The Case For Repeal
Reason Foundation's Manny Klausner sent me this link to a Yuval Levin piece in The Weekly Standard on why Obamacare needs to be repealed:
The law will spend a trillion dollars over the next decade and increase taxes by half a trillion; create a massive new entitlement on top of those that are already threatening to bankrupt the government; impose a vast array of new rules and mandates on providers, insurers, employers, and consumers; insert the government in countless new ways between doctors and patients; increase the burden of Medicaid costs for the states; and cause millions of middle class families to lose the employer-based insurance they have today and pay even higher premiums.Rather than reducing costs, Obamacare will increase national health expenditures by more than $200 billion--according to the Obama administration's own actuary. Rather than pave the way for entitlement reform, it will take the resources that future policymakers might have used to improve the structure of Medicare and use them instead to construct a new entitlement that will grow more expensive more quickly than Medicare itself. And all of this to increase the portion of Americans who have health insurance from just under 85 percent today to about 95 percent in 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. There are far better ways to contain costs and so increase access to coverage--above all, by increasing the control consumers have over how their health care dollars are spent. Opponents of Obamacare proposed a variety of such approaches this year.
All this we knew, and said, last spring. But today, we know even more about why the law must be repealed. We know with far greater certainty, for instance, that Obamacare will make it very attractive for both large and small employers to stop providing insurance coverage, thereby sending millions more into the subsidized exchanges than the CBO accounted for, and thus sharply increasing the cost of the law and with it the deficit. We know that Obamacare will make it more difficult for many providers of nonstandard insurance (like colleges insuring young students, or employers providing bare-bones plans to part-time workers) to offer coverage. We know that it will drive up premiums--since it has already begun to do so. We know that it will create massive administrative headaches for businesses and consumers--for instance, requiring companies to file 1099 forms with the IRS for any vendor whom they pay more than $600 in a given year, and requiring a prescription to buy over-the-counter drugs with money from flex spending or health savings accounts.
We know that the people who designed the bill and the people charged with implementing it were not aware of a lot of this.
Gotta love those legislators who close their eyes and vote for legislation they haven't read -- legislation that will not only cause the price of my health insurance to skyrocket but will have me 1099-ing the airlines and Staples.
I will never understand the complaints about the cost of Obamacare. You all realize that's a mere fraction of our defense budget, right? And that we spend more on defense than the rest of the world combined?
Unless we're expecting the entire world to attack us, it seems to me that this is something for the budget hawks to be concerned about.
Patrick at November 2, 2010 7:36 AM
Our huge defense budget is idiotic, yes.
(Not for the reason you claim, though. It's idiotic by virtue of paying for three unjustifiable things, which I enumerate as follows:
(a) Wacky-fun nation-building adventures. That trick never works.
(b) Playing the role of world policeman by being on-hand for peacekeeping and police actions in every random squabble in every ass end of the world. This is exactly the kind of colonial-war garbage that made the British Empire hopelessly uneconomic to run, and it's not going to play out any better for us.
(c) Defending the trade lanes of most of the world, and paying the majority of the cost of the defense of some countries - like half of Europe - for basically no return. Well, fine, but if the rest of the world wants our services in these regards, then the rest of the world should ruddy well pay us for the privilege, cash on the barrelhead.
Actual national defense expenditure is a trivial portion of the defense budget.)
So, yeah, wearing my budget hawk hat, sure, I want to decimate the defense budget. In fact, I want to antidecimate the defense budget, which is to say, a 90% cut would be much closer to what I have in mind than a 10% cut.
But, my dear chap, just because the defense budget is a bloated monstrosity is not an excuse for every other way the government finds to waste money. Not criticizing Obamacare is like not telling the guy whose house is being foreclosed on that just maybe he shouldn't be kiting checks to his credit card company, too.
Alistair Young at November 2, 2010 7:49 AM
I'll never understand people who think spending trillions of dollars is ok, because if you compare it to what we spend on something else, it's less money.
We're not talking about a few dollars here. This is Trillions of dollars of OUR tax money. It's something that threatens to destroy what little is left of a free market health care system.
But hey, we spend more on defense, so it's all fair.
The people that comment here need to get a grip and a real argument.
Trish at November 2, 2010 8:20 AM
Trish: I'll never understand people who think spending trillions of dollars is ok, because if you compare it to what we spend on something else, it's less money.
Perhaps you could find an example of someone who argued that the amount we're spending on Obamacare is okay, because we spend many, many times that amount on defense.
Because I know of no one that made that argument, and I really detest liars and people who feel the need to argue by use of straw men.
Alistair: But, my dear chap, just because the defense budget is a bloated monstrosity is not an excuse for every other way the government finds to waste money. Not criticizing Obamacare is like not telling the guy whose house is being foreclosed on that just maybe he shouldn't be kiting checks to his credit card company, too.
See above.
And screaming bloody murder about the cost of Obamacare and ignoring the defense budget, as Trish did (but you have not), is a little like treating a sunburn but ignoring the melanoma.
Patrick at November 2, 2010 9:36 AM
I will never understand the complaints about the cost of Obamacare.
That's because Obamacare doesn't have a ceiling in terms of cost. Quoth:
Additionally, the original pie-in-the-sky cost savings analysis counted on two more things: the doctor fix would be eliminated, and $500 billion in Medicaid would be cut over ten years.
Please raise your hand if you believe that politicans will actually cut money from the one voter block that reliably turns out to vote. I have a bridge between California and Hawaii for sale.
And that doesn't include the cost of sending everyone and his half-brother a 1099 form. How much of your personal time will that use? Again, if one tinkers with health care, one must produce a system that is demonstrably better than its predecessor.
I R A Darth Aggie at November 2, 2010 9:41 AM
They need to defund the darned thing first. Reappeal will get vetoed and too much money will have been sucked into it by 2012 if they don't defund it now.
Feebie at November 2, 2010 10:09 AM
"Perhaps you could find an example of someone who argued that the amount we're spending on Obamacare is okay, because we spend many, many times that amount on defense."
Because defense is one of the ONLY responsibilities that our government legitimately has tasked to it - providing defense. Nothing in our Constitution requires the government to provide health care...that's why.
Feebie at November 2, 2010 10:12 AM
Patrick Says
I will never understand the complaints about the cost of Obamacare. You all realize that's a mere fraction of our defense budget, right? And that we spend more on defense than the rest of the world combined?
Tish responds
I'll never understand people who think spending trillions of dollars is ok, because if you compare it to what we spend on something else, it's less money.
Patrick Replys
Perhaps you could find an example of someone who argued that the amount we're spending on Obamacare is okay, because we spend many, many times that amount on defense.
Because I know of no one that made that argument, and I really detest liars and people who feel the need to argue by use of straw men.
OK then
Patrick, did you have a stroke today?
TISH WAS RESPONDING TO YOUR COMMENT
You are the one who implied Obamcare was OK due to its size difference in comparision to the defense budget
lujlp at November 2, 2010 11:50 AM
Because I know of no one that made that argument,
Riiight. You were just bringing up the size of the defense budget immediately after "I will never understand the complaints about the cost of Obamacare" for your health, belike.
Methinks I am being trolled...
Alistair Young at November 2, 2010 1:05 PM
I think one of the better things they could do, is repeal it and let him veto it. Then, the dems either have to really own it and KNOW their jobs are gone in 2012, or join in and override the veto, and maybe save their own asses. But, by all means, defund while working on the repeal!
I think there's a lot of cutting room in the defense budget. BUT, as has been pointed out, at least when they're overspending there, they are following the Constitution, not making up rights out of whole cloth.
momof4 at November 2, 2010 1:17 PM
lujlp: Patrick, did you have a stroke today?
TISH WAS RESPONDING TO YOUR COMMENT
You are the one who implied Obamcare was OK due to its size difference in comparision to the defense budget.
No, Trish was responding to a straw man she erected and attributed to me.
Did I say the amount that we were spending on Obamacare was fine because we're spending several times more than that on defense?
No, I didn't.
Read my post again. Nowhere but nowhere did I say that the amount that we're spending on Obamacare is OK.
The point of my post is that those who complain about the high cost of Obamacare are ignoring the much larger elephant in the living room that is our defense budget.
If you're going to argue about the high cost of Obamacare because you're some kind of budgethawk with the eye on the checkbook, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to ignore the far larger expenditure. And the fact that we're spending more than the rest of the world combined makes me wonder.
At least Alistair, when called on it, was consistent and pointed out the excesses of our defensive spending.
Nope. Nowhere did I say that the cost of Obamacare was okay. Perhaps you, Trish and Alistair need to learn to read a post instead of into it.
Patrick at November 2, 2010 6:40 PM
"I will never understand the complaints about the cost of Obamacare. You all realize that's a mere fraction of our defense budget, right? And that we spend more on defense than the rest of the world combined?
Unless we're expecting the entire world to attack us, it seems to me that this is something for the budget hawks to be concerned about."
Well, for starters, neither of those statements in the first paragraph is really true. The CBO's estimate last March was that Obamacare will cost $200B per year over ten years, and that's assuming that $100B per year will be cut from Medicare, which will never happen. So the true per-year cost of Obamacare, by itself, is at least $300B per year. That's roughly half of this year's DoD budget, which is around $660B. Welfare spending for this year is budgeted at $2,000B, and Obamacare will be in addition to that.
As for the worldwide defense expenditures, it's true that the U.S. military budget is about 55% of total acknowledged military expenditures. However, that's a suspect number since so many other countries conceal significant percentages of their military budgets, or fold them in with other expenditures which are not acknowledged. Further, consider that the U.S. is currently fighting two wars, plus providing most or all of the defense for about 30 other countries around the world. Yes, you can make a rational argument that we should not be doing all that -- I might support some of that argument myself.
However, the implication that the DoD is rolling in dough is, I can tell you from first-hand experience, a flat-out lie. Everywhere I look programs -- including some very important ones -- are being slashed. DoD officials and consultants keep telling us that this will be the toughest era for contractors since the end of WWII. And it's not like soldiers are making oodles of money. Actually, I suspect that, as in the case of NASA, a lot of the DoD's budget is being diverted to earmarks that are at best tangentially related to the agency's mission. If you want to go after that portion of the budget, I'm all for it. We compete for our work, and companies that get their work by buying a Senator really piss me off.
Cousin Dave at November 2, 2010 7:08 PM
Quite frankly -- I think a good part of our European (and other foreign bases) could be mothballed (i.e. the tanks remain -- the troops are gone). Exceptions South Korea and Kuwait). Slowly draw down our forces.
But I still challenge anyone to find anywhere in the U.S. Constitution that health insurance, the highway system (as it is currently constituted) DOT, the EPA, the Dept of Ed., the Dept of Energy, SSI, SSA are listed.
The day you do -- I will be glad to send you a silver coin.
Jim P. at November 2, 2010 8:58 PM
you folks with no solutions are so cute. repeal "obamacare" which is what, the first health care reform in 100 years? and was actually written by anti-obama congresspeople and corporate lobbyists? and he only signed it because it is a slight moral improvement over the current system? okay, repeal it. you won't live to see the next health care reform.
lol what at November 3, 2010 12:37 AM
For what this damn thing will cost(totally ignoring all the non medical attactments) it would have been cheaper to give cash to the iuinsured and let them buy insurance on their own
lujlp at November 3, 2010 7:11 AM
"and was actually written by anti-obama congresspeople and corporate lobbyists?"
You're imbicilic.
"you won't live to see the next health care reform."
Would that we had 80 more years till the next one. WE DON"T WANT HEALTH CARE REFORM! Insurance needs a little work, though.
momof4 at November 3, 2010 10:13 AM
Damn, I want some of what lol is smoking, cause that's got to be some good shit.
He only signed it because it's a slight improvement over the current system? It destroys the current system. Taxes on everything, but of course, we couldn't find that out until it passed (gotta pass it to read it, right?).
No solutions huh? You mean like everyone here who is constantly talking about decoupling healthcare from a job, allowing competition across state lines, and while it would be difficult, tort reform. Those 3 things would do wonders to drive DOWN the cost of Health Insurance.
I can but assume that you are going to be one of those starving artists that Pelosi told not to worry about getting coverage, and let others worry about it for them.
Moron.
Steve at November 3, 2010 4:49 PM
"okay, repeal it. you won't live to see the next health care reform."
Suits me fine, actually.
Cousin Dave at November 3, 2010 6:51 PM
If I can live out the rest of my days without ever seeing another Progressive "reform" I will die a very happy man.
I figure I've got somewhere between 40 and 60 years to go.
Start repealing.
brian at November 3, 2010 8:27 PM
It's one thing to cut parts of the defense that we don't need, but if we aren't the heavily armed force that can keep bad guys from killing us, who else is gonna bother? There are bad people in the world. Someone has to keep them from killing us.
KrisL at November 3, 2010 8:57 PM
Simple. New policy: next Islamist terror attack against US interests anywhere in the world equals one atomic bomb dropped on the Islamic city of our choice.
Fuck with us, we nuke you. No more invasions, no more precision strikes, no more occupations, no more nation-building. You fuck with us, we annihilate you.
As far as foreign bases are concerned - no more. I no longer have any interest in stopping Europe from having their internecine wars. Here's a better idea: with the last paragraph in mind, how's about you and him fight.
Foreign policy for dummies.
brian at November 4, 2010 6:02 AM
Leave a comment