Health 'reform' that burdens our young »
Posted By RTHTGakaRoland 2 months, 2 weeks ago in Political OpinionOne of our long-running political stories is the economic assault on the young by the old. We have become a society that invests in its past and disfavors the future. This makes no sense for the nation, but as politics it makes complete sense. The elderly and near elderly are better organized, focus obsessively on their government benefits and seem deserving. Grandmas and Grandpas command sympathy.
Everyone knows that the resulting "entitlements" dominate government spending and squeeze education, research, defense and almost everything else. In fiscal 2008 -- the last "normal" year before the economic crisis -- Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid (programs wholly or primarily dedicated to the elderly) totaled $1.3 trillion, 43 percent of federal spending and more than twice military spending. Because workers, not retirees, are the primary taxpayers, this spending involves huge transfers to the old.
Now comes the House-passed health-care "reform" bill that, amazingly, would extract more subsidies from the young. It mandates that health insurance premiums for older Americans be no more than twice the level of that for younger Americans. That's much less than the actual health spending gap between young and old. Spending for those age 60 to 64 is four to five times greater than those 18 to 24. So, the young would overpay for insurance that -- under the House bill -- people must buy: Twenty- and thirtysomethings would subsidize premiums for fifty-and sixtysomethings. (Those 65 and over receive Medicare.)
Meanwhile, AARP lobbyists scramble to shift their members' costs onto younger generations. For example, the House health legislation improves Medicare's drug benefit. That would help the half of AARP members who are over 65. The other half, those between 50 and 64, could benefit from the skewed insurance premiums.
Although premium changes would apply mainly to people using insurance "exchanges," the differences would be substantial. A single person 55 to 64 might save $3,490, estimates an Urban Institute study. By contrast, single people in their 20s and early 30s might pay about $600 to $1,100 more. For the young, the extra cost might be larger, says economist Diana Furchtgott-Roth of the Hudson Institute, because the House bill would require them to purchase fairly generous insurance plans rather than cheaper catastrophic coverage that might better suit their needs.
Whatever the added burden, it would darken the young's already poor economic prospects. Unemployment among 16- to 24-year-olds is 19 percent. Peter Orszag, director of the Office of Management and Budget, notes on his blog that high joblessness depresses young workers' wages and that the adverse effect -- though diminishing -- "is still statistically significant 15 years later." Lost wages over 20 years could total $100,000. Orszag doesn't mention that health-care "reform" might compound the loss.
Read Full Story at washingtonpost.com »
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RTHTGakaRoland
"There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by
gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent ...
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RTHTGakaRoland2 months, 2 weeks ago
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0bamacare's shifting of its massive economic burden onto the backs and futures of young Americans as they struggle to launch careers and businesses is not the only bit of redistribution at work in these ridiculous bills. The often already cash strapped States will see their share of this new burden sharing as well:
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"Obamacare: Big State Tax Hikes"
"Anxious to avoid raising taxes too much to pay for their health care proposals, the Obama administration and its congressional allies hit on a great new idea: Make the states raise their taxes to fund the program, instead.
Both the House and the Senate bills require that states cover a larger percentage of their people under Medicaid -- a joint state and federally funded program. The idea was to force states to raise their taxes to cover a big part of the health care bill for treating poor people. Since the Feds can simply charge any increase in spending to their already overdrawn bank account, but the states have to balance their budgets, the increased state spending for Medicaid will cause sharp increases in state taxes. And the governors will get the blame, not Obama and not the Congress."
http://townhall.com/columnists/DickMorrisandEileen...-
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Beau78902 months, 2 weeks ago
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Raising the deficit burdens the young. So does denying them access to healthcare and allowing private insurers to exclude them, rescind their coverage when they develop medical problems or collude to set premiums artificually high, which the consequence of the current system that Dick Morris and Eileen McGann would like to keep.
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Providing a way to pay for healthcare reform while actually reducing the federal deficit helps the young. So does giving them a way to pay for their healthcare and increasing Medicare benefits for their future.
Why do you complain about deficit spending, and also complain about providing more services while reducing the deficit? Oh yeah--because it's a Democratic initiative. -
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wtagg2 months, 2 weeks ago
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What's to rebuff? Insurance, of any kind, is a social collective where the haves pay for the have nots. I find it funny that some are just coming to realize this. The analysis is should also include the current fiscal relationships that the author is attempting to use, not just those that are possible or proposed.
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Insurance is a form of socialism. The only real difference from the accepted definition is that a small oligopoly controls the market and makes the decisions for the users of the system vs. a governmental agency or leadership.
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jimdoze2 months, 2 weeks ago
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The Dems are proffering the BIG LIE... they fully well know it... yet they continue. Their end justifies their means.
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John Cassidy of The New Yorker explains:
"The U.S. government is making a costly and open-ended commitment to help provide health coverage for the vast majority of its citizens. I support this commitment, and I think the federal government's spending priorities should be altered to make it happen. But let's not pretend that it isn't a big deal, or that it will be self-financing, or that it will work out exactly as planned. It won't.
Many Democratic insiders know all this, or most of it. What is really unfolding, I suspect, is the scenario that many conservatives feared. The Obama Administration, like the Bush Administration before it (and many other Administrations before that) is creating a new entitlement program, which, once established, will be virtually impossible to rescind. At some point in the future, the fiscal consequences of the reform will have to be dealt with in a more meaningful way, but by then the principle of (near) universal coverage will be well established. Even a twenty-first-century Ronald Reagan will have great difficult overturning it.
That takes me back to where I began. Both in terms of the political calculus of the Democratic Party, and in terms of making the United States a more equitable society, expanding health-care coverage now and worrying later about its long-term consequences is an eminently defensible strategy. Putting on my amateur historian's cap, I might even claim that some subterfuge is historically necessary to get great reforms enacted. But as an economics reporter and commentator, I feel obliged to put on my green eyeshade and count the dollars."-
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wtagg2 months, 2 weeks ago
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There have been plenty of *lies* proffered in recent years, including the idea that Reagan was some type of spending benchmark we should be striving for. He wasn't a fiscal conservative unless defined by talk and not by the walk. Clinton is the only fiscally conservative president in the last 5 decades and that is pretty funny. Well, I might put Bush #1 in that category also. He understood that taxes did need to be raised to pay for the spending that was occurring. It was that move that really helped Clinton/95 Congress balance the budget.
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Dionys2 months, 2 weeks ago
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Well, Rollie. You weren't upset about Bushie burdening our young with trillions in debt. So the only thing I can figure is you're either upset that
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1. Obama is black.
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2. It will be women, children and the marginalized getting healthcare instead of corporations like KBR getting billions of dollars.-
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chevydog2 months, 2 weeks ago
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A little begging the question, doncha think? I'd submit that a dumb idea is a dumb idea whether it's "to help the people" or "to be an imperialist warmonger" (my phraseology). For over 40 years we've acted as if the goose that laid the golden eggs would survive (and even thrive) no matter how badly we treated it. In the rush to spend beyond our means, nobody's been able to deny complicity. Makes no sense to try to defend anyone, because nobody's fundamentally got any defense. Except that we didn't want to make hard choices just because they were hard. The ultimate use of politics to trump reality. Now that the goose is dead (or at best on life support), we're seeing all along what we should've seen if we wanted to be honest with ourselves--that good intentions (however defined) were not exempt from the principles that govern economics.
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RTHTGakaRoland2 months, 2 weeks ago
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Having only been here for a few months, you will have to share with me, how you know my opinions of past Presidents and issues.
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As it happens my standard line about GWB was, and since you Dems and other Lefties are still obsessed with and deranged in regard to him is:
" I can not understand why the Dems do not actually love Bush. He may not be DNC, but he is certainly DND: Damn Near Democrat."
I was one of a group which sent him a fancy pen for a veto pen, since he seemed not to have one for most of his time at 1600.
He also helped create a huge entitlement, and was at the very least a Quisling in the nationalization of airline security.
I know that Bush hatred and blame has been effective propaganda for the leaders of the Left and opiate of choice of their followers, but he was "DND".
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RTHTGakaRoland2 months, 2 weeks ago
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The Propeller Left, understandably, wants to argue about everything except the key point of the article:
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Obamacare will substantially redistribute the burden of health insurance from economically secure people in their late middle and senior years to those under thirty-five struggling to lay their economic foundation.
FTA:
"A single person 55 to 64 might save $3,490, estimates an Urban Institute study. By contrast, single people in their 20s and early 30s might pay about $600 to $1,100 more. For the young, the extra cost might be larger, says economist Diana Furchtgott-Roth of the Hudson Institute, because the House bill would require them to purchase fairly generous insurance plans rather than cheaper catastrophic coverage that might better suit their needs."
These increased costs at this age groups economic "start-up" time will, beyond the immediate minor deprivations, shape their (our) entire by denying needed capital for home purchase, investments, debt reduction, career choice, and entrepreneurship. Even if measured by nothing more than the impact of compound interest or interest on debt each dollar that an individual keeps at twenty-five is much larger a slice of their future than a dollar kept at sixty.
A younger person's good health and limited responsibilities that allow them to choose to limit their insurance and other health related cost and more appropriately use those funds is also an important resource to be denied them (us) by obamacare's indefensible individual mandate.
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