The Fuzzy math behind the Massachusetts universal healthcare law is starting to add up – just as Washington studies the law as a possible model for the nation.
Because of a recession-related drop in state revenues and a surge in enrollment by the recently unemployed, the truth is emerging at an inconvenient time. Massachusetts doesn’t have enough money to pay for the coverage envisioned by the law.
In June, state officials announced they are cutting $100 million from Commonwealth Care, which subsidizes premiums for needy residents. The poorest residents, along with the newest – legal immigrants – will take the hit.
This outcome is not surprising, but it is instructive as President Obama pushes for a national healthcare plan.
That’s the ace kicker with this whole Healthcare reform business. Short of massive (and I mean MASSIVE) tax increases, there is simply no way to pay for it without completely ballooning the already bloated federal budget. The simple fact of sticker shock is going to doom the project in the end.
But exactly how will “MASSIVE tax increases” pay for it, when there are simply no tax revenues incoming, in the first place?
It’s about control and power – nothing else.
A common theme runs through the “stimulus” package, the strongarming of banks, the takeover of GM and Chrysler, the cap-n-trade fiasco and the collectivization of healthcare. #3 has it pegged.
“I pledge that under my plan, no one making less than $250,000 a year will see any type of tax increase,” Obama told a crowd in Dover, N.H., last year. “Not income tax, not capital gains taxes, not any kind of tax.” On Sunday, that pledge went out the window. (AP Photo)
http://www.newsmax.com/headlines/obama_healthcare_tax/2009/06/28/229497.html
And:
[blockquote]”I pledge that under my plan, no one making less than $250,000 a year will see any type of tax increase,” Obama told a crowd in Dover, N.H., last year. “Not income tax, not capital gains taxes, not any kind of tax.”
At the time, his Republican rival, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., was proposing a tax on health benefits similar to the plan Obama is now considering. Just a year ago, Obama spent millions on campaign commercials attacking the idea.
One ad accused McCain of favoring “taxing health benefits for the first time ever … taxing health care instead of fixing it. We can’t afford John McCain.”
A second Obama ad called McCain’s approach “the largest middle-class tax increase in history.” Driving the point home, it contended the “McCain tax could cost your family thousands. Can you afford it?”
Under the current proposals, a tax on health benefits would affect only those with pricey health plans. The idea would be to tax as income the portion of health benefits worth more than a specified limit. Officials are considering several options, including one that would set the limit at $17,240 for family coverage and $6,800 for individuals.
Plans worth more than that would be taxed; those worth less would see no increase.[/blockquote]
But you forget, Br. Michael, union members would be exempt under this plan – their health benefits would NOT be taxed. “Health care costs for thee, but not for me!”
Along with “fuzzy math,” the term “smoke and mirrors” regarding ObamaCare comes to mind.
It may have been theoretically plausible when serious consideration was being given to taxing employer-provided health benefits across the board. Now, however, if the Prez and his fellow travelers in Congress are taking union health benefits out of the mix, they’re right back to staring at a yawning money pit.
This, coupled with the climate change monstrosity wending its way through Congress, will make the deficit spending of the last eight years, or frankly, the last 80, look like the summum bonum of fiscal responsibility.