You Know How Bad You Thnk ObamaCare Is? Yeah, It's Worse

Via Powerline, David Hogberg at Investors Business Daily takes a look at 20 ways the Senate health care and reconciliation bills make us less free.

Here are a few.

1. You are young and don’t want health insurance? You are starting up a small business and need to minimize expenses, and one way to do that is to forego health insurance? Tough. You have to pay $750 annually for the “privilege.” (Section 1501)

2. You are young and healthy and want to pay for insurance that reflects that status? Tough. You’ll have to pay for premiums that cover not only you, but also the guy who smokes three packs a day, drink a gallon of whiskey and eats chicken fat off the floor. That’s because insurance companies will no longer be able to underwrite on the basis of a person’s health status. (Section 2701).

9. If you are a large employer (defined as at least 101 employees) and you do not want to provide health insurance to your employee, then you will pay a $750 fine per employee (It could be $2,000 to $3,000 under the reconciliation changes). Think you know how to better spend that money? Tough. (Section 1513).

16. The government will extract a fee of $2 billion annually from medical device makers. If you are a medical device maker what you will pay depends on your share of medical device sales in the U.S. So, if you sell 10% of the medical devices in the U.S., what you pay will be 10% multiplied by $2 billion, or $200,000,000. Think you, as a medical device maker, know how to better use that money, say for R&D? Tough. (Section 9009 (b)).

The reconciliation package turns that into a 2.9% excise tax for medical device makers. Think you, as a medical device maker, know how to better use that money, say for research and development? Tough. (Section 1405).

And on and on.

I find the penalty for not covering employees interesting. If it stays at $750, isn't every employer simply going to drop health coverage, pay the per capita fine and pocket the difference? That might not work in a boom economy where employers are competing for workers but in tight times like these, a job without insurance is better than no job at all.

Even at 2 or 3 thousand dollars per employee it might be worth it for some companies to dump health care coverage. I'm not sure what group rates are for big employers but I'd think it's got to be close to that number and then factor in all the costs associated with a company administering a plan, including all the HR types you could lay off and it's probably a money maker for companies.

Then you have to pay your the individual mandate fine for not being covered and/or go get your own policy. That policy will be heavily subsidized making you dependent on the government and adding to the cost of the program beyond what's already "budgeted".

Then we would hear from the left not that we should repeal this crap but that we need more government in the form of either a public option or single payer. The answer is never, ever less government, even when government is the problem.

ObamaCare delenda est!

posted by DrewM. at 03:05 PM

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