Penalty? Obamacare Encourages Un-Insurance

Obamacare turns out to be a big "whoop-de-doo" for the nation's larger/largest employers, who are threatened with fines for not providing insurance for their employees, while small businesses are lured into providing insurance through subsidies.

In a nutshell, Obamacare offers up penalties for companies with 50 or more employees but subsidies for those with fewer.

However, if you examine the penalties, these larger employers could reap a windfall in profits by dropping insurance and throwing their employees on the mercy of government subsidies and their own pocketbooks to buy their own insurance.

First, off penalties don't kick in until a) one employee qualifies for a government subsidy to buy insurance and b) you toss out the first 30 employees, who are "penalty-free." Thus, say a company has 130 employees, the employer drops his health plan, and thereafter one or more employees qualify for a government subsidy. The employer will now be on the hook for a $750 fine for 100 employees (total workforce minus the 30-person threshold). Divided by 12 months, this comes out to $6,250 a month ($750 times 100 divided by 12).

Compare that to what he previously paid on insurance. Let's say the average employer portion of the health insurance tab each month was $250 (which seems low). That works out to $32,500 a month (130 employees times $250). This employer is now saving $26,250 a month by dropping his health plan. Even if he splits this with his employers in the form of a raise, he's still left with a tidy profit of $13,250 a month for complying with Obamacare mandates. That's a nice $159,000 a year he didn't have before.

Obamacare, don't you love it?

Let's face it--the whole point of the carrot-stick approach of Obamacare is to throw the nation's health insurance business into chaos, so the Obamacrats can come back and say: "See. We need Medicare for all."

By the dawn of the next decade, we can thus post signs, "Welcome to the Banana Republic of America." And then we can stand in line for health care we'll never get--but the politicians and fat cats will.

Even If You're Not Unionized, You Are Now

As if the health care takeover by the Obamacrats weren't enough to bankrupt the nation, the Department of Labor (DOL)--under Obamaic tutelage--is now forcing all companies vying for a government contract to treat their employees as if they were unionized--or not get the contract.

Which means, most likely, that only union companies will get contracts henceforth.

The DOL already dictates hourly pay for those under government contract using the principle of the "prevailing wage" in the industry and area where the work is being done. Of course, this is just shorthand for paying union wages.

On top of this, new criteria will now be applied to contract-seeking companies in the areas of paid days off, health care and other benefits.

The prevailing wage ploy already costs the nation about $10 billion a year extra that it wouldn't have to pay were true competitive bidding allowed.

Things on the labor front will now only get worse, even as health care gets scarcer and scarcer once the government realizes it can't pay its share (which it already knows from running Medicare, but the latest ruse is meant to cover that up until at least the end of Obama's hoped-for ((we hope not)) second term).

Welcome to the Endless Recession.

Obamacare Won't Pay for Death by Hospital

NEWS ITEM: AHRQ says hospital deaths waste $20 billion a year!

REACTION: Obamacare removes payments for hospital stays that result in death, thereby saving $200 billion over ten years.

Fact or Fiction?

So far, just a glint in Zeke Emanuel's eyes, but it could be enacted by fiat (health czar, you know) once Obamacare is passed. NOTE: Obamacare already reduces payments for readmissions to hospitals within 30 days, so this isn't that big a stretch.

Baucus Bill Saves Money by Spending It--Right!

Only in the nation's capital could this equation work: You save money by spending more of it.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has come out with an estimate that the Max Baucus Senate Finance Committee health reform measure will cost taxpayers $829 billion over ten years. Okay, the CBO is probably off by a full measure, and the subsidies and other costs in the measure will probably come in closer to $2 trillion in a decade.

But that's not the real problem with this equation. This is: In 2019, the CBO says the Baucus bill will start saving $81 billion a year. From what and how? Even if that's true, it would still take more than a decade to pay back the original 10-year outlay with no interest or accommodation for inflation.

Only in D.C. could such voodoo arithmetic be acceptable. After all, they're not spending their own money. They're just printing it and asking others to foot the bill through Treasury bonds. Or inflation. Or economic devastation.

Can I print my own money and issue bonds? I could live like a king (or Congressman) too if all of us were allowed to play by the same rules as those in power.

Deja Vu All Over Again With Health Care Reform

Two admittedly left-leaning columnists, a married couple (he a pollster, she a lawyer), have produced a comparison of polling results then and now. "Then" refers to the Hillarycare hubbub in 1993-1994, and "now" refers to the Obamacare hubbub in 2009-?.

Results are a bit different than you would expect if you listen to or read what our left-leaning media have to say about health care reform.

Surprise, surprise, there was more public support then than now!

You can read through the nitty-gritty polling numbers in "A New Day or Groundhog Day," but let me focus on just one of the results to show you why Obama and the Democrats are going to stuff health care reform down our throats whether we like it or not.

A poll in 1993 when Hillarycare filled the air found 66 percent agreeing with the statement, "I would be willing to pay higher taxes so that everyone can have health insurance." Just 30 percent were opposed. A poll released March 1 of this year found just 49 percent agreeing and 45 percent disagreeing.

But wait--here's where it gets interesting. When those who agreed with the statement in 1993 were asked how much they'd be willing to spend a month so that everyone could have health insurance, just 25 percent said $50, 40 percent said $30, and 61 percent said just $10.

The same breakdown isn't available for 2009, but I bet you'd find few people willing to pay $50 more a month in this economy. I'm not even sure you could get a majority to commit to $10 (unless they thought that they would then get health care for free, an extraordinarily popular delusion in this day and age).

That in a nutshell is why the Dems are rushing to pass "reform" before anyone can sort through the details (which in any case won't be fully available until the thing is published as law). They know the nation can't afford it and taxes will be flying at everyone (and not just the rich) right and left to try to fund so-called reform (to say nothing of the long lines to see doctors, waiting lists to get hospital treatment, and medicines and procedures banned to save money).

Medicare is already on the fast track to go bankrupt in 10 years or less, and somehow our sleight-of-hand artists in D.C. are trying to get us to believe that spending more money actually saves money (in the long run, they add as a disingenuous qualification).

Welcome to life in our Brave New World, where deficits result in savings and less health care is better health care.

Health Care Reform: Denying Services to Cut Costs

I've been warning here all along about the Trojan Horse known as health care reform. In truth, there is no reform, just an expansion of the government option. Already, the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) has been reauthorized, replenished and renamed without the state part, so it's now just CHIP.

Dropping that "S" was actually highly significant because, under Obamacare, the feds are taking over, dude. Now, mind you, in some states a family can make up to $106,000 a year and yet qualify for subsidized health care for their children under CHIP.

Senator Jim DeMint, R.-S.C., points out that children growing up with "free" health insurance aren't going to want to have to fend for themselves when they grow up. So the logical thing to do, from a liberal's perspective, is just give everyone "free" health care.

'Cept it ain't free. It's rationed, and that's the word that should be substituted for "reform." What we're going through right now is more appropriately called "health care rationing."

Senator DeMint correctly points out in an opinion piece that $1 billion in the stimulus bill is going for comparative effectiveness research in the field of health care, a code phrase for figuring out how best to ration or eliminate expensive treatments and medicines.

The junior senator tells the chilling tale of a young woman who died at 23 because the rationers in Great Britain wouldn't authorize her to take an expensive test. Read about Claire Everett and her fate at the hands of Britain's cost cutters.

Health Care Reform: How Gurneys Become Beds

To be frank, I share neither the euphoria nor the enthusiasm that seem to surround the rush to "reform" health care. Of course, the optimistic aura surrounding Obama's push for reform is largely media induced, leaving us little hope that we'll see or read anything to detract from what's going on.

My position is that there is no reform of health care going on; there's just a push to get government more involved with an eye toward eventually creating "Medicare for all," for lack of an easier description. Once that happens, then the real, intended reform can take place--bureaucrats will dictate to doctors and hospitals what they can and can't do based on cost effectiveness. In other words, if it's expensive, don't expect to get it once Obamacare takes full effect--unless you want to take a medical vacation to India and pay for it yourself.

Consider this example from Great Britain, which I actually found in a real, live American newspaper (but appearing below and inferior to a more "positive," pro-reform article):

In Britain, for example, politicians were getting pressure from constituents because hospital emergency rooms were so crowded that patients were left on gurneys in hallways awaiting care, sometimes for days. Politicians told the hospitals this had to stop and that they had to admit patients faster.

The response of some hospital administrators: Take the wheels off the gurneys because they then fit the definition of a 'hospital bed.' The patients were no better off, but the statistics looked better to the politicians.

The article was written by someone named Grace-Marie Turner, whom the Atlanta Journal-Constitution quickly described as president and founder of the Galen Institute, which is funded in part by the pharmaceutical and medical industries (my emphasis).

At least the AJC let the article see the light of print before quickly disavowing and discrediting it.

So you see what I mean about how hard it is to find and read the truth.