Happy Canada Day! Let them keep universal healthcare for themselves
In honor of Canada Day, I propose that we let the Canadians keep their beloved health system to themselves, because that’s something America can do without.
Socialized medicine, known by the popular euphemism “universal healthcare,” is the new Obama plan/flavor of the week. Unfortunately, this gimmick is the worst one yet.
The details are still a bit blurry, and even so, the popularity for this too-good-to-be-true plan is slipping. Maybe Obama’s softball “town hall” meeting today, featuring blatantly obvious planted questions from the audience and select union members may not even be enough to save it.
The phony-ness portrayed in the numbers is most offensive of all. “The” number, Americans without healthcare, usually falls somewhere around 46 million. Of course, that’s not considering people who don’t want to have it (often people in the just out of college bracket don’t bother because of lower health risks) or are covered in other ways such as through Medicare and Medicaid.
Meanwhile, most Americans are happy with the healthcare they have, and almost half oppose any reforms. But those opinions and numbers don’t matter to Barry, not at all.
Conservatives need to squash this once again as they did in 1993-1994. Americans may like things for free and may care about those who cannot reasonably afford healthcare, but at the end of the day, they are not willing to sacrifice their plan for someone else, nor should they.
The concept is not hard for people to understand: When you have to split the pie more ways, there is less to go around. The compassion arguments are easily refuted by the fact that no one is EVER denied healthcare in the United States. Not a one. So what are people sacrificing for? If the Right can change the debate on that ground, they will win on the issue politically and culturally.
The AIG alternative
Ultimately, I think this plan will fail in its current form, mostly for political reasons. But there is an easy way for Obama to still get his way.
AIG is one of the largest insurance companies in the world. It is also essentially owned by the US government. Let’s consider what has happened to other government-controlled businesses to date, specifically General Motors. Besides getting its CEO fired by Obama, the carmaker was forced to come up with a plan that the government thought was best for the country, being the majority stockholder. The plan involved selling off Hummer, building certain types of cars, developing “green” programs and the like have now become the goals of GM because they are the goals of the Obama administration.
Think about how simple it would be for Obama simply to order AIG to give healthcare to certain Americans at a set rate. Obama can appoint another czar to handle the administration of this “private” health insurance that will, coincidentally, apply to the target groups of the current plans. The US government will tell AIG who it must give insurance policies to, and at what cost. All the while, Obama will be able to nullify arguments against a public system, as a “private” company would be handling the health care, as if it was from the kindness of their hearts. In reality, AIG would have no choice but to grant these policies or be forced to fold.
In the end, AIG will realize that they were doomed from the start: a sacrificial lamb in the whole process. As the rolls at AIG grow, the extremely competitive, low rates would cause millions to flock to the AIG policy over their own. Once this occurs (or maybe even before), AIG will promptly fail, as the menial premiums will not provide enough revenue to cover what AIG is paying out in coverage.
America is then left with two options:
- Bail out AIG, again, and help them supplement their premiums by the billions they will fall short OR
- Simply take over the existing AIG policies
Either way, Obama achieves a universal system by dressing up a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
I don’t see why Obama couldn’t do this tomorrow if he wanted to. I’m looking for feedback from our other authors on this, and anyone else as well. It seems too simple for no one to have seen this coming. Chime in!
