Americans Rebelling but is Washington Listening?

By Jeb Bradley

Americans know the debate about health care is as profound as any issue in recent memory. They are paying attention and growing increasingly alarmed at what they see:  politicians who don’t read legislation then can’t explain what they don’t understand. It gets worse when politicians cower from their constituents, then lash out at them venomously calling them un-American mobs.

Americans are nothing if not practical. After passage of the $787 billion stimulus legislation that was supposed to keep the unemployment rate below 8% --now a stark 9.4% -- Americans are approaching health care reform by keeping in mind the old adage: fool me once shame on you but fool me twice shame on me. 

Americans are asking serious questions. For example, who exactly are the 47 million uninsured?  According to the United States Chamber of Commerce 10 million are not even American citizens, 9 million earn more than $75,000 and should be able to afford some coverage, and 11 million are currently eligible for government assistance but are not enrolled.  While some people need help it is a far cry from 47 million.

We listen carefully to the President tell us we will be able to keep our current insurance and choose our doctors. Who can disagree with that?  But then people read the pending House Legislation HR 3200 and discover the President’s so-called “public option” will over time squeeze out private insurance. That's because the public option will be an entitlement for many, will be government subsidized, and will limit payments to doctors and hospitals as Medicare currently does. With that kind of head start – the public option will prevail and will eliminate the insurance millions of Americans now have.

The new flavor of the week, health insurance cooperatives sounds like the public option dressed up with a new name, but still taxpayer subsidized and subject to government mandates.

Large multi-state employers who now provide insurance to employees without the yoke of costly state and federal mandates will have to get their plans approved by the government bureaucrats in five years. Studies cited by the Heritage Foundation state that nearly 85 million Americans will lose the coverage they now have and are generally satisfied with.

Do you purchase your own insurance? Well according to section 102(c) of the House Bill, starting in 2013 you will no longer be able to purchase an individual policy---except through the government run “exchanges” this legislation establishes. This doesn’t sound anything like what we are hearing from Washington about “choice”!

When more and more Americans are forced into the public option what will happen? Doug Elmendorf head of the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has bluntly told Congress the pending health care legislation will increase the debt by $239 billion over ten years and will “probably generate substantial increases in federal budget deficits during the decade beyond the current 10-year budget window.”  Naturally, that runs directly counter to the President’s promise not to sign a bill that increases the deficit. Even the President, despite his eloquence, cannot overturn one of the pesky axioms of economics: there is no free lunch. 

Get ready for new taxes and costs. It is a given the 2003 tax cuts will not be renewed meaning higher taxes on all wage earners, small businesses, investors and anyone fortunate to have capital gains. If that wasn’t enough, the health care legislation carries a hefty surcharge on top earners – many of whom are small business owners who pay the IRS as individuals not corporations. Watch what this additional disincentive does to the very business owners our nation depends upon to create new jobs.

Beyond that the legislation proposes an 8% payroll tax on most employers who don’t provide insurance and a 2.5% tax on individuals who don’t purchase government approved insurance. All of this will leave our United States of America with one of world’s highest tax rates – hardly an effective way to attract capital, investment, business development and new jobs.

Seniors on Medicare should beware. The President said in Portsmouth that concerns expressed by seniors that Medicare will be cut is a myth, but then just moments later he proposed to do exactly that by eliminating Medicare Advantage. Over 10 million seniors (22%) enroll in Medicare Advantage because it provides better coordinated and preventive care for chronic illness and disease management.

Entitlements, higher taxes, Medicare cuts, government controls and mandates inevitably will lead to rationing of care.  Rationing is reality in countries with government run health care. Just ask Canadians or the British. While the President tries to sooth frayed nerves about rationing, Medicare recently denied payment for ‘virtual colonoscopies’ done through CT Scan technology. Now government bureaucrats -- not physicians – will decide who gets this treatment for colon cancer, which is both a killer and preventable. Survival rates for cancer are better in America than Canada or England – rationing and the innovation and preventative care it undermines --- is the reason.

The President came to Portsmouth as salesperson in chief. But one has to wonder if he has read the legislation pending in the House. His promises of choice of physicians, no additional deficits, no Medicare cuts and no tax hikes for anyone earning less than $250,000 may have been a balm to the staged and hand-picked crowd chanting “yes we can”, but the promises contradict the actual legislation he is pitching. Thus the concern and ire of frustrated Americans grows daily. At this critical juncture in our history such anger is not only justified but healthy – very healthy.

And when voters realize Congress intends to pass a plan for Americans that exempts America’s leaders, the camel’s back will break.