I use my 4th grade math a lot because it is about as complex as the average voter can understand. In the case of Obamacare, all you need is 4th grade math to see how stupid it is. The answer to the liberal call to, "do something for the uninsured" was Obamacare. What was the reason for "doing something". The claim was that there were about 40 million people who did not have health insurance and we had to "do something". The starting point was that about 85% of the people already had health insurance and it was costing us 17% of our total GNP. For the record, we were spending more for health care as a percentage of our GNP than any other country in the world. Now the 4th grade math.
We have about 320 million people, so 40 million means we need to add 14.3% more people. If we can do that for the same amount that we now spend per person, the 17% of our GNP will jump to 19.4% of our GNP. There are a couple more things that need to be considered. How about those extra mandates that are required by Obamacare to "correct" the substandard health insurance plans most people now have. Let's say that those will add 5% to the cost of insurance under Obamacare. That works out to increasing our health care to 20.5% of our GNP. Finally. do you think that people in Washington DC can run health care more efficiently than us individuals spending our own money? No way! Let's say that the efficiency drops to 97% of what it is now. That means the share of our GNP will jump to 21%.
The impact of all this is that we will have to give up some of the things that we spend our 83% share of our GNP on now. If the spending on health care goes up from 17% to 21%, that means our 83% share will drop to 79% of the GNP. 4% drop means that our standard of living will drop 4.8% due to Obamacare alone.
Notice that my numbers do not take into account the fact that the cost of health care is going up at over twice the rate of increase of our GNP. That means it will be even worse than what my 4th grade numbers show. If you can handle 4th grade math, check out my numbers. Make your own estimates and see what the impact of Obamacare will be.
