DAVE ROSS

Now just 5 days from shutdown

Sep 25, 2013, 7:15 AM | Updated: 7:35 am

All the talk is about is the other shoe that's dropping next week - the opening of the insurance exchanges under Obamacare. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

(AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Actually, no one seems too exercised about the shutdown.

All the talk is about is the other shoe that’s dropping next week – the opening of the insurance exchanges under Obamacare.

“Companies are increasingly blaming the health reform law for the rise in part time work,” they say in news reports. “They’re moving towards far more part time work – that is, less than 30 hours a week.”

Yes – employers cutting hours because of Obamacare. And I’ve heard critics of the health care act saying see, we told you so!

But – wait a minute. Does that mean people who hate Obamacare want to change it to force businesses to cover employees working less than 30 hours? As in, you hate it but at the same time you want to make it tougher on businesses?

That’s weird!

The fact is, businesses have always tried to cut costs as much as they can. That’s what they’re supposed to do.
But at least now – as of Tuesday – workers who lose their insurance for whatever reason are guaranteed to be able to buy their own, at a price no more than 9.5 percent of their incomes. And come January, no American will go bankrupt because of illness.

Does that sound like a catastrophe? Maybe it does to some people. The way Medicare did in 1961. In fact, if you’re on Medicare you might be old enough to remember this warning about how horrible that program would be:

“It’s very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian one of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset days telling our children what it once was like in America when men were free,” said Ronald Reagan.

Mr. Reagan predicted the American people would come to hate Medicare.

I’m curious: is there anybody in their sunset years wishing they had to find private health insurance on their own?

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