Or Will We?

"Without the individual mandate in the (ObamaCare) law people would not need to secure insurance while they were healthy but rather could wait until they were sick enough to need it under the 'guaranteed issue' clauses of the law.  The 'community rating' clauses of the law would ensure such sick people would pay no more than perfectly healthy people who chose to buy insurance for their own reasons while they were healthy.  You can see that insurance companies would quickly go out of business setting up & really accelerating exacting what BO has wanted all along – single payer universal healthcare.

 

"America could be on this accelerated path to socialism this summer if the majority of the nine Supreme Court Justices rule (vote) as indicated above.  Nine people who the great majority of Americans could not name or identify if their lives depended on it – which in this case it just might."  last two paragraphs of RTE posting of 3/29/12 following Supreme Court oral arguments on ObamaCare

 

"The best part of the letter (from Boehner et al., to BO) is that the Republicans ask for a response by July 16 so we won't have to wait long to see what happens, if anything." – Last sentence of the July 15 posting re the letter that asked many pointed questions including why BO unilaterally delayed the enforcement of the employer mandate (that requires employers with 50 or more employees to offer government approved healthcare insurance to workers or pay a $2,000 per full-time employee fine) for a year but left the mandate for individuals in place.

 

click on graph to enlarge

 

Since I was not aware of BO's response to the above mentioned letter I called Boehner's office to find out what the response was.  Boehner only had an answering machine hooked up in his office – I left a message & so far there has been no call back.  Called Cantor & the aide had no idea if any response was received but did call me back & said that no response to the letter had been received.

 

So after BO ignored the letter's requested deadline to respond - the next day the House decided to pass two bills – the first one delaying the employer mandate for a year which is exactly what BO is doing with or without the House bill & the second one also delaying the individual mandate for a year which will go nowhere legislatively – but it did put House Democrats on record.

 

In this regard thirty five Democrats voted to delay the employer mandate & twenty two Democrats voted to delay the individual mandate.

 

This seems anticlimactic & another symbolic gesture since the Republican controlled House has already voted to completely repeal the entire ObamaCare bill three times & to defund or dismantle it thirty-nine times – & of course other than a few provisions like the tax reporting requirements for small businesses & the long term care part of the original bill this has gone nowhere. 

 

But the big danger here is that by voting to delay the individual mandate clause while keeping the guaranteed issue clause of ObamaCare in place means that sick people with pre-existing conditions can get healthcare insurance while healthy people continue to skate.  If this were to happen the healthcare insurance business would be doomed.  Republicans have to do more than read these bills – they also have to understand the consequences of their votes.

 

Only one Republican, Morgan Griffith, (VA, 9th district) voted against both bills.  I called Griffith's office & an aide did not know why Griffith voted against these bills.  I asked the aide to find out why & call me back – I'm still waiting.  I did find out through the internet that Griffith is for healthcare reform but also feels "in essence, ObamaCare is like an abscessed tooth – delaying fixing the problem is not going to make it better; it only makes it worse."  There is an Atlas Shrugged sense to this logic that I share on ObamaCare & for that matter on the entire state of our republic – the quicker it falls to the trough the sooner we will recover, if ever.

 

There is a group of senators led by Mike Lee of Utah that is for withholding funding of ObamaCare by not funding it through the next Continuing Resolution that will come up in September.  Ringside Reid & BO will never cooperate with this approach & any shut down of the government will work in BO's favor so this approach is dangerous for those of us who would like to see ObamaCare repealed.

 

No one knows politically what is the right way to proceed to control ObamaCare but the Atlas Shrugged approach takes on more credibility every day – the next Congress & President can repeal ObamaCare after an apathetic citizenry pays the price for not being involved.  Of course the rest of us do too.

 

Just look @ the above graph that clearly shows what is happening to the unsustainable cost growth of Medicare & Medicaid.

 

In the case of Medicare – seniors love it & why not since they are only paying 25% of its costs.  I cringe when I hear someone say they paid into Medicare all of their lives & are entitled to it.

 

Today's retiring baby boomers are the only people who have paid into Medicare their entire working lives.  Medicare Part A is primarily paid for by the 2.9% payroll tax plus co-pays & deductibles paid for by the recipient while Medicare Part B is primarily paid for from funds taken out of the general tax revenues from the U.S. Treasury plus monthly premiums & shared co-pays & deductibles paid for by the recipients.  The portion of Medicare Part B paid by seniors amounts to only 25% of the program's cost.  Medicare Part D is under a similar arrangement as Part B & is 75% funded by the U.S. Treasury meaning that the drug plan constitutes a public subsidy of 75% of the cost of the program.

 

So what's not for seniors to like – except that these programs are not financially sustainable?  How unkind is it for our elected reps to let this continue until total collapse of the programs?  It is the elderly & people over 55 who are dependent on these programs who will be hurt the most when the programs collapse.  Just what will these people do then?

 

Now ObamaCare is following a similar road to ruin to the single payer universal healthcare model.

 

The minute ObamaCare was passed into law it started to implement the two principles that the free market healthcare insurance business cannot tolerate – guaranteed issue & community rating as described above in the 3/29/12 posting quote.  Centering ObamaCare on these two principles ensures the demise of the healthcare insurance business – all per BO's design. 

 

Currently BO wants to delay the employer mandate past the 2014 mid-term elections so that employers will not have the incentive to reduce employee's hours to part time status (below 30 hours per week) or start laying off workers with the employees dropped from coverage going on the exchanges thereby raising the government's cost of ObamaCare.

 

By not wanting to delay the individual mandate to buy healthcare insurance BO may very well be counting on people taking full advantage of the subsidies (that can apply to four times the poverty level for each family size – about $46,000 per year for a single person) that cannot be verified by employers because the healthcare exchanges will not be electronically up & running any time soon.  This is a risky position & BO may very well be counting on his likeability factor to work its magic again if problems develop.

 

All of the above, & more if you think about it, show the ever-present danger to our republic.  BO is spoon feeding the destruction while waiting for takeover of the House in 2014.  He has all of this as measured as he did his reelection.  He knows what he wants & he is winning a planned collectivist government with single payer universal healthcare insurance where medical treatment can be denied by death panel boards.  Remember there is a difference between having healthcare insurance & getting healthcare.

 

But its summertime & the kids are out of school & people are going on vacation hoping to relax & get away from all of this so they can enjoy themselves.  We'll have plenty of time to return in the fall to tackle this baby head on.  Or will we?