By the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Special for US Daily Review.
Today’s U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding the individual mandate within the federal Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act (PPACA) is a tremendous blow against Americans’ health care and individual liberties, according to the Texas Public Policy Foundation.
“The fundamental question before the U.S. Supreme Court in this case was, if the federal government can force us to buy health insurance, what can’t it force us to do?” said Foundation president Brooke Rollins. “Though the individual mandate was upheld under the taxation authority of the Congress, rather than the Commerce Clause, the net effect is the same: the Constitutional limits of federal power are now dangerously eroded.”
“James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, argued passionately that in any constitutional republic, the transition to unrestrained majority rule is often an irrevocable step on the road to tyranny,” Rollins said. “Today’s ruling should be a wake-up call to all Americans: now more than ever, it is time to redouble our efforts to reclaim the proper sovereignty of states and citizens.”
Arlene Wohlgemuth, the Foundation’s executive director and director of its Center for Health Care Policy, said, “The Supreme Court got one big thing right: the individual mandate is a de facto tax on every single American. The problem is that it’s a uniquely destructive tax for American households, American businesses, and the American economy. The extraordinary growth of federal power and the degradation of the American economy go hand in hand.”
“Congress now needs to act quickly to repeal this law and take a new approach to health care reform,” Wohlgemuth said. “But this time, we need to fix health care the right way – with patient-centered reforms that emphasize the patient-doctor relationship and allow them to make more effective and economical health care choices with less interference from insurance companies or government.”
Wohlgemuth encouraged the U.S. Congress to include the following elements in any new health care reform legislation, following repeal of the PPACA:
- Individual ownership of insurance policies – the tax deduction that allows employers to own your insurance should instead be given to the individual;
- Promotion of Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) – HSAs empower individuals to monitor their health care costs and create incentives for individuals to use only those services that are necessary;
- Interstate purchasing of insurance – policies in some states are more affordable because they include fewer bells and whistles; consumers should be empowered to decide which benefits they need and what prices they are willing to pay;
- Reduction of mandated benefits insurers are required to cover – empowering consumers to choose which benefits they need is only effective if insurers are able to fill these needs;
- Reallocation of the majority of Medicaid spending into simple vouchers for low-income individuals to purchase their own insurance– an income-based sliding scale voucher program would eliminate much of the massive bureaucracy that is needed to implement today’s complex and burdensome Medicaid system and produce considerable cost savings;
- Medical liability reform following Texas’s example – defensive medicine needlessly drives up medical costs and creates an adversarial relationship between doctors and patients.
“Our research has established that a patient-centered approach to health care reform would build on America’s world-leading quality and high patient satisfaction in a way that extends those benefits to even more people and empowers all patients to make their own medical decisions,” Wohlgemuth said.
Brooke Rollins is president and chief executive officer of the Texas Public Policy Foundation.
The Honorable Arlene Wohlgemuth is the executive director and director of the Center for Health Care Policy at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. She served 10 years in the Texas House of Representatives, specializing in health care issues.
July 10th, 2012 at 10:43 am
As President Obama launches his campaign to extend tax cuts for the middle class, he is hopeful of shifting key economic issues, unemployment and housing markets, to the issue of “tax fairness”. He hopes that the enormous hidden tax implications of Obamacare will somehow be lost via this new political distraction.
There is no question that Chief Justice John Roberts revealed the true facts surrounding the Obamacare tax increase last week when he asked if “Congress thought of it as a tax, if they defended it under the tax power, why didn’t they say it was a tax?”
The records show the response from the Obama administration as: “They might have thought, your Honor, that calling it as they did would make it more effective in its objective, but it is in the Internal Revenue Code, it is collected by the IRS on April 15th.” If the provision appears in the Internal Revenue Code and operates as a tax, it is indeed a tax. Attempting to fool, deceive and/or confuse taxpayers is a clear “no confidence” vote getter.
Let’s remind the President of his campaign pledge not to raise middle class taxes.
As a result of Obamacare and many other policy enactments, our economy will continue its downward spiral. The risk equation in our economy is now greater and the prospects of growth revival far lower. We are quickly dismantling our country’s growth engine with these continued massive deficits, regulatory job-destroying burdens, increased governmental entitlements, programs and costs, major tax increase initiatives, bailouts, export driven outsourcing, locked up credit, carried interest and capital gains tax uncertainties. Obamacare being a prime example. All of these elements exacerbate our continued high unemployment and housing woes.
With Obamacare, small companies, which make up the majority of our economy are incented to drop health insurance coverage and instead provide employees with a stipend to purchase their own insurance on the open markets. It’s clearly a cost savings for companies to take this route with the justification that employees may be able to get better insurance coverage than the company offered. Of course, we know what happens when 15% of the population is burdened with paying for 85% of its people.
If the Obama administration’s objective is to support full employment, there are far better policies to accomplish this over our current unemployment benefits insurance. The majority of economists concur that unemployment benefits generate additional unemployment, pure and simple. Having the employed pay for extended unemployment entitlements fuels the current depression era sentiment of Wall Street, causing its dire effect on our economy. Stepped decreases and termination of unemployment benefits after a given point is the catalyst to helping people help themselves in securing jobs.
Excessively high tax rates are counterproductive and result in de-incentivizing capital investments (key to employment growth), which in turn suppresses governmental tax revenues. Simply put, tax cuts are absolutely key to job creation. Job creation and low unemployment are key to consumer confidence. All of which are key to economic recovery. Tax increases, ala Obamacare, will continue to severely depress the economy and further erode Obama’s dismal recovery attempts.
A prosperous economy is fundamentally all about job creation, productivity and consumer confidence. We need to grow our economy from the Middle class up, not suppress it. The reality is that the vast majority of those wealthy (+$250,000 incomes) people lost 30-50% of their wealth over the last 4 years due to the economy, lost jobs and investment losses, while no one on any federal entitlement program took a 30-50% cut. The taxpayers who paid into those entitlements certainly did.
Policies geared to boosting mortgage interest deductions, cutting governmental spending, deploying additional stimulus spending so as to create jobs and get us on a path to a 3+% economic growth rate would get us on the right path. Enacting those policies and governmental mandates quickly is the key to insuring our economy’s rebound and long-term success. Frankly, Mitt Romney has long figured this out and mapped out purposeful resolutions. I don’t think I can survive another 4 years of Obama, and am certain that the US economy won’t.