The healthcare “reform” bill backed by Obama “would reduce senior care,” and “could jeopardize access to care for millions,” report healthcare experts at the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The bill also “increases medical costs” through inflation, increasing health-care costs to 21.1 percent of GDP by 2019.

The House of Representatives recently passed the bill by a vote of 220 to 215.

According to the federal experts, the bill would likely either cost much more than projected, or result in some “hospitals and nursing homes” deciding to ”stop taking Medicare…

Read the full story

Some of the consequences of increasing government’s role in health care are easy to predict. One is that cutting costs requires cutting the amount of care. That means rationing. People judged not deserving of care would be denied it.

Another is that if government uses its increased bargaining power to lower drug prices, there will be less money for R&D. That means less innovation. That could well mean the end of increasing life expectancies.

Some people see these consequences and oppose more…

Read the full story

“ObamaCare is all about rationing,” says one of Obama’s own advisers, Martin Feldstein. Feldstein earlier noted that Obama’s health-care plan would harm people with insurance, and massively raise taxes.

Civil-libertarian and former ACLU board member Nat Hentoff says that after reading Obama’s health-care plan, he was more scared of the Obama Administration than any other Administration he’s lived under. (In 1995, Hentoff received the National Press Foundation’s Award for lifetime distinguished contributions to journalism).

Legal experts and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights have questioned the…

Read the full story

Today, Reps. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Ed Markey (D-MA) released a new 932-page version of their cap-and-trade bill and a summary explaining how emission allowances will be allocated.

President Obama had campaigned on a cap-and-trade plan in which 100% of the emission allowances would be auctioned. His FY 2010 Budget also calls for a 100% auction system (pp. 21 and 100), generating anywhere from $646 billion to nearly $2 trillion in revenues over ten years.

Of course, the last thing companies subject to emission caps want to do…

Read the full story