Obamacare In Critical Care Unit
Civilized people would never wish for an early demise of an actual patient, but seeing the unraveling this past week makes me hopeful that Obamacare will die a quick, spectacular death.
The Washington Times reports many of Obama’s initiatives are hitting the cost-reality-speedbump, a sign that the prolifigate spending of the administrations first few weeks is finally catching up with it. Socialized medicine, long one of the top goals of liberals, is being crowded out by the pork-barrel projects of the “stimulus package”. There’s only so much money to go around, even when you’re printing it yourself.
Doug Bandow at Cato puts it succinctly in the lead paragraph of his “Panic Starting to Set In Among Advocates of Government Run Healthcare” article:
Until now the usual suspects hoping to win a government takeover of America’s health care system appeared to be confident of victory. No longer, however. Some of them, at least, are starting to notice the fact that health care “reform” will be incredibly expensive at a time when the U.S. government has no money. Indeed, the problem is not that the Treasury is empty. Rather, it is filled with IOUs for which foreign creditors, such as China, now worry about collecting on.
Lest you be too optimistic, the “unthinkable” is now being discussed … a tax hike on the “middle class” (meaning, everyone). In addition to the idea of a VAT tax being floated, raising existing income tax rates is now being considered by some on the left. As quoted in the Heritage Foundation’s The Foundry Blog article “The Coming Obama Tax Explosion“, the influential Center for American Progress senior editor is calling for an extra annual tax of $500 per person to raise “almost 150 billion”.
How that would pay for a program conservatively estimated to cost a trillion dollars is beyond me, but that’s hardly the point. In the shallow halls of Washington, DC, the larger the number the easier it is to forget just how much money it really is. If a trillion dollars is really not that much to the Congresscritters, how, they may ask, can a middle class family of four really miss a mere $2,000?
An attempt to increase taxes, across the board and not just on the “filthy rich”, is coming. I hope it is in time for the mid-term elections, so the American people can once again assert their desire for liberty, including the engine of all liberty, economic freedom.
When it comes to the Obamacare proposals, a quick death would be best. But even a slow, lingering and difficult demise would be OK with me. As long as it dies.
