Myths, Lies and Stupidity About Health Care

President Barack Obama's health care plan, we are told, will spend $1 trillion over the next 10 years. But since trillion is the new billion, Americans aren't supposed to worry about that.

Obama's health care plan will cause employers to stop providing private health insurance for millions of employees and instead shift employees to public care. But Obama says that government is the best arbiter of your health, so Americans aren't supposed to worry about that.

Obama's health care plan, according to the Congressional Budget Office, will add only 16 million of the 46 million uninsured to the rolls of the insured. But Obama says that's an improvement, so Americans aren't supposed to worry about that.

Here's something we should worry about: Who are the current uninsured for whom all of us are supposed to sacrifice our current health care plans? And should the other 300 million of us turn to government care just to help those 46 million?

Here's a quick profile of those who are uninsured. Ten million of the uninsured are illegal immigrants -- which, by the way, doesn't mean they don't get health care. Walk into virtually any emergency room in California and illegal immigrants are the bulk of the population. Education costs and health care costs for illegal immigrants compose between 16.4 percent and 20.5 percent of California's budget deficit.

Liberal commentators are already urging that Obama's nationalized health care plan cover illegal immigrants. Ezra Klein of the Washington Post suggests that a failure to include illegal immigrants in the new health care redesign would create unemployment among U.S. citizens; businesses would not be forced to pick up the health care tabs for illegal immigrants and would therefore hire them at greater rates. This is undoubtedly true. But the solution is to prosecute businesses that hire illegal immigrants -- or, better yet, not to require employers to cover employees. Only liberals would use employer malfeasance as an excuse to sacrifice workers' current insurance plans.

Another 9 million "uninsured" have household incomes of above $75,000. That's 3.4 times the federal poverty standard for a family of four. For a married couple, that's 6.9 times the federal poverty standard. Some of these people – 30 percent -- are just temporarily without health insurance for six months or less. Others voluntarily avoid health insurance, even if they can afford it. And that's a perfectly reasonable position -- many people worry less about paying for the occasional visit to the doctor than about paying the monthly premiums. In essence, the Obama plan would force insurance on these people and force public insurance on the rest of us.

And then there are "12 million uninsured Americans … eligible for Medicaid and the State Children's Health insurance program -- but they haven't signed up," according to Sally Pipes of the Pacific Research Institute and author of The Top Ten Myths of American Health Care. Again, voluntary behavior is voluntary. It's not an excuse for government involvement.

So, to sum up, of those 46 million "uninsured," a solid 31 million are uninsured in ways that require no fix from the federal government. That leaves 15 million uninsured unaccounted for. A nationalized health care plan of the sort Obama proposes therefore shifts health care for literally 95 percent of the population on behalf of 5 percent of the American population -- 5 percent who, like illegal immigrants, receive emergency care under federal law.

The media and Obama have portrayed the American health system as a system in crisis. They point to skyrocketing premiums -- the cost of a family policy is now $1,000 per month for employers. Obama says, "One out of every five dollars we earn will be spent on health care in a decade." Premiums for family coverage have risen 78 percent since 2001. And the government programs Medicare and Medicaid will comprise a huge chunk of the federal budget in ten years, more than any other government expenditure.

Why these exponentially higher costs? Because of increased government involvement in the health care system. State regulations have decreased market flexibility by requiring that insurers cover unhealthy individuals at lower-cost and requiring that insurers cover certain hospitals and doctors. The federal and state governments have required that health care providers care for individuals without reimbursement – which means escalating costs for those who do pay. And both federal and state health care subsidization programs have encouraged health care providers and insurance to raise costs.

The answer is more of a free market, not less of one. The answer is competition between insurers, not government monopoly. The answer is a private system, not a public one.

I just don’t understand the debate nor do I suspect many do.

Yes, I am currently paying for the uninsured in tranfered costs/rates or whatever. How is spending a couple trillion more going to change that? I already know the cost now...there is no gain for anyone. Sounds to me like its a loss of a couple trillion.

Zero and the clown posse keep saying costs will go down. How can that possibly be? Where specificly are the savings. Maybe from people who see the waiting rooms crowded with sniffling people and turn around and go home. Maybe from mandating that dr.s will only be paid $20/hr or somesuch. I don’t see any savings. Just increased costs.

This whole thing sucks so loudly its deafening. I don’t understand why so many people more concerned with fair than reality don’t see it.

We are seeing the loony left’s (moonbats) erosion of all our rights. These are rights we all have enjoyed and many have taken for granted, for our entire lives. Many of our population, listening in denial, believed these rights could never be truly threatened and much less taken away.

Now, we are dubiously told that it is for our own good our rights are turned over to the almighty State. We are told that we are mistaken if we believe we can or even should make decisions for ourselves in our own best interest or in the best interest of the greater societal good. Essentially, we are told, we are simply too ignorant and wrought with emotion to know what is in our best interest and therefore the government should and indeed must make our decisions for us.

In lieu of this loony left assumption and deception, we are seeing more restrictions on gun ownership (even pocket knife ownership and weapons ammunition). They know there are some who will not go down without a fight. They know many will be forced into lives of crime and lives underground to survive rather than be State owned and/or killed. They know, of course, because this has all taken place in several scenarios throughout relatively recent time.

We see more and more far reaching attacks on home schooling (the atheistic socialists must own and bend our children, to be successful in their takeover of everyone's lives...to be successful playing/replacing God). They must remove religion and tradition from our children's minds, and indeed our culture and historical reference, in order to make the State the almighty authority.

We, as we become a nation of government property rather than private persons, are pushed and even forced into increased dependence on the federal government...the State. Private property is to be confiscated and used for State interest rather than private interest.

The Democratic (socialist) Party of America is putting into place so many provisions and legislations and policies, supposedly, to protect the disadvantaged and the poor and the sexually perverse. However in the light of day, historically educated and well read, moral persons know these acts take away from and lie about the truth of the dignity of the human person. These more wise persons know these acts will ultimately fail as they always have and will continue to do. They fail for that one supreme reason...we are not of this world.

These loony left actions seek to kill more unborn and mentally handicapped and costly-to-the-state elderly and terminally ill - this will reduce financial costs to the State. They cannot achieve this without first getting our buy-in. Just as all the past failed attempts at socialism/communism/Marxism achieved control of the human person, by first convincing the human person that the State will save them.

These atheistic socialists seek to eliminate those whom the State views as undesirable and costly and threatening to their impossible but nonetheless desired Utopia.

Our economy is now quite stressed, but this is simply the tip of their iceberg — the Cloward-Piven strategy iceberg. An iceberg specifically implemented for our republic's demise and our constitution's overrule.

We are going to be so much less free than we ever thought possible in this great nation. Right about now, Costa Rica looks wonderful...lol. But that's neither here nor there. We must stop this evil in 2010 and we can, if we ever get a good dose of morality in this nation. Without true morality, morality based on the rule of law and the acknowledgment of each and every one of our divine origins.

When will we, as a whole nation, wake up and realize it is our immorality that has enabled all this disorder to come this close to fruition?

Far too many of us choose sit back and believe that we can and do have a solid foundation built on mere man's good principles. Isn't that laugh...man's good principles? I think I'll cry. Unfortunately the truth is that man is human and it is our own human nature to be violent, bigoted and perverse - immoral. We, as a nation, are doomed to man's weak foundation as long as we deny the source of our own human dignity. We were not made in the image of something earthly, but something divine. Sorry for the rambling on, I got a little carried away, it seems. But, I still want to say it.

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