If you missed part 1 of this review of thoughts on the Obamacare Crisis, you can click here. For part 2, click here, part 3 here, part 4 here, and part 5 here. For those that have already read through, please continue on below. As
stated in part one, these thoughts were from about 5 years ago,
and were originally published in a different place.
When we don't learn from history...
March 22, 2010 at 11:21pm
Let's
just pretend for a moment that I earn $1 million per year. Let's
further pretend that because I have some hefty spending habits, that my
yearly outlays are $1.2 million. This would put me at a -$200,000 per
year, which is a considerable amount of money. Fortunately for me,
because of who I am, my credit is good, so it's not really a problem for
me. Still, I'd really rather be putting money away for the future (mind you, not for anything important, just so I can develop more extravagant spending habits at a future date without piling up too much more debt.) I look at the situation in a very serious matter, note that my income is not going to increase for at least the next 10 years, and come up with a plan: I simply am not going to pay any bills for 4 out of the next 10 years. Not one red cent will leave my pocket. So at the end of that 10 year period of time, instead of looking at a $2 million deficit, I am showing a profit of $2.8 million. To say the least, I am rather pleased with myself (never mind those pesky bill collectors, I'll simply ignore their phone calls and shred any mailings I receive.)
Having put together that little nest egg, I formulate a new plan for the next 10 year period: I'm going to pay my bills all the time, every year (based on the same numbers from paragraph 1.) I'm going to do so with one proviso, however: I'm only going to pay 70 cents on every dollar I spend (the bill collectors will be thrilled just to get a steady influx of cash, after the previous decade's escapades, right?) So now my $1.2 million a year spending habit is only costing me $840,000 a year, which means I'm banking $160,000 a year, leaving me with another cool $1.6 million at the end of the 10 year cycle, which is less than I made in the first decade, but still, it's nothing to sneeze at. Overall I'm up $8.4 million over 20 years ($4 million in debt forgiveness I gave myself, plus $4.4 million in banked money.)
It's really a rather ludicrous plan, is it not? Yet, it is exactly that type of bizarre accounting that our federal government is using in order to make it seem like their health care takeover helps to lower our budget deficit. For the first decade the plan is in existence, they only pay out benefits for 6 of those years. In the second 10 years, they have draconian cuts planned for doctors and other medical professionals that not only are insane, but impossible to even hope that they may be realized, yet, they are included as 'savings' for purposes of making the bill look like money is being saved.
Another bizarre accounting trick that is planned is to offload 50% of the 32 million new persons who will receive 'quality' "health care" because of this bill on to the medicaid program. The very same program that is already essentially bankrupt (states cannot afford to pay their share as it is, and it is nearly impossible for anyone with medicaid to find a doctor that will take them on as a new patient.) is being asked to absorb an additional 16 million customers. Stealing Social Security money and legions of other scams are crammed in to the legislation that makes War & Peace look like a church tract (if you find anyone who claims to have read every word of the bill, they are a liar. There is no exception to this rule at all.) It's double speak to the infinite level.
Maybe health care needs reform of some sort, maybe it doesn't, I'm not here to judge that (today.) I also will not delve in to some more sinister and cynical thoughts such as what happens when you or your kids or your grand kids are deemed to be living unhealthy lifestyles. Read 1984, put it on warp speed, and that may just start to scratch the surface. If I was a parent, I'd be hugely concerned with this legislation that has 'passed'.
For today I'd just like to say that anyone who voted for this bill and claims that it will reduce our budget deficit is a LIAR. This legislation will do many things, nearly none of which are good for the citizenry, but make no mistake, one of them will not be to reduce our deficit. Then again, for a nation already saddled with $43 Trillion in debt, what's another 2 or 3 (or 20 or 30) Trillion more?
A couple of final notes before we close this for today: Massachusetts, the state in which I reside, was seen as the 'pilot' program for the type of nationalized health care bill that has made its way through the U.S. House. Before you simply dismiss my thoughts as those of a rambling, bumbling idiot, consider the following words from Treasurer Tim Cahill (former Democrat who turned Independent in order to challenge Governor Deval Patrick this year):
Well, we have what David Axelrod referred to as the pilot program. It started four years ago in Massachusetts — universal health care to mandate, to cover everyone in the state of Massachusetts. It wasn't going to cost us a whole lot of money, so they said and it was going to work.
We have a public exchange that was going to match up private insurance with people who couldn't get insurance, small businesses. It hasn't worked out the way they said it was going to work out. And it has increased cost in just in Massachusetts of about $4 billion over when this program was started in 2006.
And just today, the governor himself announced there's an extra $300 million hole in our health care line items. So, it is bankrupting the state and would have bankrupted our state if not for the federal government being overly generous with Medicaid reimbursements over these last four years. They've really propped the system up to keep it in place.
and also:
I haven't read all 2,000 pages, but there's exchanges which is not supposed to be a public option but is functioning as if it was a public option in Massachusetts, because most of our people who have been covered have been covered with heavy subsidiaries or free health care. It's really serving as a second Medicaid program, this public exchange.
So, we have regular Medicaid that's costing us over $10 billion a year. And then you have this connector that is matching people up and giving them coverage of which they're not paying anything for.
Much more from that interview here:
http://tinyurl.com/yhuhl4h
Or you might consider these words:
"There ain’t no rules around here — we’re trying to accomplish something. And therefore, when the deal goes down, all this talk about rules, we make ‘em up as we go along, and I’m here now 18 years...” -Alcee Hastings (D-FL)
or these:
Barney Frank (D-MA)- "There will be a public option, and it doesn't matter the size, because we will build on it going forward." (and they will, as they have with every public program since the beginning of time.)
There are very few chances to fix this mess before it becomes as ingrained as social security or any other ginormous, failing government program. Take all action that you can to help prevent this travesty.
