Amity Shlaes, writing at Bloomberg, says that watching the Obama administration is a lot like being an unwilling participant in the world portrayed in the movie The Matrix.
President Obama’s $634 billion, 10-year health-care plan undoubtedly appeals to would-be Neos out there. In its broad outlines — the details are still to come — the plan seems to promise easier days for employers and employees alike. (There was discussion during the campaign of tax breaks for employers for providing health care.) As the president said, “Health care reform that reduces costs while expanding coverage is no longer just a dream we hope to achieve. It’s a necessity we have to achieve.”
As in “The Matrix,” freedom is a mirage. That $634 billion reserve has to come from somewhere. The administration has already said it will cut, by $177 billion, payments to private insurance plans that serve senior citizens through Medicare. That by itself will make insurance costlier for the rest, because private companies will doubtless shift some of those costs to non-Medicare policies.
The administration will also need to raise taxes, and almost all the increases under discussion are ones that affect employers. “The administration wants to curtail itemized deductions and raise marginal rates. These are the kinds of changes that hammer employers, especially unincorporated businesses,” Thomas Miller of the American Enterprise Institute told me. So in the future, the health insurance may be there, but the employers won’t.
I’m always a bit uncomfortable in using movies as metaphors for current events. Yet, there is a bit of a resemblance here. Shlaes sees an Agent Smith-like quality to the enforcers Obama is deploying. (Ahem, sort of like this item).
So, which pill do you want? Me, I’ll stick with the red one.
