition

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This is from Newsbusters.

Excerpt:

RATIGAN: So, here’s a couple of the issues that come up I would love to get your response to, and I want to show you this, and you can explain it to me. As you know, in addition to everything you just described, this does very little to bring real competition and choice into the insurance marketplace. It does very little to reform the insurance monopolies. It does very little to create more choices for everybody in America for their healthcare. But at the same time, it mandates that everybody in America face penalties if they don’t buy healthcare.

So the result of that has been the following: you know the monopoly scenario. I want you to take a look at the insurance stocks in this country on news that a bill may be passed that mandates the creation of millions of new customers but does not reform the monopoly structure. Take a look at the insurance stocks since November 17th. WellPoint up thirteen percent, that’s over a course of a few weeks, United Health up ten percent, Aetna up twelve percent, Humana up six percent. Those health insurance companies are up because being an unreformed oligopoly, monopoly, and having now the benefit of a government that is assigning the expense of covering the uninsured without reforming the monopoly. It basically allows the taxpayer to take the hit to pay for the uninsured, but it does not deal with the underlying symptom as to why there are so many uninsured, which is we have an unreformed private insurance monopoly in this country that is now being guaranteed more customers by the government. Why is that a good thing for America?

Holy snark! Please watch this! I can’t believe that this news guy is from the hard-left MSNBC network.

He is basically pointing out that government is going to force a bunch of uninsured Americans to buy the products of these medical insurers, and force ordinary productive taxpayers to pay the bill. So it’s a massive transfer of wealth from ordinary productive taxpayers to big medical insurance companies, for the benefit of Obama’s key voting groups.

Podcasts

Former midwife reveals sorry state of NHS maternity services

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Story here in the UK Daily Mail. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

I started working as a midwife in Basildon in 1995. I left to work as an independent midwife in January last year because I simply could not bear to let any more women down.

During a typical 12-hour shift, I could be the sole midwife in charge of six women in the antenatal ward  –  some in early labour  –  or one of two qualified midwives running a postnatal ward with up to 32 women.

If I was in the delivery unit, I would assist in the births of up to three babies a shift.

Obviously, if there was a crisis during a woman’s labour  –  such as a sudden need for an emergency Caesarean  –  there was always a surgical team on call, and there would be an anaesthetist available to administer epidurals and so on.

But in terms of the normal care through labour, that was all down to the midwives.

Although we were under huge stress even back in 1995, current cutbacks mean fewer and fewer midwives are caring for more and more women.

No wonder new mothers are encouraged to leave hospital just hours after giving birth.

When I started in the mid-Nineties, there were 35,000 midwives working in Britain. A year or two ago, that number had fallen to 25,000, more than half of whom were part-time.

What a mess! Here is my previous story about 4000 NHS patients denied hospital beds to give birth to children.

More NHS horror stories linked here.

Health care podcasts from the libertarian Cato Institute

I listened to these and thought they were filled with interesting details about the effects of Obamacare.

Now may be a good time to call your representatives in Washington and tell them not to pass the health care reform bill.