ObamaCare: America Starting to Feel Nauseous

Well, Nancy Pelosi did say of ObamaCare, “We have to pass it so you can find out what’s in it.” As Americans sift through the thousands of pages, their stomachs are starting to turn. 

Zach Hoffman owns a third generation office furniture company in Springfield, Illinois and hoped some of the promises of good things might be true, but after discovering that in order to meet the mandates of ObamaCare, and share in the goodies, he would have to fire ten employees and slash their wages.  Hoffman says, "It leaves you with this feeling of a bait-and-switch.”

Here’s just a partial list of recently exposed problems.  Keep the antacid close by. 

·         Tax credit for Small Business not so sweet –Obama’s claim that small business will revel in “how much they’re going to save” isn’t quite so.  As the AP explains, “Lost in the fine print: The credit drops off sharply once a company gets above 10 workers and $25,000 average annual wages. It’s an example of how the early provisions of the health care law can create winners and losers among groups lawmakers intended to help.”

·         CBO ups cost by $115 billion – The Congressional Budget Office raised by $115 billion their estimate of the 10 year cost of ObamaCare, gobbling up virtually all of the supposed deficit savings.  The CBO had warned before they passed ObamaCare they had not completed analysis of cost, particularly Congress discretionary spending, as a result of all the new programs and regulations mandated by the legislation.  The Democrats pushed the vote through, anyway.

·         Premiums to go up, not down – Contrary to the President’s claim that families would benefit by reduced premiums, another AP story documents that due to the new provision that adults to age 26 can stay on their parents' health insurance plans, premiums will increase.  Surprise!

·         Massive Hidden Tax Change – CNNMoney.Com exposed, “An all-but-overlooked provision of the health reform law is threatening to swamp U.S. businesses with a flood of new tax paperwork.”  ObamaCare mandates that businesses will have to fill out a 1099 report for every individual or corporation from whom they purchase goods or services of just $600 or more in any year.  “The stealth change radically alters the nature of 1099s and means businesses will have to issue millions of new tax documents each year,” according to the article.

·         Millions of Workers Insurance Threatened – Another government report, this one from CMS, projects “about 14 million people will lose employer-provided coverage.”  Due to “the new law's radically different regime of subsidies, penalties, and taxes” millions workers are likely to lose their employer provided health care coverage because paying the penalty would be far more cost effective for business than premium cost.  This stark accounting reality would “seem to contradict President Obama's statements that Americans who like their current plans could keep them,” according to Fortune. Further, “it would hugely magnify the projected costs for the bill, which controls deficits only by assuming that America's employers would remain the backbone of the nation's health care system.”

·         4 Million Middle Class to pay penalty – Obama “pledged in 2008 not to raise taxes on individuals making less than $200,000 a year and couples making less than $250,000.”  However, CBO recently estimated that 4 million people – mostly middle class – will get hit with an average $1000 penalty for not having insurance under the new mandate.

·         2500 jobs lost - In a move that had nothing to do with health care, ObamaCare also seized the Student Loan Program from the private sector.  ObamaCare was trumpeted as a jobs creator, however, the nationalizing of the Student Loan program has already cost 2500 jobs with Sallie Mae in locations across the country that specialized in administration of the program.