Now you see it, now you don?t

Sleight-of-hand politics. It's not new. Matter of fact, in this day and age, "sleight-of-hand" practically defines "politics." Call it what you will, Universal Health Care, Socialized Medicine or Single-Payer Systems - all are representative of modern-day political trickery whose acceptance depends entirely on the ultimate success of a political phenomena called sleight-of-hand.

We've all heard the talk and the emotional appeal the administration and others are using to set the stage:

"America doesn't care for its people, especially the poor"

"America spends more per patient than any other country and yet is ranked well below other nations in the healthcare it delivers."

"America is indifferent to the plight of the uninsured."

"America is cruel by denying health care to its own citizens."

Blah, blah, blah and yada, yada, yada.

It's not surprising that most of the crowd in Washington won't call these plans what they are - nationalized health care or worse still, socialized medicine. No, they don't want the stigma of a government-run medical program attached to this new and dumbocrat improved version of HillaryCare called ObamaCare. So they disguise the program by calling it other innocuous names ... things like single-payer plan, or universal health care. However, once in place, the federal government would be at the epicenter of our medical care administering a politically-driven program through a new and ever-growing bureaucracy.

Putting aside the shortcomings of the present system - and there are some things that need fixing - how well do you think the average American will accept having to wait months or even years to have a surgery or a critical diagnostic procedure? How well will they tolerate long delays in getting to see a doctor? If ObamaCare is allowed to dump up to 49-million new people into the pool of the insured that's exactly what will happen.

Why? Adding that many new patients without also adding about 206,000 new providers (doctors, nurse practitioners and physician's assistants) would require that every provider in the system would have to absorb up to 20% more patients and that's like cramming six days of patients into five days of appointments. And down the road? It's estimated that training and licensing more doctors and nurses to share the load would take three to six years. But without them, our health care system is likely to collapse under the strain.

All this is presently the subject of many debates and honest debate is good. But here's where the administration is trying to pull the wool over our eyes ... the sleight-of-hand: no one inside the beltway is having much to say about how as a country we'll finance this program of mandatory health care. Oh sure, one senator has suggested that we pay for it by taxing beer, wine and sugar-sweetened soda pop. And the administration hopes to advance its cause by keeping a campaign promise to increase the taxes on the evil rich - a move sure to please the wealth envy crowd at the core of the democrat party. Others believe that even as we widen the war in Afghanistan, bailout the banks, prop up sub-prime mortgages and take over America's crippled automobile industry, savings from the war in Iraq will soon have the country's coffers filled to overflowing.

What they ain't saying is that the government's benevolent program of health care for all Americans is yet another thinly veiled socialistic program of income redistribution.

How's that, you ask? (Shhhh! Don't tell anyone you heard it here!) They plan to tax the cost of the health care premiums paid by employers as ordinary income for working families and use that revenue to offset the cost of health care for the uninsured!

Here's how it would work: assume that a working family receives health care benefits that cost their employer $800 a month or $9,600 a year. If they are a typical two-wage-earner family, they probably have an income of $80-90,000 annually and pay roughly 25% in Federal taxes. Taxing their health care benefits would increase their $22,500 tax bill by $2400 or 10.6%. So, for every four families that takes the hit, a bunch of free-loaders that chose shiny rims and big flat screens over health insurance gets their medical care for free. Whatta country!

Another trick that Sir Hopenchange has up his sleeve involves energy. Again, they have to be careful what they call it lest folks figure out how the trick works.

The WSJ reports, "The Obama administration is consulting pollsters who advocate avoiding phrases such as "cap-and-trade" and "global warming." On Monday, the White House Council on Environmental Quality was scheduled to meet with Robert Perkowitz, president of ecoAmerica, a Washington-based nonprofit that uses "psychographic research" to "shift personal and civic choices of environmentally agnostic Americans," according to its Web site.

"We're trying to give them phrases that work," Mr. Perkowitz said in an interview. He said that in a survey of some 2,000 Americans conducted by his group in March and April, less than half of the respondents said they would support a "cap-and-trade" policy and that only 24% said they knew what the phrase means. "If you call it 'clean energy dividend'...almost anything other than 'cap and trade,' you'll get people responding a lot more favorably," he said.

Let's explore the cost of this thing called a ‘clean energy dividend'. In testimony before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, a former Speaker of the House said, "This bill amounts to a $1-2 trillion energy tax levied on a struggling economy, which is destructive and wrong. With this glorified $1-2 trillion new energy tax, expect utility bill increases up to $3,128 per year per household.  Filling up your gas tank will cost anywhere from 60 percent to 144 percent more, your electricity bill will increase by 77 to 129 percent, and the cost of home heating oil and natural gas could nearly double."

Folks, even Sir Hopenchange - himself a political sleight-of-hand expert -- admits that under his plan "electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket."

According to the Heritage Foundation, "the cost of cap-and-trade" - er 'clean energy dividend' - "would be $1.9 trillion."

Consider this: adjusted for inflation, Roosevelt's New Deal cost the country $500-billion, the Kennedy/Johnson Vietnam War cost the country $698 billion and NASA since its inception has only cost $851 billion. Now in pursuit of Al Gore's wet dream, the dumbocrats want to spend another $1.9 trillion of your money.

$1.9 trillion? I don't know about you, but I don't think even a master of deception from the Southside of Chicago has that many Aces up his sleeve.

tags: politics  obama  obamacare  hillarycare  socialized  medicine  income redistribution  wealth envy  socialism  marxism  

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