The Devil In The Details (Or But We MUST Do Something...)

We MUST do something...that is the plaintive refrain of the defenders of ObamaCare - we must do "something"... but is this really the "something" that we want? That is the question that must be asked. For example, do we want or need a health care "reform" program that taxes the health insurance benefits as if it were income? How about one that will tax things like soft drinks or that Big Mac you had for lunch? That is what the Democrats in the Legislature are proposing. Do we want a health care reform that actually cuts health care benefits for Medicare and Medicaid recepients while spending money on "Community Make-Over" programs and spending on streetlights, sidewalks, grocery stores and jungle gyms? Do we really want a health care "reform" bill that will spend approximately $1,000,000,000,000 (that is 1 TRILLION dollars) more than we are currently spending on health care? Do we really want a health care "reform" package even the AMA finds to be unworkable?

Oh I fully agree that something needs to be done, but the devil is (as always) in the details and the details of THIS so-called reform bill shows that this Congress and this President are not serious about real reform - they are only serious about enacting single payer health care and in the process putting several hundred million more people (in the insurance industry ALONE) out of work.

Is that really the kind of reform we want?

Update: Oh and according to the CBO this plan still leaves roughly 30 MILLION people uninsured (HT Ed Morrissey)

The Congressional Budget Office has tried crunching the numbers on Barack Obama’s plan to reform health care, which Obama says will save money and protect the uninsured. The CBO director on his official blog says, “Wrong!” — on both counts. The reform plan will cost more than a trillion dollars over the next decade, and while it will put 39 million people on insurance plans, it will drive off more than 23 million more from their existing plans. The cost doesn’t include Obama’s public plan option, either:

According to our preliminary assessment, enacting the proposal would result in a net increase in federal budget deficits of about $1.0 trillion over the 2010-2019 period. When fully implemented, about 39 million individuals would obtain coverage through the new insurance exchanges. At the same time, the number of people who had coverage through an employer would decline by about 15 million (or roughly 10 percent), and coverage from other sources would fall by about 8 million, so the net decrease in the number of people uninsured would be about 16 million or 17 million.

These new figures do not represent a formal or complete cost estimate for the draft legislation, for several reasons. The estimates provided do not address the entire bill—only the major provisions related to health insurance coverage. Some details have not been estimated yet, and the draft legislation has not been fully reviewed. Also, because expanded eligibility for the Medicaid program may be added at a later date, those figures are not likely to represent the impact that more comprehensive proposals—which might include a significant expansion of Medicaid or other options for subsidizing coverage for those with income below 150 percent of the federal poverty level—would have both on the federal budget and on the extent of insurance coverage.

A net decrease of 16-17 million would still leave about 30 million uninsured, according to the figures thrown around by ObamaCare advocates. It would simply exchange individuals in the uninsured category, and those most likely to lose their coverage would be those in lower-income jobs, as well as people working in small businesses and startups.

Is this really the kind of change you want?