The Obamacare Octopus

1.      Any of cephalopod mollusks having a soft body, and a  large head with a mouth on the underside and eight arms covered with suckers; 

2.      2) Anything suggesting an octopus, especially an organization with branches that reach out in a powerful and influential manner.

Webster’s New World Dictionary

May  4, 2012 – Obamacare is a wondrous, wily, and wide-reaching creature.  It has a large bi-lobed brain.  One side of the brain is called Medicare, the other Medicaid.  

It has a large budget, officially $1 trillion, but nearer $1.3 trillion if one includes ancillary health programs such as those for Veterans and others.   Collectively  it spends 50% of all health care dollars.

It has a large ink-sac – with chambers for black, red, and purple ink.  The black chamber is the smallest and is said to represent “savings,” which have yet and may never be seen.  The red chamber is huge, and Obamacare continually squirts ink out  of it, to the tune of $1.76  to $2.23 trillion over the next 10 years, depending on which federal agency.  the CB0 or OMB,  you ask.  The purple chamber is the most effusive. It is capable of gushing gobs of purple prose to mask the red ink.

The octopus is highly mobile and continually changeable. It moves fast both at the bottom and top of the ocean know as American society. It has been known to sprout wings, if the political occasion demands. It can assume the hues required to sooth and seduce allies and enemies.   It even has a megaphone, called the mainstream media, to broadcast its message, or to hide its intent as it glides along the bottom or occasionally rises to the surface.

Its real power lies in its eight tentacles.   These tentacles can vacuum up monies and liberties and suck them up into the central brain, which is crawling with experts, bureaucrats, administrators, and elites of every stripe, all of whom know now to distribute power and redistribute other peoples’ money.

Tentacles

·         One tentacle reaches into the pocket of taxpayers, from which it will extract at least $500 billion  to pay for new entitlements.

·         A second tentacle sucks  $575 billion out of Medicare, through such “savings” incurred  by dismantling Medicare Advantage and herding patients, doctors and hospitals in Accountable Care Organizations.

·         A third tentacle feeds its expanding brain and soft body by cramming down Medicare physician incomes and hospital revenues to below those of Medicaid by 2019.

·         A fourth tentacle presses down on State Medicaid budgets,  adding 32 million initially and 46 million more by 2020 while suctioning money out of State budgets for education, transportation, and other social services.

·         A fifth tentacle is placed down upon patients, who will be losing their existing health plans and doctors, because of federal rules, regulations, and costs.

·         A sixth tentacle draw upon large and small employers who will be required to offer coverage, accept high cost  government programs,  or pay financial penalties.

 

·         A seventh tentacle will be applied to healthy young families and adults, who are already seeing costs rise and benefits shrink, and who object to having to pay for comprehensive plans they feel they do not need.

·         An eight tentacle is Obamacare’s operating system and underlying values  which are fundamentally astodds with the principles of limited government under the U.S. Constitution.

Tweet: Obamacare is an octopus with eight tentacles suctioning money and liberties from  every sector of the U.S. population.