AT WHOSE EXPENSE?

The current debate and wrangling over the Affordable Health Care Act, the Federal Budget, and the Federal Borrowing Limit has bandied about accusations of Big Brother, taking away personal liberties, destroying business, and a lot of other emotional issues. Please consider with me some basic issues that are not being brought out to the light of day but are at the root of the emotion and energy generated by these issues.

The new health care law is going to raise the cost of health insurance for many people and many businesses. People are now given the chance to purchase health insurance who could not purchase it before because they have preexisting health problems. By excluding them, health insurance premiums were kept lower for the people who had health insurance. Up to now health insurance has been affordable for the majority of people because it was unavailable to those who were high risks. For this and a number of other reasons 41,000,000 Americans did not have health insurance. Before the advent of “Obamacare” health insurance, though expensive, was kept artificially low at the expense of those who need health insurance the most.

The same spirit of “keep the price low for me, I don’t care how” has led to the flight of jobs from the U.S.A. to countries where labor costs are much lower. It has also led to the madness of deficit financing of the Federal budget in the last decades. If an individual consistently spent more than he/she earned and used a credit card to increase their spending; and if this same individual paid only the minimum on their credit card account each month, we would that person is a fool. That is exactly what the Federal government has been doing for years. The voters demand that taxes be lowered and their Congressmen accede to their demands. Now we have a two pronged fiscal crisis involving the Federal budget and the Federal borrowing limit.

Where are the leaders who have the courage to say, “You are going to have to pay higher health insurance premiums so that everyone will have access to health care.” and “You are going to have to pay higher taxes, much higher taxes, so that we can have a truly balanced budget and so that we can begin to make significant reductions in the Federal debt.”?