What’s Wrong with the Healthcare Bill After All?
Now after Scott Brown broke democratic supermajory in the Senate and the fate of the healthcare bill looks doomed I would like to address the issue of its would-be hit on the very nature of our life. With all efforts of the central press trying to convince us that the election outcome was not a “referendum on healthcare reform”, it definitely was. It was a referendum on the entire Obama’s agenda for that matters. As a voter I was a firsthand witness of the process. During the pre-election season with all its bombardment by text messages, e-mails, and phone talks I made an interesting phenomenon. Though people were sick of the socialist agenda many of them had a vague understanding of the actual negative implications the reform would create. Several people even asked me for specifics, preferably with related links. However obvious this information might be, I would like to present it in the form of a single compiled list.
Here are some of the most controversial provisions in the healthcare bill:
1. Mandatory purchase of insurance plan
You MUST purchase insurance plan, or face penalty of up to 2.5% of your income. Alternatively the penalty might be “fix-prise” between $750 and $2,250 a year, depending on income and family size. This proposition is often considered non-constitutional as it mandates a person to buy privately provided commercial product. See here.
2. You will have to buy insurance on the “insurance exchange” (something like stock exchange).
The new government bureaucracy, Health Choices Administration, with wide (vaguely defined) jurisdiction will be regulating the process. By virtue of the law the Choices Administration will not have to consult with patients or doctors and hospitals and will be making unilateral decisions about healthcare choices. Effectively this will lead to the increase of waiting times for appointments, tests and new procedures in ways that in many cases would be rationing of healthcare services. The main motivation for the Choices Administration to impose rationing will be achieving the target (promised by Obama) to make the healthcare reform “budget neutral”. See here.
3. Tax increase and “Cadillac” tax
Medicare payroll taxes to capital gains and other dividend incomes above $200,000 for individuals and $250,000 for families. Also you will be paying 40% tax on your healthcare plan (including part paid by employer!) if the plan is good enough. It is also worth mentioning that unions will get excise tax on health benefits (though typically they have the best plans) until 2018. This is another form of a political bribe as the unions’ support is critical for the democrats in Congress. See here.
4. Coverage for illegal immigrants
The bill does not specify a reliable verification system.
See here.
5. Cut the medicare budget by 500 billion
The doctors will be abandoning medicare in large numbers. See here.
6. Unachievable promise of budget neutrality of the reform.
This issue is wide with so many unknowns that any attempt to conduct a systematic analysis is not feasible. For starters, all above-mentioned issues, with all special excises (bribes) being treated and “negotiated” as the departures from the bill versions analyzed by CBO (Congressional Budget Office) make meaningless any speculations on how big the deficit increase the reform will create.