Obamacare Hazardous to America's Health

Obamacare Hazardous to America's Health
David Limbaugh
Tuesday, December 22, 2009

At least common thieves don't destroy an entire health care system and socialize the American economy when they commit their felonies. Too bad we can't say the same for our illustrious Democratic senators who sold out the nation.

In exchange for criminally unconstitutional favors for their respective states, they voted to pass the Senate health care bill just 38 hours after it had been made available to the public for review.

Everyone knows about Sen. Mary Landrieu's negotiating $300 million for her state in non-guaranteed Medicaid payouts. She was even cocky about her institutionalized larceny.

Sen. Bernie Sanders finagled $10 billion worth of earmarked greenbacks for the funding of community health centers in his home state, Vermont, to support a bill he vehemently opposed just three days earlier.

Sanders and Sen. Patrick Leahy secured additional Medicaid funding for Vermont, while senators from Pennsylvania, New York and Florida achieved Medicare Advantage protections for their constituents even as benefits from this program are being cut nationwide.

And why not? The end always justifies the means for these liberals. And the end, in this case, is their long-held Utopian Marxist dream of socialized health care. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was not only unapologetic but also defiant about these bribes. "You'll find a number of states that are treated differently than other states. That's what legislating is all about. It's compromise," said Reid.

But this wasn't compromise. It was blackmail. And the payoff was at the expense of our bankrupt heirs.

Liberal politicians rationalize judicial rewriting of the Constitution on the basis that great things are accomplished that might not otherwise be possible through legitimate democratic processes. But what we're seeing now is the logical result of this callous disregard for our government charter.

If the Constitution had been treated with respect, this legislative monstrosity passed in the dead of night with the discriminatory application of federal monies would have been invalid on its face. But these days, adhering to constitutional principles designed to separate government powers among the three branches has become arcane -- and almost a lost cause.

You have to wonder, though, when residents of our individual states who were recipients of these pernicious deals will rise up and reject this blood money flowing from the mortal wounds to the nation their senators have inflicted. After all, the bribe money their states are receiving won't do them much good if the nation further disintegrates into bankruptcy.

What's worse is that the foregoing outrages don't begin to address the disturbing provisions, such as the following, in this shameful Senate bill.

Obama brags that the Congressional Budget Office scores the bill as reducing the federal deficit over the next decade. But even if you accept this static analysis, you should be aware that according to The Heritage Foundation, the CBO bases its calculations only on the data the Senate provides. The Senate bill provides that Medicare fees for doctors would be cut by 20 percent beginning in 2011, but "nobody believes these cuts will be allowed to happen." If they don't, just this one change would result in Obamacare's adding $196 billion to the deficit in the first 10 years and $765 billion in the following one.

Obamacare would fare even worse, accountingwise, if it didn't force states to increase Medicaid obligations -- another unfunded mandate that would bankrupt states further.

Health care costs, say Heritage experts, would rise by $234 billion. They also tell us that though Obama promised that no one would be forced to change his health care plan, the CBO confirmed that 10 million Americans would be forced out of their current plans under Obamacare. And the $493 billion in Medicare cuts would force up to 20 percent of health care providers into insolvency.

Finally, Heritage informs us that "Obamacare is funded with over $400 billion in new taxes at a time of double digit unemployment."

National Center for Policy Analysis health care expert John C. Goodman says: "This bill does not curb health care expenses, but it will increase taxes and cost jobs. The end result of this bill: most Americans will wait longer for poorer quality care."

Adding insult to injury, most pro-life groups believe the bill does not ensure that federal funding would not be available for abortions.

After all the dust settles, millions will remain uninsured, which makes this entire bill a grotesque mockery of the American people.

The clock is ticking toward 2010.
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Maximum Achievable Damage
Mona Charen
Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Does anyone remember the TV show "Supermarket Sweep"? Contestants would compete with one another by careening through a supermarket and grabbing as many products as they could toss into a basket. The winner was the shopper whose cart carried the biggest price tag when the bell sounded.

It's a fitting image for the way Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have handled the most important domestic issue of the decade. They've raced down the health policy aisles, sweeping items off the shelves and into their legislative carts, heedless of nutritional value, taste, or cost. As items dropped out on the hairpin turns, others were shoved into the spaces. Harry Reid inserted the Medicare "buy-in" at the 11th hour and just as quickly withdrew it under pressure. No organizing principle has governed the contents of their baskets (Pelosi added and jettisoned abortion coverage), just an urgent imperative to pass something. And now, as the clock winds down, they are declaring, as a journalistic cheerleader at the Washington Post put it, "a legislative feat of epic proportions."

Actually, it was the sloppiest and most slapdash legislative process ever to accompany a major bill. The 383-page manager's amendment, making changes to the Senate bill, was released on the morning of the cloture vote. Secrecy marked Reid's handling of the bill throughout. Not only Republicans, but Democrats, too, were kept from studying the legislation. Payoffs to wavering Sens. Lieberman, Landrieu, and Nelson, on the other hand, were blatant.

The Democratic leaders of the House and Senate, in concert with the White House, have bullied, bribed, and rushed their members to vote on this legislation so that the deed could be done before constituents -- who oppose it forcefully -- could confront their representatives face-to-face over the Christmas break.

The Democrats have endured bruising internecine conflicts and risked the loss of between 20 and 40 seats in 2010 (Pelosi's estimate) for this. And what have they achieved? Their goal -- a single-payer system or a glide path to one -- remains as distant as ever. Instead, they have produced (or will, after the conference committee) an enormous new $2.5 trillion octopus of federal regulation that will increase premiums, contribute to medical cost inflation, reduce quality and choice of care, and deeply politicize an aspect of life that most Americans regard as sacrosanct. Additionally, and most alarmingly, it will aggravate the already crushing debt we are accumulating.

President Obama has betrayed every ringing promise he made about this reform. People will not be able to keep their health plans if they are happy with them. The federal government will determine which plans pass muster. As for not adding one dime to the federal deficit? Risible. The "savings" in the Senate bill consist of cuts to Medicare, not increased competition or more efficient delivery of services. And while CBO has scored the bill as reducing the deficit, CBO must abide by the assumptions Congress presents. It cannot say what we know from history to be the truth: Congress will not make cuts in Medicare. Besides, every entitlement ever enacted has wound up costing orders of magnitude more than the estimates at passage. That's why the Medicare and Social Security unfunded liability is currently $107 trillion, according to a 2009 trustees' report. The Reid bill will add at least 15 million new beneficiaries to Medicaid, accelerating that program's budget-busting momentum.

The president also promised that no one earning less than $250,000 would pay higher taxes. But under both the Senate and House bills, people who do not purchase health insurance will be slapped with an excise tax (2.5 percent of adjusted gross income under Pelosicare, and $750 or 2 percent of income, whichever is larger, under Reidcare).

The Democrats have not achieved their goal of completely lassoing one-sixth of the economy, but their mammoth legislation (the House and Senate bills both top 2,000 pages) will apply heavy-handed regulation that will further gum up a system already choking on bureaucracy. Americans will be forced to buy health insurance. Insurance companies will be forbidden to price their services according to actuarial tables. And no aspect of medical care will be free of political interference. (One section of the Senate bill reinstates coverage for DXA scans because two senators insisted upon it. Another requires breastfeeding breaks in the workplace.)

The Democrats will create, among others, the following new bureaus: The Grant Program for Health Insurance Cooperatives, the Telehealth Advisory Committee, the Community Based Medical Home Pilot Program, the Center for Comparative Effectiveness Research, and the Qualified Health Benefits Plan Ombudsman. In short, Democrats have done the maximum amount of damage to our system that they could manage under the circumstances.