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 One of the warnings that has come up intermittently, but is rarely emphasized, is that a Government run health care system explicitly means that politics--not need, not how much we individually pay—determines the quality of your health care. In one sense, it almost imputes that politics controls the length of your life. Who you know—or how much political clout you happen to have—will determine what kind of care you get.
The wealthy will always be able to get any treatment they need or want, as they can simply fly to India, or where ever they choose. They can even have the treatment brought to them if they can afford it. Many of our current crop of socialists—sorry, I mean progressives—here in America have made a big deal of this ‘wealth factor’ in our current health care system. But ObamaCare, or any expanded government health care program has and will continue to make good health care less accessible to a growing portion of the population.
Our current system is mightily hampered by the government. Since the government already dictates nearly 80% of health care pricing, most of the high prices we now see have been caused by the government. ObamaCare will simply drive them higher. Put it more out of reach for the poor, and more out of reach for the middle class. To a great extent, what health care or health insurance you get will no longer be decided by how good of a job you have, or how much you can pay. Now, that freedom will be limited to only the most wealthy—or those who can muster the greatest political ‘pull’.
The real horror of ObamaCare, then, is that it explicitly introduces more special interest group rationing of healthcare based on ‘pull’. If you are a member of a politically powerful group, say the Longshoreman’s Union, your ‘Cadillac’ Health Care policy will not pay the 40% excise tax that other ‘Cadillac’ Health Care policies--those of politically less powerful groups--will be required to pay. If you live in New York, or certain counties in Florida, you get the same treatment, but pay less in taxes. This is rationing by ‘pull’. Already, we see it throughout the process and the bill. (A superb summary is in today’s Wall Street Journal. Caution: Reading this article could make your head explode!) It will not get better. It can only get worse as time goes by and more and more special interest groups are added.
The only question you really need to ask yourself is this: Do you want the quality of health care for yourself and your family to be based on what you do to obtain it? How much you sacrifice for it? Or do you want it to depend on who the politicians in Washington think should have it? Or whoever the Secretary of the HHS decides is ‘better than you?’ I know I don’t want my family to depend on who Harry Reid thinks will vote for him in the next election, or who will make a bigger contribution to his re-election campaign. Or who will give him a job after he is thrown out of office this November.
Who knows, maybe Obama will make him Secretary of HHS? If he still has the pull, for it, that is.
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