President Obama's rating
| By John S. Pinto It is about five months since President Barack Obama took office (as of this writing). The tone of his administration has been set and his agenda has been laid out. His programs are pretty much what he laid out during the campaign, namely redistribution of income and wealth, health care ‘reform’ and exponentially increasing the welfare state. The general themes are that producers are to be punished for producing, non-producers are to be rewarded and that the federal government is to become even more involved in our everyday lives. If you are a producer, it is bad news and if you are a non-producer, it is even worse news. The reason for this is that producers are the ones that generate jobs and if Obama’s agenda is implemented, they will not take the risks needed to generate job growth and thus unemployment will continue to rise. Let us take a look at health care. In a couple of years, baby boomers will start signing up for Medicare. About 78 million people will stop working, will stop paying taxes, will stop paying into retirement programs and start drawing benefits. In an analysis by John C. Goodman, president at the National Center for Policy Analysis, he says that neither Social Security nor Medicare is ready for the influx. The federal government has made explicit and implicit promises that it is unable to keep, since no funds have been set aside to pay for the promises. In the Ponzi scheme business, Bernie Madoff is small potatoes compared to the federal government! The federal government has a potential liability of $500 trillion in entitlements to the baby boomers. In addition, Obama’s wild spending is only going to add to the problem. By 2020, just 11 years from now, the federal government will need every one out of four income tax dollars to pay for Social Security and Medicare. By 2030, it will require one out of every two income tax dollars! Add to that Medicaid. A recent forecast by the Congressional Budget Office estimates that Medicare and Medicaid are going to crowd out every thing the federal government does by the middle of the 21st century. At the same time, a middle-income family will have to pay two-thirds of its income in taxes. So, what will happen to the federal government’s primary duty to keep us safe? According to Goodman, there may be light at the end of the tunnel. He says that the only sensible alternative to relying on the welfare state to solve our health care needs is a renewed reliance on private sector institutions that utilize individual choice and free markets to insure against unforeseen contingencies. It is best to get away from thinking of health care as an entitlement and think of it as a service that is provided in time of need. Consumers of this service should pay out of pocket for routine visits to the doctor and even for minor medical procedures. If we start saving at an early age, we will have enough money to afford these services. If health care consumers spend their own money as they see fit, it will bring costs down and improve the level of care. You do not think that this can happen? Take elective cosmetic surgery. Consumers compare prices and services and then make their decision. Over the last 15 years, the price of cosmetic surgery has gone down, while the price of every other kind of surgery has risen more rapidly than the Consumer Price Index. This has happened even though the number of people using cosmetic surgery services has increased by five or six fold. In other words, the free market works. There are many other examples of health care being delivered at a reasonable cost to consumers. The underlying assumption amongst these examples is that health care is not an entitlement and that the consumer sees the bill. At the same time, many of the services provide quality health care to the patient at a reasonable cost. The Obama administration wants to nationalize health care or more properly to socialize it. Under this plan, the federal government would take charge of paying for and providing your health care. You would not see any of the costs and only be involved in consuming health care services. The logical progression of this system is that it will become overburdened. The quality of care will suffer. Your health needs will be determined by bureaucrats and rationing of health care will be the result. In summary, the Obama administration is making ‘changes’ that hearken to the old Soviet Union and unless we put a stop to them, not only we, but many succeeding generations will pay for our mistakes. If future generations are unable to pay for this boondoggle, we will be bankrupt! I believe that future generations should not be obligated to pay for our missteps. Thus, my grade is an F. |
John Pinto's column
