The Obamacare Disaster Has Arrived

Reason on the new socialized conspiracy in medicine:

For a sense of where the health care policy debate in America is headed, look no further than Massachusetts, where Romneycare was a state-run demonstration project for Obamacare.

Here, activists with ties to the Massachusetts State Nurses Association are organizing to place a question on the 2014 ballot. The “Act to Limit Excessive Hospital Operating Margins and CEO Compensation Through Greater Financial Transparency” would impose a tax on any hospital “whose patient mix is less than 60% government payer” and whose annual operating margin is greater than 8 percent.

It would also impose a civil penalty on any hospital that pays its CEO more than 100 times what the lowest-paid employee of the hospital makes.

Behold, the future of the American health care sector. If you derive more than 40 percent of your revenues from non-governmental sources, you become a target for confiscatory taxation — under the wording of the ballot question, the penalty for a margin of better than 8 percent would be equal to the entire amount in excess of 8 percent. If an institution manages to operate with a profit or surplus, the government will take away all of it once it gets above the government-approved level.

Hard to believe? Sound like something out of an Ayn Rand novel?

Well, it would have been hard to believe a president of the United States turning himself into an insurance salesman, reciting an 800-number and announcing that operators were standing by: “The prices are good…it is a good deal.”
Yet that is what happened Monday, as President Obama went on television to try to get more Americans to buy the health insurance he is offering.

Obama was hailed after the 2012 election for the technical savvy of his campaign team, which reportedly spent about $11.3 million on technology. Yet Healthcare.gov, which reportedly cost taxpayers about $634 million, doesn’t work properly, as Obama himself conceded in his televised remarks.

ProPublica, the non-profit news organization, described the Obamacare Web site problems as “inexplicable.”

Since Big Brother pays the bills: Big Brother will tell you what you can make.