Since never.

When Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid decided it was more important to cut deals with interest groups and each other to pass the Health Care Act than actually follow the will of the people, they betrayed their oaths of office— and they betrayed us.

At every turn Americans were misled in the politician’s zeal to deliver a brand new social program to make citizens dependent on government—and entirely political—decisions about health care. Well, here’s a little news flash for Washington power brokers, pundits and political schemers–in politics we have the last word and we will on ObamaCare.

They said that health care costs would be controlled—they weren’t. They said that taxes and private insurance premiums won’t go up—they are. They said that healthcare won’t be rationed—it will. They said that this will help, not hurt, the national economy and the national debt—it won’t.

Instead, cost savings will be achieved by savaging Medicare with cuts that will make it all but impossible for doctors to treat the elderly. Instead, we will see the national debt go even higher at a moment when we are already borrowing trillions of dollars against our children’s future wages. Instead, our economy will suffer another body blow at the hands of the same people who thought it just fine to take taxpayer money out of our pockets and our children’s pockets to allow huge conglomerates to stay in business—and transfer billions of dollars in bonuses to the very people who caused our housing markets to collapse.

This healthcare act is a disaster inflicted on us with little concern for anything but politics. Most in Congress just can’t grasp what it is like to struggle to put food on the table, to work your heart out to make payroll or to risk everything to create a new business. For many in Washington, it is all about spending our money so they can win election after election, fly first class and have a large expensive staff to treat them like the aristocrats they think they really are. That’s coming to an end and it will begin with outright repeal of the Health Care Act.

We threw off the power of aristocrats a long time ago and we’ll do it again. The days of telling us one thing and doing another are coming to an end. The days of spending our money out of the national treasury to advance not the public good but the politician’s and lobbyist’s best interests are numbered. We are at the very edge of a national precipice. Now we must do much more than “send a message”, we must actually take back control of public policy and the broken system of representation that threatens the very core of our great experiment in democracy. It is our country Washinbgton—not a country of, by and for politicians.

The very first step for this new Congress must be outright repeal of ObamaCare. It is an obvious example of Washington insider’s dishonesty, poor judgment and arrogance. It is a stain on honest representation and it must be removed, lock, stock and barrel. They have wasted enough of our wages and now have set sight on our children’s future earnings. This must be stopped in its tracks before more damage is done.

The line in the sand is drawn. We, the people, will leave no option to the new Congress—whether Democrat or Republican. This lie to the American people must be erased and the power of Washington insiders to take our money and limit our freedom set back on its heels. This is the time of the American citizen saving what is left of our nation and restoring our voice and clout in public policy and politics. We’ve done it before and we will do it again, now, before it is too late.

“…to the end it may be a government of laws and not of men.”

John Adams, Samuel Adams and James Bowdoin, Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1780

In a blatantly unconstitutional move, the Feds have let McDonalds off the hook from some of ObamaCare’s requirements. This violation of the Equal Protection clause is just one more reminder, as if we needed it, that D.C. is now completely ignoring the rule of law and deciding issues based on political pressure and pull.

“McDonald’s and 29 other firms have received waivers from a requirement to up the minimum benefit covered by insurance, making it possible for their employees to continue to buy low-cost coverage. But thousands of other workers are not exempted and will not be able to afford the government’s idea of good insurance.

Starting next year, insurers will be required to cover up to $750,000 in costs, ratcheting up over the next few years so that coverage must be unlimited by 2014. The administration calls that a consumer protection, but it only protects you if you can afford it.

Firms that hire low-wage workers, such as McDonald’s, can offer “mini-med” plans that provide lower benefits than a typical comprehensive health plan at a correspondingly lower cost. By far the most popular mini-med plan offered by McDonald’s costs $24.30 a week and covers doctor visits, hospital stays, and some prescription drugs, up to $5,000 each year.

Raising the benefit cap to $750,000 would put insurance out of reach for workers who clearly want coverage. They are buying that insurance with their own money, without the government telling them they have to. Fortunately, they can now keep that coverage, at least for next year.

True, that’s always gone on. But it used to be hidden, and when discovered heads rolled. Or, at least newspaper headlines made the perpetrators uncomfortable. Now, it’s done in the open and without apology. Though Sebelius did offer this quasi-defense: “We can’t waive a regulation that doesn’t exist.”

That, after all, is one of the problems. As Michael Cannon describes it at Cato: “The law they passed is a shell of a law,” says Michael Cannon, director of health-policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington. “Most of the rules have yet to be written.”

That’s one reason so many businesses are holding off on investments and hiring. They have no idea what’s coming. But McDonald’s needn’t worry. High-profile firms can simply ask to opt out and, because it would embarrass the Administration (especially shortly before the election) for so many low-pay workers to get booted off their health insurance plans, they get a free pass.

Do I think McDonald’s should have to follow that law? Of course not. No firm should. It’s impractical, immoral, and unconstitutional. But letting some firms opt out clearly demonstrates that the rules are not uniform, one of the keystones of the rule of law. And, that simply increases the rampant political corruption in D.C.

Far from being a backdoor deal, this sort of thing is actually built in to the legislation. As Caroline Baum outlines it in a Bloomberg editorial

The explanation of the purpose, background and process for filing a waiver isn’t much better. The gist of it is this:

• the Secretary of HHS is authorized to determine the minimum coverage limits; [emphasis added]
• the Secretary of HHS is authorized to waive those limits if compliance with them “would result in a significant decrease in access to benefits or a significant increase in premiums,” according to the memo. [emphasis added]

The state insurance commissioners can give the secretary advice, Antos says, but she doesn’t have to take it.

That pretty much describes the operating premise for the legislation that changes health care as we know it.

Bad enough to pass a bad law, one that we can all push to repeal in toto asap. Far worse to apply it selectively, granting a royal privilege to those with something politically important to trade. It undermines the separation of powers, grants still more power to an already out-of-control Executive Branch, and makes the law nothing more than the thinnest veneer over naked fascism.

Given the nature of this sort of quasi-legislation, things like this are bound to happen. There’s no way to apply it uniformly, since it’s designed to separate individuals into favored and punished classes. And, true to form, those allegedly intended to be the (admittedly, unjustly) punished soon find a way to become the favored. Such is the inevitable outcome of Progressive legislation.

The most breathtaking flight of fancy from Washington this past week was the full- court press by the President, Vice President, Chairperson of the White House Council of Economic Advisors and a whole host of Obama acolytes to proclaim that the Stimulus is working, that we’re “ahead of schedule” on job creation and that we’ve created  (or saved) millions of jobs.  The job saving claim is, in a strange way, irrefutable…sort of like a witch doctor saying if he hadn’t done his rain dance, the drought would have been worse.  As Democratic Senator Max Baucus complained to the White House “you created a situation where you cannot be wrong.  If 2,500,000 jobs are lost, you claim that without your stimulus program, 3,500,000 jobs would have been lost.  Taken to its logical conclusion, if everyone except one person were laid off, the Administration could claim that without its stimulus program, that person would have lost his job.”

There is, of course, a reason for this disciplined chorus of downright silly spin.  The Administration knew that data were about to be released from a variety of reliable sources revealing a further decline in manufacturing and retail activity, a further pull back in private sector hiring plans and industry investment plans, unemployment stubbornly stuck at just under ten percent and a further sinking of consumer confidence.  What’s a “fella” to do with elections coming and millions of jobs lost?  Dance the old dos-a-do and around you go, and claim the stimulus saved jobs.

This further sinking of consumer confidence is particularly significant and vexing to the Administration.  Consumer confidence is a consequence of the consumers’ sensitivity to what they see, hear and feel all around them.  It is reality. It can’t be manufactured, successfully manipulated (for very long), divined from the White House or spoon fed from a teleprompter.

The big problem the White House faces is its dogged determination to transform America into a left leaning, statist nation consistent with the President’s vision of what’s good for America, when Americans don’t want to be transformed into that vision.  Americans understand the difference between needed reforming and radical transforming.

Dos-a-Do and Around You Go has been like an anthem within this White House. Remember the Obama healthcare reform bill that wasn’t going to add “one dime to the deficit” and the president’s mantra that he wouldn’t sign a bill that added one dime to the deficit “ now or in the future.” We now know, because the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has told us, and, as the president surely knew when he made that promise, that his healthcare reform bill would add hundreds of billions of dollars to the deficit.

And when George Stephanopoulos suggested that the fine for not purchasing insurance under the Obama healthcare plan was clearly a tax on the middle class, the President replied that it wasn’t a tax at all. This rather astounding presidential response quickly had Stephanopoulos reaching for the nearest dictionary (which, conveniently, was resting at his elbow). After reading aloud the definition of a tax, which fit the fine or penalty in Obamacare like a glove, the President, with a straight face, lectured that the fact that Stephanopoulos had to use the dictionary proved he (the president) was right all along.  Dos-a-Do and Around You Go.

To add insult to injury, the Justice Department in responding to lawsuits brought by several state attorneys general who claim the Congress has exceeded its constitutional authority in the health care legislation by mandating fines on individuals who do not purchase health insurance, is now making the argument that the fine is really just . . . you guessed it . . . a tax which is, of course, within the power of Congress.  Quite amazing isn’t it?  It isn’t a tax, it’s a fine except when it’s a tax.  Mr. Obama has created a new dance step:  the double dos-a-do.  Then there was the White House assurance that the Administration’s spending (they call it investment) was going to decrease the deficit.  The CBO, ever so belatedly, blew the whistle on that outlandish claim with the warning that the mounting deficits were now deemed to be unsustainable.

Another refrain of Dos-a-Do and Around You Go was the Administration’s attempt to harmonize the American Latino community with the President’s promise of comprehensive immigration reform legislation during his first year in office.  Eighteen months later, and counting, and there hasn’t been a scintilla of effort to propose or advance such reform.  Arizona Governor Jan Brewer and the state’s legislature called the President’s hand on this one when they passed Senate bill 1070 which goes into effect this week unless derailed by an injunction asked for in the recent suit filed by the federal government against the state (that is, the people) of Arizona. SB 1070 does nothing more than require the state’s law enforcement officers to assist the federal government in enforcing its own laws. The President’s claim that SB 1070 would result in police “confronting a mom and her kids at an ice-cream parlor” with demands they show proof of citizenship was pure demagoguery.  It was Dos-a-Do and Around You Go writ large and sung off key.

And just this month, the president, employing his power to make recess appointments, named Donald Berwick to head the Office of Medicare and Medicaid Services.  Mr. Obama, citing Republican obstructionism, said speed was needed to fill a position that has been vacant for a number of years.  If that is so, why did it take him eighteen months to make the appointment?  Amazing isn’t it coming from a man who as a senator was outraged over President Bush’s recess appointment of John Bolton to be the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

Then there was the effort from day one of this Administration to convince the American public that there was no such thing as a war on terror, that terrorism didn’t exist and we could change the reality of terror with a mere change in vocabulary.  Administration officials were forbidden to use the words Islamic and terror in the same sentence.  The Obama cabinet began dissembling with new ways to describe what every American recognizes as the paramount existential threat of the 21^st century. Suddenly, the President’s cabinet members were, with straight faces, trying to convince the people that “man caused disasters,” and not terrorism, caused the first and second World Trade Center attacks, and the attack on the USS Cole, and the bombing of the Embassies in Africa, and the London subway and bus bombings and the Christmas-day near mid-air disaster and the Fort Hood massacre and the Time’s Square attempted car bomb attack, and the carnage at Mumbai.  We are not fighting Islamic terrorism on a global scale they tell us.  We’re, instead, engaging in “overseas contingency operations.” This is well beyond the typical Dos a Do and Around You Go that routinely emanates from every misstep of this Administration. It is even beyond implausible. The President simply shouldn’t tolerate this sort of semantic gobbledygook, much less be responsible for it. This is our national security with which these political neophytes are toying.  It boggles the mind.

And to prove there was no war on terror the Attorney General of the United States declared that the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks would be tried in civilian courts rather than by the military tribunal to which Khalid Sheik Mohammad had already announced his intention to plead guilty.  Almost comically, Attorney General Eric Holder, testifying at a recent Senate hearing, displayed breathtaking linguistic gymnastics by resisting every effort by the panel to coax him into acknowledging that there was even the remotest connection between Islamic extremism and attacks on innocent civilians.

Then, of course, there is also the new 2300-hundred-page financial reform law that calls for 243 new regulations to protect Main Street from Wall Street.  America got a lot of Dos-a-Do and Around You Go by the President about how the people were going to be protected with this new law even though there isn’t a word in the Act dealing with the malfeasances of those government sponsored enterprises, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which were, perhaps, among the most responsible culprits in the entire financial meltdown.  So far, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are untouched, unmentioned and unregulated by Obama’s financial regulatory reform.  We doubt, however, that they will remain unscathed once the public begins to focus on the fact that Representative Barney Frank, Senator Chris Dodd and (former Senator) Barrack Obama were the largest recipients of Fannie Mae’s political slush fund.

We could go on, as the Presidential encores of Dos-a-Do and Around You Go seem endless.  But things do have a way of changing and, perhaps, the President will soon learn that, just like the original Virginia Reel, fewer and fewer people are dancing to this tune.

By Hal Gershowitz and Stephen Porter

In chapter 4 of our book, The Blueprint: Obama’s Plan to Subvert the Constitution and Build an Imperial Presidency, we make the point that Team Obama would try to pull a fast one when it comes to Obamacare’s individual mandate that everyone reading this blog post needs to buy health insurance, or be subject to a penalty payable to your good friends at the IRS.

We first made this argument in a column we coauthored with Senator Orrin Hatch in the Wall Street Journal back in January. Now this issue has suddenly exploded back into the news.

For months, Team Obama has been saying that the individual mandate is authorized by Congress’ power to regulate interstate commerce found in the Commerce Clause. We explain in the book why that argument is a loser in court, and that the White House would have to pull a bait-and-switch and suddenly argue that the mandate is a tax (violating Obama’s promise not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $250K per year).

Looks like we were right. In their first filing against the multi-state lawsuit challenging Obamacare, Team Obama is now arguing that the individual mandate is… a tax.

If you read chapter 4 of our book, though, after we explain how the mandate is not authorized by the Commerce Clause, we then go on to explain how it is also unconstitutional if it’s a tax.

Evidently worried about this, Team Obama then goes on to argue that if the court doesn’t buy the tax argument either (because the argument is bogus, perhaps?), then it’s still justified under the General Welfare Clause.

Anticipating that, our next section in chapter 4 explains why the mandate is also not authorized by the General Welfare Clause.

We close that section by noting that one thing you’re taught in law school is that the General Welfare Clause doesn’t authorize the federal government to do anything. It is a limitation on federal power, not a source of additional power.

When you cite the General Welfare Clause, you’re grasping at straws. That’s exactly what Team Obama is doing. Their legal argument is desperate, because the Obamacare mandate is unconstitutional.

With Elena Kagan’s confirmation vote for the Supreme Court right around the corner, this issue could not be more timely. We need federal courts that will uphold the Constitution’s limits on federal power. They can start by striking down Obamacare.

Sen. Robert Bennett lost his party’s nomination during the second round of voting at the GOP state convention Saturday, making the three-term Senator the first incumbent to fall in this volatile midterm election cycle.

Bennett finished in third place in the crucial second-round vote, garnering just 26 percent of the delegates’ support, well behind Tea Party-backed attorney Mike Lee and businessman Tim Bridgewater, who will advance to the June 22nd primary.

“The political atmosphere obviously has been toxic and it’s very clear that some of the votes I have cast have added to the toxic environment,” Bennett acknowledged in a brief media availability with reporters shortly after he was eliminated in the second round of voting.

“Looking back on them, with one or two very minor exceptions, I wouldn’t have cast any of them any differently, even if I had known at the time they were going to cost me my career,” he continued.

Bennett was dogged by his support for the Troubled Asset Relief Program and for co-sponsoring a healthcare bill with Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oreg.). To help make his case to the 3,452 delegates, he even tapped the star power of former Massachusetts governor – and fellow Mormon – Mitt Romney to make a final pitch.

But in the end, the furor stirring at the grassroots level of the party over spending and the growth of government was too much for him to overcome.

Read more here. Bennett’s stunning defeat should be a stark reminder to the national GOP. The GOP can’t “phone in” this election. It isn’t enough to have an R behind their name. It has to stand for something more than supporting just slightly less-big government.

In the novel, the hero Galt and his followers retreat to a hideaway where they wait for society to collapse. But in America, regular citizens have organised in masses against Obama’s vision of socialized medicine, and they’ve embraced their own John Galt – a Texan scholar-activist named John Goodman. Known to many as the inventor of Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) and a key figure in defeating Hillarycare in the 90’s, Goodman has become the intellectual heavyweight of Obamacare’s opponents and his arguments are increasingly embraced by the new “Repeal and Replace” movement.

According to Goodman, the real problems with the bill are only just starting to emerge. As soon it was set to pass, Caterpillar announced the bill would cost them $100 million in its first year alone. And Verizon told its employees their costs would go up almost immediately because of the 40% excise tax the bill puts on the kind of high-end plans the telco giant provides. But looking ahead it’s clear to Goodman that the legislation’s inverted incentives would result in much more than changes to the healthcare system and the company costs but that the impact on the economy would be disastrous: labor dislocation, hiring freezes, economic assaults on lower paid workers, and spikes in unemployment.

In a “the health alerts” email Goodman listed last week the troubles ahead for the economy and for Obamacare advocates:

1.       People will be required to buy a product whose price will be rising at twice the rate of growth of their incomes and they will be barred from doing many of the things needed to control these costs.

2.      A bizarre system of subsidies will profoundly disrupt the labor market, leading to massive layoffs, contracting and outsourcing.

3.      A health insurance exchange will give health plans incentives to attract the healthy and avoid the sick; and after enrolment, to over-provide to the healthy and under-provide to the sick.

4.      A weakly enforced individual mandate will give people incentives to game the system – remaining uninsured while healthy and obtaining insurance only after they get sick; choosing limited-benefit plans while healthy and scaling up to richer plans after they get sick.

TAKING IT TO THE CROWDS

As opposition to Obamacare intensifies in anticipation of the mid-term elections, and the movement to “Repeal and Replace” grows, Goodman will continue to deploy the tactics that brought him to the forefront of the legislative struggle.  When opposition began to build with the tea party demonstrations last summer, Goodman gave the movement intellectual heft and a media high point. Teaming up his think tank — The National Centre for Policy Analysis (NCPA) located in Dallas Texas with Salem Radio in September 2009 — he got live media coverage and 1.3 million signatures in a petition against the bill that crystallized the opposition.

“Combining new media with talk radio- it’s never been done before” says Goodman, “it was the largest online petition ever delivered to Congress”. According to Lee Habeeb, Salem Radio’s network director and a leading talk radio producer, “What John is great at is taking big ideas and making them understood”, and it’s making the public understand the bill that was his goal from the start. Habeeb explained that they had seen the healthcare bill coming early on – “I knew Barack Obama was serious. John Goodman knew he was serious… we knew what they were going to do and we knew who ‘they’ were. We knew what the agenda would be.” So they took it to the airwaves: “we really worked to deconstruct the numbers before they hit us so that people would be armed for when the swing came”.

As the fight reached the breaking point, the NCPA and Salem radio also launched their “million email” campaign, getting over 1 million citizens from all 50 states to send emails against the bill to their Congressmen. To Habeeb, the bill was “a catalyst… healthcare was an over-reach, this is a call to arms” — and Goodman provided the arms.

One of the reasons Goodman has been so effective at rallying people to oppose the healthcare bill is that aside from being an academic armed with facts and numbers, he’s also engaged the public in media-savvy ways. His blog on the NCPA website went from 48th to 8th as the debate heated up. After Paul Krugman took a joking comment on his blog seriously and attacked him in the New York Times, Goodman installed a “satire button” for Krugman and any other sombre critics. He wanted readers to make it clear when they were mocking the situation, underscoring how much of a minefield the healthcare debate has become.

Dr. John Goodman, "Father of the HSAs"

GOING TO CORE AGRUMENTS

But although he embraces a media culture that many academics avoid, Goodman doesn’t just go for the quick hit: he takes the time to go to the opposition’s core arguments. He took on Michael Moore’s Sicko movie in 2007 with rigor, breaking it down piece by piece, dispelling typical healthcare myths by offering facts on foreign government’s healthcare that Moore had ignored. Myths like the notion that people abroad are able to obtain better healthcare because their country calls healthcare a “right”: but talking about healthcare as a fundamental “right” in theory doesn’t translate into results in practice – waiting times abroad are staggeringly long. In Britain, about 1 million are waiting to be admitted to hospitals at any one time. And as for Cuba, Goodman dryly pointed out that Marxist abstraction about a “right to care” doesn’t come with a “right to an MRI or heart surgery.”

Then, there’s the myth that nationalized healthcare is better, because people in some countries with state-run systems are healthier. Advocates of a government takeover of medicine often argue that life expectancy is higher and infant mortality lower where healthcare is state-run and that therefore national systems are better. Such comparisons, Goodman says, are misleading for three reasons. First, comparing European countries that are homogeneous and the US that is a heterogeneous nation with high and lows in incomes and social conditions — is to compare unlike things. Compare a European country with parts of the US that are similar, however, Sweden to Minnesota, and the numbers are similar. Second, life expectancy and infant mortality are affected by lifestyle choices like diet, exercise, and alcohol far more than health care delivery, so whether healthcare is state-run or private is a secondary issue. Third, any comparison of survival rates for diseases where health care assistance can make the difference like cancer, diabetes and hypertension shows the US system simply walking away with the honors.

He also challenged the notion of more “fairness” in nationalized systems, pointing out that in state-run systems healthcare costs are redirected away from those who need it most because of political incentives. People often say that foreign healthcare is more “fair” because healthcare costs are spread more evenly abroad – but healthcare costs should be allocated disproportionately: by going to the sick, who need it most. In America, only 4% of people consume half of health care costs, which is actually the way it should be: the truly sick get the attention, that’s what health care systems are for. In state run systems, however, politicians have an electoral incentive to spread money across their voters – and away from the very sick, who are a minority, and who often cannot vote. In making the point that government run-systems are politicized and that the money goes where the votes are, he notes that the real victims in state run systems are the very people politicians claim they are trying to help – the poor, the elderly and those who live in rural areas.

NUMBERS, WORDS AND ACTION

But even when opposing people like Moore, Goodman stays away from the kind of firebrand rhetoric that often surrounds healthcare– which may be why he’s gone under the radar of major media outlets. According to former Delaware governor Pete Dupont, “Dr. Goodman doesn’t enrage people […] They might not agree, but they listen. When he’s done, people with either say, ‘That’s right’ or ‘That’s interesting, and I’ll think about it.’” He attracts both libertarian and traditional conservatives, but he approaches people of all political folds, doing Congressional briefings for everyone willing to listen. He does this based on arguments grounded in research and numbers, including some that have not yet been really picked up by the opposition. .

So “Who is John Goodman?” A telegenic Texan academic, he started his career defending market-based economics at Columbia. He went on to teach as a fellow at Sarah Lawrence, Dartmouth and Stanford, and after investigating the British health care system wrote Patient Power in 1992. Published by the CATO institute, the book laid out how to reform America’s healthcare and sold over 300,000 copies; a bestseller for a policy book. A few years later, he took his ideas to the political table: along with Bill Kristol and then Texas Senator Phil Gramm, Goodman led the fight against Hillarycare. Together, they took on Clinton’s proposal to force all employers to provide health insurance controlled by a gatekeeper- the HMOs. They succeeded.

Goodman then became what the Wall Street Journal calls “the father of HSAs.” Working from his think tank Goodman developed Health Savings Accounts in the early 2000s. Today, almost 9 million Americans benefit from HSA’s: they’re accounts in which taxpayers can accumulate money free of federal taxes to pay for expenses not covered by their insurance. Until Goodman developed HSAs, deposits to these kind of savings accounts by employers or employees were taxed just like wage income.

But getting HSA’s implemented wasn’t easy: at first, Congress found them so controversial that Senator Ted Kennedy fought to repeal them. But now, 70% of users want HSAs to expand. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed this March, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels showed the game-changing potential of HSAs when he wrote how the accounts kept patients satisfied and helped both the people enrolled and the state save money. Among Indiana state workers, 70% chose to enroll in HSA’s introduced by Daniels and only 3% switched back. By the end of 2010, those enrolled will have saved more than $8 million compared to their peers belonging to regular PPOs, and the state’s costs will go down 11% due to HSAs alone.

But it’s not because patients are forgoing necessary treatment or preventative care: a review by independent healthcare experts at Mercer Consulting found no evidence of this- rather, patients were now making smarter choices like choosing generic drugs over brand-named ones and eliminating unnecessary expenditures. Thanks to Goodman’s idea, people were making better healthcare choices because they felt they were spending their own money.

BREAKING IT DOWN

The reasons for Goodman’s belief that the fallout over Obamacare is just beginning lie in his breakdown of his recent “health alert.”  According to Goodman, the most potent arguments against the bill for the public is the dramatic impact on peoples’ wallets. “The bill that’s passed will require all non-elderly people to buy insurance plans with costs that will grow at twice the rate of their income” he explains. And above all, there’s the impact on jobs. One of the strangest effects of the bill is the irresistible pressure it creates for employers to avoid providing health insurance, despite the penalties it puts in place. Goodman explains that for $30,000 a year employees who receive employer health insurance, the federal government ends up providing a subsidy of around $2,300. But employees who are not receiving health insurance from their employers and are required to obtain it on the new health insurance exchange created by the bill, the government ends up providing a federal subsidy of  up to $19,400 – what Goodman calls “an enormous federal government gift to the employer and the employee”. For employers who do not provide insurance, the penalty is lower than this “gift”, so they have an incentive to avoid giving insurance. And since the state is footing the bill for the insurance, these employers can raise their employees’ wages by the amount they would have spent on insurance (minus whatever penalties they pay). What then happens to employer health insurance? It disappears for $30,000 a year employees, who all have an incentive to migrate to the exchange. Who pays this soaring bill? The taxpayer.

But there’s more: take an employer of many uninsured $30,000 a year employees. He now has to either offer all his employees insurance, or else have them all go to the exchange and pay the fine for not providing insurance: in both cases, his labor costs either rise dramatically – which means he has to fire workers to cover these costs, or else, he must absorb these costs by cutting wages. They can also just outsource the jobs. However you look at it, the bill will end up causing serious unemployment and huge shifts in the labor market.

To be clear: Goodman does not support the previous status quo either. The system before the bill discriminated against individuals by giving major tax breaks to businesses providing health insurance, without providing equivalent tax breaks to people saving their own funds. This model is designed for a different age — a time when most employees spent their working lifetimes with one company. But Goodman points out that today, one-third of workers are outside the workplace and would do better if they could manage their own healthcare expenditures in a competitive market. Instead, not only are they taxed, but they’re unable to take or buy their insurance across state lines.  Yet the current bill is worse: “The cost will go up compared to what it was and the quality will decrease compared to what it was” he says, “even though we insure an additional 23 million, access to care may not improve at all. There’s not a single dollar in this bill that’s allocated to new doctors or to build hospitals. There’s nothing to increase the supply of care to meet the needs of the 23 million newly insured”.  It will be just like Massachusetts, he says: “they cut in half the number of uninsured… but they had a huge problem finding doctors. In Boston you have to wait twice as long, and just as many people go to the ERs as before”. More insurance doesn’t mean more care, unless there are also more doctors and hospitals.

WHAT’S NEXT?

So what can regular citizens do? First, Goodman says citizens should act through the ballot box: “if you have someone representing you and they totally ignore what you think” he says, talking about how Pelosi forced Democrats to vote for the bill, “I hope they punish the people who voted for this”.

But then, there will be real reforms needed to create a good healthcare reform bill: in an op-ed with Newt Gingrich in the Wall Street Journal last month, Goodman explained just a few of the ten key reforms that would make what he considers a very good bill. They include making sure people can buy insurance across state lines, allowing providers to create special insurance packages to meet the needs of the chronically ill, and provisions to help individuals save for when their health status changes and they need to switch plans. “If Republicans want to govern, they can’t be a party of ‘No’” he says, “they’ll have to change the bill in fundamental ways.” Lee Habeeb agrees: “they won” he says of the House vote – “it’s time to stop protesting about the process take back Congress and reunite on the legislation.” Healthcare’s John Galt isn’t about to retreat.

Nearly 4 million Americans will have to pay a penalty if they fail to get health insurance when that element of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul law kicks in, according to congressional projections released Thursday.

The penalties will average a little more than $1,000 apiece in 2016, the Congressional Budget Office said in a report.

The vast majority of people paying the fine will be middle class, which would violate Obama’s 2008 campaign pledge not to raise taxes on individuals making less than $200,000 a year and couples making less than $250,000.

Republicans have criticized the penalties, even though the idea for a mandate was originally proposed by Republicans in the 1990s and is part of the Massachusetts health care plan signed into law by then Gov. Mitt Romney, a Republican, in 2006. Attorneys general in more than a dozen states are working to challenge the mandate in federal court as unconstitutional.

Democrats argue the mandate and the penalties are a necessary part of a massive overhaul designed to expand coverage to millions who now lack it. They point out that getting young, healthy Americans in the insurance pool will reduce costs for others.

Americans who don’t get qualified health insurance will be required to pay penalties starting in 2014, unless they are exempt because of low income, religious beliefs, or because they are members of American Indian tribes. The penalties will be fully phased in by 2016.

Continue reading here.