Thursday, June 28, 2012

Why ObamaCare doesn’t make sense - better chance of succeeding in the late ’90s

News: Why ObamaCare doesn’t make sense - now: Here are some intimate details about ObamaCare, which the Supreme ...http://tinyurl.com/7afko8a

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12:17 PM - 28 Jun 12 via twitterfeed · Details

Why ObamaCare doesn’t make sense - now

Last Updated: 12:00 PM, June 28, 2012

Posted: 11:57 PM, June 27, 2012

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John Crudele

Here are some intimate details about ObamaCare, which the Supreme Court will rule on today.

Last year it cost News America — the company that publishes The Post — exactly $1,860 to pay for health insurance for my 24-year-old daughter, Kim. It costs about the same in 2012.

And that’s just for the insurance premium.

Senators not involved in debt talks say it doesn't make sense for them to stay.

That amount doesn’t include any medical procedures that might have occurred or doctors visits that might have been needed.

The tea-leaf readers think at least part of the law will be struck down.

Ironically, news from the Supreme Court will come hours after the government gives us the final reading on economic growth in the first quarter.

The preliminary figure was paltry: annualized growth of just 1.9 percent. If tomorrow’s report revises that figure downward, it is going to be another shock to the economic system.

Then, late next week, Washington will report the number of new jobs created in June. Don’t expect that figure to be great either.

Health care for everyone is a wonderful idea, not to mention a humane one. It would have had a better chance of succeeding in the late ’90s when the economy was humming and companies wouldn’t have minded — or even noticed — that they were paying the cost of insuring more people.

That decline is particularly troublesome to me (as it should be to you) because we, as taxpayers, still own 500 million GM shares. We got them when the government bailed out GM a couple of years ago.

So we’ve lost around $4 billion these past few months. Put into perspective that $4 billion would be enough for Congress to fund low-interest student loans for another nine months.

But why is the stock weak? Could it be that GM and other car makers aren’t really giving us the truth about sales. For instance, were the sales being reported really only those vehicles being unloaded onto dealers and not those actually going into people’s garages?

I’ll let that question hang because I just don’t know. But I’m sure we will find out soon enough how the auto industry is really doing.

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Dear John: The Obama campaign has asked that instead of gifts for brides and grooms, that contributions be made to the Obama campaign instead.

Does anybody in the Obama campaign realize that in 1935 the Italian government did virtually the identical thing when they asked Italians to turn in their gold wedding rings in exchange for steel ones to help fund the war in Ethiopia?

Where do they get these people from anyway? — M.R.

Dear M.R. — At least they aren’t asking for your gold fillings. Not yet, anyway, but I’d keep your mouth closed just in case.

Where do they get these people? I think mostly Ivy League Schools.

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Here’s some good news for the beauty care, dieting and surgery industries: 88 percent of girls aged 15 to 25 in this country would change something about their body if it were easy to do. That’s according to a survey done by InSites Consulting.

More shocking to me is that 73 percent of the boys would also make changes. But here’s the stat that really floors me: 14 percent of the guys don’t like their cheeks.

Cheeks!

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat down with my guy friends and discussed their cheeks. Actually, yes I can — never!

And I guarantee that cheeks will never, ever come up.

And its time will come again. But right now the fact that the government is forcing companies to pay to insure people like Kim is hurting my daughter’s chance of getting a job and her own coverage.

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