Heartland Blog: A Short Guide to Obamacare

By Matt Faharty - It’s not a national healthcare system. It’s not the free market. It isn’t what we’ve had for the last forty years. So what is Obamacare?

Maybe I am too late to write about this topic since the Affordable Care Act has already been passed and is in the process of implementation. Then again, the bill is infamously opaque, and I believe very few people, either in Washington, the media, or the general public understand what Obamacare is, or how it will make healthcare more affordable. A study in the Journal of Health Economics published this month claims that only 14% of Americans between ages 25 and 64 have a basic understanding of how insurance works, let alone how Obamacare will effect it. Nobody even seems to know how long the bill is with estimates ranging from 10,000 to 33,000 pages of mind-numbing bureaucratic documents.

According to Nancy Pelosi we should start to know what is in the bill at this point, so I will take a crack at it. Read more at Somewhat Reasonable, a Heartland.org/blog ... Read More......

Uninsured in America

By Stuart Browning - Visit FreeMarketCure.com
(Figures presented in this video are shown below the fold)

---

Data presented in this video:
Claim: 45 million Americans are uninsured

• 17 million live in households with yearly average incomes of $50,000 (38%)
  
• 9 million live in households with yearly average incomes of $75,000
  
• 18 million are the "Young Invincibles," age 18-34 who spend 4 times as much on alcohol, tobacco, entertainment and dining out as they would spend on health insurance (40%)
  
• 14 million of the uninsured are eligible for Medicade or SCHIP but choose to opt out (31%)
  
• 12 million illegal immigrants have no health care insurance but cannot be turned away from health care
  
• With "Compassionate Entry," Mexican citizens living in Mexico can receive free health care in border states

This leaves 8 million people of the claimed 45 million who are actually uninsured in America and either fall through the cracks and don't get health care or refuse treatment.

Claim: The numbers of "Uninsured in America" are exaggerated by advocates of universal (or nationalized) health care. Read More......