The Heritage Foundation, in a brief published on July 21st, points out apparent conflicts between what President Obama has been saying about “his” healthcare reform plan since the campaign, and what the plan passed out of a House committee the previous week stipulates with regard to guaranteeing that citizens could keep existing health insurance coverage subsequent to passage of reform legislation if they chose to do so. R\Please, read their post for more on that, but be sure not to miss this. According to an economic analysis of the effects of the legislation currently pending in the house:
Yearly premiums for the typical American with private coverage could go up by as much as $460 per privately-insured person, as a result of increased cost-shifting stemming from a public plan modeled on Medicare.
What does that mean? Simply this. If you are not on Medicare today, then your current healthcare costs are artificially inflated because the federal government reimburses healthcare providers for care delivered to Medicare patients at below-market rates. The resulting deficits in revenue collected by providers are then recouped by increasing charges for care delivered to non-Medicare patients. This is what is meant by “cost-shifting” in the quote above. If you think your healthcare is too expensive right now, realize that the portion of the healthcare industry that is already controlled by the government (yes, Medicare) is, right now, a big part of the problem. Is a massive broadening of the application of Medicare’s guiding principles then able to solve the problem? Common sense shouts no. In fact, the above quote says that private insurance policies (those either purchased either directly by the family, or through an employer, from Blue Cross, Aetna, CIGNA, etc) after the “public option” went into effect would, on average, cost a family of four an additional $1,840 each year. (That’s about $153 per month.) That’s the payoff for the “increased efficiencies” the government would bring to the healthcare marketplace.
The full-court press being run by the Democrats and the Obama White House to rush this legislation through Congress, without time for even Congress’ own watchdogs in the Congressional Budget Office to analyze the implications of the legislation - and in much the same way that every major initiative of the Obama administration (Stimulus, Cap-and-Trade, etc) has been hurried through under the banner of responding to a crisis that is so urgent that taking time to carefully study proposals and refine the bills would only increase the desperate suffering of the American people - if successful, is sure to cost us both liberty and wealth. If you cannot choose your doctor, and choose what means and extremes of treatment will and will not be carried out for you and your family, then you do not have liberty. Don’t sit on the sidelines on this one, I beg you. Talk to your family. Talk to your friends. Talk to your co-workers. In the end, this is not about Obama, or Republicans, or Democrats. Nothing less than our liberty is at stake.
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