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De Omnibus Dubitandum - Lux Veritas

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Obamacare merry-go-round: Regulations, subsidies, taxes, more subsidies

By TIMOTHY P. CARNEY | DECEMBER 3, 2013

Nobody should be surprised that President Obama's Department of Health and Human Services has proposed a new bailout for insurers. Whenever Obama sees a problem, he proposes a regulation. When that regulation hurts someone, he proposes a subsidy. That subsidy, in turn, justifies a new tax or regulation, then more bailouts.  It may seem like he’s swinging back and forth — pro-business, then anti-business — but he’s marching in a straight line: more state control of industry. It's the ratchet of state corporatism, and Obama is pretty handy with it.

Health insurers and the federal government were intertwined in a web of subsidies and regulations before Obamacare, of course. The federal government exempted insurance from wage and price controls, and later made it an untaxed benefit. These rules not only subsidized insurance, but by favoring the employer-based market over the individual market, they insulated insurers from competition……To Read More….

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