These days it’s hard to be more outrageous than the news. Given the increasingly hysterical attacks on the proposed health care reform, this piece, which I wrote a few weeks ago, may not be enough of an exaggeration to pass muster as satire. My fear is that the opposition will pick it up and run it verbatim as an ad.–Ed Stein
OBAMACARE EXPLAINED
Health care experts from the insurance and drug industries, talk radio and the Republican National Committee answer your questions about health care reform.
What is the general outline of the proposed reform?
The details of the various bills being considered in Congress vary, but all of them share a few common elements: a government takeover of your health care leading us inexorably down the path to despotic government, an end to personal freedom and a nightmare totalitarian state.
I like my insurance plan. Will I be able to keep it?
The socialized, anti-capitalist public option, unfairly underwritten by the government, will be so much cheaper that it will put all the private insurers out of business, leaving you with no other option. Worse, you will end up paying higher taxes to pay for insurance for millions of illegal immigrants, shiftless minorities and unemployed former insurance company employees.
Will I still be able to keep my own doctor?
Once the private insurers go broke, government run insurance will be the only option, and government bureaucrats will decide which doctors you can see. And because the pay doctors will get will be so low, the best ones will leave the profession to go into banking, leaving your health care in the hands of incompetent losers.
I heard that In Canada you have to wait forever to get treatment. Will that happen here?
Absolutely. In Canada, thanks to the kind of socialized medicine that Obama wants you to have, hundreds of thousands of people die every year because they have to wait so long to see a doctor. That’s why three out of every four people in American waiting rooms are actually desperate Canadians who came here for health care.
What happens if I have a pre-existing condition?
You will no longer be denied coverage if you have a pre-existing condition. But if you do, you will have to face a death panel to determine if you deserve to be treated or should be forced to die.
What’s a death panel?
If you are 65 or older, you will be examined by a panel of government Medicare doctors to determine if you are suffering from a chronic or terminal illness. Because Medicare funds will be raided to pay for reform, only the healthy will be allowed to go on living. The rest of you will be given a choice of death by starvation or lethal injection (hanging or firing squad in Utah).
What will this reform cost me?
The Obama administration estimates that reform will cost the taxpayers $800 million over ten years, but we all know about government estimates. It will end up costing far more, paid for by your taxes. The non-partisan health care lobby estimates that each family of four will see your taxes go up by $400 million to pay for pay for health care for all the deadbeats who aren’t insured now, most of whom are minorities, gays and illegal immigrants.
What happens if I lose my job?
Right now, you’ll lose your employer-paid health insurance. That’s just part of the natural process of creative destruction in a capitalist society. It’s unfortunate, but you’ll be doing your part to keep our economy vibrant. Under Obamacare, you’ll be forced by the government to buy insurance, and you’ll probably only be able to afford a government plan, one that competes unfairly with a more expensive private plan. You’ll end up being a pawn in his plot to destroy our capitalist system and replace it with a socialist dictatorship.
I’m perfectly healthy. Will I be forced to buy insurance?
Yes. Even though you know what to do with your money better than some government bureaucrat, you will be forced to buy insurance. The health care reform being proposed is nothing more than a brazen attack on your right to make personal decisions.
What if I can’t afford to buy insurance?
The government nanny state will pay for it, removing yet one more incentive for Americans to take personal responsibility for their own well-being, weakening us as a nation and making us easy prey for our enemies at home and abroad.
But don’t we need reform?
Yes. Everyone agrees we need reform, but reform that will change the best health care system in the world in any way is the wrong way to go.