Based on his wildly successful campaign alone, one would have to concede that President Obama and his progressive cohorts are skilled political tacticians. It may be less obvious that they are also world-class political strategists.
Take the recently passed Obamacare bill as an example. On many occasions, the President and the Democrat leadership have clearly stated that their primary goal is nationalized health care (also called “single-payer system”, and “socialized medicine”). In fact, nationalized health care was often described as the core provision in the proposed health care reform bills – progressives like Congressman Dennis Kucinich threatened to vote against the bill unless it contained nationalized health care. But, nationalized health care ran into stone walls in Congress, so the progressives dropped the provision, ostensibly because any version of Obamacare was better than none – a seemingly wise tactical move.
The bill that finally passed is more than 2,700 pages long, incredibly complex, and contains many controversial provisions, but it does not contain nationalized health care ... or does it? Doesn’t it seem strange that people as committed and successful as Obama/Pelosi/Reid gave up on their primary goal? In fact, they did no such thing. What they really did was employ a brilliant strategy to slip nationalized health care in under the radar. Here’s how they did it.
We begin with the health care bill’s seemingly innocuous and just provision that insurance companies can no longer deny coverage to anyone because of pre-existing conditions. Who wouldn’t be in favor of that? Even many Republicans support this notion. (Never mind that it flies in the face of all business logic - imagine calling an insurance company to buy coverage for your wrecked car or your house that just burned down.)
The second provision to consider is that everyone will be required to have health insurance – universal participation. Those who refuse to buy health insurance will be fined. Requiring Americans to buy something is of course highly controversial and even unconstitutional in the eyes of many. The Obama camp cleverly responded to these arguments by explaining that universal participation would mean more customers for insurance companies and therefore lower premiums for everyone. They emphasized that approximately half of the currently uninsured people in this country choose not to buy health insurance because they are healthy; and, since Obamacare will require these healthy folks to buy health insurance, the insurance companies will gain more than 10 million new, healthy, and therefore profitable, customers. Seems like a win-win, except of course for the 10 – 15 million reluctant participants who will be forced to buy insurance they don’t want.
Enter the third, and last provision we must consider: to soften the blow for these reluctant participants, the fines for refusing to participate are relatively low. Individuals who refuse to participate will pay an annual fine of $695 or less, and families who refuse will pay a maximum of $2,085. Compare these amounts to conservative estimates of the average annual cost of health insurance: around $4,000 for an individual and $10,000 for a family. The health insurance costs 5 times more than the fines. Obviously, most of the healthy uninsured folks won’t be new insurance company customers after all – financially, they’ll be way better off to pay the fines.
Now, recall the Obamacare provision that insurance companies cannot deny coverage because of pre-existing conditions. This means you can choose to pay the fines at absolutely no risk, because you can always buy the health insurance after you get sick or injured. Holy smoke and mirrors! What if all the other healthy individuals and families – those that are currently insured - choose to do the same thing?
Well, let’s see. Health insurance companies stay in business because the insurance premiums paid by healthy customers exceed the claims made by sick or injured customers. But, under Obamacare, it is financially prudent for healthy people to pay the fines and avoid buying health insurance until after they are sick or injured. So, the only remaining insurance company customers will be the sick or injured. Without the premiums from healthy people to offset the cost of claims, the insurance companies will go broke.
And what will happen then? Why, our benevolent progressive government will bail out the insurance companies and take them over. Presto chango: we have nationalized health care/single-payer/socialized medicine. Wow! Wasn’t that the core goal of President Obama and his progressive friends in the first place – the goal that they ostensibly tactically abandoned?
Now that’s what I call a great strategy. The progressives’ first tactic was to abandon the most controversial provision: nationalized health care. Then by proposing a huge, hopelessly complicated, multi-thousand page plan filled with many controversial provisions, the progressives diverted attention and focused the national debate on many other obviously controversial issues – another really clever tactic that was critical to the success of the overall strategy. Even if the President and the progressives lost a few of the battles over some of these controversial issues, the strategy moved forward because all they really needed was coverage of pre-existing conditions and relatively low fines for not having health insurance coverage. Any other provisions that remained in the bill were pure gravy, because these two provisions alone will inevitably lead to nationalized health care.
Here’s the bottom line. Unless we somehow manage to repeal Obamacare, America will soon have nationalized health care/single-payer system/socialized medicine, and the government will have taken over (nationalized) one of America’s largest industries. We’ve been had by the biggest con in American history.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Joe, never to be one who wanted to do work twice I am cutting a pasting a note I sent to another friend who is convinced we have become socialists. He also makes his living as a Fundementalist preacher of sorts.
I can not say that the healthcare reform passed is nearly perfect. I doubt it is. I do however think our country needed to address it and I believe it would have been better had the right engaged successfully.
My response to my other friend follows but with the exception of the religion part is close to how I would respond to your well constructed blog.
Cal
Looking forward to catching up with you at the reunion. I am reading your rants daily. You've got yourself pretty deep into the angry mob. Personally I don't see our country heading to socialism as Fox news would have you believe. I also think health care needed to be addressed and it would have been a better bill had the conservative right joined in and offered a little support in turn for tort reform etc.
We've had universal care for years, but the problem was we provide it in the most expensive way possible, in emergency rooms to the un-insured.
Both my wife and I are cancer survivors. We are deeply effected by "pre-existing conditions" and found that we could not become capitalist entrepeuners and find any insurance plan to take us when we owned an hotel in St Croix. So I work in a bank doing an under-employed career so I don't lose my coverage. Me and a few million others who have had no mobility in jobs since becoming ill. That stiffles capitalism.
As a capitalist banker I see another negative effect of the current system. I see countless people who are otherwise hard working Americans (without heathcare) want to get their life going but through circumstances beyond their control have had some medical issue/accident/injury that ran up pretty large medical bills. They have no way of ever paying off those bills and the hospital has very little expectation of ever seeing the money. The result is the individual has a very poor credit score and can not even get a $3000 loan to buy a beater of a car so they can get to a job. Forget that person ever buying a home. Another negative for capitalism under the current system.
We've seen a growing separation of society since the 1970's the rich get richer and the working poor fall further and further behind. that seems to be true in every aspect of our society. I see that as negative. I have been fortunate to be one of the "rich" I suppose but it doesn't give me pleasure to see the separation occur.
I am not for free rides for lazy people but I am for helping the unfortunate and providing opportunity for all. A society that will help the less fortunate seems to be consistent with Christian principles. I am quite sure Jesus Christ was a compassionate man who preached that we should share and give to the poor. I suspect he was a democrat.
I would have perferred to see a bi-partisan approach to healthcare and in fact all issues facing the country. I long for us to return to the days of Everitt Dirkson/Abe Ribicoff/Tip O'Neill and John Warner. Principled people who, for the good of the country could come together to get things done.
Whats going on with XeBecks Asylum these days? I miss you Dougie but me thinks you have ventured a bit too far right for a musician at heart.
Yo Amigo!
Your predicted outcome certainly is a possibility.
Another is that insured people will not opt to be fined and will continue to buy insurance as always (most Americans participate voluntarily in most aspects of our civilized society). Some portion of those who don't want insurance will take the fine (probably the young and healthly who think they are invincible anyway) and most of them will not be a drain on medical system anyway. Maybe the cost of insurance will go down, or stay the same or not. Regardless, the Bill is a start at solving the broader healthcare issues. It should have had tort reform and allowed interstate sale of insurance to broaden competition. Maybe those changes will be added to the program down the line.
One thing is for sure..doing nothing was not an option!
"doing nothing was not an option" is a total cop-out.
A person in a miserable marriage shouldn't kill his spouse because "well, it wasn't the perfect solution; but doing nothing was not an option".
This is absurd. Washington is corrupt. The right won't do what is right and come to the table. The left has an agenda that Joe has very eloquently pointed out. Meanwhile, the vast majority of us in the middle are completely screwed. This country is a mess and having the most liberal regime imaginable in power is not going to solve anything.
I love this country which is why it pains me so to see what is happening here. I don't trust any of the politicians at this point. They all pander to their base and accomplish nothing.
Back to the original thought...we already have a system in place for the less fortunate. The elderly are entitled to Medicare (WHETHER THEY NEED IT OR NOT!!!), and the poor are entitled to Medicaid. Some changes in law to change who is entitled to these entitlements (notice the word ENTITLED so many times?) would have been a great option that could have provided coverage to more people, particularly those who WANT it, while still satisfying the left's need to raise our taxes.
Do we really need to throw the baby out with the bathwater? Or could we have started on a smaller scale working to get more people covered? There is no question in my mind what their agenda is. I have believed since the last campaign that we are headed way to the left and that they would love nothing more than the government controlling all of the major aspects of our lives...finances, done!... healthcare, done!... stay tuned for what's next! Well stated Joe!
Post a Comment