By Scott W. Atlas
Monday, November 12, 2012
Dancing in Chicago, young voters gleefully celebrated
President Obama’s victory. Indeed, voters younger than 30 may well have changed
the outcome of the race. They represented 19 percent of all voters, even more
than they did in 2008, and they favored President Obama by 60 to 37 percent,
according to exit polling.
One college student asked me, “What exactly are they so
excited about?”
Presumably, they aren’t celebrating their job prospects.
Under this administration, unemployment of younger Americans and recent college
graduates is not very different from the scandalous unemployment rates of youth
in failing European countries whose misguided economic policies are creating a
nearly jobless generation.
Presumably, they aren’t celebrating the increasing tax
burdens awaiting the lucky few of them — mainly those who have studied hard and
long and spent a great deal on both the direct and indirect (from delayed entry
into the work force) costs of advanced education — who will finally attain
lucrative jobs.
And presumably, they aren’t celebrating the changes in
health care for themselves and their future children directly caused by the now
inexorable progression of their president’s signature legislation. The list of
unwelcome changes is long:
Many people will
not be able to choose their doctor, as millions will lose their current
insurance plan and, along with it, their doctors.
Private insurance
companies, squeezed dry by the limits Obamacare places on their profit margins,
will disappear, even though most doctors accept private insurance and it is
proven to result in superior medical outcomes.
Even young,
healthy people will be forced to buy expensive health coverage, because
Obamacare requires expansive coverage of high-cost care. Consumers will no
longer be able to buy less comprehensive, lower-cost insurance, such as
high-deductible plans with health-savings accounts, even if that insurance
would make the most sense for them.
Millions of
Americans will be shifted into Medicaid, insurance that pays doctors and
hospitals so little that the needed care will simply not be available — as
proven again and again in the U.S. (where fewer and fewer doctors provide care
to Medicaid and Medicare recipients, specifically because of low reimbursement
rates), as well as in other countries dominated by government insurance.
Parents and
grandparents will lose access to the very medical technology and drugs that
have revolutionized health care in the past half century; these will become
less available to Medicare beneficiaries because of cuts by the Independent
Payment Advisory Board.
There will be
fewer high-paying careers in the medical-technology industry: Obamacare’s
misguided medical-device tax (on revenues, not just profits) is already
destroying high-paying jobs for Americans and moving them overseas. More than
400,000 high-paying American jobs of the very sort young people seek are at
risk because companies in California, Indiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, and
elsewhere are already eliminating jobs specifically because of Obamacare’s
onerous taxes.
Our reelected president, so jubilantly cheered by young
voters last week, has completely failed to address what is the single most
important problem in America’s health care: the total cost burden on U.S.
taxpayers. With Obamacare, one of the greatest intergenerational financial
transfers in history, America’s younger generation will bear the burden of
unsustainable, ever-expanding entitlements.
Presumably, the young voters who approved of the past
four years and chose this year to follow the path set forth by President Obama
know exactly what’s in store.
Well, I say go for it, keep on dancing, but watch out
when the music stops.
No comments:
Post a Comment