Comments on Medicare-for-All

Elizabeth Warren's plan to nationalize the health care system in the USA has a price tag of $52 trillion according to her no-doubt reliable cost accounting.  She has claimed repeatedly that billionaires will pay all the taxes to pay for it.  The middle class will pay nothing, so she says.

The total wealth of American billionaires is estimated to be about $2.4 trillion.  If every last penny of that wealth were confiscated by Warren's socialist government, the tax on the billionaires would cover about 4.6% of cost of the first 10 years of her Medicare-for-All program.  Now, mind you, who is then going to pay that same 4.6% of more of the next 10 year period of her Medicare-for-All?  When those American billionaires sell off all their assets to pay their confiscatory taxes, will those who buy up the assets manage them as well and generate as many jobs and as much GDP growth?

Other portions of the costs are to be paid by having the states transfer their Medicaid payments to the federal government.  Companies will have to turn over what they are paying into employee health plans to the federal government.  Companies will lose the ability to tune their health insurance costs to their industry, location, and profitability.  Many more companies will fail without this flexibility, causing a loss of jobs and a loss of GDP growth.  Still, these sums will fall far short of providing the $52 trillion costs of Warren's plan.  Who do you think is going to make up the huge difference?

Both Warren and Sanders plans will shut down the private health insurance markets.  This means they will put 2 million Americans in that industry out of work.  Do either of their plans cost estimates include putting these 2 million Americans on unemployment insurance payouts and other welfare programs?  When 2 million Americans lose their jobs, how many will become alcoholics or other drug users?  How many will commit suicide in their despair and depression?  Have we learned nothing from the human disaster that occurred in part as Obama acted to destroy the coal mining industry and the jobs of those who transported coal, burned coal in power plants, and ran the retail and services industries of the towns that depended upon coal production?

Medicare-for-all will result in lower quality medical care for everyone.  Innovation, medical care giver training and intelligence, equipment, and facilities will all deteriorate more and more over time.  Bureaucrats will be in charge of deciding who will live and who will die.  And every American will lose the sole ownership of their minds and bodies.  When someone else gets to dictate how you will act to maintain your own mind and body, then you have lost your most critical property right.  You are no longer sovereign.  You are a slave.

Repealing ObamaCare Costs How Many People Coverage?

Those who advocate the retention of ObamaCare are claiming highly exaggerated losses of coverage due to its repeal.  They assume that no new coverage will come into play upon its repeal.  HHS Secretary Burwell cited a claim that 30 million Americans will lose their coverage.  Many others are claiming that 20 million will lose their coverage.  These exaggerations are exactly as I predicted here.

First, as I noted here, only 11.1 million people were covered for the year in 2016, though 12.7 million signed up for coverage on ObamaCare health insurance websites.  They are very trusting people to sign up and to provide their social security numbers on those very incompetent exchanges.  But I digress.  The lower 11.1 million people number is found by adding up the monthly premium payments and dividing by 12.  But you can be sure that the advocates of ObamaCare use the 12.7 million number and have no regard for the fact that the 6 million who lost coverage due to ObamaCare are now proportional to the population growth as 6.1 million who would have been happy to stay on their old plans, especially now that they will have to soon make more changes due to the many instabilities that ObamaCare has introduced.  Subtract 6.1 million whose loss of insurance the ObamaCare advocates originally did not care about from 11.1 million and one has only 5.0 million on ObamaCare of new enrollees.

The ObamaCare insurance loss alarmists count all of the new enrollees on Medicaid compared to 2013 as being covered by ObamaCare as well.  As I noted here, of the 17 million new enrollees into Medicaid in 2014, only 3.3 million were newly eligible for coverage as a result of state expansions of Medicaid benefits as a result of ObamaCare.  It is clear that the claim that 30 million will lose their insurance comes from adding 17 million added people on Medicaid to 12.7 million who paid some portion of their premiums on ObamaCare purchased insurance in 2016.  It is also clear that this is a very dishonest number.

A more honest number is that of adding the additional 5.0 million insured under ObamaCare exchanges from the fully paid premium equivalent number to the 3.3 million added due to the expansion of Medicaid coverage by states under the ObamaCare law.  That gives us 8.3 million people.  But even that is dishonest.

Why?  One of the reasons this is dishonest because in 2014 alone employers dropped the health insurance coverage of 2 million people under their employer plans.  Small businesses alone dropped coverage for 2.2 million people as a result of ObamaCare and some unknown degree of reduction due to the super-extended poor growth Obama economy, some of which is also due to ObamaCare.  What is more, prior to ObamaCare, the number of people covered under employer plans had expanded year after year, so that growth in employer coverage was lost.  So, conservatively, we subtract another 2 million from the number of people who will lose coverage due to the repeal of ObamaCare.  We are now at 6.3 million people.

But in reality, these 6.3 million people will have the option to go without health insurance after the repeal, which may be wise if they are healthy or so rich that they can reasonably be self-insured.  In 2017, the wealthy will not be able to afford to lose 2.5% of their income to ObamaCare penalties, so they will have to buy ObamaCare health insurance no matter how little they need it, unless it is repealed.  Then ending ObamaCare will bring many employers back to offering insurance plans for their employees.  Many more cost effective private plans will come into existence, once the ObamaCare straitjackets are removed.  ObamaCare requires too many doctor visits and doctors offer much less treatment per visit since it was passed.  This is the usual practice with government-controlled health care.  It becomes very inconvenient, so people use it less and get less for the cost of the coverage.  Without ObamaCare, there will be a return to competition in the medical insurance market as well.  Most areas of the country now have only one or two insurers offering ObamaCare health insurance plans.  This is not good for costs.  High costs keep many from enrolling in health care insurance.

So, if the Republicans do nothing to replace ObamaCare, the net number of people losing health insurance will be fewer than lost it when ObamaCare was put in place.  If 6 million people happy with their insurance then did not matter, how can the advocates of ObamaCare claim that the less than 6 million people dependent upon ObamaCare will matter now.  In fact, the repeal of ObamaCare does not mean that those people added to Medicaid due to its expansion in some states will not continue to be covered by Medicaid in those states.  That 3.3 million people were almost entirely the responsibility of the states after 3 years under ObamaCare in any case.  2016 was the third year. Federal subsidy payments were scheduled to plummet in 2017 anyway.  This is why many states did not allow themselves to be hooked into expanding their Medicaid rolls.  So, the repeal of ObamaCare will actually result in fewer than 3 million people losing their health care insurance relative to the before ObamaCare number.

Only Democrat Socialists can get away with pretending that fewer than 3 million people are 30 million people or sometimes only 20 million people.  These are the same people who claimed that 47 million Americans were uninsured before ObamaCare and then in 2014 stopped counting the many millions of illegal immigrants as among those uninsured to make ObamaCare look as though it was much more effective in providing health insurance than it actually was.  Tricky Dicks, these socialists.  Too bad we do not have a free press willing to keep them honest.

Only 19% of New Enrollments in Medicaid in 2014 were due to ObamaCare

Advocates of ObamaCare like to claim that all of the new enrollments in Medicaid in 2014 were due to ObamaCare.  So you find claims that ObamaCare provided insurance coverage to 17 million people in 2014.

According to a study one of whose authors is Jonathan Gruber, a chief moving force behind ObamaCare, only 19% or 3.3 million of the new Medicaid enrollments were due to ObamaCare.  The remaining new enrollments had been eligible for Medicaid prior to the passing of the ObamaCare act.

This should be remembered when considering the repeal of ObamaCare.  It will be said by some that all of the new enrollments in Medicaid since it was passed represent people who will lose insurance coverage when ObamaCare is repealed.  This is not true.  When ObamaCare was passed 6 million people lost their insurance coverage and had to sign up under new plans under ObamaCare or pay a penalty tax.  Yet only 3.3 million people were newly able to gain insurance under the expansion of Medicaid.

Some people with pre-existing conditions were able to get insurance more affordably under ObamaCare in 2014, but that was not an increase outside of Medicaid expansion large enough to offset the remaining part of the 6 million who lost their insurance.  The total number of people who gained insurance in 2014 was 11.6 million people.  The difference between that number and the 17 million said to be insured under ObamaCare in 2014 is those who lost insurance due to ObamaCare and had change their insurance plan, at inconvenience to themselves and generally at a higher cost.

The number of people who benefited from ObamaCare is greatly exaggerated, while the damage in insurance loss, lowered insurance and medical care quality, higher premiums, and higher deductibles is minimized by those who promote ObamaCare.

See here and here.

A Crime Syndicate Head, Foreign Agent, Harridan President?

Hillary Clinton is the worst major party presidential candidate in my lifetime, with the possible exception of Obama.  The first election of Obama at least came with a built-in excuse for those of a lame mind and irresponsible nature.  Those who make no real effort to learn about the candidate for whom they vote could claim him as an unknown.  Of course they could not make the same excuse in 2012.

Hillary is a decades long known collectivist, personal power luster, and criminal and crime abettor.   She is now known also as the thief of government e-mails, a paid (through the Clinton Foundation) foreign government lobbyist while Secretary of State, and an effective undercover spy for foreign governments using her highly insecure e-mail server as a drop for our national security information for any foreign government to pick up at their leisure.  Hillary gave up classified documents and much insight into State Department bargaining positions for her convenience in hiding her pay for play schemes through the Clinton Foundation.  Any foreign government, generally friendly to the U.S. or unfriendly, that was not monitoring her e-mails was negligent or incompetent.  It is known that at least five foreign governments did and that some also monitored the e-mails of Hillary's close confidants.  It is likely many more were able to do so without leaving amateurish traces of their snooping.  Hillary truly should be in jail for her effective work as a spy against the national interests of the United States.

Let us not forget that Hillary also defied court orders to turn over the e-mails she stole from the government by destroying them.  Then she testified that she suffered massive memory loss both to the FBI and more importantly to the court when she evaded the answers to many of the Judicial Watch questions the court ordered her to answer.  Can a person with such massive memory loss function as President of the United States of America?  Before her severe memory loss, she failed to take the State Department required course to be able to recognize classified information and to handle it correctly.  Can anyone unable to recognize classified information be entrusted as President, the Commander-in-Chief?

Hillary took a nearly $100,000 payoff engineered through a commodities trading scheme from Tyson Foods and worked for them as a lawyer when Bill Clinton was attorney general and then governor of Arkansas so the state would look the other way as Tyson Foods heavily polluted the state rivers. Tyson Foods was then and still is one of the nation's top polluters.  Then she and Bill contributed to the savings and loan disaster with their Whitewater activities.  As President, Bill Clinton pardoned a top Tyson executive who was imprisoned for trying to bribe the Secretary of Agriculture.  Of course he also pardoned a fugitive from justice, Marc Rich, with the encouragement of Eric Holder.  Rich, a long-time contributor to the Clinton Foundation, was convicted of tax evasion, wire fraud, trading with the enemy, and racketeering.  The Clinton's have also had a long relationship with the billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and have often visited him on his island in the Caribbean Sea, known to many as Lolita Island.  The Clintons are very unusually nasty people.  They have close ties with many other corrupt people, including Hillary's brother.

Hillary Clinton was even later than Obama in continuing to support Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT) and the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), both of which came out of the Clinton administration and deprived LGBT individuals of their individual rights.  The reason for this may well be that most of the major nations providing contributions of money to the Clinton Foundation have laws making sex between two people of the same sex a crime punished by death.  Most also routinely deny women equal rights.

The Clinton Foundation claims that it is a charitable foundation and says on its website that it spends 87.2% of its money on program services.  But you are in serious error if you assume that this means that needy people are receiving 87.2% of the Foundation's contributions.  Almost all of that money is actually used to promote such causes as the catastrophic man-made global warming fraud and the provision of sub-standard AIDS medications made in India and the jetting around the world of Bill Clinton, Chelsea, and their colleagues as they build their world-wide crime syndicate with close alliances with scam artists and dictators around the world.  Now it appears that the Foundation even paid for Chelsea's wedding and a lavish income for her and her husband, the son of a convicted criminal.

Let us take note of Hillary's bad policy positions:

• A national $15 minimum wage, still higher in high cost of living areas, which she wrongly claims will help grow the economy, but which will increase unemployment and force many businesses out of business
• Support for union card check and the outlawing of Right-to-Work laws in the states, forcing many Americans into unions, dues payments, and making contributions to the Democrats many oppose
• Kill off more coal industry and supporting industry jobs
• Decrease or end fracking which provides us with relatively inexpensive and reliable energy
• A 12-week family and medical leave mandate to be paid by increased taxes
• Higher tax penalties to force more people to use the ObamaCare they hate
• She has said behind closed doors that she wants open immigration
• She wants the government to decide whether equal pay for equal work is the case in companies, but not for her staff.
• Free college education, with taxpayers to pay for young people uninterested in learning, but very interested in four years of play
• Increased business taxes, which will increase the cost of goods and services, decrease business investment, and decrease employee compensation
• Supports the idea that carbon dioxide is a pollutant and the false claims of catastrophic man-made global warming
• Spend more money on Medicaid and induce the states to do so also
• Maintain the government monopoly on education, preventing school choice and anchoring the teachers unions as the prime beneficiary of government-controlled education
• More limitations on the right to bear arms
• Campaign limits on freedom of speech for individuals and companies, but not labor unions or other Democratic Party support organizations
• Have taxpayers provide matching money for first-time home down-payments
• Give preferred status to women and chosen minorities for capital access in starting businesses, thereby making it harder for men not in the preferred minorities to obtain capital
• Force taxpayers to pay for more free Internet
• Block efforts to privatize the VA and its medical services
• Expand national service at taxpayer expense
• Prevent options to save for retirement that by-pass Social Security impoverishment in retirement
• Maintain policy to force Christians and others to violate their conscience

Well, Donald Trump is not a gentleman.  He can be childish and indelicate.  He has paid politicians to favor his business.  But, he is not the head of a major crime syndicate and he has not massively shuttled national security information into a drop to be picked up by any old foreign government.  He did not fail to act in Benghazi to save American lives and he did not lie about why those lives were lost.  He may well prove to be a failed President, but with Hillary's political track record and her massively wrongheaded policies, she will certainly be a failure.  Known failures should not be put in office.  If Trump fails, he should be put out of office in four years.  He does have a some good policies, such as

• Supports the fossil fuel industries
• Repeal of ObamaCare
• Reduction of business taxes, making it much easier to U.S. companies to hire and build facilities and plants again in the U.S. and to bring home $2 trillion of money now kept abroad
• Allow private schools to compete with the generally poor government schools
• Bring order to immigration laws
• Oppose the catastrophic man-made global warming scam, saving tens of billions of taxpayer money and ending distortions to the economic markets through crony mercantilism
• Favors term limits on members of Congress
• Freeze government employee hiring
• Reduction of regulations with active effort to retire many
• Allow energy infrastructure building to provide less expensive, safer, and more reliable energy
• Cancel many of Obama's unconstitutional executive orders
• Allow veterans to see private doctors rather than travel long distances to VA Hospitals and provide them timely service
• Seriously investigate fraud in the VA
• Overhaul the IRS with its attacks on freedom-favoring tax exempt organizations
• Reduction of personal income taxes
• Repeal the death tax
• Supports the right to bear arms

I do not like Trump and since he will not win in Maryland, I may not vote for him.  But, he is clearly the lesser of two evils and it is not even close.  Trump is not a principled defender of individual rights, but neither is he a fully committed collectivist as Hillary Clinton is.  He probably has some respect for productive people operating in the private sector, which Hillary clearly does not.  He may prove a rascal as so many politicians do, but it may also take him time to become so corrupted and to learn the usual political paths to scamming the People.  If he disappoints us, as Hillary surely will, we should be happy to throw him out in 2020.

Hillary says "We are Stronger Together."   What she means is "I am stronger when you jump to it and do what I tell you to."  I for one do not want this not very intelligent, power-hungry person telling me what values I must choose and micromanaging my life.  She is incredibly presumptuous and would be even if she knew me, which she most certainly does not.

I am appalled by the number of Americans supporting her authoritarianism.  I note that this includes the majority of American women, who clearly do not wish to protect the rights of the individual against the force of government.  The use of force should be minimized in our society, not made rampant and placed in the hands of a corrupt, unknowing, uncaring harridan.

Big Government and Race Relations

I made the following comment in a response to an article that talked about race relations under the Obama administration:

Good race relations are based on mutual respect and ultimately, respect has to be earned.  It is not earned by those long dependent on government or by those who use the force of government to take what they want from others.  A consequence of this is that Big Government, which does make some dependent and does take values by force from many, is itself a major force creating disrespect.  Having done so, that disrespect tends to become racial disrespect if there are differences by race in the likelihood of being dependent or in that of being robbed or forced to contribute services by government.

There are many, many reasons for opposing Big Government.  The most fundamental one is that Big Government is necessarily a violator of our sovereign individual rights.  As such, Big Government shows its disrespect for every individual.  That heavy disrespect is propagated throughout a society governed by such a Big Government.  This makes it very unlikely that the people of that society will not often treat others with disrespect.  This is terribly corrosive to the good-will and the sense of benevolence with which we should be able to treat our fellow man in a free society.  The subsequent loss of good-will and respect degrades the quality of life in how we trade with others and how we live with others as neighbors.  And for the reasons I outlined in my quote above, it is very corrosive of racial relations.

It is no surprise then that racial relations have not been well-served by Obama's unrelenting commitment to Big Government.  The cancerous growth of long term unemployment benefit, food stamp, Social Security disability, Medicaid, subsidized ObamaCare, and many other programs for dependents upon the government, has created many more dependent persons, who have lost the respect of many more productive and self-reliant individuals.  The cost of these programs has placed increased burdens on those productive people and at least some of them have naturally become angry at those dependents who receive the benefits of their hard work.  It is very hard for productive people to respect unproductive people when those unproductive people show so little respect for productive people by using government as their agent to take what they want by the use of force.

ObamaCare's False Boast: It has significantly lowered the number of uninsured

It has become common to see supporters of ObamaCare, artfully and deceitfully called the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, claim that it has decreased the numbers of the uninsured from the 17.4% of Americans in 2010 when it was signed into law to the present 13.4%.

Of course the main factor affecting the percentage with health insurance is affordability.  It happens that in 2012 real dollars, 2010 was the minimum in household income for the upper limit of the lowest, the next lowest, and the middle quintiles of household income due to the Great Socialist Recession.  Even the fourth and next to the highest quintile upper limit was almost as low in that year in its worst year of 2009.  So of course one of the ways households hard-pressed due to the loss of income due to the Great Socialist Recession got by was by dropping their health insurance, especially assuming everyone in the household was in good health.

It makes more sense to compare the percentage of uninsured under ObamaCare now to the number before the Great Socialist Recession had its great depressing effect on household income.  In 2008, only 14.4% of Americans were uninsured for medical care.  That year was the maximum income year for all four lowest quintiles before the Great Socialist Recession depressed earnings, with the exception of the second quintile whose upper limit income maximized in 2007, but at a figure only $100 greater than that of 2008.  So, the great success of ObamaCare is really a 1.0% drop in the percentage of uninsured, not the 3.0% claimed by some of its advocates.

The proponents of ObamaCare want us to assume that all of that 1% is due to poor Americans obtaining insurance coverage either through Medicaid or as a result of federal government subsidy for their medical insurance coverage.  The fact that studies have shown no health advantage in being covered by Medicaid is unacknowledged by ObamaCare supporters.  The fact that more than half of the government subsidies are based on an IRS ruling that clearly violates the ObamaCare law and has been judged such by the DC Federal Court of Appeals is also ignored.

Another factor is ignored as well.  Many American households are wealthy enough to have been self-insured.  Few people understand how many are so wealthy and few people recognize that their decision to be self-insured was often a rational one, especially if members of the household were of generally good health.  Since good health is a useful attribute in achieving high incomes and in accumulating wealth, it is likely that the wealthier Americans are also commonly the healthier Americans.  Yet, the tax penalties of ObamaCare will have forced many such wealthy households to stop being self-insured, which is registered as uninsured.  Many such households had to purchase ObamaCare mandated medical insurance.  The movement of these wealthy households to being insured, is a part of the mere 1% decrease in the number of Americans uninsured.

So, how many American households might reasonably have been uninsured before the onset of ObamaCare?  In 2012, the top 5% of household income earnings exceeded $191,156 a year.  With such an income, one can easily afford the doctor's bills a relatively healthy family might incur.  But there is more.  In 2012, the total net household wealth was $80.66 trillion.  This is an average of about $659,000 per household.  Of course the median household wealth was much lower at about $120,000, actually a 2011 figure.

I do not have the wealth distribution figures for 2012, but those for 2007 are available.  Assuming about the same percentages of wealth in the wealthiest 1% and then the next wealthiest 4%, the average wealth for these groups of households in 2012 is:

Wealthiest 1%, $22,790,000 per household.

Next Wealthiest 4%, $4,495,000 per household.

So, any of these wealthiest 5% of households might well have chosen to be uninsured prior to ObamaCare.  Now, they are most likely better off being insured.  So it is clear that there is great potential for all of the 1% decrease in the uninsured since 2008 being people from the wealthiest and highest income households.

This may not be case, but until there is a complete and validated breakdown of the health care insured by income and wealth, we should not assume that the 1% decrease in the uninsured is the result of poor and maybe middle income people rushing into ObamaCare.  In addition, with the assurance of health insurance under ObamaCare for those with severe health problems, some wealthy and high income people are undoubtedly also saving money by putting unhealthy family members under ObamaCare's lower age-pooled rates.

Given the very small decrease of 1% in the uninsured since 2008 and the claims that large numbers of people have been signed up on Medicaid, it is clear that many of the people who had insurance in 2008 do not have it now.  This suggests strongly that a larger fraction of the middle income groups do not have health insurance now than did in 2008.  This is an expected effect of the large increase in the cost of insurance premiums brought on by ObamaCare for those who qualify for little or no subsidy.  It is also an expected result given the decrease in full-time employment since then due to this never-ending Great Socialist Recession.

Medicaid and ObamaCare are Racist

The Progressive Elitists have told us over and over that those of us who believe one should have to have photo identification to vote are racist.  Of course there are many actions for which a photo ID is required, such as setting up a bank account.  That is not just a bank policy, but it is actually required by law.  One is sometimes also required to show a photo ID to enter a courthouse or many a federal facility.  All apparently racist policies.

Why is it racist to require a photo ID?  Well because the poor are more likely to be of certain racial or ethnic groups and the poor are less likely to own a car or have other easy transportation.  They are also less likely to have a stable address.  Yet, ObamaCare either requires you have a computer, or go to a few sparse and undependable centers for registering, or to undergo an exchange of mailings which tends to depend upon a stable address.  It clearly discriminates against the poor by the criteria of the left.

Now many of the poor will qualify for Medicaid in those 26 states that chose to expand Medicaid under the PPACA or ObamaCare law.  How do they apply for that Medicaid once they find out they qualify for it?

• Go to your Social Security, health department, or social services office.
• Produce a birth certificate or a passport
• Produce your Social Security card
• Produce a utility bill with your address on it
• Provide a recent paycheck or a tax return
• Provide a photo ID

Now, having enrolled in Medicaid, call and travel all over tarnation trying to find a doctor who will actually treat any medical condition for the severe underpayment amount provided them by Medicaid.  Clearly, the Medicaid program does not consider those on it to be worthy of an adequate payment for their medical care and has no concern for their travel time or problems, long waits for care, or even if they can actually find care at all.

As is usual for Progressive Elitist programs for the poor, it is all a pretense and there is no actual concern for the poor.  Yet, the existence of the programs is supposed to fool everyone into believing that they care, while those of us who point out the absurdity of the programs are claimed to be uncaring and racists by criteria the Progressive Elitist laws themselves require.

• Birth certificate or passport
• A power or light bill showing your address
• Something that shows your Social Security number
• A recent paycheck or tax return

Let's see; did I forget anything? Oh, that's right… A PHOTO ID!

Read more at http://freedomoutpost.com/2013/12/obama-racist-promoting-obamacare/#ep0PgVDhw432vRDE.99

24 States Expand Medicaid Under ObamaCare

The CBO predicts that 9 million more people will go on Medicaid in the next year.  Most of this increase will be in the 26 states that expanded Medicaid under ObamaCare.  These states are shown in gold in the map below:

The states not expanding Medicaid coverage under ObamaCare have the number of additional people they would cover with coverage to 133% of the poverty level shown on them.  This represents a huge future savings for these states after 2022 for their state budgets when the federal government stops paying 90% of the bill for the added state dependents.  Those living in the states in gold had best have piles of gold to pay the tax bills after 2022 for all of the people on Medicaid.

The CBO is predicting that ObamaCare expansion of Medicaid will add 9 million people on Medicaid by the end of 2014 and 13 million by the end of 2020.  These additions and the future large increases in state budget costs will occur in the states in the above map in gold.  Of course, Progressive Elitists will complain that the added 5 million people who might have been added in the blue-gray states have been sadly neglected in this redistribution of wealth.  In fact, they like to complain that even more of those in poverty live in many of these blue-gray states.  See the map below from one of their websites:

So the states not expanding Medicaid have an average 9.1% of their populations qualifying as below 133% of the poverty level, while the national average is 8.0% of the population.  But one thing that is overlooked is that there is one single poverty level for the 48 contiguous states and higher levels for Alaska and Hawaii.  So, this map of those below 133% of the poverty level has to be compared to one for the cost of living.  Clearly, some people at 133% of the poverty level are much better off in low cost of living areas than are others at that level in high cost of living areas.  The cost of living map:

Now we see that the states that refused to raise their Medicaid dependency levels to 133% of the poverty level are mostly states with most of their population below or at the national average in the cost of living.  Most of the states that raised the Medicaid eligibility level to 133% have most of their populations living in high or average cost of living areas.  Of the 24 states not raising the Medicaid eligibility level to 133%, Wyoming, Montana, Florida, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and Maine are the only ones mostly at the average or higher in cost of living.

There is a reason that Republican-dominated states tend to have lower than average costs of living.  The governments in those states mostly extract less from the private sector to use in unproductive ways in the government-sector.  Their present choice not to increase the eligibility for Medicaid in their states is a move to continue having a lower cost of living.  That means that people in those states above 133% of the poverty level will continue to be better off than will people in the expensive government states that mostly raised their Medicaid eligibility levels under ObamaCare.

After 2022, when those mostly above average cost of living states have to pick up the cost of the 13 million people added to Medicaid, their cost of living will shoot up even higher.  Their taxes will increase further and some of them will go bankrupt.  More and more people will migrate out of those states and move to the states that did not raise their Medicaid eligibility levels.  There will be a further easily seen lesson on the perils of redistribution and socialism.  Socialist transformation and change will have seriously damaged the middle class who will have to pay the bills in the mostly Democrat states that made this bad choice to expand Medicaid.

Americans On Medical Care Subsidies Under ObamaCare

It is important to know how many Americans will be receiving government subsidies for medical care once ObamaCare takes effect in a few months.  I was looking at a article by Robert Romano, the Senior Editor of Americans for Limited Government.  His article is Why Obamacare always was a public option.  Unfortunately, I found upon examining this article more closely, that his numbers do not add up.  The outcome is worse than his totals imply.  [See Robert Romano's comment below.  He has set me straight on the errors I will correct in brackets below.]

Unemployed and Given Up on Finding Employment = 22 million
Pregnant Women, Disabled, and Nursing Home People on Medicaid now = 27 million
Children on Medicaid now = 31 million
Medicare Enrolled = 49 million
Workers making $45,960 or less, new under ObamaCare = 113 million [counts those adults already enrolled on Medicaid and Would-be Workers who are Unemployed]

Total Number of Medical-Expense Subsidized Americans =  242 million [- 22 - 27 million = 193 million, as Robert Romano wrote]

To be sure, there may be some people in more than one of these categories.  A few people who are unemployed may already be on Medicaid.  People in nursing homes may be enrolled in Medicare.  The total is probably a bit lower than 242 [193] million then.  However, some of the unemployed not on Medicaid have children and they will be in families receiving subsidies and therefor benefiting.  The U.S. population now is 316 million.

242/316 = 0.766 [193/316 = 0.611],

so it appears that [three-fifths] of Americans will be getting subsidized medical care!

How is the remaining two-fifths of Americans supposed to sustain this burden?  Should we not expect that many of them will be drawn under as the costs are put on their backs more and more?  This burden will actually increase the number of poor in America and hence those eligible for subsidies.

While getting subsidized medical care, many college graduates over 26 years old with jobs will soon not only be paying their unforgivable student loans, but will also be paying a fortune for health insurance at costs to provide for the very sick and older people or fined a minimum of $695 a year for not having expensive government-approved health insurance.  Those without jobs will also be fined $675 a year for not having insurance, which means almost all of such unemployed people will have to apply for the government subsidies.  Your life will be hard, but if you voted for Obama, it will be a just consequence.  Life is commonly hard on the irrational.  The exception is the irrational members of Congress who voted for ObamaCare or who have failed to defund it and who are being allowed to escape its draconian provisions in a most unlawful manner.

Obama Wants Bigger Government on Top of This?

From his State of the Union address, it could not be more clear that Obama wants a much bigger government with much more spending and much more control over our lives.  He wants to impose this further growth upon the already unbelievable increases in government spending since 2002 as shown in this great graphic from the current issue of the magazine of the National Federation of Independent Businesses:

Of course there is no limit to the extraction of money, time, and other resources from the private sector for the use of the government sector in this fool's mind.  All of these programs have grown much faster than real, per capita income has in that time.  This has been especially true during the four years Obama has occupied the White House.  This is a huge problem he simply does not recognize, which means he is either incredibly dumb or incredibly evil.

Government Gone Wild on the National Debt and Liabilities

Daniel J. Mitchell of the Cato Institute just drew my attention to this excellent video created by Government Gone Wild.  Earlier videos from Government Gone Wild that I have seen have been excellent also, which is an assessment with which Daniel Mitchell agrees.

Krauthammer - Obama's next act

Charles Krauthammer, in his column piece called Obama's Next Act, claims that almost everyone is underestimating Obama.  He says Obama has accomplished a huge part of his ideological goals.  He has

• "Irrevocably changed one-sixth of the economy" with ObamaCare and put the country inexorably on the road to national health care in a manner to bring about one of the most massive redistributions of wealth in U.S. history.
• The financial "reform", creating 243 new regulations, will provide government control of banks, "storefront check cashiers, city governments, small manufacturers, home buyers and credit bureaus," among many other economic activities.
• The Stimulus Bill was the largest spending bill ever and helped to lock in a requirement for further tax increases.
• The nationalization of student loans [gives the federal government control of who goes to college and which college they will go to --- in time.]
• The Medicare and Medicaid entitlements dominate future government budgets.  ObamaCare freezes out future reductions in programs, so there is no possibility for deficit reduction except to increase taxes massively, probably with "a European-style value-added tax.

Krauthammer says "the next burst of ideological energy -- massive regulation of the energy economy, federalizing higher education and 'comprehensive' immigration reform (i.e., amnesty) -- will require a second mandate, meaning reelection in 2012."  Krauthammer seems almost to expect Obama's reelection.

I am not as pessimistic as Krauthammer is, but he is right that Obama has accomplished a plunge deep into socialism.  The extraction process will be fraught with difficulties and dangers.  We are on the verge of losing the very concept of America as the Land of the Free, the Home of the Brave and replacing that transitionally with America, the Land of the Moocher, the Home of the Irresponsible, before it becomes permanently, America, the Land of the Slave, the Impoverished without homes.  To prevent this, we must overturn each and every socialist accomplishment of Obama listed above.  There is no other route to the salvation of the equal, sovereign rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  We must come to control the House, the Senate with a super-majority, and the presidency by the 2012 election.  The consequence of not doing so is death.  Or slavery, if you think there is a difference.

Obama Chooses NHS Admirer to Head Medicare

Obama has chosen Dr. Donald Berwick to be the new head of the Center for Medicare/Medicaid Services.  Berwick gave the talk shown in the video below in 2008 in the United Kingdom and bowed in praise to the altruists' shrine of the British National Health Service (NHS).  He loves the political system of rationing health care and redistributing the costs from those not poor and not unhealthy to the poor and the unhealthy.  He claimed that health care decisions made in the free market are made in the dark, while those made in the bowels of a gigantic government are made democratically in the public light.  That huge government makes democratic decisions in the light of day is certainly laughable in the light of understanding how ObamaCare came to be.  The backroom deals with big companies to gain their support or at least to prevent their opposition, the backroom deals to enlist the aid and enthusiasm of labor unions, the backroom deals to get the votes of certain reluctant Senators, the willful trampling of the well-expressed opposition of the People, and the order to pass the bill so we would find out what was in it, all make a lie of the Berwick idea that the political process is democratic and performed in open daylight.

On the other hand, health care decisions made in a free market are made where they matter in the light of day.  First, the government does meddle extensively with the free market in medicine, with many limitations on health insurance due to state mandates and many government limitations on competition between hospitals and among doctors, such as severe limits on their numbers.  The government has also stacked the cards in favor of having employers choose the health care insurance options for their employees, thereby reducing the employee's choice in the matter.  Still, the employee does evaluate his own compensation package in choosing employers and the employer will sometimes offer multiple choices.  The market, if it were free, would offer more choices.  But, even after all this, the decision that really counts is one made by the individual, who can decide which compensation plan best meets his individual needs.  In the Berwick and Obama system, bureaucrats will make many more of these decisions than they now make.  Dr. Berwick thinks this is great.  Listen to him:

Government Appreciation for a Great Family Physician

This is not a post about abstract effects of government controls on our medical profession.  This is a small note on my offense that the best family doctor I have ever met has recently been given a raw deal by the federal government.

This family doctor has been practicing family medicine for a good 30 years.  He loves being a doctor and relieving his patients of pain.  His fees are very reasonable and he takes a strong personal interest in his patients.  He takes the time to talk over how they feel and he is careful to check up on the medicines given to many of his patients by specialists, who often do not check for conflicts with other medicines the patient may be taking.  His patients respect and care for him in return.  He and my father and mother became friends over the many years they were and are his patients.  This doctor saved my father's life many times and helped guide him and my mother through the last four years of my father's life when my Dad was on dialysis due to his kidneys failing after another doctor damaged them with radiation in prostate cancer treatment.  The average 80 plus year old patient lives about 1.5 years on dialysis, but with this doctor's help, my Mom's help, and my Dad's indomitable soul, Dad lived on dialysis from 85 to 89 years of age.  My Dad died at home Christmas morning in 2007.  His doctor visited him at home on Christmas Eve to say goodbye.

In his entire career, this great man and family doctor was sued only once.  Despite that, his malpractice insurance went up by 25% from last year to this year.  He treats many Medicare patients.  Very recently, he sent in a Medicare reimbursement request for my Mom and he soon after received a letter telling him that he was being fined $3,000 by Medicare because he had allowed his Medicare registration to expire.  It turns out that a doctor taking Medicare patients not only has to put up with low payments and much paperwork, but he also has to pay $2500 every five years to register with Medicare.  Medicare had never notified him that his Medicare registration was expiring and he forgot, as a very busy man with much more important things on his mind might do, after 5 years.

Not only was he fined $3,000, but he has to reapply for his registration with Medicare and pay for that.  That may take months.  Meanwhile, none of his Medicare patients will be reimbursed by Medicare for their medical costs.  So the good doctor sent a letter to all of his patients telling them about the problem and telling them he would give them all a 25% discount until his Medicare registration is complete.  His waiting room is still overflowing with patients.  They all love him and are hardly willing to go to a run-of-the-mill doctor in order to be reimbursed.  But, the loss of income due to his discount and in the face of the 25% increase in malpractice insurance is making it hard for him to continue his practice.  Nonetheless, he told my Mom he would continue as long as she was alive, so she would never have to worry that he would not be her doctor.

Being a doctor who treats Medicare and Medicaid patients is very much as though you or I had to deal with the IRS on a daily basis.  Can you imagine the daily trauma?  Their payments for medical care are too low and they are miserable to deal with.  They turn a profession dedicated to healing pain and extending life into a drudge.  And now, ObamaCare will extend this misery for doctors.  No one seems to fully understand the role of the IRS in ObamaCare, but I sure hope that it is not such that our heroic and good doctors have to deal more often with them as well as Medicare, Medicaid, and the well over 100 other federal agencies and panels which are to play roles in ObamaCare.  Can anyone imagine the horror of having to deal with that many uncaring, mean-hearted, money-grasping, you-wait-forever, they-want-it-yesterday government agencies?

The day after my Mom dies, I hope this good and heroic man retires and says he has had enough.  No one like him should serve a day of slavery to the likes of these government bureaucrats.  Doctors have the same sovereign individual rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that the rest of us have.  Remember, these inalienable rights are equally sovereign to us all.  There is no exclusion of doctors.

Medicare and Social Security Liabilities Prior to ObamaCare

Let us review the status of the Medicare and Social Security liability situation in 2009 according to the Social Security and Medicare Trustee Reports.  Their combined unfunded liabilities are $107 trillion!  To this, we are now going to add the liabilities of ObamaCare.  It is also important to note that the Congressional Budget Office was not allowed to calculate the cost of ObamaCare borne directly by the public, which it had done for ClintonCare.  For ClintonCare, 60% of the added cost was to be borne by the private sector, while only 40% was borne by the government, which of course taxes the private sector for that amount.  This is at least likely to be roughly true for ObamaCare.  So, the real price of ObamaCare will really be about 2.5 times the price admitted by the CBO numbers.  In the end, all of these costs will be borne by the private sector, even as the private sector staggers under the crushing load of previous commitments to Medicare and Social Security.

Pamela Villarreal, a senior policy analyst of the National Center for Policy Analysis, prepared an excellent and brief summary of the Medicare and Social Security future burdens in 2009.  Medicare and Medicaid spending has grown at an average rate of 2.5% faster than GDP since 1970.  So, they are taking more and more of our productive output year after year after year.  This retards GDP growth considerably.  Now, ObamaCare has just added greatly to the cost of Medicaid by putting at least 15,000,000 more people on that program.  But, we will ignore that sudden spurt in growth and just assume these programs will "plod" along with a growth rate in excess of GDP by 2.5%.  The consequences:

• Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid would have consumed almost half of the federal budget by 2050, just as today's recent college graduates are nearing retirement.  Remember that much of the cost of Medicaid is passed on to the states, which are already staggering on the brink of bankruptcy in many cases under its burden.
• By 2082, Medicare alone will devour almost the entire federal budget.  Of course this is of no concern to most people now, since they will be dead by then.  But, today's children will be living in those dire times, unless the medical system is so deteriorated by then that life expectancy has shortened to that of the old Soviet Union or of Russia.

Let us consider the popular fiction that tax rates can be increased and people do not change their behavior.  Politicians who support tax increases like to make such projections to calculate the increase in tax revenues.  Of course, tax increases actually usually mean lower tax revenues over time, given the high rates we already start at now.  So, what tax rates are now needed to maintain all of the programs of 2009 in the federal budget at their current levels of spending under a balanced budget under the fiction that everyone will work as hard as now?

• The lowest marginal income tax rate of 10% goes to 26%.
• The 25% rate goes to 66%.
• The highest rate of 35% in 2009, which Obama now wants raised, goes to 92%.
• The corporate tax rate of 35% goes to 92%.

It would seem there soon will not be any wealthy people to shift the tax burden to for long. Imagine the entire middle class paying 66% of income to taxes!  There surely will not be a middle class for long either at these tax rates.  This was our future before ObamaCare made matters worse!

Let us look at an article from the Washington Post last year by Amy Goldstein on the financial problems of these programs.  She notes that the financial status of both Medicare and Social Security deteriorated at an accelerated rate in 2009.  This would largely be due to the recession and the shrinking payroll tax take that resulted as people lost jobs, went to shorter hours, and took pay cuts.  Of the two, Medicare is in the worse shape.  By 2017, Medicare will not be able to pay all of its hospital bills, which is two years earlier than was projected in the 2008 Trustee Report.  Social Security will be unable to pay retirees full benefits by 2037, which is 4 years earlier than was projected in the 2008 report.  That, I caution you, assumes the government honors the IOUs it has given the Social Security program for previous taxes it used for the general budget.  The situation has further deteriorated since the 2009 report was issued on 12 May 2009.  The part of the Social Security program for disabled Americans will run out of funds in 2020.  That report, however, predicted that the Social Security tax fund will begin to spend more money in 2016 than it takes in through the Social Security payroll tax each year.  As I recently noted, the recession has caused this milestone to be reached this year!

At that time, before the problems continued to become worse as this government-caused recession has dragged on and on, the Social Security problem, provided you consider the IOUs to be good and without problems, could be solved by increasing the payroll tax from 12.4% to 14.4% or by reducing benefits by 13%.  I believe increasing the tax rate will only lead to a compounded reduction of growth in the economy and is a bad idea.  The proper thing to do is to raise the retirement age enough to greatly reduce the costs.  People have been living longer and they are certainly more healthy at age 65 or age 70 than they used to be.  They can work longer.  Since they would then be working longer, they can continue to pay for their own health care costs longer also.  This is clearly the right and moral way to solve the financial crises of these programs.  Of course, I would also encourage programs to allow people to save and invest more, such as a huge reduction in government spending for many purposes, so people will have more take-home pay to save and invest.

Increasing taxes is not the answer.  We must become more hard-nosed and cut the many unconstitutional government programs so people can do a much better job of managing their own lives.  Going on as we are is not a realistic option.  It is the option chosen by the Obama administration, however.  Well, not really, since the Obama administration thought it would be better to make the situation much worse yet and has given us ObamaCare as one of many ways to make it worse.  The young Americans who still like Obama and his socialist programs need to consider very carefully whether they really want the future implied here of incredibly burdensome taxes.  It is time for you young people to focus on trying to live rewarding personal lives in the real world.  But, if you want to continue with your fervor for socialist programs, you need to do a few things:

• Work incredibly hard for the collectivist good and earn a lot of money to be taxed at very high rates.  Never stop working.  It is your duty to the collective good.
• Get used to spending little money, because you will have little left after taxes.  Save all of that money for your old age.  No luxuries, no big homes, no fancy cars, clothes from the thrift shop, and squeeze every penny ten times before spending it.  No, don't spend it.  You cannot afford to.
• Have lots and lots of children to support you in your old age after Medicare and Social Security have gone broke or to keep them hobbling along.  Remember, they are Ponzi schemes and they require lots of young workers to support the older geezers, which you will one day be.  You hope.  If ObamaCare and Medicare do not kill you before what we now think of as our time.  Remember those death panels, they are a-coming, unless retirement and Medicare ages are greatly increased.  As I keep reminding you, Supply and Demand will not be denied.  It is the Grim Reaper of Life.
• Teach your children that they are slaves to your future need as an old geezer.  You must indoctrinate them really, really thoroughly to work like demons and to want nothing from life, but to support you in your old age.

Darn, I missed John Stossel's program again on Fox Business News.  He was going to talk about how the needs of the old require the young to give them their all.  I missed his 8:00 PM show and the re-run at 11:00 PM.  I hope you did not miss his show.

I later realized that an important clarification was needed on the solution of the Social Security funding shortfall with a mere 2% increase in the payroll tax and added the above color-coded caveat on 27 March.

Representative Paul Ryan's Comments on ObamaCare Costs

Representative Paul Ryan is a Libertarian-oriented Republican Congressman of the 1st Congressional District of Wisconsin, which is bordered by Illinois, Lake Michigan, the southern suburbs of Milwaukee, and reaches out to Janesville in the west.  Racine and Kenosha are in his district.  Paul Ryan has read Ayn Rand's works and thinks highly of them.  I have heard him speak a number of times at events which the Atlas Society or the Competitive Enterprise Institute were participating in or sponsoring and he has always been a rational voice.  On 25 February, he spoke up at the Health Care Summit called for by Obama to discuss budgetary issues.  While I believe the primary, and completely sufficient, reason to oppose ObamaCare is the personal mandate and the idea that government has the power to decide what is and what is not acceptable health insurance and health care, the budgetary issues are also important.

Congressman Ryan said:

• Medicare has a $38 trillion unfunded liability already, but half a trillion dollars is to be taken from it, so 20% of present Medicare providers will either go out of business or stop serving people on Medicare.
• The cost of Medicaid is growing at a 21% annual rate and is about to bankrupt a number of states.
• The Majority Leader of the Senate claims the Senate bill will reduce the deficit by $131 billion over the next 10 years, which is nonsense.
• The bill collects half a trillion dollars of new taxes for 10 years and cuts Medicare for 10 years, in order to provide revenues for 6 years of ObamaCare spending.
• The first 10 years of ObamaCare will cost $2.3 trillion.
• The Senate bill takes $52 billion from Social Security, which has huge unfunded liabilities already.
• It takes $72 billion from the long-term care insurance program called the CLASS Act.
• The real 10-year cost of ObamaCare will cause a $460 billion deficit, despite the four-year delay in the program and counting taxes in that 4-year period.
• The second 10-year cost of the program is $1.4 trillion.
• For the last 7 years, Congress has not made the kind of 21% doctors payment cuts that are supposed to be part of the savings from Medicare according to the Senate bill.  The savings which will not occur from this cut is $371 billion.
• Far from reducing Medicare's costs as claimed by Obama, the chief actuary at Medicare says medical costs are going up $222 billion.

The Obama camp response to being in deep, deep debt and running deep, deep deficits, is to close your eyes and plow ahead with huge new spending plans.  After all, tomorrow we will all be dead.

Our Unsustainable Federal Spending

Democrats love to talk about sustainable energy policy, sustainable agriculture, sustainable environmental policies, sustainable cities, and sustainable housing.  But, they never give a fig about sustainable government, sustainable public sector spending, sustainable health care, and sustainable deficits.  Indeed, they almost seem to court governmental catastrophes as just an excuse for more government and a still bigger catastrophe.

Richard W. Rahn wrote an article in the Washington Times on 22 September about the growing problem of sustainability in the federal government.  He notes that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has estimated the additional federal debt grew by $4 trillion for the 2010-19 period in the last 8 months.  In the same 8 months, the amount of taxpayer debt grew from $5.9 to $7.5 trillion.

The taxpayers now own or insure about 80% of the $14.6 trillion of home mortgages outstanding debt in the United States.  This was not enough for the Democrat Congress, so it passed a bill outlawing bank student loans and requiring that all student loans be from the federal government.  Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other entitlement programs are growing faster than the economy.  They will take more than 100% of federal tax revenues this year.  All other federal spending, including defense and interest payments on our debt, will be funded by government borrowing.

There is no way to tax ourselves out of this dilemma, especially not by only taxing the rich.  The only thing that can happen is that the entitlement programs will have to be cut back.  The growing Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security entitlements will have to be cut.  In other words, rationed retirement and health care are coming.

Planned increased taxes and anti-trade policies such as the tariff on Chinese tires and the failure of Congress to approve the trade treaties with South Korea, Colombia, and Panama will make it harder to grow the economy to produce more tax revenues for the federal government.  The Chinese, who have bought a large part of our debt, are looking to diversify their investments.  We are driving other debt buyers away also, so we will have to offer higher interest rates to attract more bond and debt buyers.  This will make business investment less attractive, further retarding growth of the economy.

Rahn concludes:

What is particularly frightening is that neither political party has offered a serious plan to defuse the debt bomb. The Democrats are just piling up more debt as if there were no limit, and the Republicans, to date, are only proposing measures to reduce the increase, rather than reverse it. When the debt bomb explodes — within the next one to three years — expect to see record high real interest rates and/or inflation, coupled with a collapse of many "entitlements." It will be like the neutron bomb, the buildings will be left standing, but the people will not.

So much for the Democrat commitment to sustainability.

The Immoral Federal Health Insurance Bills

The Democrat Congress is in the midst of working on numerous bills for the federal government takeover of the health insurance business. The details of the bill that will finally become law are not known, but some broad aspects of it are quite likely. What is likely?

• He who controls the health insurance money, controls the health care industry.
• The federal government will exercise considerable control over what health insurance plans will have to offer in coverage.
• The federal government control over insurance plan requirements will grow with time.
• Young and healthy people will be forced into health insurance plans with older and less healthy people.
• Young and healthy people will be forced to subsidize the old and unhealthy.
• The number of people assigned to the Medicaid program will increase greatly.
• The amount of taxpayer money used to pay for Medicaid will increase greatly.
• Eventually, the states will be required to fund more of the increased Medicaid costs.
• Medicaid costs and the costs of the insurance premiums people will be forced to pay will increase greatly.
• Medicaid costs are already way beyond the expected costs of years ago.
• All the savings of such plans now touted by politicians will prove minuscule compared to the cost increases.
• The cost increases will greatly exceed all government predictions.
• The cost increases will exert great pressure on the government to ration health care services greatly for Medicare, Medicaid, and for the "private insurance plans" with government requirements and control ala fascism.
  
• Government bureaucrats will indeed decide what drugs and what operations are cost-effective, from their viewpoint.
  
• The old will be seen by the government as too old to justify the costs of many medical procedures they now benefit from to extend their lives and improve their comfort.
• Waiting times to see doctors and for procedures will increase greatly.
• The free market with all of its factors of supply and demand would have provided much better health care for most people.
• The new federal health care system is a further unconstitutional expansion of federal government powers.
• The new federal health care system will be even more immoral than the present mixed health care system.
• Government control of the health care system will allow them to grant special favors of limited market entry to drug companies, health insurance companies, doctors and others whose services are not usually covered by private health insurance plans, and large HMOs.
• Campaign contributions from the health care industry, which in the last election greatly favored the Democrats, will skyrocket as special interests vie for protection and advantage.
• Entry into the health care industry of small businesses and new businesses will become much harder.
• Some large health care businesses will find life less competitive and will relax.\
• The vast majority of small businesses will, contrary to promises now, be hit with penalty taxes if they do not offer health insurance plans compatible with government requirements.
• The fraction of the health insurance premium costs that businesses will have to pay will be increased with time.