What Obamacare Means for You

Okay. So this bloated bill has passed the house, and Obama will be signing it into law. There are a couple of quick things we need to keep in mind before I get into the meat of this thing. First is that government entitlement programs never go away. Now that this thing has passed, the chances of it being repealed are slim to none (although I’ll give examples later of why it is unconstitutional and should never have passed). Second, is that government entitlement programs always cost more than they are originally projected. That’s just the way they operate.



So, let’s really dive into this. First, I really need to state that health care is NOT a right. People, especially those on the left, and those that are tax takers, have been claiming health care is a right. They are confusing a “right” with “entitlement”. A right is something that comes from within the individual. Government is not required for you to have rights. Government is there to protect your rights, not give them to you. Rights apply to everyone. You have the right to life. You have the right to property. You have the right to liberty. You have the right to keep and bear arms. Those are things you can do on your own without government. It is government that, instead of protecting those rights, is infringing upon them. You obviously don’t have the right to property, because if you did, you wouldn’t have to pay property taxes. If you don’t pay property taxes, the local government takes your house away. Therefore, you don’t actually own your property. You just paid a lot of money to live on it. And liberty? That’s been lost a long time ago. Sure, you feel like you have freedom, but it’s only an illusion. You see, we are all slaves. Not slaves in “The Matrix” sense, but in the chattle sense. You know, the black people that had to pick cotton. That was chattle slavery. “What?” you say. “That is just stupid to say”. Not really. The difference now is that the plantation is really big. The fact that you have to pay half of your income to various taxes means that you don’t own your labor. If the government can take part of your income by the threat of force, that means they own your labor, and by extension, they own you. Liberty is just an illusion right now. Sure, they let you complain about them. They let you drive around. If you want to move to another country, you have to pay an exit tax. That’s an infringement on right to travel. Don’t even get me started on gun laws. What you need to understand is that government cannot give you a right, especially if that so called right is given to you at the expense of other people’s labor. That means that it takes tax dollars to pay for this “right”. At that point, other people’s rights have been violated, so in the case of health care, it is no longer a right, but an entitlement program. Some people feel it is a moral obligation for hospitals to not refuse anyone, but it is immoral to forcefully take money from me in order to pay for that. I’m not saying I’m not willing to donate to the hospital’s charity wing, just don’t force me.



Alright, now that that’s out of the way, and you hopefully understand rights, let’s look at the health care bill itself. Well, I’m not going to actually look at the 2000 pages right here. I have perused bits and pieces of it, and it’s full of legaleze and stuff that most people wouldn’t even understand. What this bill does is increase demand while diminishing supply. By increasing demand, I am referring to the fact that tens of millions of people are now going to have health insurance that didn’t have it before. By diminishing supply, I mean that the supply of doctors isn’t large enough to keep up with the demand. In fact, it is shrinking. More and more docs are retiring early because of rising costs in malpractice insurance (thank you John Edwards), and the cost of doing business with the government. You know how Obama keeps complaining about the rising cost of health care? He’s right, but his rationale is way off. You see, medicare and Medicaid only pay for a small percentage of a billable procedure. So, because the government will only pay for part of your hospital bill, that has to be made up with private insurance companies or people that pay out of pocket to make up for the loss the hospital or doctors office takes when they deal with the government. Now, add thirty-something odd million people into that equation. Anyone with a gradeschool understanding of economics can see that with a greatly increased demand, lowered supply, and underpayment for services received, the cost to the 87% of Americans that are already insured is going to go up.



Time to look at the constitutionality of the thing. There is a really important thing that most people don’t know. Even the government people seem to have forgotten this. States’ rights supersede the government. Read the 10th amendment. Also, states must recognize other states’ state constitution (that sentence needs the word “state” in it more). In plain English, that means that the state of Illinois must recognize the rights of someone from South Carolina under the South Carolina constitution if that person is in Illinois. Now, this doesn’t always work out. For example, it is legal to open carry a firearm in New Hampshire, but try doing that in Chicago. There really isn’t any legal precedent on this that I know of, but the argument is this. If states rights are above the federal constitution, and states must recognize the state constitutions of other states, then this whole health care bill is unconstitutional. You see, in some states, the government cannot force people to pay for a product or service they don’t want. Now, if all other states have to recognize this (and let’s be honest, they really don’t, but by law they are supposed to), and state constitutions are above the federal one, then this health care bill is unconstitutional. Ponder this, I’m just some guy that has a reasonably good understanding of states rights and individual rights. I didn’t study and then teach constitutional law like Obama did. You’d think he would know all this. He probably does, but just doesn’t care.



Remember how we were taught that the people in Washington “represent” us? That doesn’t seem to be the case, now, does it. They didn’t listen to the American people when it came to the bail outs, and they didn’t listen to the American people when it came to this health care bill. I love how statists (that’s both of you, democrats and republicans), love to live by this majority rule nonsense. Majority rule is two wolves and a sheep deciding what’s for dinner. For the sake of argument, let’s just say majority rule is a good thing. Well, the majority of Americans did not want the bank bail outs to happen. A majority of Americans did not want this health care bill to pass. In both circumstances, congress did not listen to the majority of Americans, and did what they wanted to do anyway. How is that representation? Americans need to realize that nobody can represent them, let alone one person representing millions of people. I can’t think of one person that I would want representing my ideals and beliefs in government and making votes on my behalf. “Just vote for the guy that best represents you”, I’ve been told. Forget that. It doesn’t matter. The president and congress have just proved several times over they don’t listen to us, so why bother voting for “the right guy”.



Let’s now look at all the arm twisting and deal making that went on to get this thing passed. It is at this point that I must give a hat tip to Richard Lightstone for this information, since I’m pretty much just lifting it from his blog:



“It will saddle us with huge tax increases and debt that could very well be unsustainable. Do the Democrats care? Not at all, they always wanted to control every facet of our lives. They’ve grabbed huge chunks of our free market system; automobile companies, banks, insurance companies and now health care.

To quote Margaret Thatcher, “Sooner or later you run out of other people’s money”.

* A $569 billion tax increase – the largest in history.
* It will be 18% of our GDP
* Increases our deficit by $662 billion

In order to get the reluctant Democrats to vote for this travesty here are some of the dirty deals:

The Louisiana Purchase: A state in which every single county qualifies as a disaster area will receive extra Medicaid funding. Louisiana is the only state that qualifies, courtesy of hurricane Katrina. This $300 million bribe purchased the support of Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) for the Senate version of the bill.

Cornhusker Kickback: Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) won a provision that the full amount of Nebraska’s increased Medicaid costs would be paid for by the federal government.

Gator Aid: Medicare Advantage participants in five states would be exempted from the general Medicare cuts — Florida, New York, California, Oregon, New Jersey. The estimated cost of this plum is $7.5 billion according to the office of Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL), and Florida is the largest beneficiary, with the bulk of the affected senior population.

Vermont Green: The Senate bill provides $600 million in extra Medicaid funds to Vermont, ensuring support from Independent Bernard Sanders (I-VT).

Massachusetts Moolah: The Senate bill provides $500 million extra for Massachusetts Medicaid, a political move designed to put pressure on newly elected Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA).

The Dodd Deal: In oh-so-innocent and unspecific wording, the Senate bill allows $100 million for “debt service of, or direct construction of, a health care facility,” at a public university. Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) bragged that he was securing the money for the University of Connecticut.

Montana Earmark: Max Baucus (D-MT) secured a provision that expands Medicare coverage for people who live “in or around the geographic area subject to an emergency declaration made as of June 17, 2009.

Bismarck Bank Job: This deal bought the vote of Rep. Earl Pomeroy of North Dakota, the state’s only House Democrat. Legislation to restructure the student loan program was included in the health care bill.”



Ok, I’m back. Thanks Richard for that info.

This is just a small amount of deal making that went on. I’m curious what happened with Dennis Kucinich on Air Force One. This just shows you that all of these politicians really are just political whores. At least they are high paid whores. They treated us like cheap hookers with a dry rape and not even a thank you at the end.

Sorry for the crudeness, but it’s the truth.

After all this, what does this really mean for you? It means expect to see your health insurance premiums go up over the next few years. Expect to see taxes increase on businesses. Expect to see small businesses go out of business. Expect to see the dollar lose even more of its value. After all, America’s credit rating is going in the toilet, and we won’t be able to borrow money from china at a decent interest rate. Have your children start saving now to pay for all this. Oh, don’t forget that it will take ten years of tax money to pay for 4 years of “health care”. That math just doesn’t add up, here in the real world. I’m not going to even get into the path to a single payer system that this paves. I’ll save that for another post, as this is already really long.

Here is what you need to do…and don’t do. Don’t bother calling or writing to your representative. They don’t care. The republicans are powerless. You can vote the democrats out, but the republicans won’t be able to do anything for a bunch of years. Rather than hope the political system works (has it ever?), you need to stop paying for it. That’s right. Stop paying. I look at it this way, paying for this broken system is like paying to for the afore mentioned dry rape in prison. Really, that’s what it is. Stop paying taxes. I know it’s a scary idea, but think about this. Millions of people who are supposed to file each year don’t even file. They never get caught. The government only really goes after the really rich tax dodgers because they have the most to gain from going after them. Here’s what I do…if I end up owing money, I don’t file. If I end up getting a return, then I file and get the money back that is rightfully mine. It’s my money after all. Hell, it was a loan to the government that was paid back with no interest!