Suprise! Suprise! The dim-witted Dems attempts to steal more money...

Here we go, the onset of the attempt to cram national healthcare scam onto the productive in order to pander to the parasitic...


Courtesy of Bloomberg.com:

Democrats Agree to Fast Track for Health Care Revamp

Here's the 'worry' paragraph: Obama has proposed spending at least $634 billion over the next 10 years to revamp the nation’s health-care policies with the goals of simultaneously expanding coverage and reducing costs. Most of the details of such a plan, along with how it would be financed, have not been decided. Obama’s proposal would require insurers to begin submitting competitive bids to participate in the government’s Medicare Advantage program...


Note the following from the Heritage Foundation:

October 24, 2008

The Obama Health Care Plan: A Closer Look at Cost and Coverage

by Greg D'Angelo and Paul L. Winfree
WebMemo #2114

Presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) has put forth an ambitious health care plan.[1] The plan proposes:

• 
  Expanding eligibility for existing public programs, including both Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP);
• 
  Creating a National Health Insurance Exchange to serve as a federal regulator of private insurance plans that would compete alongside a new National Health Plan;
• 
  Providing income-related subsidies for those without employer-sponsored health insurance while mandating that children have coverage; and
• 
  Requiring that medium and large employers provide coverage or pay a tax, while extending tax credits to small businesses and creating a government reinsurance program to cover businesses' catastrophic health costs.

(there's more)

The news only gets worse...

Michael O. Leavitt and Jeffrey H. Anderson writting on the AmericanSpeakOn (found via The Foundry) about the A Trojan Horse for Government-Run Health Care:

Pay particular attention to this part of the commentary: Americans’ 43 years of experience with Medicare and Medicaid provide a jaw-dropping tale of under-projected expense and extraordinary costliness. Within two years of Medicare’s creation in 1965, the Johnson administration and the House Ways and Means Committee each projected that, in 1990, Medicare would cost $12 billion. In 1990, Medicare’s actual cost was $111 billion — nine times the original estimate. In fact, Medicare now costs more than half of what it cost to fund the entire federal government in 1965, even after accounting for inflation.

Medicare’s and Medicaid’s skyrocketing price-tags are generally kept hidden from view. So even a simple cost-to-cost comparison is illuminating: Since 1970, the cost of these flagship government-run health-care programs has risen more than two-and-a-half times as much as the cost of all other health care in the United States, the vast majority of which is run by the private sector. Since 1970, Medicare’s per-beneficiary cost — even without counting the prescription drug benefit — has risen 50 percent more than our overall per-capita national health expenditures aside from Medicare and Medicaid, rising 8 percent more in this decade alone.

The picture gets worse going forward. Medicare’s budget is projected to double within ten years, topping $1 trillion annually. The number of workers per beneficiary will soon drop from almost four to just over two and a half. The Medicare hospital trust fund, which funds the largest part of Medicare, is projected to become insolvent by 2016 — three years earlier than last year’s projection. Yet the Obama administration wants to add new federal health-care spending at a projected — not actual — 10-year cost of $1,300,000,000,000?. . . (there's more)


Let's consider it from the insurance companies' point of view courtesy of the Washington Times:

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

HEALTH CARE REPORT: Insurance warnings

(skip)

In a letter to four key senators responsible for overseeing health care reform on Capitol Hill, two industry trade groups warned against implementing a proposed government-run health-benefits program — a critical component of the administration's reform plans.

Such a move would damage the private health insurance sector and "thwart the ability of the health care sector to implement meaningful delivery system reforms," says the letter by America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) — the nation's largest health insurance lobby — and the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association.

The groups added that allowing the government to compete with private insurance companies would "exacerbate the cost-shift from public programs to consumers and employers in the private market, and destabilize the employer-based system." (there's more)