Written by David Nace

Wednesday, 28 October 2009 14:16

As individual citizens and taxpayers read the various healthcare bills that their legislators have not read, it becomes very clear that there are many losers in the Administration's healthcare reform plan. And it is experience with previous government healthcare programs shows that proponents of new government programs will misrepresent the cost to the public to get programs approved.

For example, when Medicare was proposed in 1965, the projected cost in 1990 was determined by the Johnson Administration to be 12 billion dollars. The real cost in 1990 was 107 billion dollars. The cost was underestimated by a factor of 9 to obtain passage of the legislation. Imagine what the real cost of healthcare reform would be in 10 years if the CBO estimate of 1.2 trillion dollars is equally under estimated. Clearly the American taxpayers are losers in this legislation.

The Medicare experience shows that when inexpensive medical coverage is offered, utilization increases. The only way to prevent greater utilization is to impose rationing. If Obamacare is to have any hope of containing costs it will have to limit care to those that use healthcare most extensively. Since more is spent on healthcare in the first and last years of one’s life than all the years in between, seniors will have rationed care.

To help pay for inclusion of the uninsured into healthcare, taxes will be levied on businesses that provide healthcare coverage to their employees and responsible individuals that purchase their own coverage. So clearly, small businesses and responsible individuals do not benefit from this reform.

However, there are groups that do benefit from this legislation. Those groups have “contributed” significantly to the Obama administration and the legislators drafting Obamacare.

In some ways, hospitals will benefit from not absorbing the cost of providing medical services to the uninsured. And this can be a significant cost especially if there is a large illegal alien population. But at the same time, Obama has promised to reduce Medicare/Medicaid spending on hospitals.

Pharmaceutical companies will have a new taxpayer funded market for their products. In early March they met with the Obama team to negotiate support for the bill in exchange for more generous prescription drug reimbursement, which will undoubtedly cause costs to rise even faster.

Not to mention, insurance companies support this legislation because it will force 30 million young and healthy people to by insurance. This is almost half of the current uninsured and represents a profitable untapped market for insurers, making a massive government-granted cartel.

However, perhaps the largest beneficiary of this legislation is not quite so obvious. The Service Employees Union International (SEUI) contributed 60 million dollars and thousand of hours to the Obama campaign. Their purple shirted members have attended August town hall meetings to support Obamacare through intimidation and violence.

The real prize in this legislation is the ability to organize 7.5 million new government employees that Obamacare will create. The National Health Service (NHS) in England employs approximately 1.4 million workers in a country with a population of 60 million. The voting power of those workers effectively thwarts any NHS reform efforts in that country.

The SEUI has used threats and intimidation to pirate nurses and other service workers from other unions in California. It has used taxpayer funds fraudulently provided by ACORN programs to enrich its bosses and diverted member dues to subsidize ACORN’s supposedly non-partisan voter registration programs. In testimony before the Pennsylvania Legislature it recently admitted to knowingly organizing and collecting dues from illegal aliens. It has also been one of the most vocal advocates of Card Check legislation that would replace secret voting on union representation with public intimidation.

In the healthcare debate, if those wearing purple win, the American taxpayer, small business owners and senior citizens will lose.

David Nace is a Liberty Features Syndicated writer and a featured NetRight Nation contributor.