It's Like Living in a Certs Commercial

Remember the old commercials where they intoned that Certs was a breath mint and that Certs was a candy mint; it was two, two, two mints in one? Lately, I think that the media is trying to recreate that slogan. Obamacare is a tax; Obamacare is a penalty; Obamacare is a tax; Obamacare is a penalty. Obamacare is two, two, two bad things in one. So what! Except for the Supreme Court, it just doesn't matter if the individual mandate in Obamacare is a penalty or a tax. what does matter is that Obamacare is a bad idea which will do severe damage to an already weakened American economy. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that Obamacare itself would reduce the amount of labor employed in the economy by about one half of one percent. That sounds like very little until you realize that one half of one percent is the equivalent of 650,000 jobs. That is 650,000 jobs which are desperately needed to reduce the overwhelming unemployment and underemployment already rampant in the USA. Obamacare will also cost taxpayers huge sums that we do not have. To be specific, the latest estimate is that Obamacare will add $1,160 billion to net federal spending over the next 10 years and at least $340 billion to federal budget deficits in that time. Will the Chinese keep lending us all those dollars? Obamacare will also drive the cost of medical insurance up for nearly all Americans. When the people with pre-existing conditions are able to get insurance at the last moment, everyone else will have to pay for the actual costs of their care. when the children up to age 26 are able to be added to their parents policies, everyone with a policy will have to pay for the cost of the care for those children. Indeed, when Obama announces that contraceptive costs will now be "free", what he actually means is that individuals will no longer have to fork over the copay amount for the contraceptives and that cost will now be borne by everyone with a policy. In other words, all of these "free" benefits will just raise the cost of policies for everyone else. And we all know what that means; the cost of insurance will go up for employers with the net effect that the amount available to be paid out as salaries and other benefits will go down.

The disaster which is Obamacare does not end there, however. We now have a federal law which actually provides an incentive for many businesses to stop providing health insurance for their employees. Because of the major increases in insurance premiums that are the inevitable result of Obamacare, it will be less expensive for many businesses to pay a fine for each employee and to provide no insurance. Once the law kicks in fully, we will see literally millions of employees lose their health insurance. It may sound crazy, but the Obamacare plan to broaden health insurance coverage to more people may well lead to fewer people having insurance. And the folks without insurance will change from the unemployed and the poor and move instead to those with middle income jobs with incomes that puts them above the cutoff for federal help in meeting insurance costs. In short, Obamacare will impoverish millions of middle income folks while marginally helping the poor.

So does it matter that Obamacare is a tax? Does it matter that it is a penalty? NO!!! What matters is that it is an law with programs that have not been fully understood even by the Congress that passed it. What matters is that it is a impending disaster for America. What matters is that it has to be repealed.