More ObamaCare hijinks: Escalating costs, fewer doctors

As we await the Supreme Court’s decision on ObamaCare (I’m thinking next week, or the following Monday at the latest — eek!), here are a few more fun and exciting items to which we can look forward if SCOTUS decides that the PPACA is indeed Constitutional after all.

In January, the federal government informed us that we could reasonably estimate that health-related spending is beginning to taper off because national health expenditures in 2010 grew at only the approximately same rate as our GDP. However, the Economist now reports:

New projections, released on June 12th, explode the dream. Spending will grow modestly through 2013, say the government’s number-crunchers. But in 2014, when Barack Obama’s reform expands insurance (Supreme Court permitting…), spending will jump by 7.4%. And the government will increasingly foot the bill for ageing baby-boomers and a wider swathe of the poor. By 2021 spending on health will reach $4.8 trillion, 19.6% of GDP. The government will pay for nearly half.

“The government will pay for nearly half,” of course, meaning that you will pay for nearly half. Here’s another bleak illustration of just some the pre-2014 costs from a recent GAO audit:

The Internal Revenue Service is expected to use $881 million of taxpayers’ money to implement the first four years of Obamacare, including about $500 million that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) diverted to the agency, according to a federal audit.

The new Government Accountability Office (GAO) audit refers to ObamaCare – the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which became law in March 2010 – as a “significant effort for IRS.”

The IRS’ “implementation costs” are expected to total $881 million from fiscal years 2010 to 2013, it says.

Here’s the best bit: The Doctor Patient Medical Association just completed a survey on doctors’ attitudes about the future of American medicine. They key findings included:

• 90% say the medical system is on the WRONG TRACK
• 83% say they are thinking about QUITTING
• 61% say the system challenges their ETHICS
• 85% say the patient-physician relationship is in a TAILSPIN
• 65% say GOVERNMENT INVOLVEMENT is most to blame for current problems
• 72% say individual insurance mandate will NOT result in improved access care
• 49% say they will STOP accepting Medicaid patients
• 74% say they will STOP ACCEPTING Medicare patients, or leave Medicare completely

And etcetera. This, to me, is one of the most infuriating things about ObamaCare — health care is not a human right. As much as I would love it if health care existed in a vacuum, it doesn’t. Health care is the product of people’s labor, and therefore nobody is entitled to it. Legislative takeovers like this interfere with incentives and transform free and willing private-sector workers into indentured bureaucrats.

Astronomical price tags, more people wanting to exit the medical profession — who could’ve seen this coming?

• IRS official in charge during Tea Party targeting now runs agency’s Obamacare office
• GOP probing Sebelius’s fundraising push: “Clear appearance of a conflict of interest”
• White House: Well, the conduct “of a small number of IRS employees may have fallen short…”

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