Ouch, The Bill For ObamaCare Coming Due

by JASmius

One more piece of redundant evidence that there's no such thing as "news" anymore:

The bill is coming due for ObamaCare and it's a whopper. According to Medicare's own actuaries, U.S. healthcare spending is about to rocket.

Federal meddling in what was once the finest and most cost-effective healthcare system on the planet is nothing new.

Parenthetically, it really says something that three quarters of Peter Morici's column is a lamentation of how socialized American health care was already before ObamaCare was even shoved down our throats:

Back in the 1960s, many Americans paid for doctor and hospital services out of pocket or through modestly priced private insurance. Healthcare spending was approximately 6% of GDP.

Enter President Johnson and Medicare. He bought millions of votes by giving seniors free healthcare that they never paid for through payroll taxes during their working years. Although insidious, he helped lay the foundations for the entitlement state with Medicaid. The latter, first conceived to help poor children, has been gradually expanded to include many working families.

Today healthcare spending is more than 17% of GDP. Life-extending treatments are part of the jump, but Germany and Holland spend about 12% and have those. The extra U.S. costs are federally mandated giveaways, inefficiencies and abuse — approximately $850 billion and much more than what is spent on defense. [emphasis added]

And NOW comes ObamaCare:

Now ObamaCare is throwing new sand into the gears by fining individuals who lack employer-provided insurance and fail to purchase a plan from the government marketplace.

No surprise, next year those policies are expected to jump in cost by as much as 30%. Medicare actuaries are forecasting health spending will rise at 6% a year during the next decade and are on pace to reach 20% of GDP by 2025.

That's thirty percent more on top of the thirty-plus percent government-mandated premium gouges a year ago, on top of the millions and millions of individual policy cancellations, on top of all the fraudulent promises of being able to keep your plan, keep your doctor, lower premiums, lower healthcare costs, etc., etc., etc.  The parts that would have been most politically lethal have all been delayed via illegal, unconstitutional Executive fiat until Obama's third term, where the ultimate objective of forcibly herding all Americans into Medicaid - i.e. single-payer - will be attained and finalized.  And another "mission accomplished!" banner will go up in the Oval Office.

It seems like so long ago that ObamaCare dominated the headlines, doesn't it?  All the crises that have erupted since that first one almost a year ago.  But we always knew that the next year's massive, federally-mandated premium hikes were always go to, like W. B. Yeats's rough beast, their hour come round at last, slouch towards American kitchen tables to be born.  Those that haven't been hawked or mortgaged, anyway.

Will that have any noticeable impact upon the midterm elections eight weeks from tomorrow?  We might find out in 57 days.