It is a sad day in America today, at least for those opposed to Obamacare, the derelict universal health care initiative that President Obama managed to get enacted into law. Yesterday was the day that our Supreme Court made the ultimate decision to let Obamacare go into effect and change the lives of millions of Americans. I feel it was a poor decision, but I am not a lawyer or politician, so what do I know about it? I know enough to say that at least from my perspective, life for many people will get more difficult. The minor glimmer of hope for people is that this law will enable the uninsured to finally be insured. Thats it pretty much. I don't see any other benefit coming out of this. For me personally, if I now hired someone as an actual employee of my company (which I am not planning on doing), I would have to offer them health insurance or pay a penalty. To be honest, I would pay the penalty because it will be cheaper than offering health benefits. I have a feeling that many small companies that have employees will be making the same decision, pay the penalty instead of offer health benefits. Larger companies that currently offer health benefits might decide to drop them in favor of the penalty. With a cheaper penalty, its pretty much a no brainer for anyone in business. There are a couple of problems I have with just this aspect of the law. The first is that if enough businesses elect to pay the penalty instead of offer benefits, what will that do to the cost of insurance for those employees and the millions of others that would now be required to have health insurance. They would have to get the insurance somewhere and with the penalty paid by businesses not being as costly as offering health benefits, how would the additional cost be covered. Taxes! Thats how.
With insurance now having to be affordable for everyone and accepting of everyone even with pre-existing conditions, the nightmare will commence soon. What the government is saying essentially is that since everyone, both healthy and unhealthy is being forced to by insurance or pay a penalty, the healthy will largely shoulder the bill of the unhealthy. In addition, every business, regardless of whether or not they elect to offer health benefits to their employees, will have to track all their purchases to the dollar and issue a 1099 to any business that they buy over $600 dollars worth of supplies/materials from. (This will supposedly help pay for Obamacare) For me, that means instead of simply combining all my reciepts for supplies into one pile, adding them up and getting one number, I will have to take extra steps to file my taxes. I will now have to make a pile based on which business I buy supplies from; i.e. Home Depot, hardware stores, tool rental places, Lowes (rarely go there), lumber supply companies. After making a pile for each separate store, I will then have to see if the receipts for each business total over $600. For every business that exceeds this limit I will have to issue a 1099. Once all that is done, I can then take all the piles and add them together to get my total for the year. The extra time that I put in to do this is my penalty for owning a business and living in this country, even though I don't have any employees. Doesn't sound particularly fair to me, but hey, what do I know. I do have an idea that could work going in line with how the government is enacting this law. That idea is taxing those that live unhealthy lifestyles.
I say that anyone who is overweight should pay a tax, period. I say that anyone who smokes or does anything detrimental to their health pay a tax, period. That right there would pay for a good chunk of this health care initiative. While I think it is a good idea that people with pre-existing conditions be allowed to get health insurance, it shouldn't be at the same rate that the rest of us receive it or there should be a tax on them like I indicated earlier. If someone wants to eat fast food for their entire lives and walk around weighing 400 pounds, they should have to pay extra because they will be more likely to have health issues. Maybe this doesn't sound fair if your overweight, but I bet it sounds fair if you aren't overweight and rarely see the doctor yet still have to have health insurance. But then again, what do I know. It seems to me that the only reason that all Americans will be required to have health insurance is to pay for those that are unhealthy and will now be getting health insurance and paying more visits to the doctor. I think the government knows full well that even if many Americans get health insurance, they still might not go to the doctor so their penalty or premium will go to paying for the unhealthy. Listen, I think that all Americans should have access to health insurance. I think that they should be able to get health insurance even if they have pre-existing conditions. But I don't think that everyone should be forced to get health insurance. Yet all this ranting and raving won't do a damn thing because we now have legal socialized health care in this country. Good luck to everyone, hopefully the doctor's office and hospitals won't get overly crowded now, and hopefully the filthy government doesn't try to dig their dirty fingers in our pockets anymore (wait, they already did).
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