Those Damn Socialists!

I am cur­rent­ly hav­ing to spend a few min­utes each day dri­ving my van which lacks an FM radio. The pick­ings on AM radio are rather slim, so I some­times end up lis­ten­ing to con­ser­v­a­tive talk radio (or “con­ver­sa­tion radio” as the host called it today). I have no idea whose pro­gram I was lis­ten­ing to today (but not Rush or Beck…does Beck still have a show?).

Any­ways, the guy was going on at great length about how the Oba­ma social­ists were set­ting things up in the Afford­able Care Act. He was key­ing in on the busi­ness man­date. Any busi­ness that has more than 50 employ­ees is going to have to include health insur­ance in the employ­ee ben­e­fit pack­age. If the busi­ness fails to do this, the fine will be $2,000 per employee.

The host makes the point that any busi­ness (includ­ing ones that already offer health insur­ance) would look at the choice and choose to pay the fine. After all, it is much cheap­er! This will force all the employ­ees into the Social­ist Health Care that Oba­ma set up…and then “they” (the Social­ists) will have “them” and come elec­tion time the Democ­rats will say of the Repub­li­cans “They want to take away your health care!”

Where to begin. Well, in the first place, if a busi­ness is today offer­ing health care to its employ­ees, why would it sud­den­ly stop when there is a fine added to the costs of stop­ping? Why not just stop now? There is no fine today! Hmm­mm, could it be that there are rea­sons beyond gov­ern­ment man­dates why busi­ness­es sup­ply health insurance?

But some busi­ness­es will not offer insur­ance. Most of these are prob­a­bly not offer­ing insur­ance today. So none of the employ­ees will be forced into the Social­ist Health Care that is Oba­maCare. No, they will be buy­ing insur­ance from a pri­vate com­pa­ny just as they are doing today! Only they will get a sub­sidy if they do not make enough money.

And if the indi­vid­u­als do not buy a pol­i­cy? They will be fined:

Impose an annu­al penal­ty of $95, or up to 1% of income, whichev­er is greater, on indi­vid­u­als who do not secure insur­ance; this will rise to $695, or 2.5% of income, by 2016. This is an indi­vid­ual lim­it; fam­i­lies have a lim­it of $2,085.^[44][45] Exemp­tions to the fine in cas­es of finan­cial hard­ship or reli­gious beliefs are permitted

and they will not have insur­ance. They will have to rely on char­i­ty and emer­gency rooms just like today! (at least, I think that’s what happens.)

But wait! What about the Social­ist Health Care that is Oba­maCare? Peo­ple have to buy pri­vate insur­ance with a sub­sidy if they qual­i­fy. Jeep­ers, how much more social­is­tic can you get?

Final­ly, there is the host’s point about how the Democ­rats will use the Health Care to retain/​gain pow­er. How DARE they try and use the poli­cies they favor to cur­ry favor with the vot­ers! This would be like a Repub­li­can say­ing he or she will cut your tax­es to retain/​gain power!

Remem­ber, “the Repub­li­cans want to take away your Health Care!”

This is an admis­sion that peo­ple will like the Afford­able Care Act once it is ful­ly imple­ment­ed in the same way Tea Partiers protest­ed with signs that read “Keep your gov­ern­ment hands off my Medicare!” Damn those Social­ists cre­at­ing Medicare! Oh wait! The Tea Partiers are vot­ing for Republicans!

Well, it was on the radio. It must be true.