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ObamaCare Spells Doom For America
By HERB DENENBERG, For The Bulletin
Fasten your seat belts, prepare for an explosion, and get ready for catastrophe unlimited. Obamacare will not only destroy our health-care delivery system, but it, also can wipe out our economy. We’re already mired in unsustainable debt, turning our great America into a beggar nation, and Mr. Obama is still serving up a multi-trillion dollar entitlement called ObamaCare, which could bankrupt the U.S. by its own cost alone, but coming in the face of the $787 billion stimulus, the $410 billion omnibus appropriations bill, the $80 billion cash for clunkers auto bailout, recent budgets, the House passing an $821 billion cap and trade, and the other barrage of liberal spendthrift programs, the torrent of irresponsible spending can sink even the mightiest economy in history. This is only one leg of a three-legged stool certain to and, perhaps, designed to kill the U.S. economy. In addition to unsustainable spending, there is an array of new taxes – even a war tax – and regulations that will help wipe out business and stifle entrepreneurs. The old Democratic Congressional formula to kill the economy is alive and well: spend, tax, and regulate.
Before discussing the details of ObamaCare, we should clear up misconceptions about what the effort and intentions behind reforming health care are for:
• First, this is not about health-care reform. It is about Mr. Obama and the leftists in Congress that want to control Americans by diminishing their freedom in order to gain more political power for themselves. They want American citizens dependent on government, to assure votes and to diminish and destroy freedom. If it were about health-care reform, for example, the truly uninsured - excluding such groups as the voluntarily uninsured - could easily be covered without disrupting a system that almost all Americans are now happy with and get at a relatively modest cost. If the kitchen sink is broken, you don’t tear down the whole house and rebuild it, a la ObamaCare style. Author and former government official James Simpson focused on control as the real purpose of health-care reform: “The real goal of ‘health care’ legislation, the real goal of ‘cap and trade,’ the real goal of the ‘stimulus’ is to rip the guts out of our private economy and transfer wide swaths of it over to the government to control. Do not be deluded by the propaganda. These initiatives are vehicles for change. They are not goals in and of themselves, except in their ability to deliver power. They will make matters much worse, for that is their design.” Insane political behavior can’t be explained by the more conventional political analysis.
• Second, Mr. Obama and his Democratic Party collaborators don’t care if a good health-care bill is passed. They want to ram through anything, as that will provide the lever of power sought. They also know that a majority of Americans oppose ObamaCare, and that the longer the bill is delayed, the more Americans will discover ObamaCare is an unmitigated disaster. They are in an almost irrational frenzy to get the object of their desire. They are literally about to break America and destroy our health system to do so.
• Third, don’t assume Mr. Obama and the Democratic Congress are acting or will act rationally and responsibly. They are insane enough to pass some of the most complicated and far-reaching proposals in American history without reading the legislation or fully analyzing, debating, and deliberating on it before a vote. They are passing a bill they haven’t read and probably don’t understand. The fires of their radical, leftist ideology are so strong that they just want to pass the bill, nationalizing and socializing health care, and expanding their grip on the American economy and American citizens’ freedom and power.
• Fourth, don’t assume that the master of all this, Barack Hussein Obama, understands any of the details of his plan. He makes claims clearly impossible to fulfill: if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor; if you like your insurance plan, you can keep it. But, at the same time, his plans call for the virtual elimination of Medicare Advantage plans, which now insure ten million senior citizens. His plans call for cutting a half billion from Medicare. How do you restructure one-sixth of the American economy, reconfiguring the market, the kind of policies written, and about everything else health care related and manage to preserve all the insurance/policyholder and doctor/patient relationships? This president is so enchanted with his oratorical powers he thinks whatever he says dictates reality, a syndrome called the talking disease.
• Fifth, don’t assume there is any relation between what advocates of healthcare promise and what they will actually deliver. Mr. Obama, as suggested, has the talking disease, characterized by being so enchanted with his speaking that he seems to believe it will trump reality – the reality that exists in the minds of American citizens, a reality which is a result of a thoughtful process. Consider Mr. Obama’s nature, an egotistic, narcissistic, rookie who has never accomplished anything in his life other than polish his resume and seek promotions and higher office. Do you really trust him to reconstruct one-sixth of the American economy and make good on all his incredible promises? This guy has never run a hot dog stand and he thinks he knows enough to restructure our economy? The very fact Mr. Obama and this Congress want to force votes on thousand-page bills, drafted behind closed doors, and passed without deliberating, debating, or even reading should tell you this process cannot produce a good outcome.
Then, consider more of the outrageous, incredible claims being made for ObamaCare that can’t possibly be true.
• It will lower costs for health care. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says it will raise costs for health care. But, for those with the speaking disease, facts are immaterial in the face of sweet oratory read from a teleprompter. ObamaCare will insure millions previously uninsured. It will grant new expanded coverage, prohibiting the exclusion of pre-existing conditions, and providing broader coverage in other ways. It will add sweeping coverage of preventive care in these policies. It will deliver all kinds of goodies and, somehow, make the price go down while enriching benefits and expanding those covered. And, incidentally, raising taxes on health-care policies and such things as certain kinds medical equipment and drugs. At the same time, it will impose new taxes, penalties and other charges, a certain way to drive up costs. It will also impose a vast army of mandates and establish dozens of boards, commissions and other agencies. It will deliver the world in new free benefits and entitlements, establish new bureaucracies and, by some undisclosed magic, it will make costs go down.
• It will be deficit neutral. Even the advocates admit it will cost close to a trillion, and these entitlement programs often balloon to strong multiples of seven to ten times original estimates. It expands Medicaid, already a budget backbreaking program with a huge deficit position. And, it claims deficit neutrality only by virtue of phony accounting front-loading receipts from taxes, penalties and other charges and back-loading benefits. It does all that and still doesn’t add to the deficit. Again, this is material for the con men selling the Brooklyn Bridge. Mr. Obama is making Bernie Madoff look like a piker, when it comes to Ponzi schemes.
We have here one of the great rip-offs in American history being engineered by one of the great frauds, phonies, fibbers, fakers, four-flushers, and America-haters in history, Barack Hussein Obama. As a long-time consumer reporter, I’m impressed more and more by the way ObamaCare has all the earmarks and red flags that go hand-in-hand with the classic rip-offs, starting with outlandish, too good to be true claims.
• It can’t add to the deficit, so, phony accounting is used to make it deficit neutral for the first ten years. Taxes, penalties and other charges are front-loaded, and benefits don’t kick in until about the fourth year. That is a total, obvious and blatant fraud, as you can make any entitlement deficit neutral if you front-load taxes, penalties and other charges to support it and push back the benefits to be delivered. Why not push back benefits for 50 years, and it would be deficit neutral for half a century?
• Most recently, Senator Harry “Wave the White Flag” Reid, D-Nev., in releasing his bill, claimed it would actually reduce the deficit. Start spending about a trillion, spreading benefits around like confetti, restructuring one-sixth of the American economy, and reduce the deficit. More magic from these radical leftists hell-bent on fulfilling their liberal dreams.
• In my view, it is a rip-off to deliver insurance, which doesn’t provide coverage in early years, but still charges premiums for that period. When I was insurance commissioner of Pennsylvania, insurers wanted to offer life insurance that collected premiums for the first year, but offered virtually no benefits (premium return only) until after the policy was in force two years. I ruled that was an illegal rip-off.
• Then, there are all the general red flags of the rip-off. You know the hustle routine. You have to sign up for this right now or the offer will expire. Another bright red warning flag is a deal, when considered at all four corners, that sounds too good to be true. I hate to say it, but ObamaCare is so incredible it would take an idiot to believe it can be delivered as promised and it would take a Bernie Madoff-style con man or an idiot even to offer it with a straight face.
It’s time Americans stop this madness before there is nothing left of the America as we know it – which is with the values that empower us.
Herb Denenberg can be reached at advocate@thebulletin.us
Before discussing the details of ObamaCare, we should clear up misconceptions about what the effort and intentions behind reforming health care are for:
• First, this is not about health-care reform. It is about Mr. Obama and the leftists in Congress that want to control Americans by diminishing their freedom in order to gain more political power for themselves. They want American citizens dependent on government, to assure votes and to diminish and destroy freedom. If it were about health-care reform, for example, the truly uninsured - excluding such groups as the voluntarily uninsured - could easily be covered without disrupting a system that almost all Americans are now happy with and get at a relatively modest cost. If the kitchen sink is broken, you don’t tear down the whole house and rebuild it, a la ObamaCare style. Author and former government official James Simpson focused on control as the real purpose of health-care reform: “The real goal of ‘health care’ legislation, the real goal of ‘cap and trade,’ the real goal of the ‘stimulus’ is to rip the guts out of our private economy and transfer wide swaths of it over to the government to control. Do not be deluded by the propaganda. These initiatives are vehicles for change. They are not goals in and of themselves, except in their ability to deliver power. They will make matters much worse, for that is their design.” Insane political behavior can’t be explained by the more conventional political analysis.
• Second, Mr. Obama and his Democratic Party collaborators don’t care if a good health-care bill is passed. They want to ram through anything, as that will provide the lever of power sought. They also know that a majority of Americans oppose ObamaCare, and that the longer the bill is delayed, the more Americans will discover ObamaCare is an unmitigated disaster. They are in an almost irrational frenzy to get the object of their desire. They are literally about to break America and destroy our health system to do so.
• Third, don’t assume Mr. Obama and the Democratic Congress are acting or will act rationally and responsibly. They are insane enough to pass some of the most complicated and far-reaching proposals in American history without reading the legislation or fully analyzing, debating, and deliberating on it before a vote. They are passing a bill they haven’t read and probably don’t understand. The fires of their radical, leftist ideology are so strong that they just want to pass the bill, nationalizing and socializing health care, and expanding their grip on the American economy and American citizens’ freedom and power.
• Fourth, don’t assume that the master of all this, Barack Hussein Obama, understands any of the details of his plan. He makes claims clearly impossible to fulfill: if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor; if you like your insurance plan, you can keep it. But, at the same time, his plans call for the virtual elimination of Medicare Advantage plans, which now insure ten million senior citizens. His plans call for cutting a half billion from Medicare. How do you restructure one-sixth of the American economy, reconfiguring the market, the kind of policies written, and about everything else health care related and manage to preserve all the insurance/policyholder and doctor/patient relationships? This president is so enchanted with his oratorical powers he thinks whatever he says dictates reality, a syndrome called the talking disease.
• Fifth, don’t assume there is any relation between what advocates of healthcare promise and what they will actually deliver. Mr. Obama, as suggested, has the talking disease, characterized by being so enchanted with his speaking that he seems to believe it will trump reality – the reality that exists in the minds of American citizens, a reality which is a result of a thoughtful process. Consider Mr. Obama’s nature, an egotistic, narcissistic, rookie who has never accomplished anything in his life other than polish his resume and seek promotions and higher office. Do you really trust him to reconstruct one-sixth of the American economy and make good on all his incredible promises? This guy has never run a hot dog stand and he thinks he knows enough to restructure our economy? The very fact Mr. Obama and this Congress want to force votes on thousand-page bills, drafted behind closed doors, and passed without deliberating, debating, or even reading should tell you this process cannot produce a good outcome.
Then, consider more of the outrageous, incredible claims being made for ObamaCare that can’t possibly be true.
• It will lower costs for health care. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says it will raise costs for health care. But, for those with the speaking disease, facts are immaterial in the face of sweet oratory read from a teleprompter. ObamaCare will insure millions previously uninsured. It will grant new expanded coverage, prohibiting the exclusion of pre-existing conditions, and providing broader coverage in other ways. It will add sweeping coverage of preventive care in these policies. It will deliver all kinds of goodies and, somehow, make the price go down while enriching benefits and expanding those covered. And, incidentally, raising taxes on health-care policies and such things as certain kinds medical equipment and drugs. At the same time, it will impose new taxes, penalties and other charges, a certain way to drive up costs. It will also impose a vast army of mandates and establish dozens of boards, commissions and other agencies. It will deliver the world in new free benefits and entitlements, establish new bureaucracies and, by some undisclosed magic, it will make costs go down.
• It will be deficit neutral. Even the advocates admit it will cost close to a trillion, and these entitlement programs often balloon to strong multiples of seven to ten times original estimates. It expands Medicaid, already a budget backbreaking program with a huge deficit position. And, it claims deficit neutrality only by virtue of phony accounting front-loading receipts from taxes, penalties and other charges and back-loading benefits. It does all that and still doesn’t add to the deficit. Again, this is material for the con men selling the Brooklyn Bridge. Mr. Obama is making Bernie Madoff look like a piker, when it comes to Ponzi schemes.
We have here one of the great rip-offs in American history being engineered by one of the great frauds, phonies, fibbers, fakers, four-flushers, and America-haters in history, Barack Hussein Obama. As a long-time consumer reporter, I’m impressed more and more by the way ObamaCare has all the earmarks and red flags that go hand-in-hand with the classic rip-offs, starting with outlandish, too good to be true claims.
• It can’t add to the deficit, so, phony accounting is used to make it deficit neutral for the first ten years. Taxes, penalties and other charges are front-loaded, and benefits don’t kick in until about the fourth year. That is a total, obvious and blatant fraud, as you can make any entitlement deficit neutral if you front-load taxes, penalties and other charges to support it and push back the benefits to be delivered. Why not push back benefits for 50 years, and it would be deficit neutral for half a century?
• Most recently, Senator Harry “Wave the White Flag” Reid, D-Nev., in releasing his bill, claimed it would actually reduce the deficit. Start spending about a trillion, spreading benefits around like confetti, restructuring one-sixth of the American economy, and reduce the deficit. More magic from these radical leftists hell-bent on fulfilling their liberal dreams.
• In my view, it is a rip-off to deliver insurance, which doesn’t provide coverage in early years, but still charges premiums for that period. When I was insurance commissioner of Pennsylvania, insurers wanted to offer life insurance that collected premiums for the first year, but offered virtually no benefits (premium return only) until after the policy was in force two years. I ruled that was an illegal rip-off.
• Then, there are all the general red flags of the rip-off. You know the hustle routine. You have to sign up for this right now or the offer will expire. Another bright red warning flag is a deal, when considered at all four corners, that sounds too good to be true. I hate to say it, but ObamaCare is so incredible it would take an idiot to believe it can be delivered as promised and it would take a Bernie Madoff-style con man or an idiot even to offer it with a straight face.
It’s time Americans stop this madness before there is nothing left of the America as we know it – which is with the values that empower us.
Herb Denenberg can be reached at advocate@thebulletin.us
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bigboy2001 wrote on Dec 8, 2009 12:39 AM:
looking forward to get more articles like this ine "