Trickle Up Poverty (20 page)

Which begs the question: how many seniors will be affected?

According to U.S. Representative Paul Ryan (R), millions of senior citizens will be impacted by Obama’s cuts. “As a practical result of this legislation,” says Ryan, “an estimated six million current Medicare Advantage beneficiaries no longer would be able to afford their current plans or would lose access altogether.”50 Six million? Let’s put that figure into perspective. That’s the equivalent of terminating the health benefits for every senior sixty-five or older living in the states of Florida and New York combined!51

I thought nobody was talking about reducing Medicare benefits.

What’s more, did you know your government intentionally worked to silence such information from becoming public? That’s right. Obama’s promise of conducting his administration as “the most open and transparent in history” just stuffed a rag in the mouths of his critics.52 According to Representative Ryan, a gag order was put into place to prevent insurance companies from warning their customers about the serious nature of the cuts should ObamaCare be passed. Representative Ryan said:

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, recently placed a gag order on Medicare Advantage providers to prevent them from sharing information with their enrollees about pending changes to their plans. Disregarding private health care plans’ right to inform their enrollees about consequential legislation, CMS has launched an investigation against Humana for mailing a factually verified warning about proposed cuts.53

Do you see how these gangster thugs in the Obama administration work?

First, they silenced the opposition and violate their free speech rights.

Then, when Humana had the nerve to inform its clients about the downside of ObamaCare, a pack of ravenous government hounds was immediately dispatched to make Humana’s life hell on earth. Representative Ryan rightly concludes, “The administration’s actions open an array of troubling questions about both the appropriateness and legality of such political intimidation.”54 If, however, you think that the Attorney General will look into this violation of free speech, guess again.

Which brings us to Dr. Donald Berwick, Obama’s radical choice nominated to run Medicare and Medicaid. If confirmed, Berwick would bring his far leftist ideas to these government programs—which is especially bad news for the elderly. I’m not the only one who sees problems with this pick. The New York Post describes Obama’s choice as “A fervent ideologue” who “puts social engineering ahead of the individual patient’s needs” because in his Triple Aim plan, Berwick “laments that US health care is ‘designed to focus on the acute needs of individual patients’ He argues for a different focus, social justice.” What’s more, Obama’s nominee has praised the British National Health Service (which is a disaster of the highest order) for its “central planning, frugality, wealth redistribution and rationing.”55

The last thing America needs is a doctor like this in the house.

Too Damn Bad

Not only will ObamaCare create widespread trickle up poverty within the middle class, it is designed—yes, designed—to take away your freedom of choice. Not one or two freedoms, but dozens of them. The Doctor of Truth is in and I’ll break down several of them for you this way. Let’s say you’re a young person, you’re healthy, you jog, eat right, take vitamins, drink plenty of water, and don’t feel the need or want to pay for health insurance at your stage in life.

Too damn bad.

Section 5000A of ObamaCare requires you to maintain minimum essential coverage or pay a $750 fine or 2 percent of your income—whichever is greater.

Here’s one for the single guys. Let’s say you have no plans to get married any time soon. Let’s say you’re 28, 48, or 88, and have no projected need for pediatric services. So you’re in the market to buy a health coverage plan without an option to insure children in order to enjoy lower premiums.

Too damn bad.

Let’s say you’re a woman and you’re medically incapable of having children. Furthermore, you have no plans to pursue adoption so you want a lower-cost policy without maternity or newborn care.

Too damn bad.

Section 1302 forces you to cover it anyway.

What if you prefer to go to a physician-owned hospital because they feel more personal, especially in the doctor-patient decision making process—rather than the larger, more bureaucratic, corporate-owned hospitals?

Too damn bad.

While the current limited supply of physician-owned facilities will be allowed to exist, new physician-owned projects will not be able to receive reimbursement for Medicare and Medicaid patients under Section 6001. Without those payments, it will be difficult for a hospital to be financially viable. In short, ObamaCare bans the development of new physician-owned hospitals while throwing roadblocks in the way of expanding old ones.56

Prior to ObamaCare, one of the “perks” of employment was an employer-sponsored “gold plated” insurance plan, which represent about the top 20 percent of health plans enjoyed by millions of Americans. In the past, employees were not taxed on that benefit. If you were happy with that arrangement and you would like to keep it that way, guess again.

It’s too damn bad.

Section 4980I now imposes a 40 percent excise tax on “gold plated” plans—whether your employer pays for the coverage, or whether you, as a self-employed person, pay for it out of pocket. Obama is saying it’s a sin to provide a generous healthcare plan for your family. Is it any wonder why the Dems in Massachusetts lost their seat in the Senate? We know the election of Scott Brown was as if a tsunami hit the White House. But the reasons why Brown won aren’t necessarily obvious on the surface. It takes insight to break it down. Here’s what was really going on.

The people of Massachusetts already have the sort of socialized medicine championed by Obama. They got stuck with it from Mitt Romney. At the time Romney’s administration proposed it, it sounded like a good idea. The people voted for it—and now they’ve watched their premiums soar through the roof while service decreased. As FORTUNE magazine has documented, Massachusetts now faces a number of undesirable side effects after launching Romney’s health care reform program. Topping the list is the ever-increasing price tag. According to this report:

When Massachusetts launched its reform program in 2006, it already had the highest medical costs in the nation. Today, the burden is still rising far faster than wages or inflation, from those already lofty levels … Costs are rising relentlessly both for families and for the state government.57

What accounts for the spike in costs and premiums in The Bay State?

Two primary reasons: the adoption of “guaranteed issue” (a law requiring insurance companies to offer coverage regardless of the medical condition of the applicant) and “community rating” (the practice of charging everyone a comparable premiums regardless of the actual cost associated with their risk factors). These factors create a perfect storm for rising costs, as the FORTUNE report points out:

The result is that prices rise steeply for young, healthy customers, who must pay far more than their actual costs. It also give them a strong incentive to drop insurance; then they can “game the system” by signing up any time they need surgery or get diabetes.58

Even though “guaranteed issue” and “community rating” are driving the costs of health care through the roof, both are features of ObamaCare.

Another reason the people of Massachusetts are sick over their new health care plan is because “low-to-medium earning families often suffer financially if they get a raise, work overtime, move to a higher paying job—or if a spouse rejoins the workforce.” Why do they “suffer financially” if they earn more money? For starters, a family making less than $33,000 can get health coverage through Commonwealth Care for free. But, let’s say they’re a growing family and have more financial needs. If they work harder or longer hours and bring home $46,000, the state requires them to pay approximately $2,400 in health care premiums. As this report points out, “That’s an effective tax rate of 18.5% on that $13,000 raise. A pay increase of $44,000 to $46,000 is mostly erased by higher premiums alone.”59

The “free” care actually encourages workers to earn less, not more.

Once again, ObamaCare offers a similar disincentive to work harder and prosper due to higher health care taxes. FORTUNE points out the scenario in which “a $55,000 earner contributes $4,400 a year towards insurance. At $65,000, the bill is $6300; so the family is paying a ‘tax’ of $1,900 or 19% on that $10,000 raise. After payroll taxes, those Americans would face a marginal rate of around 35%, a number that’s heretofore been the territory strictly for high-earners.”60

Did I mention that illegal aliens also receive free health care in Romney’s state? This, of course, is what happens when the government imposes socialized medicine. So the people, angered by this reality, voted their first Republican Senator into office in fifty years. What happened in Massachusetts with high premiums and inferior coverage is about to happen in all fifty states.

There’s more bad news buried within the bill. For you parents whose kids have finally left the house and who thought you would no longer have to underwrite their expenses, guess again. President Obama has redefined when childhood ends (previously considered to end at age 18 or 19 depending on the state) and gives parents the “option” to pay for health care coverage of “dependent children” through age 26 (Section 2714).

While the law calls this an optional feature, it doesn’t specify what will happen if you refuse to pay for your twenty-six-year-old slacker who insists that you cover him even though, by any reasonable definition, he is old enough to provide for a family of his own. No doubt the IRS Healthstapo will come knocking.

If you recall, one of the much-touted accomplishments of ObamaCare was to be the end of the “pre-existing conditions” clause for children. If that’s what you think happened, guess what? It isn’t in there. The Associated Press reports, “Under the new law, insurance companies still would be able to refuse new coverage to children because of a pre-existing medical problem, said Karen Lightfoot, spokeswoman for the House Energy and Commerce Committee, one of the main congressional panels that wrote the bill Obama signed into law.”61

There’s plenty of bad news for business owners, too.

In the past, large employers (those with at least 101 employees on the payroll) had a choice of how to compensate and provide for their workers. On one hand, they could elect to offer health coverage as an incentive to attract employees. Or, they might decide against that because their business model wouldn’t sustain such a costly outlay. It’s their business, their choice, right?

Wrong.

Employers with as few as fifty employees must provide healthcare coverage or pay a fine per employee. According to House Minority Leader, John Boehner, “The new law imposes a tax of $2,000 per employee on employers with more than 50 employees that do not provide health insurance. These new taxes on employers are sure to be passed on to workers in the form of lower wages or reduced hours, and will undermine job creation as well.”62

If you believed the president when he pledged not to raise taxes on the middle class—”not one dime”—for those making less than $200,000 if single, and $250,000 if married, your faith was misplaced and it’s too damn bad. Dave Camp, Ranking Member of the Committee on Ways & Means Republicans, cites a dozen ways Obama has raised your taxes indirectly or directly, several of which I’ve touched on:

A “Cadillac tax” on high-cost plans

An individual mandate tax on Americans who do not purchase government-approved health

An increase in the 7.5 percent AGI floor for medical expense deductions to 10 percent

Limits on Flexible Spending Accounts in cafeteria plans

Increased penalties for nonqualified HSA distributions

Other restrictions on Health Savings Accounts, Health Reimbursement Accounts, and Flexible Spending Accounts

A tax on tanning services

An employer mandate tax

A sales tax on medical devices

A tax on health insurance premiums

A tax on prescription drugs

A tax on insured and self-insured health plans63

There’s yet another downside to this boondoggle of a bill. David Hog-berg of Investor’s Business Daily says ObamaCare will result in “physicians leaving the field in droves, making it harder to afford and find medical care.” Why such a dire prediction? Here are two of Hogberg’s compelling reasons:

• If you are a physician owner and you want to expand your hospital? Well, you can’t (Section 6001 (i)(1)(B)). Unless, it is located in a county where, over the last five years, population growth has been 150% of what it has been in the state (Section 6501 (i)(3)(E)). And then you cannot increase your capacity by more than 200% (Section

6001 (i)(3)(C)).

• If you are a physician and you don’t want the government looking over your shoulder? Tough. The Secretary of Health and Human Services is authorized to use your claims data to issue you reports that measure the resources you use, provide information on the quality of care you provide, and compare the resources you use to those used by other physicians. Of course, this will all be just for informational purposes. It’s not like the government will ever use it to intervene in your practice and patients’ care. Of course not. (Section 3003(i)).64

What’s more, analysts warn that there are simply not enough doctors and nurses to treat the tens of millions of newly insured patients. The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) reports, “at current graduation and training rates, the nation could face a shortage of as many as 150,000 doctors in the next 15 years.”65 This translates into limited access, longer waits, and inferior service as doctors are stretched thin to handle the influx of new patients. How long will this bleak picture last? The AAMC’s chief advocacy officer, Atul Grover, predicts “It will probably take 10 years to even make a dent into the number of doctors that we need out there.”66