More Nationalized Health Care Failure and Bad News for Obamacare

 Cross Posted from The Lonely Conservative

Every time a Republican or conservative warned of the problems with nationalized health care, or the Obamacare plan, the elites and progressives simply scoffed. The evidence indicating we were right all along continues to pile up. Take, for example, the vast expansion of the IRS under Obamacare. The Democrats said that wasn't going to happen. So why is the Wall Street Journal reporting that the IRS has a new mission?

National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson, who operates inside the IRS, highlighted the agency's new mission in her annual report to Congress last week. Look out below. She notes that the IRS is already "greatly taxed"—pun intended?—"by the additional role it is playing in delivering social benefits and programs to the American public," like tax credits for first-time homebuyers or purchasing electric cars. Yet with ObamaCare, the agency is now responsible for "the most extensive social benefit program the IRS has been asked to implement in recent history." And without "sufficient funding" it won't be able to discharge these new duties.

That wouldn't be tragic, given that those new duties include audits to determine who has the insurance "as required by law" and collecting penalties from Americans who don't. Companies that don't sponsor health plans will also be punished. This crackdown will "involve nearly every division and function of the IRS," Ms. Olson reports.

Well, well. Republicans argued during the health debate that the IRS would have to hire hundreds of new agents and staff to enforce ObamaCare. They were brushed off by Democrats and the press corps as if they believed the President was born on the moon. The IRS says it hasn't figured out how much extra money and manpower it will need but admits that both numbers are greater than zero.

We all know it will be greater than zero. Much greater, I would say. Especially because in addition to the delivery of social benefits, there's also the provision requiring businesses great and small to report each and every product or good purchased from vendors. So we'll get hit twice - with the increased cost of the new IRS employees, and the cost of compliance with the new regulations. Hmm. Wouldn't that money be better used to fund our health care?

Speaking of health care funding, have you heard the latest horror stories out of Great Britain? If not, pay attention, this is our future under Obamacare.

The Telegraph reported the unfortunate news:

Women in labour have been forced to wait while epidural equipment was borrowed from other hospitals, while other patients have been denied chest drains and radiology supplies, according to doctors at South London Healthcare Trust.

Minutes of a meeting between medical staff and the trust’s chief executive say “cash flow” problems at the trust which has a £50 million deficit, mean vital equipment is regularly not ordered.

[...]

The document records: “The trust in different areas had run out of under water sealed chest drains, epidural packs, gynaecological disposables, radiological disposables, and the response to this was 'this was a cash flow issue’”.

Doctors told managers “again and again” that consultants were unable to know that equipment was missing until the last item had been used, when their patient was already lying on the table, according to the minutes of June 16 meeting.

The document states that Chris Streather, the trust’s chief executive said the situation had improved to the extent that the trust could now pay some of its bills, but that he could not promise that the problem would not recur.

It describes “significant risks” to patient safety because of shortages of beds, and “chaotic” failures dealing with such crises at the trust, which also runs Queen Mary’s Hospital in Sidcup, in Kent, and Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich, London, and NHS units in Orpington and Beckenham, in Kent. Patients affected include a woman who had undergone major cancer surgery who could not be found a bed. ...

Remember, the man Obama appointed without a hearing to head up Medicare, Donald Berwick, is a big fan of the British health care system. But President Obama doesn't want you to know that, at least not until it's too late.