Obama: Communist or Moron? You Tell Me

On Monday, the Obama administration introduced another section of the "Affordable Health Care Act" which will force insurers to spend 80 to 85 percent of premiums on actual medical care, rather than overhead and profits. HHS Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius said that many insurers spend a substantial amount of the premiums they collect on administration costs and profits. Wow, I had no idea that there were costs associated with running a business or that portions of the revenue collected was returned to those that had invested in the business. As Barack Obama and the people around him continue to make bone headed statements like this and promote job killing, business destroying policy, it leaves us with only two choices as to why. The first option is that the president and pretty much everyone in his administration is an idiot with regard to business and economics. It's not difficult to make an argument for this point of view due to the complete lack of business or private sector experience of anyone there. The idea that consumers will be getting more value for their dollar under this mandate is pure fantasy. It sounds good, but the reality is that insurance companies, as well as all other businesses, have operating costs. They either have to pay those costs or cut them out which will mean layoffs and a loss of efficiency, which will likely lead to delays in approving treatments and processing claims. In other words, less value for the dollar to consumers. Furthermore, establishing businesses requires the investment of capital and the only reason people are willing to risk their money is to, hopefully, get a return on it. Take away that incentive to invest in insurance companies and the capital will go elsewhere. Despite what Obama feels is the immorality of it, the objective of business is to make money, not donate to charity. I really don't think the president has a problem with making money, he just wants to decide who gets to keep it. After all, non-profit organizations didn't pay for that Indian vacation he just took, taxes on capitalism did. This will lead to investors leaving the insurance market, fewer choices for consumers, and a poorer quality product. By the way, I wonder what percentage of the money allocated to Medicare and Medicaid actually goes toward medical services. I'll bet it's not close to 80%. The second option to consider and the one I favor is that the president knows all of that to be true and is merely trying to drive private insurers out of business in favor of government controlled socialized medicine. Nationalizing health care is a key component of communism and Obama is a communist. He's not interested in providing anyone with a better quality of life; just providing everyone with an equal, albeit lower, quality. You can actually make a very strong argument that he's a communist and a moron since communism and socialized medicine have been colossal failures everywhere they've been tried. But these are really the only choices available.