Something Is Not Adding Up

On the backs of the Poor Isn't a Solution

I heard the Obama speech and preceding Hoyer remarks yesterday and it choked me up. Great lines from Lincoln about being true to the light you have. Obama is a political genius. I wanted to quote half of it. Surely everyone agrees that we need to fix a broken system.

But something isn't still adding up.

If the ENTIRE PREMISE of this construction of 2,000 pages of massive reform is rooted in making, forcing, under penalty of onerous fines poor people who already do not have insurance to buy it at any cost- it's not Just or Fair. Forget the abortion issue for the time being- it could be a canard, a red herring or a straw woman argument. Lets talk MATH.

Obama doesn't really understand poverty. The ridiculous back and forth on subsequent news commentary shows indicates how much the people moving the bill don't understand poverty.
If you have lost your job, and thus your health insurance the last thing in the world you can afford to do is buy an expensive health insurance policy. Where is the Antitrust exemption for private insurers in this bill, where are the price controls or caps, what is the governmental role in price fixing, what is to stop the private insurance companies from charging whatever they want still?
Housing in America used to run people about a fourth of their budgets, now it is more like half if they can afford it at all. One in 8-10 people are in some foreclosure stage. That's a tenth of the country. 30 Million people are out of work. If you lost your job, you are missing mortgage payments, your car note is in jeopardy and you probably told your wife you need to scale down to being a one car family -to avoid the expense of a second car like car insurance. You cannot afford health insurance, so after COBRA runs out, you don't get insurance. This bill helps how? Obama identified the problem without identifying the solution- the government MAKES you buy it when you cannot afford it or they threaten you with fines? And what is the penalty for people who cannot afford the fines? Lock them up as scofflaws? Tax credits don't help someone with no income. That doesn't enable anyone to purchase anything.

Professor Michael Stoto, who teaches at Georgetown University Public Health Policy is outraged at the interjection of the Bishops in this issue and he views their remarks as "blatantly political," considers that they have "totally abnegated the church's social justice role" and even calls them "totally irresponsible." Because people are tired of viewing the world through the abortion spectrum and don't trust the studies that speak to the issue from partisan groups, his views are widely held.

However, the opponents of this Bill may nevertheless be correct on one front: if you base it on private insurance, and you sell it to private insurers by saying you are going to increase the pool, by giving poor people (the working poor and the desperate poor) only tax credits to make it fly- it won't get off the ground. It can't fly.

Poor people don't have insurance because they cannot afford it. It's not like they are flying off to Europe instead of buying insurance for vacations in the South of France- it's like they can't put food on the table for the whole month if they have to out of pocket thousands of dollars in insurance a month for their family.

Wholly aside from the constitutionality of requiring, mandating (another unfunded mandate?) people to purchase a product from a private company, if you have no income as a practical matter it is an almost absurd proposition.

Obama believes and has said before that he thinks it is just irresponsible for any adult not to carry health insurance- so he is going to make everyone carry it. This shows he really does not understand fully poverty-or the reasons why people don't have health insurance. In some cases it is the only responsible thing to do not to carry health insurance. If your choices are a roof over your family's head and food on the table, and the health insurance is utterly cost prohibitive, you dump the insurance. Clearly, this scenario never crossed Obama's mind- but it has for at least 30 Million plus Americans.

THE COST QUOTIENT isn't explained, it isn't answered, it doesn't add up. Until that was clarified to the public and in the bill I wouldn't be comfortable voting for it. Just wait till someone gets their first "citation" for not carrying health insurance and has to beg a family member to get them out of trouble with the "government." And more stalking by the IRS-that's what a despirately poor person really needs.

Obama's "light" comes from the perspective of having a mother die from cancer and struggle to keep from going bankrupt from medical bills and deficient insurance. His mother was married, at least once, to someone with income from a large corporation and thus had insurance even if she didn't survive to medicare age. He comes from a middle class perspective of having corporate health coverage that wasn't sufficient- and believes the way to make it more sufficient is to make more people have to buy into the pool. This doesn't clearly think through however what is required of the people he is asking to pony up. Bless his Light- we are not there yet.