Taxpayers Pay and Plow the Road to Single Payer

O-Care isn't about creating a viable insurance marketplace -- it's about creating a taxpayer funded money laundering scheme to plow, pave and pay for the road to single payer.

It goes like this -- 

1. OCare is really a massive expansion of Medicaid -- that part of O-Care has been very successful. 
2. Expect O-Care to mandate that providers who accept O-Care insurance to be required to take Medicaid as well.  That will make sure there's lots of claims to process rather than lots of Medicaid patients on waiting lists...  
3. Medicaid claims are processed by carriers because the gubermint has been proven to be incompetent at this task. 
4. Carriers don't mind the claims processing task -- they get the taxpayers to pay for processing OMedicaid claims, and they don't have to pay for the claim. 
5. It's all paid for by the taxpayer. Easy gravy...
6. Carriers in turn will take significant portions (billions?) of what they are paid for processing OMedicaid claims, and lobby politicians for more Medicaid claims to process, plus higher taxes so they get paid even better for processing more claims. 
7. All paid for by the taxpayers... Did I mention that again?  My bad... Go figure...
8. It's a socialist taxpayer funded money laundering scam made in liberal heaven.

Also, don't hold your breath for any of the crony GOP LOSERship to stop this sort of crony activity -- helping crony's out in exchange for more campaign bucks and insider trading info is the LOSERship's bread and butter when it comes to maintaining their power over common sense Constitutionallist tea party types.

Ocare Petition/Boycott

Cruz and the new GOP ought to push the idea of counting paying folks signing up for Obamacare as a petition.  If 50% of those eligible sign up by Dec 15, then he'll stand down and let Ocare proceed, otherwise, Ocare goes away.   Seems only those actually paying some premium expense would be eligible to be counted in this petition as those getting Ocare for free are bought with other people's money.   

Even if this idea doesn't make headway in Congress, it's likely to be picked up by average Bubbas and Bubbets who log onto Ocare and find they'll be paying big bucks for Ocare.  Unlike subsidized Congresscritterrs, folks in the struggling Oconomy of Main Street will have to redirect their plans for a new house, new boat, new car, nice vacation and saving for college for their kids to pay for Ocare, with it's $6000 deductible and high premiums. 

Some might call the people's Ocare petition to be an Ocare boycott -- big deal, liberals try the same sort of thing all the time against conservative companies...   Let the Ocrats make all the noise they want to fight it -- all publicity is good publicity if your cause is just... 

Enjoy the Show

Obamacare isn't all that complicated -- it's like a taxpayer funded benefit for "free" cable TV.  OTV provides everything, in HD, with Tivo, multi rooms, smart phones, etc  -- It's got the full NFL, NBA, MBA, NCAA, MLS, ESPN sports package; HBO, Hulu, Netflix for your whims; Cooking channels to fatten you up; Exercise channels to thin you up; Education channels to make you smart; Fast internet for surfing,  Hustler channels for...   Anyways, OTV covers everything...  Mostly at your rich neighbors expense, after you pay a premium yourself if your income is above middle class $50k or so.  Gotta love it...
    Fine print, when the Obucks start to (quickly) run out to pay the creators and actors of these shows and show quality drops what are you to do for new quality shows when you absolutely need a new show?  Big surprise -- the new stuff won't be on your network.  Translated back into healthcare terms, Obamacare promises coverage but that's doesn't mean they have to provide you care.

  IMPORTANT NOTE : Doctors (and nurses), NOT politicians, provide care.
 
    There's a difference between coverage and care.  Sure you may have Obamacare coverage, but that doesn't mean you'll find a good doctor to provide your (cut rate) Obamacare.   Those with Obamacare coverage will have to get used to waiting in line (throttled in cell phone lingo) -- Medicare and Medicaid patients will shuffle in behind the waiting Obamacare folks.   Prepare for endless seesaw political battles over decreasing health care quality for this or that group -- with ever increasing media hype and advertising to follow.  It's all part of the "plan". 

   Oh yes, did I forget to mention that politicians and many gubbermint workers are exempted from Obamacare?  They'll jump right to the front of the line with top dollar first in line coverage, at your expense.  Sucks not to be part of the Privileged...   
Enjoy the show while you can...  Suckers...

Raising taxes on the Lawn

Raising taxes on the productive sector for politicians to spread around is like lowering the cut of a lawn, collecting the clippings, and dumping the clippings over the brown areas in the lawn so they look green for a few days. 

Go figure, the brown dumping ground soon turns brown again and harbors diseases that spread to adjacent areas in a never ending downward spiral. This pretty much describes the current state of our welfare entitlement economy. 

And the 'common sense' solution offered by the 'greenskeeper' is what?  Raise taxes (lower the mower cut even more) so there's more clippings to spread around?  And just how is that supposed to work?  Doesn't work for the lawn, won't work for economy.  

Obamacare's Working Family Tax increase

Folks, the big "tax" in Obamacare isn't the penalty for not buying insurance, it's the premium you pay for the insurance. 

Obamacare is basically a variation of a sliding scale Medicare tax -- those above a certain amount pay more than the cost of the coverage, and that money collected is shifted to help pay for those who pay less than the actual coverage's value.  This tax/premium is collected by and managed directly by the insurance companies according to the rules set down by the Obamacare bureaucracy.   This bureaucracy has be granted the power to increase this tax/premium as well as modify the coverage provided without consultation with Congress. 

For example, assume that the basic coverage might actually cost 12k for a family -- the actual cost put forth for those in higher incomes might be 20k.  The eight thousand extra charged those over 100k is used to subsidized the coverage for average families of 50k who can't be expected to pay the $12,000 tax for their coverage -- that would be a 24% tax bill on middle class working families.  Instead, middle class families may be expected to pay perhaps $6,000 (or 12%) in income taxes to carriers for their Obamacare coverage, with premium subsidies from those with higher incomes and various other taxes used to make up the rest of their coverage.    Never mind that this is a huge 20% health care tax increase on those with 100k incomes...   There aren't enough of those folks to bend the vote in other directions.

Clear as mud?  Yep -- it's way too complicated for left wing CongressCritters or the PRESSSSident to explain without upsetting middle class families -- many families may only wake up to this huge Obamacare tax when they are formally drowned in Obamacare's first round of taxes/premiums.  

To simplify this just think of Obamacare as a sliding scale Medicare tax for working age folks to pay for working class coverage, on top of paying Medicare taxes.  How much your "tax" is depends upon your income.  

Never mind that little of this is Constitutional as a tax or not... 

It's Social Marketplaces, not spending or revenues.

The US (as well as many other nations) doesn’t have a spending or revenue problem, they have a Social Marketplace problem. The perpetual “spending versus revenue” debate is a misdiagnosis of the problem. The problem is centralized politically driven social marketplaces are inherently fiscally, as well as morally, unstable and lead to eventual fiscal as well as moral bankruptcy. No amount of adjustments to spending or revenue will treat this cancer.

Instead of defining the various social marketplaces (education, health care, housing, pensions, etc) to be individually driven according to marketplace rules, with prudent self adjusting accommodations for those of limited means, politicians have tried to play Santa Claus buying votes for this or that Social Marketplace program, generally at the expense of future generations as well as the general prosperity of today’s economy.

Any solution that doesn’t address taking the centralized and special interest politics out of these various social marketplaces is doomed to be little more than a temporary fix on a long downhill slide into some sort of economic abyss.

There are plenty of options, as well as examples, of how the various social marketplaces can be redefined toward individually driven social marketplaces. Chile provides an example of how personalized retirement plans work. There are others. There are pockets of HSA health care coverage that are working fine in the US even given the straightjackets politicians have encumbered them with — if they’re not killed by Obamacare. There are other examples around the world such as Singapore. Similar sorts of models can be applied to education and other social marketplaces.

What is needed is recognition that government’s proper role isn’t to provide these various Social Marketplaces via some central command and control system. Government’s proper role is to define and implement individually driven, Social Marketplaces that are sensitive to marketplace whims, while also providing structures for those of limited means — with a natural unassailable check and balance against perverse expansion of ‘limited means’ to larger and larger populations via politicians buying votes as Santa Claus.

How the US got here is simple — During FDRs days, politicians determined that the Preamble to the Constitution was irrelevant and started to ignore the guidelines it provides for how the powers of the Federal Government are to be used. As a result, instead of promoting the general welfare, politicians have pushed providing special interest welfare over promoting the general welfare — this buys votes… They also ignore preserving liberty for our posterity (future generations) by buy votes today for goodies that future generations will have to pay back. Then there’s the shadow government of federal bureaucracies that basically write law without regards to Congress or the Constitution and the Preamble — taking liberty away one regulation at a time, many regulations each day…

Judges, politicians and many of the population have bought into this extra-Constitutional fantasy of a cradle to grave worship of big government that will solve all problems, big and small. It does no such thing — government is the problem, not solution. The solution isn’t smaller government, it’s developing and implementing individually driven compassionate social marketplaces. Individually driven social marketplaces will result in a smaller government that also provides access to a vibrant and healthy set of social marketplaces for all.

Socialism and other Social Marketplaces

Socialism is basically a centrally controlled Social Marketplace owned by government.

There are many forms of centrally controlled Social Marketplaces that don’t fit the classical definition of Socialism — Obamacare, for example, isn’t strictly socialized health care because the private sector carriers administer the programs the centralized federal bureaucracies largely define. The taxation/cost shifting to support coverage of those with lower incomes is in part paid for by redistributing overpriced premiums paid by those with middle to higher incomes. The overpriced premiums are basically a hidden tax on middle income folks on up, collected and managed outside of ‘normal’ government revenue and spending channels. Socialism it’s not, but a centralized social marketplace it is. At least it’s not the Mandated Employer Subsidized Socialism (MESS) that HillaryCare was all about.

Home financing via Fanny and Freddie are similar examples of federally centralized Social Marketplaces that have run amuck with a mix of private and public sector financial enterprises being puppeteered by federal bureaucracies and politics. The fiscal malaise we are currently stuck is in directly related to the failure of this Social Marketplace AND the continuing denial of the federal government playing the key role in it's bubble bursting.

There are plenty of other examples of centralized Social Marketplaces in the US and around the world that don’t fit classical Socialism but should be treated with equal distain. Then there’s public schools — they are basically socialized education save for how the funding is mixed between local and federal sources — trending towards more federal control, at least until the feds figure out they don’t have the money…