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June 20, 2009
Here's your mandated, massively expensive health insurance plan
Rick Moran
Well, the Democrats have released more details of their health insurance boondoggle and, if anything, it's worse than we could have imagined.
The public option remains. Every citizen will be required to have some kind of approved health insurance. If they don't have it, they will be fined.
Here are some other snippets from an article in the New York Times by Robert Pear and David Hrszenhorn describing the plan:
The proposal would establish a new public health insurance plan to compete with private plans. Republicans and insurance companies strenuously oppose such an entity, saying it could lead to a government takeover of health care. The draft bill would require all Americans to carry health insurance.
[...]
The 852-page House bill, as expected, is more expansive than the legislation taking shape in the Senate, where work on the issue bogged down this week after early cost estimates came in far higher than expected. The initial price tag for a measure drafted by the Senate Finance Committee, for example, was $1.6 trillion over 10 years.
[...]
Under the House bill, health insurance would be regulated by a powerful new federal agency, headed by a presidential appointee known as the health choices commissioner.
[...]
The bill would impose a new "tax on individuals without acceptable health care coverage." The tax would be based on a person's income and could not exceed the average cost of a basic health insurance policy. People could be exempted from the tax "in cases of hardship."
[...]
The public plan would receive an unspecified amount of start-up money from the federal government. After that, it would have to be self-sustaining.
There is no word on how expensive this massive bill would be. The last estimate anyone saw was from the CBO who pegged the Democratic senate plan at $1.6 trillion. This will be far more expensive and intrusive. It is a liberal's idea of a benevolent government running your life for you. In reality, it is a recipe for fiscal disaster and a loss of personal freedom so profound as to call into question the American experiment itself.
Thankfully, the cost may be so bad as to scare away most Democrats who aren't from districts where they get 70% of the vote. But the senate version isn't much better and no one has any idea how either the House or Senate plan will be paid for.
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