Image Source : Desert Rose Creations / Family Survival Protocol 2013
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Obama, the Great Defunder
Aug 27, 2013
Obama
has announced that he will defund the entire government rather than
sign a bill that does not contain funding for ObamaCare. Senator Harry
Reid has said he will not let the U.S. Senate pass a continuing
resolution that does not contain funding for the program that he rammed
through despite the opposition of the majority of Americans.Now Obama,
denying the need for congressional approval, is defunding part of his
own program all by himself.
Delaying the employer mandate has the effect of losing the revenue from the penalties. But not to worry. In a July 31 article in the generally pro-Obama New England Journal of Medicine, Mark Pauly and Adam Leive state that the lost revenue amounts to a mere $10 billion, “a small fraction of the eventual cost of the exchange subsidies.” The Congressional Budget Office expects those to reach an annual $153 billion by 2023.
The Administration’s rationale for the postponement is to reduce a burden on employers. More importantly, say Pauly and Lieve, it gives them an opportunity to help employees “take maximum advantage of exchange subsidies.”
Less revenue in, more spending out: isn’t that the functional equivalent of defunding other programs in a zero-sum government budget?
Moreover, “crowding out of fully paid private insurance by more generously subsidized coverage”—already documented in Medicaid—poses an even greater threat to the government budget for financing the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The annual subsidy bill could nearly triple, Pauly and Lieve suggest.
Not verifying eligibility for subsidies is still another way for Obama to effectively increase the program’s drain on the Treasury. There is no guarantee that the money spent for such “liar loans” can ever be recouped.
The ACA is of course the great defunder of private insurance companies, hospitals, doctors, medical device manufacturers, and all the other entities subject to the premium price controls, fee cuts, and new taxes. Senator Reid finally admitted to the Las Vegas Sun that the plan is to purge the private sector from health care.
What a situation for the American system of government! We have two men, a President and a senator, each asserting the power to singlehandedly defund the entire government, shutting down everything that the people’s House has voted to fund—unless funds continue to flow to ObamaCare implementers and promoters, such as Planned Parenthood’s Navigators.
Spending on these implementers and promoters is leveraging the defunding of other items in the federal budget, as well as the private sector. All of ACA’s funds come from defunding businesses’ hiring and expansion plans, research and development, and the hopes and aspirations of current and future taxpayers.
Obama is a great pretender—pretending that all is well with the American economy. We will surely hear from those cronies who are getting funded by his redistributive largesse— and not so much from the invisible ones who are defunded, sucked dry, exhausted, or silenced.
Obama is the Great Defunder. Congress can either defund his pet program, or stand by as the PAC-Man-like program defunds and eats out America’s substance until it collapses. Maybe with a bang, maybe with a whimper.
Jane M. Orient, M.D., Executive Director of Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, has been in solo practice of general internal medicine since 1981 and is a clinical lecturer in medicine at the University Of Arizona College Of Medicine. She received her undergraduate degrees in chemistry and mathematics from the University of Arizona, and her M.D. from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. She is the author of Sapira’s Art and Science of Bedside Diagnosis; the fourth edition has just been published by Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins. She also authored YOUR Doctor Is Not In: Healthy Skepticism about National Health Care, published by Crown.
Delaying the employer mandate has the effect of losing the revenue from the penalties. But not to worry. In a July 31 article in the generally pro-Obama New England Journal of Medicine, Mark Pauly and Adam Leive state that the lost revenue amounts to a mere $10 billion, “a small fraction of the eventual cost of the exchange subsidies.” The Congressional Budget Office expects those to reach an annual $153 billion by 2023.
The Administration’s rationale for the postponement is to reduce a burden on employers. More importantly, say Pauly and Lieve, it gives them an opportunity to help employees “take maximum advantage of exchange subsidies.”
Less revenue in, more spending out: isn’t that the functional equivalent of defunding other programs in a zero-sum government budget?
Moreover, “crowding out of fully paid private insurance by more generously subsidized coverage”—already documented in Medicaid—poses an even greater threat to the government budget for financing the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The annual subsidy bill could nearly triple, Pauly and Lieve suggest.
Not verifying eligibility for subsidies is still another way for Obama to effectively increase the program’s drain on the Treasury. There is no guarantee that the money spent for such “liar loans” can ever be recouped.
The ACA is of course the great defunder of private insurance companies, hospitals, doctors, medical device manufacturers, and all the other entities subject to the premium price controls, fee cuts, and new taxes. Senator Reid finally admitted to the Las Vegas Sun that the plan is to purge the private sector from health care.
What a situation for the American system of government! We have two men, a President and a senator, each asserting the power to singlehandedly defund the entire government, shutting down everything that the people’s House has voted to fund—unless funds continue to flow to ObamaCare implementers and promoters, such as Planned Parenthood’s Navigators.
Spending on these implementers and promoters is leveraging the defunding of other items in the federal budget, as well as the private sector. All of ACA’s funds come from defunding businesses’ hiring and expansion plans, research and development, and the hopes and aspirations of current and future taxpayers.
Obama is a great pretender—pretending that all is well with the American economy. We will surely hear from those cronies who are getting funded by his redistributive largesse— and not so much from the invisible ones who are defunded, sucked dry, exhausted, or silenced.
Obama is the Great Defunder. Congress can either defund his pet program, or stand by as the PAC-Man-like program defunds and eats out America’s substance until it collapses. Maybe with a bang, maybe with a whimper.
Jane M. Orient, M.D., Executive Director of Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, has been in solo practice of general internal medicine since 1981 and is a clinical lecturer in medicine at the University Of Arizona College Of Medicine. She received her undergraduate degrees in chemistry and mathematics from the University of Arizona, and her M.D. from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. She is the author of Sapira’s Art and Science of Bedside Diagnosis; the fourth edition has just been published by Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins. She also authored YOUR Doctor Is Not In: Healthy Skepticism about National Health Care, published by Crown.
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