Moral of the Obamacare Story: Taxes In, Doctors Out

There were two important developments recently in the continued unraveling of the Obamacare public relations BS.

First, the Obama administration cemented its legal position that the health care mandate is a tax, which means that Obama is raising taxes on people making less than $250,000 a year contrary to his campaign promise.

Second, the promise that you could keep your doctor is evaporating as health insurers, in a desperate attempt to keep down premiums under the burden of Obamacare requirements, are reformulating their plans by limiting choice of physicians.

Read Obama’s Tax Lips

Read Obama’s lips: I will not raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 per year.

Read Obama’s lips: The health care mandate is not a tax, so even though people making less than $250,000 per year have to pay it, I have kept my promise.

Read the Obama administration’s legal defense of the mandate:

When Congress required most Americans to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty, Democrats denied that they were creating a new tax. But in court, the Obama administration and its allies now defend the requirement as an exercise of the government’s “power to lay and collect taxes.”

And that power, they say, is even more sweeping than the federal power to regulate interstate commerce.

Administration officials say the tax argument is a linchpin of their legal case in defense of the health care overhaul and its individual mandate, now being challenged in court by more than 20 states and several private organizations.

You see, it all depends on what the meaning of “is” “tax” is.

He will say anything, because he doesn’t really care whether it is a tax or not.

He just wants to force you to pay it.

You Cannot Keep Your Doctor, Sucker

Read Obama’s lips: You will be able to keep your doctor if you want to.

Reality is that Obamacare imposes so many requirements on health care insurance that costs must rise or companies will go out of business. In order to qualify as acceptable insurance, and to avoid the health care mandate penalty, patients must obtain insuance with coverage they may not need or want.

There is no free lunch. Either health insurance premiums must rise, or coverage must fall. But since coverage cannot fall due to Obamacare requirements, the only place left to cut is in access to physicians:

As the Obama administration begins to enact the new national health care law, the country’s biggest insurers are promoting affordable plans with reduced premiums that require participants to use a narrower selection of doctors or hospitals.

The plans, being tested in places like San Diego, New York and Chicago, are likely to appeal especially to small businesses that already provide insurance to their employees, but are concerned about the ever-spiraling cost of coverage.

But large employers, as well, are starting to show some interest, and insurers and consultants expect that, over time, businesses of all sizes will gravitate toward these plans in an effort to cut costs.

The tradeoff, they say, is that more Americans will be asked to pay higher prices for the privilege of choosing or keeping their own doctors if they are outside the new networks.

That could come as a surprise to many who remember the repeated assurances from President Obama and other officials that consumers would retain a variety of health-care choices.

Welcome to Obamacare, one big freakin’ HMO.

Moral Of The Story

Yes, we will raise taxes on people making under $250,000 per year, and no, you cannot keep your doctor.

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Related Posts:
The Guns & Tobacco Mandate
Obamacare’s Chickens Coming Home To Roost Already
Freedom So Willingly Relinquished

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Tags: Health Care, Obama campaign, Taxes

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