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Author Topic:   The Liberal Dream Crumbles
Randall
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From: Saturn next to Charmainec
Registered: Apr 2009

posted November 01, 2013 10:40 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Randall     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Kudlow: Liberal entitlement-state dream is crumbling
CNBC.com 11/01/13 6:25 PM ET
By: Larry Kudlow

May I ask this question? Why is it that Americans don't have the freedom to choose their own health insurance? I just don't get it. Why must the liberal nanny state make decisions for us? We can make them ourselves, thank you very much. It's like choosing a car, buying a home or investing in a stock. We can handle it.
So why must the government tell me and everyone else what we can and cannot buy?

Charles Krauthammer and the Wall Street Journal's Dan Henninger noted in excellent recent columns that this whole Obamacare business represents the greatest-ever expansion of the liberal entitlement-state dream. But I don't want that dream. And you shouldn't either.
(Read more: When insurers drop policies: Three stories)

Here's what else I don't want: As a 60-something, relatively healthy person, I don't want lactation and maternity services, abortion services, speech therapy, mammograms, fertility treatments or Viagra. I don't want it. So why should I have to tear up my existing health-care plan, and then buy a plan with far more expensive premiums and deductibles, and with services I don't need or want?

Why? Because Team Obama says I have to. And that's not much of a reason. It's not freedom.
Fortunately, NBC News pulled the plug this past week on President Barack Obama's promise that "if you like your own plan, you can keep it." Ditto for keeping your own doctor. The plug was pulled because NBC learned that Team Obama knew—for three years—that stiff new regulations would prevent the grandfathering of existing health-care plans. And not just a few plans. But plans that could affect as many as 15 million individuals.
The day after that bombshell hit, the president tried to blame insurers rather than regulatory overkill for this Obamacare shortfall. Yet both the public and the mainstream media were having none of it. In what may turn out to be a landmark moment, Americans and the media at large have turned against the president and Obamacare.
(Read more: Hillary running ... away from Obama)

Incidentally, equally punitive regulations will hit more than 90 million employer-sponsored health plans next year. It's the same problem as the individual plan. Grandfathering won't work. Moreover, replacing these plans with much more expensive products will constitute a major tax hike on the entire economy. This point shouldn't be lost as Americans worry about being kicked from their plans. Obamacare is not only anti-freedom but anti-growth.

As for the grandfathering lie, Obama's HHS staffers were the saboteurs. They undoubtedly acted with full knowledge of what they were doing, and thus trapped the president in three years of falsehoods that were essential to selling Obamacare.

And I just love it when they tell me that so many of these existing plans are substandard "bad apples." Do the president and his people not know that insurance at the state level is one of the most regulated areas of the economy? They're blaming insurance companies, not their own new regulations. The stupidity of that is hilarious. Do they really think salesmen are out selling these policies off the back of trucks?
(Read more: Obama blames 'bad apple' insurers for dropped coverage)

No, this is federal coercion at its worst. And that's why the public is turning against it. It's not freedom.
Of course, there are other structural problems to Obamacare that are both unfair and unaffordable. Mainly, younger healthy people are not going to subsidize older sicker folks. We should take care of the latter with transparent government subsidies, and not by trying to redistribute resources (again) from the young to the old.

Or then there's the Medicaid entitlement. It's already out of control and close to bankruptcy. But in the early days of Obamacare, Medicaid sign-ups are exploding, all while sign-ups for private plans on the new exchanges are minuscule.

Between the president's broken promises, the millions of policy cancellations, the continued website breakdowns and the unaffordable, unfair con game between the healthy young and the sicker old, this Obamacare monster is well on its way to collapsing of its own weight.

But here's the bigger point: All this is the inevitable result of massive central-planning exercises to control the economy. That's not freedom.

No amount of rescue legislation is going to change this. It's the elections of 2014 and 2016 that will allow citizens to reject this Soviet-style planning. But I'll reference my conservative colleagues in the media once again: Obamacare represents the greatest-ever expansion of the liberal entitlement-state dream. And you know what? That dream is crumbling and dissolving before our very eyes.

And that is freedom.

—By CNBC's Larry Kudlow; Follow him on Twitter @larry_kudlow

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101164217?__source=yahoo%7Cfinance%7Cheadline%7Cheadline%7Cstory&par=yahoo&doc=101164217%7CKudlow:%20Liberal%20entitleme

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AcousticGod
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From: Pleasanton, CA
Registered: Apr 2009

posted November 02, 2013 01:01 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for AcousticGod     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
There is no entitlement-state dream. There's a safety net dream.

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Randall
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From: Saturn next to Charmainec
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posted November 02, 2013 07:32 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Randall     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Really? Millions who had insurance they could afford with low deductibles are now being forced to buy policies with benefits they don't want or need and will NEVER be able to use due to insanely high deductibles. You call that a safety net? There sure are some mighty big holes in that net.

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AcousticGod
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Posts: 8039
From: Pleasanton, CA
Registered: Apr 2009

posted November 03, 2013 12:18 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for AcousticGod     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
I was responding to your title, which apparently isn't related to your article.

As I've told Jwhop, previous insurance also included things you may not need, but which were standardized in order to accommodate both sexes. As far as high deductibles, I'll bump the article I posted for you.

I would call universal health care a safety net, yet, as well as other so-called "entitlements." I wouldn't call the result of ACA an "entitlement," nor use it as a qualifier for the statement, "Liberal entitlement-state dream is crumbling."

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Randall
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Posts: 33871
From: Saturn next to Charmainec
Registered: Apr 2009

posted November 03, 2013 02:01 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Randall     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
It isn't my title--it's the title the author chose.

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