The Good and Bad of Democrat Healthcare Reform
If you haven’t heard, the House approved the Senate healthcare bill last night and boy are liberals giddy! No article sums this up as well as this morning’s article by the New York Daily News titled History in the making: Healthcare bill cements President Obama’s legacy, which says that this moment will be frozen in time the same way that Pearl Harbor, the Kennedy assassination, and 9/11 were in previous generations.
Seriously?
While it should be obvious why conservatives oppose this bill, one should wonder why liberals are clamoring so much for it. The simple answer is that only truly passionate Democrat apologists are coming out in support of the bill given the absence of a public option and the denial of any mention of single-payer in the early debates. There is also the later development of our “pro-choice” president promising an executive order to ban federal funding of abortion. Let’s also not forget about the tax on “Cadillac” health plans that are held generally by those involved with Big Labor (though those conveniently won’t come into effect until 2018).
I will grant, as do many Republican lawmakers, that there are things in the bill that are not only popular but good reform. Specifically:
# Insurance companies will be prohibited from placing lifetime caps – limits on the amount of money that can eventually be paid out – on their policies. They’ll face new restrictions on setting annual caps, as well.
# Insurance companies also will be prohibited from pulling your coverage, except in case of fraud or intentional misrepresentation.
# Children won’t be excluded from coverage due to pre-existing health conditions. Plus, children will be able to stay on their parents’ policy until age 26.
#Illegal immigrants won’t be covered (that this was ever up for consideration should blow anyone’s mind)
Still, it’s unclear to me why or how any of these things could cost $940 billion. The simple answer is that they don’t: they were just bundled with a variety of other things that do cost absurd amounts of money including all of the back room deals for lawmakers that vowed to vote for the bill.
There is also that whole issue of, well, the Constitution. Not that anyone knows anything about it or really cares about it anymore, but individual mandates to buy health insurance stand in pretty stark violation of the Commerce Clause or at the very least the mandates rely on unconventional, overreaching interpretation of the Commerce Clause. Despite this, I’m doubting that the federal courts have any intention of striking this down but it is a ray of hope as we look forward to the lawsuits that will be filed by various Attorney Generals across the country.
Perhaps most troubling about the bill is the 3.8% Medicare tax on investment income (interest, dividends, capital gains, annuities, rents). This tax is effectively a tax on investment and economic growth – something that should strike anyone as ironic given all the rhetoric about getting the economy back on track.
One thing is for sure: the bill conforms to the Obama Administration’s agenda of throwing piles of money at something and calling it change. I can’t wait to hear where the next trillion imaginary dollars are going to go.