Condition still critical

As the president of the United States drifted from the heavens to Blountville, Tenn., and then a Kroger grocery store in Bristol, resisters wilted, deals bloomed and a path opened to a dream and a nightmare, that of nationalized heath care. The form of it is surely far more diluted than Barack Obama prefers, but systematically dismantling an economic system is no easy thing, not even for a fellow whose gifts are a mix of Chicago and the celestial.

Here’s what set hearts in the House aflutter as Obama swooped into southern Virginia: The 10-year cost of a proposed health care plan would be reduced by $100 billion, from $1 trillion to $900 billion. This, along with some protections for small business, was sufficient to appease a collection of Blue Dog Democrats put off by universal health care’s cost. These cuts are akin to slicing a half-foot off the lawn after the owner has allowed the grass to sprout to 5 feet high. Ten percent of the green stuff is gone, but the place still looks unseemly.

There’s more. Some of the trimmed $100 billion would be covered by states helping with the expansion of Medicaid. States, of course, don’t help with much of anything. Taxpayers help, and they do so with their money. Like some churches, tax dollars exiting pockets have a non-denominational quality – whether shoveled to federal or state government, those doing the paying notice the same blank space where their cash used to be. People at the bottom of the income ladder would help, too, paying higher insurance premiums. So how does this help again?

Well, principally it helps by not roping more small businesses into a federal requirement to provide insurance to their workers.

The original House bill would have exempted businesses with payrolls of less than $250,000. Let’s try some quick math. Provided workers are paid an average of $40,000 a year, or about the median annual income in Waynesboro, a business with more than six full-time employees – or about the same number at a restaurant or auto repair shop – would be pushed into the requirement. Blue Dogs, along with Republicans, chafed at this scenario.

So House leaders worked with Obama strongman and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel on a solution that is the equivalent of dousing a roaring blaze with water tossed from a mug rather than a shot glass. The payroll threshold would double to $500,000. A company with more than 12 full-time employees then would fall under the requirement. Almost 10 million businesses in America employ 10 to 99 employees, according to census statistics, and almost all of them would fall under the mandate at a time when some can ill afford it.

None of this takes into account an impact that has abided with so-called Obamacare from the onset. The president declares that it will increase competition by entering government into the insurance business. In fact, it will destroy competition by allowing the entity that sets the rules to play the game. Think of Wade Phillips acting as referee when his Dallas Cowboys tackle the Redskins in the fall. The outcome is predetermined.

Mercifully, nationalized health care is not likely to be approved by Congress before lawmakers go into recess next month. The polls steadily have tilted against the initiative, stiffening the spines of the idea’s detractors within the Democratic Party. Given the partisan majority, the Blue Dogs had provided the best hope for rationality, which never has been abundant inside the Beltway but appeared to have been churned to bits under Obama’s spending locomotive.

The changes produced Wednesday by Emanuel’s dealmaking are cosmetic. Team Obama rejoiced. Many small businesses – who provide millions of jobs – will not. Nor will Americans who recognize the larger implications of the national health care push. It is a poison masquerading as a panacea.