Understanding Obamacare - Part III

In Part I, I discussed how the stage was set for the expectation of government provided health care and the hope that we’d get something for nothing. Part II addressed whether Obamacare was truly “affordable” for the average American.

In this part, I take a look at the dark underbelly of the legislation and what I believe is the real strategy behind the designers.

Small businesses are the backbone of our economy. While the big businesses get all the press, it is the small businesses that form the foundation and security of our economy. Headlines carry news about the intended opening of an Amazon headquarter might be, or the earnings of Apple, or the outsourcing of Chevrolet products, but the nitty-gritty mom and pop establishment, the independent insurance agent, the gymnastics lessons for your kids, the attorney on the corner, the lady who opened the McDonald’s franchise in your town, the couple who rolled the dice on the hair salon – they are the basis for our economy.

Some statistics: A small business is any business entity that employs fewer than 500 employees. Small businesses constitute 99.7% of all private businesses employing firms. Small businesses historically provide more than 65% of all newly created jobs. Their exports constitute 97.5% of the total exported goods. The small business sector is comprised of 52% home-based companies. (Sources: US Dept of Commerce; Census Bureau, and International Trade Administration.) “

Before we go further, here’s an important question: Did you know that when liberal politicians attack “the wealthy” as a group, which needs to pay more taxes, they are generally attacking small businesses? It’s true, and here’s why: A basic number is this - $380,000 per year. That sounds like a lot of cash, right? Well, it is if someone hands it to you, tax free. But if you’re a small businessman or woman, that number doesn’t represent your take-home pay. No, that is how much you pulled in to put you in the top 1%, but you still have a lot of obligations to meet – like employee salary and benefits, like income taxes, like improvements, like advertising, like covering theft or vandalism, and much, much more. The typical business owner who forms the fabric of our economy is not a fat-cat riding to work in a limo and taking long vacations in a glamorous location (that’s for Michelle Obama or the administrators of the GAO). No, ask most business owners and they’ll honestly tell you they haven’t taken a vacation in the last couple years, and… and… didn’t take a salary because after paying the business expenses, there was nothing left. Are they complaining? No, that’s a fact of life they’ve come to expect; they’ll work hard for many years, and hopefully, at some point, the business will turn the corner and a real payday and profitability will provide their security for retirement.

So, where does Obamacare fit into this discussion? Workers need healthcare. Workers look for a job that will include healthcare benefits. Under the Affordable Health Care Act, businesses with more than 50 employees must offer health care insurance for their employees, or pay a TAX per employee for failing to do so. Currently, the TAX for failing to offer insurance is $2,000 per employee, with the first 30 employees being exempted – (go figure). So a business with 51 employees will pay $42,000.00 in penalty TAXES  in 2014 if they do not offer insurance. As we saw in Part II, the insurance premiums offered by the Affordable Health Care Act are much greater than affordable by most standards – for low income earners. So, let’s say that an employer hires mostly 35 year-olds, and their premium would be approximately $400/month, or $4,800.00 per year. For starters, if you are being forced by the government to provide this or pay a TAX, and feel that you’re business is in jeopardy, would you rather pay $4,800.00 per year for 51 employees ($244,800.00) or the $2,000 TAX times 21 employees ($42,000.00)?

Okay, now that we realize the employer saves $200,000+ by paying the TAX, we still have 51 people without medical insurance, and a business with $42,000.00 less in profits with which to grow – and hopefully hire more unemployed people. So, the employees still don’t have insurance, the backbone of our economy – small businesses – have $42,000 less, and the TAX disappears into a labyrinth of bureaucracy that hires more government workers to “administrate” the system – employees who will be guaranteed an income surpassing those employed by the small business and guaranteed a benefits and retirement package that must be paid by the taxpayer.

Now, if you are a small businessman or woman, at what point will you stop expanding? Forty-nine employees or fifty? See, this law serves to put a lid on the growth of small businesses. As soon as they exceed 50 employees, they are penalized for doing so due to mandated health care. When so many people are unemployed and underemployed, do we really want the backbone of the American economy to shy away from growth? Do we really want to become a country that discourages people from developing into Ford, Microsoft, Apple, Nike, etc because by doing so, the government is going to turn the entrepreneurs into demons who are portrayed as selfish, greedy land barons as opposed to innovators who provide cutting edge products and putting tons of people to work? Or assuming the business remains “small” – if these businesses are creating 65% of all new jobs in America, do we really want to put roadblocks in their path that serve to interfere with job creation?

This effect is not by mistake. Obama and those behind this legislation did not overlook this outcome. Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I believe it’s more the “end game” than an unfortunate outcome. Barack Hussein Obama has never run a business, nor held a job in the private sector. He is unabashedly socialist – his Congressional record and Presidential actions stand ready to prove this. Our President, despite his rhetoric before crowds, wants the American public to become dependent on government jobs and government entitlements. It’s the easiest path to a redistribution of wealth, and dependency on the cradle-to-grave expectation.

Undoubtedly, every person would like to have health care. But does that make it a RIGHT? Our ancestry in America cherished the right to have an opportunity, as the Declaration of Independence states “…the pursuit of happiness…” and being happy would seem to include being healthy. The key word, though, is pursuit. As much as it would be “nice” for all people to have full access to top-of-the-line healthcare, the question still must be answered, Can we afford this, and is the government of the People and by the People empowered to force the People to pick up the tab?  When the responding law to the desire to provide healthcare puts us in the position of being required to buy government care the typical family cannot afford, while simultaneously punishing businesses that make up the foundation of our economy, AND taxing both businesses and individuals for not buying the mandated insurance, I conclude that our government has moved beyond the intended limited government our Founders designed, and well onto the path of intrusion and tyranny. And if tyranny sounds like I’m using hyperbole to make my point, I encourage you to study the events which led to our Country’s War of Independence; the Founders well understood that once they capitulated on principle – giving up their rights, even a little, the die was cast for anticipating an onslaught of attacks, which put the British government more and more in control of every nuance of what constituted individual freedom.

I Defer to David Kaiser...

Interrupting Part III of Obamacare, I felt compelled to present the following from an historian by the name of David Kaiser. Here is a reprint...

David Kaiser is a respected historian whose published works have covered a broad range of topics, from European Warfare to American League Baseball. Born in 1947, the son of a diplomat, Kaiser spent his childhood in three capital cities: Washington D.C., Albany, New York, and Dakar, Senegal .. He attended Harvard University , graduating there in 1969 with a B.A. in history. He then spent several years more at Harvard, gaining a PhD in history, which he obtained in 1976.. He served in the Army Reserve from 1970 to 1976.
He is a professor in the Strategy and Policy Department of the United States Naval War College . He has previously taught at Carnegie Mellon, Williams College, and Harvard University . Kaiser's latest book, The Road to Dallas, about the Kennedy assassination, was just published by Harvard University Press.

History Unfolding -  I am a student of history. Professionally, I have written 15 books on history that have been published in six languages, and I have studied history all my life. I have come to think there is something monumentally large afoot, and I do not believe it is simply a banking crisis, or a mortgage crisis, or a credit crisis. Yes these exist, but they are merely single facets on a very large gemstone that is only now coming into a sharper focus...
Something of historic proportions is happening. I can sense it because I know how it feels, smells, what it looks like, and how people react to it. Yes, a perfect storm may be brewing, but there is something happening within our country that has been evolving for about ten to fifteen years. The pace has dramatically quickened in the past two.
We demand and then codify into law the requirement that our banks make massive loans to people we know they can never pay back? Why?
We learned just days ago that the Federal Reserve, which has little or no real oversight by anyone, has "loaned" two trillion dollars (that is $2,000,000,000,000) over the past few months, but will not tell us to whom or why or disclose the terms. That is our money. Yours and mine. And that is three times the $700 billion we all argued about so strenuously just this past September. Who has this money? Why do they have it? Why are the terms unavailable to us? Who asked for it? Who authorized it? I thought this was a government of "we the people," who loaned our powers to our elected leaders. Apparently not.

We have spent two or more decades intentionally de-industrializing our economy... Why?

We have intentionally dumbed down our schools, ignored our history, and no longer teach our founding documents, why we are exceptional, and why we are worth preserving. Students by and large cannot write, think critically, read, or articulate. Parents are not revolting, teachers are not picketing, school boards continue to back mediocrity. Why?

We have now established the precedent of protesting every close election (violently in California over a proposition that is so controversial that it simply wants marriage to remain defined as between one man and one woman. Did you ever think such a thing possible just a decade ago?) We have corrupted our sacred political process by allowing unelected judges to write laws that radically change our way of life, and then mainstream Marxist groups like ACORN and others to turn our voting system into a banana republic. To what purpose?

Now our mortgage industry is collapsing, housing prices are in free fall, major industries are failing, our banking system is on the verge of collapse, social security is nearly bankrupt, as is Medicare and our entire government. Our education system is worse than a joke (I teach college and I know precisely what I am talking about) - the list is staggering in its length, breadth, and depth.. It is potentially 1929 x ten...And we are at war with an enemy we cannot even name for fear of offending people of the same religion, who, in turn, cannot wait to slit the throats of your children if they have the opportunity to do so.

And finally, we have elected a man that no one really knows anything about, who has never run so much as dairy Queen, let alone a town as big as Wasilla , Alaska ... All of his associations and alliances are with real radicals in their chosen fields of employment, and everything we learn about him, drip by drip, is unsettling if not downright scary (Surely you have heard him speak about his idea to create and fund a mandatory civilian defense force stronger than our military for use inside our borders? No? Oh, of course. The media would never play that for you over and over and then demand he answer it. Sarah Palin's pregnant daughter and $150,000 wardrobe are more important.)

Mr. Obama's winning platform can be boiled down to one word: Change. Why?

I have never been so afraid for my country and for my children as I am now.

This man campaigned on bringing people together, something he has never, ever done in his professional life. In my assessment, Obama will divide us along philosophical lines, push us apart, and then try to realign the pieces into a new and different power structure. Change is indeed coming. And when it comes, you will never see the same nation again.

And that is only the beginning..

As a serious student of history, I thought I would never come to experience what the ordinary, moral German must have felt in the mid-1930s In those times, the "savior" was a former smooth-talking rabble-rouser from the streets, about whom the average German knew next to nothing. What they should have known was that he was associated with groups that shouted, shoved, and pushed around people with whom they disagreed; he edged his way onto the political stage through great oratory. Conservative "losers" read it right now.

And there were the promises. Economic times were tough, people were losing jobs, and he was a great speaker. And he smiled and frowned and waved a lot. And people, even newspapers, were afraid to speak out for fear that his "brown shirts" would bully and beat them into submission. Which they did - regularly. And then, he was duly elected to office, while a full-throttled economic crisis bloomed at hand - the Great Depression. Slowly, but surely he seized the controls of government power, person by person, department by department, bureaucracy by bureaucracy. The children of German citizens were at first, encouraged to join a Youth Movement in his name where they were taught exactly what to think. Later, they were required to do so. No Jews of course, How did he get people on his side? He did it by promising jobs to the jobless, money to the money-less, and rewards for the military-industrial complex. He did it by indoctrinating the children, advocating gun control, health care for all, better wages, better jobs, and promising to re-instill pride once again in the country, across Europe , and across the world. He did it with a compliant media - did you know that? And he did this all in the name of justice and .... . ... change. And the people surely got what they voted for.

If you think I am exaggerating, look it up. It's all there in the history books.

So read your history books. Many people of conscience objected in 1933 and were shouted down, called names, laughed at, and ridiculed. When Winston Churchill pointed out the obvious in the late 1930s while seated in the House of Lords in England (he was not yet Prime Minister), he was booed into his seat and called a crazy troublemaker. He was right, though. And the world came to regret that he was not listened to.

Do not forget that Germany was the most educated, the most cultured country in Europe . It was full of music, art, museums, hospitals, laboratories, and universities. And yet, in less than six years (a shorter time span than just two terms of the U. S. presidency) it was rounding up its own citizens, killing others, abrogating its laws, turning children against parents, and neighbors against neighbors.. All with the best of intentions, of course.. The road to Hell is paved with them.

As a practical thinker, one not overly prone to emotional decisions, I have a choice: I can either believe what the objective pieces of evidence tell me (even if they make me cringe with disgust); I can believe what history is shouting to me from across the chasm of seven decades; or I can hope I am wrong by closing my eyes, having another latte, and ignoring what is transpiring around me..

I choose to believe the evidence. No doubt some people will scoff at me, others laugh, or think I am foolish, naive, or both. To some degree, perhaps I am. But I have never been afraid to look people in the eye and tell them exactly what I believe-and why I believe it.

I pray I am wrong. I do not think I am. Perhaps the only hope is our vote in the next elections.

David Kaiser
Jamestown , Rhode Island United States

If you have read this far, you are concerned. What will you do with this information? Far too many people are remaining silent, allowing others to speak up, and afraid of offending their friends and associates. Our heritage is coming apart at the seams. Please, whatever influence you have with others, stand up for the sake of America. Very few can understand how something like the Holocaust in Germany could ever happen. That may seem melodramatic at this point, but our country is rapidly sliding into socialism and fascism. It will take people like you and me to make a stand - ordinary people who are willing to oppose the decline of our country. Thanks, Jim