GUEST EDITORIAL
By Joseph Bast, The Heartland Institute
Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act … all 3,256 pages of it … into law on March 23, 2010.
Most of the provisions don’t go into effect until 2014, but some of the taxes to fund it started immediately. By counting ten years of revenues and only six years of expenses, the administration was able to claim it will reduce the federal debt over the next ten years.
The Congressional Budget Office says the act will increase federal spending by $1 trillion over the first ten years … but if you start the clock four years later, the cost rises to $2.4 trillion. This is the most expensive legislation ever approved by Congress and signed by a president. And these estimates almost certainly under-estimate real costs.
Obamacare creates more than 150 new bureaucracies, agencies, boards, commissions, and programs, including an Independent Payment Advisory Board with a mandate to cut Medicare spending by $3 trillion over the next 20 years.
Government officials are empowered to tell physicians what quality health care is and what it is not, and to tell insurers what health insurance they can sell, and to tell employers and individuals what insurance they must buy. It redistributes premium income among insurers under a new “risk adjustment” mechanism to ensure successful companies subsidize less successful companies.
This is all right out of “Atlas Shrugged.”
And no, you will not be able to keep your current doctor, or your current insurance company. Chances are, your current employer will dump you into the insurance exchange, where you may or may not get any subsidy toward your insurance premiums, depending on your income. If you make more than the poverty level and currently get insurance through your employer, chances are your insurance costs will go up.
What will happen to the quality of health care in America? We can look at Britain and Canada to see what happens when government discourages investment, fixes prices, and rations care. Long waiting lines for tests and surgery; millions of people suffering chronic pain unnecessarily; thousands of people dying every year while waiting.
Some consequences of Obamacare will be less visible but no less damaging: Less investment in care for the most vulnerable, such as premature babies and the elderly; no more progress in the war on cancer; no more investment in new drugs and therapies.
Republished with permission from The Heartland Institute
