OBAMACARE: LOSING EVERYONE
By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
NYPost.com
The elderly were the first group to turn against President Obama's health-care
pro posals, alienated by the plans to cut $500 billion cut from Medicare. The
young and the uninsured may be the next to jump ship -- out of worry over about
the huge premiums they'd have to pay.
Requiring everyone to buy insurance will impose a massive tax on all who now are
uninsured. The Congressional Budget Office projects that it would force the
middle-income uninsured to pay on average more than 15 percent of their income.
The poor will still have Medicaid. But for those earning more, the required
premiums will be worse than any tax increase. For example, CBO estimates that
when the program is fully implemented -- by 2016 -- an individual earning
$32,400 a year would have to pay $4,100 in premiums before getting any subsidy.
With deductibles and co-payments, he'd have to shell out $5,600 a year, or 17.3
percent of his income. A family of four, making $80,000 a year, would have to
pay about $10,500 in premiums alone -- with deductibles and co-payments, up to
$15,000 or just under 20 percent of income.
And if they don't buy insurance, they'll face federal fines that begin to
approach these same premium levels. They won't be able to buy what they truly
need -- catastrophic-only coverage at a lower premium -- that won't satisfy
ObamaCare's "minimum insurance" mandate.
The young and uninsured will catch on: This bill is designed to force healthy
people who don't have health insurance -- and may neither need nor want it -- to
buy it anyway, in order to raise the money to subsidize those who do need it.
Obama has pledged only to increase taxes on the rich. But his program
essentially taxes the core of the middle class (those making $30,000 to
$80,000). It will make them overpay in order to pick up the slack for others who
need the extra coverage.
In other words, health-care "reform" is a health-care tax dressed up as a
program to cover the uninsured.
No matter how Democrats get the money to cover those who need insurance, they
offend supporters that they need to pass the bill:
* If they get the money from more Medicare cuts, they alienate the elderly still
further.
* If they get it from raising the deficit, they lose moderates.
* If they hike taxes to do it, they lose the "Blue Dog" Democrats who've gone on
record as opposing such increases.
* If they don't increase the subsidies, they lose the uninsured themselves.
The latest data from Scott Rasmussen's poll of those who lack health insurance
indicates that they're starting to turn skeptical about the Obama plan. It's
supposed to help them, yet they back it by only 58 percent to 35 percent -- and
only 30 percent support it strongly.
More to the point, only 35 percent feel it will improve the quality of their
health care -- and, by 41-26, they feel the cost of their care will go up, not
down, under the plan.
Having the uninsured -- the stated object of Obama's compassion -- turn against
his reform would be the most lethal cut of all.
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