- FrontPage Magazine - http://www.frontpagemag.com -

New York Times: ObamaCare Transfers Benefits from “Wealthy White Seniors” to Minorities

Posted By Daniel Greenfield On November 21, 2013 @ 11:38 am In The Point | 17 Comments

I’m surprised it took liberals this long to play the ObamaCare race card, but now the race card is fully in play at no less an outfit than the New York Times.

In addition, the Affordable Care Act can be construed as a transfer of benefits from Medicare, which serves an overwhelmingly white population of the elderly – 77 percent of recipients are white — to Obamacare, which will serve a population that is 54.7 percent minority.  Over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the Affordable Care Act cuts $455 billion from the Medicare budget in order to help pay for Obamacare.

Those who think that a critical mass of white voters has moved past its resistance to programs shifting tax dollars and other resources from the middle class to poorer minorities merely need to look at the election of 2010, which demonstrated how readily this resistance can be used politically. The passage of the A.C.A. that year forced such issues to the fore, and Republicans swept the House and state houses across the country. The program’s current difficulties have the clear potential to replay events of 2010 in 2014 and possibly 2016.

Ironically the means vs age argument has become commonplace among some conservatives inveighing against “entitlements”. But age is a far more legitimate place for a social safety net than subsidizing generations of people who choose not to work and not to achieve.

More to the point, trying to prop up the ObamaCare disaster by blaming racist old white people (the ones Oprah recently wished would die) for trying to deny benefits to minorities topples the whole premise of ObamaCare into the welfare gutter.

And that would kill it faster than anything else.

If the millions of people being kicked off their health plans come to understand that it’s happening in order to subsidize welfare voters, then it’s game over for Obama and the Dems. And the polls may be partly reflecting that turn.

ObamaCare was sold as a way to help

1. Young people

2. People with pre-existing conditions

3. The uninsured

Young people have gotten screwed. So have the uninsured. That leaves the pre-existings. About 1.5 million. Maybe. And trashing the health plans of 93 million people to provide health care to 1.5 million people doesn’t make much sense in the Greater Good ratio.

That 54.7 percent number reveals some of the real problem. ObamaCare is another welfare state program. But the numbers reveal another little wrinkle to the tale.

able 1: Uninsured Rates by Age, Race/Ethnicity and Household Income
Percent of the Total Population Percent of the Uninsured2 Uninsured Rate3
Age Under 19 25.4% 15.7% 9.7%
19-25 9.7% 17.0% 27.7%
26-34 12.0% 21.1% 27.5%
35-44 12.9% 17.3% 21.0%
45-64 26.5% 27.5% 16.3%
65 and older 13.4% 1.4% 1.7%
Race/Ethnicity White, Non-Hispanic 64.3% 45.3% 11.1%
Black 13.1% 16.1% 19.5%
Asian 5.3% 5.6% 16.8%
Hispanic (any race) 17.3% 33.0% 30.1%
Household Income Less than $25,000 19.0% 30.7% 25.4%
$25,000-$49,999 23.3% 31.8% 21.5%
$50,000-$74,999 18.5% 18.1% 15.4%
$75,000 more 39.2% 19.3% 7.8%

The uninsured numbers among blacks are not that disproportionately high. On the other hand among Hispanics they’re double. White people are the only group proportionately likely to have health insurance. But that may also be a function of age ratios.


Article printed from FrontPage Magazine: http://www.frontpagemag.com

URL to article: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/new-york-times-obamacare-transfers-benefits-from-wealthy-white-seniors-to-minorities/

Copyright © 2009 FrontPage Magazine. All rights reserved.