Obamacare: When Obama LIKES imposing higher costs on 'the poor'

By Warner Todd Huston

My friend George Scoville, who works for the CATO Institute, asked a question that really does go to show the left's hypocrisy. This time the question reveals a "feature" of Obamacare that tends to expose hypocrisy so large that an ambulance could drive through it. (See how I said "ambulance" there to keep with the whole medical theme?)

Scoville was issued a letter from his insurance carrier that informed him that new government regulations was forcing them to eliminate a whole bunch of non-prescription items that used to be eligible to be paid for by his Health Savings Account (HSA). The new rules are forcing the insured to go to a doctor to get a prescription for things like acid reducers, baby rash ointment, eye drops, feminine anti-fungal products, lice treatments and a whole bunch of other stuff.

So now Scoville and his fellow insured patients will have to go to a doctor to get a prescription for lice treatments? For stool softeners? The insured patients will have to make a $50 or $75 doctor appointment to have their insurance cover a $3 bottle of nasal spray?

This outrageous cost hike is ridiculous, isn't it?

Here's Scoville's prognosis (HA, another medical reference):

It struck me a moment ago that liberals tend to scream when a product like a state lottery or some other policy proposal amounts to a "tax on the poor."... I don't see how forcing someone in the middle class like me to spend extra HSA dollars, and to potentially cut into other revenues outside the HSA for health care goods and services, is a good reform for the middle class.

Scoville has hit on something here, don't you think? Doesn't his question tend to make you wonder if the cure is worse than the disease? (OK, that's my last medical metaphor, I promise)

The left is always saying that when government rolls in and makes new fiat regulations that raises the costs on "the little people" — that would be you and me and the poor folks beneath our middle class existence. The left always bellows that that this is a tragedy. It is something that the left always uses for a battle cry.

But here we have Obamacare careening into our lives causing us to spend more of our own hard earned cash on medicines and medical procedures that our insurance used to cover. And if it happens to the middle class, how much worse will it be for those with less money to spend? The working poor will be hardest hit by Obamacare if these rules become pervasive.

So where is the left decrying this obscene raise in costs? Could it be we don't hear it because they don't really care about costs rising when it is their favorite program that is on the table for discussion?

© Warner Todd Huston