Obamacare: the Baby Boomers prey on their young
By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Apr 03, 2012
My son Joseph, writing for RealClear Policy, has made an important observation about Obamacare that I hadn’t seen before. Even in arguments before the Supreme Court, the Obama administration was loath to discuss the real reason why the individual mandate is an essential element of the plan.
Here’s that reason: If Obamacare is financially viable at all (which is highly questionable), it is viable only because the costs of medical care are spread across the entire population. The individual mandate ensures that people who are healthy and have few medical costs (generally speaking, young people) will pay premiums to subsidize care for those who are unhealthy and need more treatment (generally speaking, older people). In other words, Obamacare is a massive transfer scheme: taking money from the young and giving it to the old.
Isn’t it enough that we Americans of the baby-boom generation saddled our children with trillions of dollars in federal debt because of our profligacy? Now, through Obamacare, we’d be sticking them with another bill to pay for us. So we grandparents can keep the savings we’ve squirreled away to buy our retirement condos in Florida, while our children and grandchildren pay for our hip replacements.
Phil Lawler has been a Catholic journalist for more than 30 years. He has edited several Catholic magazines and written eight books. Founder of Catholic World News, he is the news director and lead analyst at CatholicCulture.org. See full bio.
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Posted by: Frodo1945 -
Apr. 04, 2012 12:33 PM ET USA
It is great that eyes are being opened. Obamacare will be just like Medicare and social security - just pass that debt on to your kids and let them deal with it. The great American dream!!!!
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Posted by: the.dymeks9646 -
Apr. 04, 2012 8:37 AM ET USA
This "free rider" solution that the administration ackonwledges as the only fair and just way of paying for this service, somehow doesn't get translated to all the other services the government provides that only half of the working people pay for and the other half get a "free ride".
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Posted by: Saint Jimbob of the Apokalypse -
Apr. 03, 2012 11:27 AM ET USA
And all those people that contracepted themselves into 1-2 child families now don't have to burden their 1-2 children with their care costs, they can shift that burden to the adults grown from 4+ child families. It's another attempt for the gov't to circumvent the natural consequences of contraception.
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Posted by: AgnesDay -
Apr. 03, 2012 11:27 AM ET USA
We haven't hesitated to kill at least a third of our children through abortion and abortifacient birth control. So we're going to quibble about robbing them? We are a wicked and adulterous generation indeed! And we're not getting any younger. Hope you had a good Lent. Mine wasn't nearly good enough to cover this bill.
