The Costs of American Fascism

Back in the first term of George W. Bush, yours truly penned a series of columns that posited that the Republican Party, then in control of all levers of power as the Democrat Party is today, would do the country a great service by moving towards a market-driven, private-sector-based system of universal healthcare. 

The reasoning then was that there was a growing mood among the public that something needed to be done to improve the delivery of healthcare services to those who either did not have health insurance provided through their employment or could not afford to purchase it themselves.  This line of thought further concluded that, if the Republicans did not seize their moment in power to move the nation to some form of market-based universal delivery of health services, then the Democrats would move the nation to a ruinous government-based form of the same thing the next time they assumed absolute power.

Predictably, the Republicans did nothing in this regard, and the nation now stands saddled with the worst-case scenario:  a nationalized system of healthcare delivery based upon the fascist model (private ownership, government mandate and control) preferred by the nation's first outwardly fascist congress and President.  

This is undeniably what Obamacare amounts to – there is no logical, fact-based argument to the contrary, though there is plenty of dissembling, name-calling and lying from the President and his supporters.

You begin with the unprecedented mandate that everyone must purchase a healthcare policy.  The President and his army of liars like to reply that this is no different than the mandate to buy auto insurance, something only a blatant liar or an oaf who flunked his Logic 101 course would attempt to argue.  You are forced to purchase auto insurance in order to engage in a privilege – the privilege of driving an automobile – and we have always paid all manner of fees in order to engage in privileges in this country.  The mandate on health insurance is the first time the federal government has imposed a mandate on citizens for the simple fact that they are alive.  If you take in breath on a regular basis, the federal government now says you must purchase health insurance.  If you do not purchase health insurance, you will be fined.  If you refuse to pay the fine, you will be thrown in jail.

This is the very essence of fascism.  Benito Mussolini would be proud.

Obamacare will have a depressing effect on the economy in the short run, and ruinous effect in the long run.  It received a 10-year "score" from the Congressional Budget Office of "just" $984 billion only due to the fact that it imposes its new taxes immediately, but does not implement its budget outlays until 2014.  Thus, you have 10 years of Obamacare taxes counted against just 6 years of outlays.  Its mandate that any business employing more than 50 people provide them with healthcare insurance will ensure that thousands upon thousands of small businesses will never grow beyond 49 employees, and many of those who currently exceed that number will lay enough off in order to get themselves under that threshold.  That process has already begun.

Where larger businesses are concerned, we've already seen announcements from Caterpillar that Obamacare will impose a new cost of $100 million on that company in its first year, and from AT&T that its cost will be more like $1 billion.  What do companies do when they incur massive new costs?  They increase the prices they charge to their customers, and they lay people off.

Continuing on the fascist model, the Democrats in congress next move into bullying and intimidation mode.  This morning, House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman announced he will subpoena CEOs from these and other large companies to explain their calculations to his committee next month.  See, their announcements do not fit into the approved story line, and any deviation from that storyline must be discredited and punished.

On the insurers themselves, the government now imposes mandates that they allow parents to carry their kids on their policies until age 26, and that they can no longer screen applicants for pre-existing conditions, among other things.  So what will happen there?  Well, both mandates will dramatically increase costs to healthcare insurers, and so the rates they charge will naturally go up as a result.  The anticipation of these higher rates is largely the basis for the cost estimates from companies like Caterpillar and AT&T.

This is not rocket science here, folks.  It is all very, very easy to predict.

Finally, the Obamacare army of liars love to compare this atrocity of a bill to Social Security and Medicare, and predict it will ultimately become as well-liked by the public as those prior entitlements.  Let's note that both Social Security and Medicare are currently actuarially insolvent and will be completely broke within the next decade.  Let's also note that the combined un-funded liabilities of those two massive programs that must somehow be paid by future generations of Americans is upwards of $50 trillion.  That's Trillion with a "T".

Those two programs may be popular, but the reality is they are well on their way to bankrupting this nation.  Obamacare will just speed that unhappy process along.

The Liberal Zoo welcomes you all to Fascist America.  Hope you enjoy the stay, but be sure to meet all your mandates.