Sunday’s passage of President Obama’s $940 Health Care reform bill
was in words of one prominent conservative columnist, “yet another
blow to freedom in America inflicted by the Obama administration.” It
is a logistical nightmare that adds to our already unsustainable
national debt, which is currently over $12 million. With its
individual mandates it seeks to undermine our political tradition of
individualism and distorts the meaning of “natural rights.” ObamaCare
is clearly the largest expansion of entitlements since the enactment
of Medicare and Medicaid more than four decades ago. It is a sorry
step towards a European-style vision of universal health care, which
will only lead to soaring costs, higher taxes, and a surge in red tape
for small businesses.
With the majority of American opposing this legislation, President
Obama’s government takeover of the health care system is wrong for
America. Moreover, It is not real reform, as it does not address why
health care is so expensive. In a recent conversation I had with Dr.
Jason Fodeman, a former health policy fellow at The Heritage
Foundation, he described the above as, throwing a trillion dollars at
the health care system “without fundamentally reforming the reason for
rising health care costs is like trying to put out a fire with
gasoline.” He also explained to me that further expanding the role of
government in the health care sector will only serve to accelerate
current trends. It will drown an industry already regulated to death
with a slew of new mandates, regulations, red tape, and taxes that
simultaneously will hinder patients from receiving desired care.
Current students and other young people need to realize that this
legislation is bad news for them. It is ushering in new record levels of debt
which when added to the deficit will during our lifetimes reach critical mass
causing our taxes to soar, high inflation, or both. The bill will also impose
price controls on health insurance that will limit insurers' ability to offer lower
premiums to low-risk enrollees. These provisions will drive premiums
down for 55-year-olds but will drive them up for 25-year-olds—who are
then implicitly subsidizing older adults. According to the Urban
Institute, many young people could see their premiums double, whereas
premiums for older adults could be cut in half. The unfortunate irony
is that Barack Obama won the presidency with 66 percent of the vote
among adults aged 18 to 29. That's a larger share than any
presidential candidate has won in decades. Yet his health care
overhaul could impose its greatest burdens on young adults.
Sam K. Theodosopoulos is the Editor-at-Large of the GW Young America's Foundation Blog
