The new face of the United States Government
Stuart Smalley would be appalled. According to the advisers hired by our government, and our government representatives by virtue of their choice of these advisers, we are not good enough, we are not smart enough and doggone it they really don't seem to like us.
The contempt which Barack Obama holds for our constitution and US laws, along with his misguided arrogance as an 'I know better than you' academic, has been on display through a series of videos of Johnathan Gruber explaining how and why he helped the president craft the ACA.
It appears that Professor Gruber is well versed in the formulas used by the CBO to score legislation and determine its viability. Except it turns out that he knows the CBO's methods so well, he had to create a fictional event to assure the auditors could not dismantle the ruse. Enter the Cadillac Tax.
The bottom line of the Cadillac tax is to tax your employer insurance benefits which are currently not taxed and to make it seem as if this tax will not affect you but rather be a tax on big business.
The now-famous former outside adviser on ObamaCare, Jonathan Gruber of MIT, spoke about the Cadillac tax before an audience at the Pioneer Institute in 2011, saying, "It turns out politically, it's really hard to get rid of. And the only way we could get rid of it was first by mislabeling it, calling it a tax on insurance plans rather than a tax on people, when we all know it's a tax on people who hold those insurance plans." He called that a "clever" exploitation of Americans' "lack of economic understanding."
In addition to this fictional event, Gruber structured a $500 billion 'savings' in the ACA to assure the math worked for the CBO. Nearly $220 billion of this savings comes from reducing annual increases in payments that health care providers would otherwise receive from Medicare.
Have you noticed doctors cutting your bills lately?
Other savings include $36 billion from increases in premiums for higher-income beneficiaries and $12 billion from administrative changes. A new national board -- the Independent Payment Advisory Board -- (AKA "Death Panels") will be tasked to identify $15.5 billion in savings, but the board is supposedly prohibited from proposing anything that would ration care or reduce or modify benefits.
Is that like saying the IRS is prohibited from targeting you based on your political affiliation?
Then there's another $136 billion in projected savings that would come from changes to the Medicare Advantage program, an alternative to traditional Medicare that has turned out to be much more costly than expected. About 25 percent of Medicare beneficiaries are enrolled in a Medicare Advantage plan.
What changes? Seniors will have to somehow receive $136 billion less in care for this to pan out.
The governments seemingly insatiable appetite for your hard earned money, taken from you in the form of taxes - seen and unseen - can at times be justified but make no mistake about it, this must be controlled lest we become Japan: here is a loose summary of Japan's tax rates. Individual - 50%, Payroll - 25.6%, and VAT (coming soon to a country near you) 8%.
Tithing 10% will leave you with 6.4 cents of every dollar you earn! Not sure you could even pay the deductibles on those new ACA health plans with that.
This well thought out and not so well executed con (passed under reconciliation - on straight party lines - and without a single member of congress reading the bill) lies squarely at the feet of President Obama.
To be fair - this is not an Obama phenomenon. It is the path the American government has been tracking regardless of which party is in charge. And parties aside, the current trajectory takes all of us to a very bad place indeed. I'm afraid not even Stuart's optimism will save us then.
Wake up America!
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