Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Senate Health Care Bill Will Bankrupt the US

This bill is a disaster of epic proportions, and will quickly bankrupt the United States.

Our current annual deficit is $1.4 trillion. The latest Health Bill is estimated to cost $871 billion over ten years. However, this hides the true cost as many of the bill's measures do not go into effect until 2014. If one calculates the ten year costs from 2014-2023, the bill's price tag jumps dramatically to $2.5 trillion.

Liberals would like you to believe that the bill will actually reduce the deficit. This relies on nearly half a trillion in Medicare cuts, which even honest liberals will tell you will never happen. Medicare is already underfunded, paying about 80% of what a private insurer will pay, and any further cuts to Medicare will certainly put thousands of doctors out of business.

And what about the ever spiraling cost of health care and insurance premiums? The CBO estimates that individual insurance plans will increase 10-13% over what they would be if we simply did nothing. The bill attempts to cover up these costs with subsidies for around half of those subscribers, which avoids the root problem altogether, and the other half of the individual market will just be stuck with massive, unsubsidized increases.

Prices for health care itself will also skyrocket. Massachusetts has already implemented similar reforms and has seen its health care costs increase much faster than the national average. I don't know if the CBO is even accounting for this form of accelerated inflation, but we will all be paying for it soon.

If you need more proof that costs will rise faster, you need look no further than Econ 101: Supply and Demand. With 31 million new people gaining or being forced to buy insurance, the demand for health care will drastically increase. The supply, however, will not. Any freshman economics major can tell you that when demand increases faster than supply, price goes up.

The brilliant lawmakers in Washington have decided to pay for some of this reform with new taxes in the middle of the worst recession in decades. I do not need to explain how billions in new taxes will hurt our economy, especially those at the bottom. Luckily, we won't have to pay for all of it as much of it will be paid for by borrowing.

China is already asking questions about the solvency of our reform plans, as they will be the ones paying for it. Not only will this bill bankrupt us, it will put us further under China's thumb.

Some of those dollars will not even go to reform. Billions in spending were written in for no other reason than political bribery. Ben Nelson's home state, Nebraska, will get $45 million. For Louisiana, another $100-300 million. For Florida, $5 billion. These votes have been bought and paid for, by which I mean bought by Democratic power players and paid for by you and me, bi-partisanship be damned.

Not only will this health bill bankrupt our nation, it will also trample our rights. Many states are challenging the constitutionality of an insurance mandate, and they are making a strong case.

It's probably why a majority of Americans do not want this reform.

Merry Christmas, America, you're about to get the worst health care reform in history.

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