Not a huge fan of Ann Coulter, but she makes some good points here.  One miss on her part, though.  She makes the claim that Obamacare is unfair because it taxes middle class and rich people at the same level.  That's actually a good thing - we shouldn't be taking from one group to pay for another group (see previous post on the rich paying their "fair share").  The real problem is that Obamacare charges sick people the same price as healthy people - that's as illogical as it is unsustainable, unless you expect a whole bunch of healthy people to essentially pay a lot of money for nothing (which is exactly what the law tries to do, except they are likely to find the required price under such a system is unacceptably high).  Insurance by definition should price discriminate (expensive, high-risk people should pay more than inexpensive, lower-risk people).  Without that key pricing mechanism (and with mandated enrollment), "insurance" essentially becomes a transfer system in which one group of citizens pays the bills for another group.  In this case, I suspect Coulter's desire to criticize the president (she can't pass up the chance to call him a hypocrite) skews her analysis of the policy - the lack of regressivity is not her problem with the law, but it is a convenient tool with which to attack President Obama.  

NEW OBAMA PROMISE: IF YOU LIKE YOUR LIFE, YOU CAN KEEP IT

 

By Ann Coulter

Liberals are winning wild praise for their candor in admitting problems with Obamacare. It shows you the level of honesty people have come to expect of our liberal friends. Now, liberals are applauded for not lying through their teeth about something.

What are they supposed to say? This Obamacare website is fantastic! And really, haven't you already read all the magazines in your current doctor's office anyway?

The New York Times has described Obama's repeated claim that you could keep your insurance plan and keep your doctor under Obamacare as a mere slip of the tongue: "Mr. Obama clearly misspoke when he said that."

Misspoke? How exactly does one misspeak, word for word, dozens of times, over and over again?

That wasn't misspeaking -- it was a deliberate, necessary lie. Even Democrats couldn't have voted for Obamacare if Americans had known the truth. It was absolutely vital for Obama to lie about people being able to keep their insurance and their doctors.

Of course, it was difficult for voters to know the truth because every time Republicans would try to tell them, the White House and the media would rush in and call the critics liars.

The White House posted a specific refutation of the "disinformation" about not being able to keep your doctor or insurance plan. That claim, the website said, was being disseminated by Republicans "to scare people."

Their proof consisted of a video of Obama clearly stating, "If you have insurance that you like, then you will be able to keep that insurance. If you've got a doctor that you like, you will be able to keep your doctor."

A video of someone asserting the very fact in dispute does not rise to the level of "evidence," but it was more than enough for MSNBC.

Even when pretending to be critical of Obamacare, liberals lie about the real problems. They tell us they're worried about the percentage of young people signing up for Obamacare. The mix of young and old people in Obamacare is completely irrelevant. It won't help if a lot of young people sign up because their premiums are negligible.

To keep the system afloat, what Obamacare really needs is lots of healthy people, preferably healthy older people. Their premiums are astronomical -- and they won't need much medical treatment.

Premiums are set by your age, not your health. It doesn't matter if you never go to the doctor. Obamacare punishes you for having a healthy lifestyle. The Obamacare tax is a massively regressive poll tax on the middle-aged and the middle class.

Apart from those who are subsidized, everyone pays the exact same amount in penalties or insurance premiums for his age group. It doesn't matter if you don't make as much money as Bill Gates. Any 58-year-old male who doesn't qualify for a subsidy will pay the same Obamacare tax as Gates.

When Margaret Thatcher tried to impose the same tax per person, as a "community charge," there were riots in the street.

Our extremely progressive tax system, where nearly half the country pays no income tax at all, and the other half pays about 40 percent of their income, may not be fair. But most people also don't think it's fair to tax a guy making $80,000 a year the identical amount as one making $80 million a year. That's exactly what Obamacare does.

With Obamacare, the Democratic Party has foisted the most regressive tax possible on America. This ruthless assault on the middle class is all so we can have a health care system more like every other country has.

Until now, the United States has had the highest survival rates in the world for heart disease, cancer and diabetes. Cancer comparisons are the most useful because all Western countries keep careful records for this disease.

For all types of cancers, European men have only a 47.3 percent five-year survival rate, compared to a 66.3 percent survival rate for American men.

European women have only a 55.8 percent chance of being alive five years after being diagnosed with any type of cancer, compared to 62.9 percent of American women.

American survival rates for breast, prostate, thyroid and skin cancer are higher than 90 percent. Europeans do not have a 90 percent survival rate for one of those cancers.

The European rates are even worse than they sound because many cancers are not discovered until the victim's death -- twice as many as in the U.S. All those cancers were excluded from the study.

Canadian cancer survival rates aren't much better than the European rates -- and they've been able to sneak into to the U.S. for treatment! Women in the U.S. have a 61 percent survival rate for all cancers, compared to a 58 percent survival rate in Canada. Men in the U.S. have a 57 percent survival rate compared to 53 percent in Canada.

That's why your insurance premiums have to go through the roof and your Obamacare tax is the same as Bill Gates'. So across the world, we'll all be equal, dying of cancer, heart disease and diabetes as often as everyone else.

It's not that Obama doesn't believe in American exceptionalism; it's that he wants to end it.