Obamacare: Unfair to the young middle class, punished enough already

"For 'tis the sport to see the engineer
Hoist with his own petar..."

Today's chapter in the book of Obamacare comes from a young free-lance writer in California who is discovering that a) someone has to pay for free healthcare and b) apparently, he's someone.

Under my old plan, my maximum out-of-pocket expense was $4,900. Under the new plan, I’m on the hook for up to $6,350. Copays for my doctor visits will double. For urgent-care visits, they will quadruple. Though slightly cheaper plans exist if I decide to shop around on the exchange, I will lose my dental coverage should I switch.

Needless to say, I am not pleased.

Most young, middle-class Americans I know are happy that millions of previously uninsured people will receive free or heavily subsidized insurance under the Affordable Care Act.

We just didn’t realize that, unless we had health insurance at work, we’d be the ones paying for it.

My reaction?



You know, people tried to tell you this, but you didn't want to listen. No, you thought, only greedy people would be opposed to this. And besides, you aren't rich - it's not going to impact you. Someone else is going to pay for it!

And I'm reminded, as has happened so many times during this administration, of Atlas Shrugged. This time, the plan at the 20th Century Motor Factory...

There wasn't a man voting for it who didn't think that under a setup of this kind he'd muscle in on the profits of the men abler than himself. There wasn't a man rich and smart enough but that he didn't think that somebody was richer and smarter, and this plan would give him a share of his better's wealth and brain. But while he was thinking that he'd get unearned benefits from the men above, he forgot about all his ingeriors who'd rush to drain him just as he hped to drain his superiors. The worker who liked the idea that his need entitled him to a limousine like his boss's, forgot that every bum and beggar on earth would come howling that their need entitled them to an icebox like his own. That was our real motive when we voted - that was the the truth of it - but we didn't like to think it, so the less we liked it, the louder we yelled about our love for the common good.

Apparently, Matthew Fleischer's love for the common good last just until it started to cost him personally.

Atlas Shrugged - part 1

I watch this with a mixture of fascination and dread...

Potential Energy: Generating Power from Electricity in the Air

Is John Galt's engine possible?

Obama in Starnesville

So, when I heard the clip from Florida yesterday of the woman asking President Obama for "our own kitchen and our own bathroom," I was reminded of something.

But his sister Ivy was worse...She was our Director of Distribution. She was the lady in charge of our needs. She was the one who held us by the throat. Of course, distribution was supposed to be decided by voting—by the voice of the people. But when the people are six thousand howling voices, trying to decide without yardstick, rhyme or reason, when there are no rules to the game and each can demand anything, but has a right to nothing, when everybody holds power over everybody’s life except his own—then it turns out, as it did, that the voice of the people is Ivy Starnes. By the end of the second year...all the petitions of need were simply sent to Miss Starnes’ office. No, not sent. They had to be recited to her in person by every petitioner. Then she made up a distribution list, which she read to us for our vote of approval at a meeting that lasted three-quarters of an hour. We voted approval. There was a ten minute period on the agenda for discussion and objections. We made no objections. We knew better by that time. Nobody can divide a factory’s income among thousands of people, without some sort of a gauge to measure people’s value. Her gauge was bootlicking.
...
Mistakes of this size are never made innocently. If men fall for some vicious piece of insanity, when they have no way to make it work and no possible reason to explain their choice—it’s because they have a reason that they do not wish to tell. And we weren’t so innocent either, when we voted for that plan at the first meeting. We didn’t do it just because we believed that the drippy old guff they spewed was good. We had another reason, but the guff helped us to hide it from our neighbors and from ourselves. The guff gave us a chance to pass off as virtue something that we’d be ashamed to admit otherwise. There wasn’t a man voting for it who didn’t think that under a setup of this kind he’d muscle in on the profits of the men abler than himself. There wasn’t a man rich and smart enough but that he didn’t think that somebody was richer and smarter, and this plan would give him a share of his better’s wealth and brain. But while he was thinking that he’d get unearned benefits from the men above, he forgot about the men below who’d get unearned benefits, too. He forgot about all his inferiors who’d rush to drain him just as he hoped to drain his superiors. The worker who liked the idea that his need entitled him to a limousine like his boss’s, forgot that every bum and beggar on earth would come howling that their need entitled them to an icebox like his own. That was our real motive when we voted—that was the truth of it—but we didn’t like to think it, so the less we liked it, the louder we yelled about our love for the common good.

Well, we got what we asked for. By the time we saw what it was that we’d asked for, it was too late. We were trapped, with no place to go.

Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

H/T: Michelle Malkin