Posted by
Brandon O'Neal Wright on Wednesday, October 14, 2009 9:54:13 PM
It sounds pretty innocent, at least if you haven'te paid attention to the government for the past, let's say, fifty years. A public "option" for health care coverage. Sounds neat doesn't it? I mean, the word option implies that Americans would have the option of choosing government health care or sticking with their employer based or privately purchased health care. Americans would have a choice and choices are good. However, if you look closer at the health care bill that is about to his the floor of the congress, the "option" looks more and more like the fact that Oprah has the option not to scarf down three big macs for lunch. There is no option, let me explain. Under this proposed change to our health care system, you would have the initial option to buy the government coverage or stick with your privately owned or employer based coverage. However, if your policy exceeds the amount of coverage that the United States government thinks is necessary, they will tax you an additional 40% of that coverage if you choose to keep it. Let's keep it simple by assuming you have a policy that costs you five hundred dollars a month, or $6,000 dollars a year. You choose to keep that policy instead of switching over to the Obama care package that you are offered. Your policy, which costs you the $6,000 dollars last year will now cost you an additional 2,400 dollars, bringing the total to $8,400. If you have employer based health care coverage, your employer will have to either eat the additional costs, yeah right, or pass that cost down to you in the form of reduced coverage or higher premiums. Either way, you lose. If a business owner has 100 employess, the 40% tax would cost them an additonal 240,000 dollars per year. The option is pretty simple to the small business. Drop the coverage for your employees, which will force them into the government coverage, or pay the additional $240,000 and close your doors for good. This is exactly how our government works. They tell us there is an option, which, taken at face value, there is. However, by taxing existing coverage by 40%, they take the "option" right out of the public option. Let's assume that you buy your own 6,000 dollar coverage and have the choice of paying 8,400 dollars for the same coverage next year or switching over to a more affordable government plan. Which do you decide? The choice would be pretty easy and the government knows that. By artificially increeasing the prices of premiums in the form of a 40% tax, the government is basically forcing every working man and woman into their little socailist paradise that they like to call the public option. And then you become a statistic that the government will use to promote their other socialist policies. They will point to the fact that millions of Americans "chose" the government option and will use that to tell you government intervention is good. What they will forget to mention is the fact that the only option you had was to drop your existing coverage in exchange for being able to afford those pesky little things you call groceries. They have managed to trick us into this no win game of chess and we were stupid enough, again, to agree to the game in the first place. As is usually the case with our government, when we open the door just a little bit and think that we can have an honest debate with them, they always, and I mean always barge the door down and criticize those who dare to question their motives. Mark my word, America, if we let the United States government get involved in our health care business, we are not five years from being a socialist, government monopolized country that will not be able to climb out of the hole that we have dug. But we do have the "option" everyone and that makes me feel a lot better, you?