Scare Tactics and What Compulsory Coverage Really Means

If you are one of the millions of people who have chosen not to obtain health insurance, you're going to be forced to do so. It will cost you heavily. That's precisely what compulsory coverage means. It means that the government will force you to buy coverage, whether you want it or not, and it will mean that you will have less disposable income at the end of the day.

The requirement, known as an individual mandate, is among the most far-reaching changes envisioned this year by those pushing for health-care reform. And it is one of the few common threads running through all three bills being considered in Congress, greatly increasing the likelihood it will survive the legislative process. Obama continued Tuesday to push lawmakers struggling with the large costs and scope of health legislation to move forward, pronouncing reform to be "closer than ever."

Just as drivers must purchase auto insurance, the medical system of the future would put responsibility for health coverage first and foremost on every adult.

For the vast majority of Americans who have health insurance, the change would mean little more than submitting a form with their tax returns proving that the plan they carry meets certain minimum standards. Many of the nation's 47 million uninsured people, however, would be required to purchase a health policy or face financial penalties, though waivers or discounts would be provided for lower-income Americans.

Compulsory coverage means that those who choose not to obtain coverage will be penalized - taxed in some amount that will equate with obtaining coverage.

There will be millions of people, mainly in the middle class who will be squeezed heavily by these proposals. They will not get the waivers and discounts promised or alleged, because they will earn too much to get the "free" care, but not enough that they can actually afford these new more onerous requirements.

In other words, the Demcorats' proposals goes against everything that President Obama promised during his days on the campaign trail.

AT tonight's press conference, someone should ask President Obama why he's endorsing, and not threatening to veto, the 1,018-page House health-care reform bill now being rushed to passage: It breaks nearly all his core promises about health-care reform.

"If you have health insurance, then you don't have to do anything," Obama said on Oct. 15, 2008. "If you've got health insurance through your employer, you can keep your health insurance, keep your choice of doctor, keep your plan. . . And we estimate we can cut the average family's premium by about $2,500 per year."

Both these solemn pledges, repeated often ever since and as recently as yesterday, are violated in the House bill. Its perverse incentives, plus the onerous regulations Congress plans to impose on employer-provided insurance, would cause more than half of those with employer-provided insurance to lose it -- 83.4 million Americans, according to The Lewin Group, a prominent, politically neutral health-care analysis firm.

The Lewin Group goes on to show that it will raise costs for nearly everyone, will not contain health care costs, and will lead to the elimination of private insurance as government health insurance undercuts the private insurers all while feeding the massive deficit.

Why should we trust President Obama when he says that the health care bills making their way through Congress must be passed now because of the urgency of the situation? There's absolutely no reason to trust him, or what any of the other politicians have to say on the matter. They're not going to suffer from the choices they make. Their health care will remain as it is, while everyone else has to deal with new more onerous rules, higher costs, lower quality of care, and rationing of care. They have no idea what any of this will cost, as John Stossel notes:

Also leave aside the inevitable huge cost of any such program. The administration estimates $1.5 trillion over 10 years with no increase in the deficit. But no one should take that seriously. When it comes to projecting future costs, these guys may as well be reading chicken entrails. In 1965, hospitalization coverage under Medicare was projected to cost $9 billion by 1990. The actual price tag was $66 billion.

The sober Congressional Budget Office debunked the reformers' cost projections. Trust us, Obama says. "At the end of the day, we'll have significant cost controls," presidential adviser David Axelrod said. Give me a break.

And for those who think that because the AMA is behind Obama on this means that all is well, consider that there was a provision included in the bill that essentially is a payoff to the medical establishment to attempt to cover the costs of a massive shortfall in payments due to Medicare.

In the bill, Democrats provide $245 billion to eliminate an annual shortfall in payments to doctors under Medicare. Democrats resolved this annual headache, in large part, to win crucial support for the bill from the American Medical Association. That money currently counts against the overall costs of the bill, but Democrats have introduced legislation that would remove remove this obligation from federal deficit.

The move to remove this obligation from the federal deficit is further proof of just how fiscally irresponsible and disingenuous the Democrats are with the budget generally, and health care specifically. Someone has to pay for those costs, and it's coming from somewhere, and it isn't the current year revenues, which means that it will be added to the towering deficit pile built by this Administration in just six months.

The irony is rather thick for the Administration to claim that opponents are using scare tactics to prevent passage of the health care all while claiming that if we don't pass this now before the sky falls there will be a health care disaster waiting in the wings. They're going to ram it through.

Ann Althouse notes:

The Democrats have dumped a drastic, complicated health care bill on us and they are ramming it through before we can even figure it out. That’s what matters, not the fact that the party out of power is squawking about it.

They're more than willing to ram it through without fellow Democrats figuring it out, and that includes President Obama, who remains clueless as to all the contingencies in the bills as currently written.

Sorry, but the only disaster waiting in the wings is the fiscal time bomb of unfunded mandates relating to existing government entitlements like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, none of which are truly addressed by the Democrats' plans.