"Investigators for the House Energy and Commerce Committee have discovered that a little-known provision in the national health care law has allowed the federal government to pay nearly $2 billion to unions, state public employee systems, and big corporations to subsidize health coverage costs for early retirees. At the current rate of payment, the $5 billion appropriated for the program could be exhausted well before it is set to expire."
Byron York has the details.
In a nutshell, American workers will now be forced to pay for the health care expenses of others who have chosen to retire early (mostly union members and public employees - in other words, core Democratic supporters), and it's not going to help save the taxpayers any money. As a matter of fact, the program almost certainly will end up blowing past its multi-billion dollar budget well before its scheduled expiration in January 2014.
No wonder liberal Democrats such as Nancy Pelosi wanted to hurriedly ram this 2000+ page Ponzi scheme through Congress before anyone got a chance to read it at all, much less thoroughly.
According to Pelosi, we just had "to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of controversy". Well, the peasants are certainly finding out to their utter disgust exactly what's in it, but the controversy sure isn't going away anytime soon.
We wonder what else will be rearing its collectivist head out of that utter morass of a law before it can be repealed by the new Congress.
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Hmmm, let's see: the cost of subsidizing early retirees vs salaries AND healthcare (incl. dependents) for keeping them on the payroll until 67.
When you also add in the hiring freeze, if they can get people to retire early, it would in effect shrink gov't. Isn't that what the conservatives want: smaller gov't?
No, I don't think this bill is perfect, and personally I REALLY don't like the "required" healthcare part of it. At the same time - people are dying because they don't have healthcare. Literally. Privatized medicine doesn't work, it's costing us big time (not only in $$ from lost time/wages), and no one ever talks about the human toll this system has had. How many other developed nations are still doing it?
If I didn't have healthcare, I would still be dying and likely to have been dead by the end of the year. I'm one of the lucky ones. How many others aren't?
I'm all about smaller government. Really. Yet, if smaller government is government where people are being given handouts--whether in the form of early retirement or unwarranted coverage (such as welfare, etc), I'm completely uninterested. That kind of government is one that encourages high taxes in the interests of 'programs' to cover pet projects of 'goodwill'. I'm all for goodwill--but that's not the role of government. The government is not a relief organization. It was never meant to be. The government is meant to protect against outside threats. In subsidization (of any kind), the government is paying for things that would likely fail or run into financial problems on its own. That is hardly worth the attention of the governing authorities.
I don't have a good argument against the healthcare law as yet. I know that. Mostly, my gripe with it is that it was that it expands government regulations to levels it was never meant to be. Shoot, even Bush (W), the much vaunted president of some conservatives, aided in expanding government in ways unintended by the founders (think the Patriot Act, line-item vetoes, etc). Yet, as we 'progress'...we continue to argue for regulation and government expansion. Ironically, when we deregulate, we tend to experience more economic growth/prosperity in that area. Another gripe I have about healthcare which ties(perhaps clarifies/draws from would be better) relates to the government not being a relief organization. Healthcare is not the roll of government. If we're looking to the government for relief, we nullity the existence of other organizations (i.e. Red Cross, et al).
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