August 28, 2009

Dems Already Attempting Catastrophic Health-Care Bait-and-Switch Predicted by Krauthammer

Today, from Krauthammer:

...there is an exit strategy [for Obama on health care]. And a politically clever one, if the Democrats are smart enough to seize it.

(5) Promise nothing but pleasure -- for now. Make health insurance universal and permanently protected. Tear up the existing bills and write a clean one -- Obamacare 2.0 -- promulgating draconian health-insurance regulation that prohibits (a) denying coverage for pre-existing conditions, (b) dropping coverage if the client gets sick, and (c) capping insurance company reimbursement.

And from today's LA Times:

With a virtual civil war raging over parts of President Obama's healthcare agenda, the smoke of battle has obscured a surprising fact: Democrats and Republicans actually agree on a bundle of proposals that could make medical insurance better for millions of Americans.

The consensus proposals include such popular ideas as barring insurance companies from denying coverage to people with preexisting injuries and illnesses, cutting insurance coverage off when a policyholder gets sick and imposing a lifetime cap on benefits.

Exactly what Krauthammer predicted, is already being attempted, per the LA Times. What are the dangers of this? It's all the horrors of Obamacare, smuggled into law by stealth. Per Krauthammer (same link):

What's not to like? If you have insurance, you'll never lose it. Nor will your children ever be denied coverage for pre-existing conditions.

The regulated insurance companies will get two things in return. Government will impose an individual mandate that will force the purchase of health insurance on the millions of healthy young people who today forgo it. And government will subsidize all the others who are too poor to buy health insurance. The result? Two enormous new revenue streams created by government for the insurance companies.

And here's what makes it so politically seductive: The end result is the liberal dream of universal and guaranteed coverage -- but without overt nationalization. It is all done through private insurance companies. Ostensibly private. They will, in reality, have been turned into government utilities. No longer able to control whom they can enroll, whom they can drop and how much they can limit their own liability, they will live off government largesse -- subsidized premiums from the poor; forced premiums from the young and healthy.

It's the perfect finesse -- government health care by proxy. And because it's proxy, and because it will guarantee access to (supposedly) private health insurance -- something that enjoys considerable Republican support -- it will pass with wide bipartisan backing and give Obama a resounding political victory.

Isn't there a catch? Of course, there is. This scheme is the ultimate bait-and-switch. The pleasure comes now, the pain later. Government-subsidized universal and virtually unlimited coverage will vastly compound already out-of-control government spending on health care. The financial and budgetary consequences will be catastrophic.

However, they will not appear immediately. And when they do, the only solution will be rationing. That's when the liberals will give the FCCCER regulatory power and give you end-of-life counseling.

It is essential for all of us who oppose Obamacare to recognize this terrible danger, and let our elected officials know that we are on to them and this horrific bait-and-switch will not be tolerated.