The New Healthcare Law

I've written my thoughts on the Healthcare plan, but I wanted to post some quotes from others who 'get it':

From the Hugh Hewitt Show's interview with Mark Steyn on March 25th, 2010:


Hugh Hewitt: Now they tell us, Mark Steyn. It’s a spread the wealth around bill.

Mark Steyn: Yeah, that’s right. I thought it was supposed to spread the health around, but as you say, it’s going to be spreading the wealth around. I mean, I think this is right, that this is, that the concept behind this bill is actually an income redistribution bill. If you look at the additional taxes that will be imposed on small businesses, and when people say the very wealthy, by the way, they’re talking…people think you mean Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. It’s not. It’s going to be a lot of small businesses, and a lot of guys doing various kinds of jobs where they employ three or four people who are going to have additional regulation, and additional taxes, and additional costs in pursuit of this grubby deal. And by the way, I don’t want to be told by a Senator that I’m too wealthy, because Senators in this country are a disgrace to republican government and the concept of citizen legislatures. They prance around with these vast retinues of the size of an average Gulf emir. Max Baucus hardly ever has to do anything in his life that requires him to reach in his pocket and get out a $20 dollar bill, or write a personal check. I don’t want to be told by Senators, I don’t want to be told by Senators that I’m too wealthy, and that’s why they need to over-regulate me, and overtax me to give it to their preferred constituency groups.

Hugh Hewitt: And it’s not going to go to…you know, the older people on Medicare Advantage, who are going to get their Medicare Advantage chopped off, and their $500 billion dollars of benefits deleted, so that the unions can keep their Cadillac plans…

Mark Steyn: Right, right.

Hugh Hewitt: They’re not, this isn’t wealth distribution for them. It’s for preferred constituents.

Mark Steyn: Yes, and that’s what this bill…this is why, as I said last week, Hugh, this is why it’s actually worse than the sort of equality of mediocrity that, the equality of awfulness, in fact, that characterizes a lot of socialized health care systems around the world, because this is worse than that. You’ve got all the smoke-filled room horse trading by which certain preferred interest groups have got opt outs from the most punitive aspects of this legislation, depending on how plugged you are to the Democratic Party. And this is the lie, by the way, to go back to this idiot, Baucus. The really wealthy guys have got the workarounds. They know how to pick up the phone and call someone in Washington who can make the problem go away. It’s the guys holding up this country, it’s the small businessmen holding up this country who haven’t got the workarounds, who can’t afford the expensive lawyers and lobby groups, that can call someone like Max Baucus and make the problem go away. So if you think…anybody who’s stupid enough to think this is a way of sticking it to the mega-wealthy, to the Wall Street plutocrat, to the guy from the Monopoly board, this isn’t going to affect them. They’ve got the workarounds. You don’t.