“I never met a crisis that I didn’t like.” Rahm Emanuel, White House Chief of Staff

The Great Social Security and Medicare Panic – Time Magazine, May 2009

It is becoming increasingly clear that one can gauge the direction of the Obama White House by the crises of the day.  It’s the old ying and yang, the noisy wheel gets the grease model.

With this said, what’s the latest trend we need to focus on? Health care. According to the White House, the American way of health care is broken and must be fixed. We can no longer afford to have a health care system that leaves 46 million uninsured, others overcharged, and even others under served.

A deadline of July 31st has been given to the House to get a proposal ready. It should be noted that to date, this deadline has been solely a partisan one. Once the House measure is detailed, it can then move on to the Senate where it will be fine tuned and then returned for reconciliation and passage before years end.

Winners and losers (yes, there will be both.) The winners: big government, social architects, the largest health insurance carriers, and those wanting a socialized medical system in the U.S. By containing costs, we also limit choice. Only the very few of the largest and wealthiest insurance carriers will be able to compete. We’ll see many smaller carriers disappear.

A predication: the passage of this medical insurance reform legislation will be but the first of several reforms yet to come. The change won’t be complete until the Obama administration has in place a health care system aligned with those in Europe and Canada.The cost for this reform, beyond our freedom of choice, is estimated to be an additional 1.2 to 2.4 trillion dollars. A cost to be covered by new taxes.

Among the losers: you and me, drug companies, and many smaller insurance providers. As has been clearly demonstrated throughout the rest of the world, drug companies will no longer be able to afford the high cost of new drug research. Pharmaceuticals will not only have price fixing attached to them, but there will be little to no flexibility to conduct the research that has made U.S. drug companies the one resource for innovative drug treatment.

In spite of Obama’s promise of “no new taxes.” The costs related to socialized medicine have to come from somewhere. That somewhere? New taxes on a variety of items that today are untaxed: soft drinks, Snapple, and whatever else that government can get their fingers into.

In fact, it could be argued that this medical intuitive holds the answer to the pending Medicare deficit. Why not simply nationalize the entire health care system, thus including Medicare services within the larger health insurance coverage?

The door has been unlocked. It will soon open a crack, followed by a rush to get “affordable“ universal health care available to all. Big brother wants to be sure that you’re taken …umm, taken care of.