The Scheme Behind Obamacare
Many of us figured this out -- that Obamacare is just the first step toward entirely socialized medicine in this country, but I liked this particular analysis.
Via Reason Foundation's Manny Klausner, Andrew C. McCarthy lays it out at NRO:
Fraud can be so brazen it takes people's breath away. But for a prosecutor tasked with proving a swindle -- or what federal law describes as a "scheme to defraud" -- the crucial thing is not so much the fraud. It is the scheme.To be sure, it is the fraud -- the individual false statements, sneaky omissions, and deceptive practices -- that grabs our attention. As I've recounted in this space, President Obama repeatedly and emphatically vowed, "If you like your health-insurance plan, you can keep your health-insurance plan, period." The incontrovertible record -- disclosures by the Obama administration in the Federal Register, representations by the Obama Justice Department in federal court -- proves that Obama's promises were systematically deceitful.
...The point of showing that Obama is carrying out a massive scheme to defraud -- one that certainly would be prosecuted if committed in the private sector -- is not to agitate for a prosecution that is never going to happen. It is to demonstrate that there is logic to the lies. There is an objective that the fraud aims to achieve. The scheme is the framework within which the myriad deceptions are peddled. Once you understand the scheme, once you can put the lies in a rational context, you understand why fraud was the president's only option -- and why "If you like your plan, you can keep your plan" barely scratches the surface of Obamacare's deceit.
In 2003, when he was an ambitious Illinois state senator from a hyper-statist district, Obama declared:
I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health-care program. I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its gross national product on health care, cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. . . . Everybody in, nobody out. A single-payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. That's what I'd like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately.That is the Obamacare scheme.
It is a Fabian plan to move an unwilling nation, rooted in free enterprise, into Washington-controlled, fully socialized medicine. As its tentacles spread over time, the scheme (a) pushes all Americans into government markets (a metastasizing blend of Medicare, Medicaid, and "exchanges" run by state and federal agencies); (b) dictates the content of the "private" insurance product; (c) sets the price; (d) micromanages the patient access, business practices, and fees of doctors; and (e) rations medical care. Concurrently, the scheme purposely sows a financing crisis into the system, designed to explode after Leviathan has so enveloped health care, and so decimated the private medical sector, that a British- or Canadian-style "free" system -- formerly unthinkable for the United States -- becomes the inexorable solution.
He continues:
Obviously, it would be far less expensive for young people -- who are already disproportionately strained by Obama's no-growth, high-unemployment economy -- to opt for a penalty they are not actually required to pay than to purchase prohibitively costly coverage. After all, under Obamacare, they can wait until they are sick to buy "insurance." That is, Obamacare's architects consciously created the incentive to destroy the program's own insurance exchanges.By the time that problem erupts, private insurance will already be gutted. Coverage requirements will already be dictated by government, as will pricing, with a subsidy structure that builds in progressive wealth redistribution. And doctors will already be beholden to government for patient access, treatment options, record-keeping requirements, and payment. That is, much of the single-payer infrastructure will be in place.
The manufactured financial crisis will be portrayed as a demonstration that exchanges based on the assumption that individuals will take responsibility for their own "private" insurance arrangements do not work. It will be time to solve the crisis by a seamless transition -- there's that word again -- to a fully socialized health-care system, now overtly controlled by the government. "Free" health care for everyone -- with all the substandard treatment, absurd wait times, and rationing that entails -- will be supported by a few "tweaks" to our progressive tax system . . . no more unwieldy, unpredictable premium payments.
That's the scheme. Or maybe you still believe that if you like your private medical system, you can keep your private medical system, period.
The whole flaw is this "scheme" is that there is no administrative fiat that can turn Obamaclusterfuck into a fully socialized health care system.
At minimum it will have to get thru congress, and then get the imprimatur of the Supreme court. Neither of those is very likely. The votes are not there.
And the feds still dont even control the health insurance industry. The states' control the insurance companies and remember the whole commerce clause authority for the feds to implement Obamacare was a non starter with the Supreme court. The Obamacare penalty is a tax, pure and sinple, and I predict in the end, that is the only part that will be left.
Isab at November 25, 2013 12:48 AM
I've been saying this for awhile, and McCarthy lays it all out. Isab, it has nothing to do with administrative fiat (although I would mention that the government doesn't seem to have many compunctions regarding such things anymore).
Simply put, in a series of steps, Obamacare will so thoroughly wreck the existing system that no hope of resurrecting it, or constructing a viable market-based alternative, will remain. The only choice left will be to go to a governmental single-payer system. We're already seeing the first step with the Federal refusal to approve so many existing plans because they lack the required (unnecessary and expensive) provisions. Those companies won't suddenly go back to offering those plans again in two or three years, and the exchange-based alternatives will fail as people stay away in large numbers because the fine for non-participation is radically less than the cost of the new, inflated premiums. There might, at that point, be a new developing private insurance market for the healthy, but the government can't afford to let that happen; they have to be able to fleece the healthy to pay for care for those with pre-existing conditions. So that won't be allowed, the government becomes the "insurance company," and the healthy consumer is taxed to cover it. As Senator Bill Bradley put it in a visit to Minneapolis a few weeks ago, "Medicare for everyone."
I believe that this was intentional, and the only real question is who was in on it from Day One and who was too stupid to do the math.
Grey Ghost at November 25, 2013 6:28 AM
The whole flaw is this "scheme" is that there is no administrative fiat that can turn Obamaclusterfuck into a fully socialized health care system.
True, so far as you go.
Take another step forward. What happens when private health insurance has been gutted, as it will be under Obamacare and you're still required to have insurance?
There will be a great hue and cry for relief. And it will come. From the Federal Government. And we'll like it because it will be better than nothing.
I R A Darth Aggie at November 25, 2013 7:24 AM
Is a single-payer system similar to the system in the U.K. or Canada ?
I ask because I don't know. But it sounds as if it is the same system.
And we all know how well that is going.
Nick at November 25, 2013 10:03 AM
Finding an old quote saying that Obama favored a single payer plan is hardly a smoking gun. Of course Obama initially favored single payer, as did Bill Clinton in 1992 and RIchard Nixon in 1974. Obama famously abandoned even the limited form of single payer known as the public option when he felt it did not have enough Congressional support to pass. His supporters were outraged by this, and current current polling shows that about 1 in 8 Americans disapproves of the ACA because it does not go far enough.
Remember, on a per-capita basis, the US spends double what any other OECD nation spends on health care. All of those other countries have some variation on single payer. The evidence is overwhelming that single payer systems provide euqal or better care at vastly lower cost than the system used in the US today (pre- or post-Obamacare). It is not at all surprising that a segment of the electorate would like to pay the same amount that citizens of other rich democracies are paying for health care.
Factual Interjection at November 25, 2013 12:26 PM
"Take another step forward. What happens when private health insurance has been gutted, as it will be under Obamacare and you're still required to have insurance?"
You will pay the fine. And people will get used to it, as an additional income tax.
A true socialized medical system is unconstitutional in this country because it would require all doctors and hospitals to be owned by the government.
Obamacare will do nothing more but add several million people to a medicaid and medicare system that is already overburdened and failing, and the additional taxes on being uninsured will do little to save it.
Making this work is an untenable democratic wet dream. As is a completely socialized medical system. It is a bigger fantasy than their belief that the web site would function like Amazon.
They don't know the constitution, and they cant do the math either.
The insurance industry is not going to be killed by Obamacare.
The premiums will death spiral when young and healthy people don't sign up, and the minuscule number of people now enrolled are not enough to break the insurance companies.
Isab at November 25, 2013 1:53 PM
"Remember, on a per-capita basis, the US spends double what any other OECD nation spends on health care."
And this will magically disappear when the federal government shows up with its hundreds of thousands of additional people who will do nothing to actually provide care.
Radwaste at November 25, 2013 2:45 PM
"The evidence is overwhelming that single payer systems provide equal or better care at vastly lower cost than the system used in the US today."
-Factual Interjection
In the U.K., patients needing major surgery face waits of 2-4 years. British teeth are awful. You can see for yourself when you go. The people resort to pulling their own teeth with pliers. This is a good system ?
Nick at November 25, 2013 4:06 PM
Lets break this sentence apart:
The evidence is overwhelming that single payer systems provide euqal or better care
If this is true why is there medical tourism to Thailand, India, and even the United States by much of the world?
at vastly lower cost than the system used in the US today (pre- or post-Obamacare).
If the care was actually provided in Canada, England, and other European or other countries why do they come to the U.S.
It is not at all surprising that a segment of the electorate would like to pay the same amount that citizens of other rich democracies are paying for health care.
Are you referring to the 49% of the American population that is already paying nothing in income taxes. Or are you referring to the working poor? Because in Europe many countries have a 50% income tax that pays for the health care. So you would have 49% of the country pay zero (50% * $0.00 = 0.00)?
Jim P. at November 25, 2013 6:42 PM
Leave a comment