It’s time for your (almost) daily nugget of bad news from the health care reform front.
Today’s bad news is really, really bad.
We’ve already learned that premiums are going up, not down, that some people with preexisting conditions may actually be worse off, we’ll scrimp on care for older citizens, and that child-only policies, a sane option for the family with limited means, probably won’t be available in the future.
What else could go wrong?
Now Betsy McCaughey, former New York attorney general and author of The Obama Health Law: What It Says and How to Overturn It, reveals that we’re in for a gigantic health care redistribution that will dint our already severely damaged work ethic:
In 2014, a staggering 85.2 million people — 31 percent of all nonelderly Americans — will be on Medicaid and CHIP (the Medicaid-like children’s health program). This accounts for the majority of those who’d gain health coverage. Amazingly, only 3 percent more people will have private insurance.
President Obama pledged to reduce the number of uninsured by making health plans affordable — but that’s not how his law actually does it. Rather, it loosens Medicaid eligibility by raising the income ceiling and barring asset tests.
In short, it pushes our country toward a welfare state.
Often, workers put up with low salaries to get good health benefits for their families. But the new law stipulates that Medicaid recipients get the same benefits that employers are required to provide workers. That will diminish the incentive to work — another step toward reversing welfare reform. Why stick it out on the job if the benefits are just as good in Medicaid?