Healthcare is a big issue in the United States. The Obama Administration and Democrats in Congress believe now is the time for massive changes to healthcare. They claim that their “reform” will allow all Americans to be covered, while simultaneously lowering costs for everyone.   Similar to the Cap and Trade legislation recently passed, what the Administration claims and what will happen are different outcomes.

            The biggest argument for healthcare reform is the uninsured. The number reform advocates like to use is 46 million uninsured or a little over 15% of the population. The reformers never tell us who these people are or why they are uninsured. Doing so would damage their attempt at wholesale changes. According to the Census Bureau in 2007, 9.7 million or 21.0% are non-citizens. There are 18.3 million or 40% of the uninsured are young adults in the 18 – 34 age range. Many of these people don’t see the necessity of paying a health care premium when they are young and healthy. In 2005, the Kaiser Foundation found that 6 million of the 8 million uninsured children were eligible for existing Federal health insurance, but were not enrolled. 3.1 million parents of these children were also eligible for Federal programs, but were not enrolled. These groups compose over 70% of the uninsured. If you don’t believe that age or citizen status should be a determining factor in health insurance coverage, the Census Bureau breaks down the income range of the uninsured. 17.5 million (38%) have incomes of $50,000 or more, which shatters the advocates’ picture of everyone being poor, and thus unable to afford coverage.

            Another big argument is by reforming health care it will lower costs. The first question to ask is how does adding 46 million people to full healthcare access reduce costs? If lowering costs were so easy, it would have already happened. The false promise in reform is that the uninsured will have free healthcare (remember, they can’t afford it), while everyone else’s costs decrease. If this is true, why is the Administration saying it will cost $1 trillion for the first 10 years of this new program? This is a low estimate, just to pass the bill. It will easily cost $190 - $210 billion (using the average individual and family cost of coverage) of the first year alone to cover the uninsured. How does Congress pay for this? It’s going to cut Medicare and Medicaid payments, which are already below private insurance rates. This will cause more cost shifting to private plans. As an example, Medicare only pays 81% of private rates and Medicaid only pays 56% of a procedure’s costs! The result is physicians restrict the number of patients in either program (rationing), so they can stay in business. How this improves care is a mystery to me. The Medicare and Medicaid cuts only pay for half the Administration’s costs. The other half will be borne by higher income taxpayers. There will be surtax on adjusted gross income (AGI), which is the total a worker has made on the front side of his income tax form before deductions and exemptions. A 1% surtax starts at $250,000 for single people ($2500.00). It jumps to 1.5% at $500,000 ($7500) and 5.4% at $1 million ($54,000) and above. In New York, all levels (city, state, and federal) of income tax would add up to a 56.9% marginal rate!  Anyone who refuses to sign up for insurance will also be levied a fine of 2.5% of their income (no minimum income limit).

            Finally, the Administration has promised that anyone can keep their insurance. That’s a lie according to the bill being written in the House. Page 16 of the bill makes it illegal to enroll anyone in new private insurance once the bill becomes law. If you change jobs or lose your job, you also have to enroll in the government plan! That would be a quick way to kill the private insurance companies. Of course, that also means massive job losses!

            Once again the Administration and Democrats in Congress don’t believe the average American can purchase health insurance on their own. Instead, everyone will quickly be folded into a government plan that will cost more than today’s policies. Individual liberty and freedom will take another blow, in the name of “fairness”. It seems by trying to pass this terrible bill after passing the Cap and Trade bill, Democrats agree with Benito Mussolini, who said, “the more complicated the forms assumed by civilization, the more restricted the freedom of the individual must become.” Will average Americans let the Democrats get away with this?