(More Than) Eight Ways Obamacare Grows the U.S. Government

From David Gratzer at National Review:

1. Obamacare creates a new, government-run assisted-care insurance program to compete with existing private plans. CLASS Act, as it’s called, is essentially a new entitlement, and its proponents promise it won’t cost the Treasury a penny. That’s what Washington used to say about Social Security. The CBO, incidentally, predicts CLASS Act will increase the deficit within two decades.
2. Obamacare creates a Medicare panel to cut payments for ineffective procedures and prescriptions. The panel will override the wishes of patients and physicians, just as it has in countries where it’s already been tried, such as Britain. The British government, by the way, is presently reviewing the mandate of its deeply unpopular committee.
3. Obamacare expands Medicaid eligibility by as much as one-third, increasing taxpayer liability for entitlements at the exact moment Washington needs to contain entitlements. It’s like deciding to build a swimming pool and gazebo when your house already has a double mortgage and a cracked foundation.
4. Obamacare gives the federal government the power to specify what every insurance plan must cover, and doesn’t touch the hundreds of state-level benefit mandates that are already in place. And, by the way, it’s a power that Washington will immediately use — both the House and Senate bills contain new mandates.
5. Obamacare creates dozens of new offices, bureaucracies, committees, programs, and authorities — more than 110 in the Senate bill — to implement the law and develop new regulations, including the Interagency Pain Research Coordinating Committee and the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute.
6. Obamacare forces states to set up health-insurance exchanges to foster competition. Massachusetts has already tried this, with no reduction in premiums.
7. Obamacare substitutes more government for patient choice by gutting Medicare Advantage (an option through which seniors can receive their Medicare benefits in the form of private insurance plans) to pay for new entitlements and new services. Let’s be clear: Medicare Advantage is hardly perfect, and Medicare itself is in need of a rethink, but the responsible step would be to seek reforms in order to reduce the deficit, not to shift the money to create and expand other entitlements.
8. Eight, with so many subsidies and program expansions, Obamacare will push the government’s share of national health spending well past the 50 percent level forever. Let’s put that in perspective: In socialized health-care systems such as Canada’s — private insurance is still banned in much of that country — government accounts for about 70 percent of total health-care spending.

And here's number 10, one that Gratzer forgot,as if the IRS doesn't have enough power over Americans: the IRS is to be the government's thuggish enforcer.

Grazter goes on to imply that the influence of lobbyist can only grow as they "attempt to sway the decisions of the health-benefit super-committee - which is changed with determining the services covered by your insurance -- or the Medicare panel, which is authorized to 'guide' physicians' treatment decisions."

I'm sure glad that I didn't spend tens of thousands of dollars and thousands of hour preparing for a career in medicine, only to have a "new boss" whether want one or not.

And if I were close to retirement age or could afford to do so, I would retire as I am certain will happen as many in profession now are weighing their options and will bow out... unless of course they are forced by a contrived penalty not to take that step... yet another way of increasing the size of government and its insidious intrusion (number 11).

Now where I have heard about that before? I know: in the Soviet Union and Castro's Cuba, among other places.

This bears repeating: if ObamaCare passes, you can kiss liberty and freedom good-bye.

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