Healthcare Reform

Before I go any further, I'd like to say, to those of you who already didn't know, I'm very liberal. Now that healthcare reform has finally passed, I'd like to offer my opinion of it. I've yet to meet one person who could offer a coherent reason reform isn't a good idea. The number of times I've heard the words "government takeover" and "socialism" in the argument against healthcare is ridiculous.

Here are some facts no one can debate:
1. Healthcare reform will cover over 30 million additional people, or almost all uninsured Americans once illegal immigrants are discounted.
2. Healthcare reform will stop ridiculous insurance practices like denying people due to pre-existing conditions (I heard one story of someone being dropped because of having the pre-existing condition of zits) and dropping them when they're sick. This is undeniably a good thing.
3. Healthcare reform will significantly lower the federal deficit (by over 1 trillion dollars in the next 20 years!). That is according to the official and nonpartisan cost estimator- the Congressional Budget Office. I don't know how people can argue that healthcare reform will add to the federal deficit when the report saying it won't is staring them right in the face.

On Friday I went to President Obama's speech at George Mason University and, obviously, there were a lot of protestors. Three of them came marching towards us holding up the obligatory Obama-as-joker and Obama-socialist signs. But the last guy was holding up a sign saying "Healthcare is NOT a right." This confused me. Do conservatives actually think that healthcare shouldn't be given to all? That when someone gets sick and there's a cure out there that can save their life, they should be permitted to die because they just don't have enough money to pay for it? That guy holding up the sign obviously had healthcare, or else he wouldn't be holding up that sign. How would he feel if he was lying on a bed dying and the doctor told him they couldn't save him because he didn't have healthcare and when he was arguing that he deserved to be saved the doctor just told him "Healthcare is not a right." I'm pretty sure that only a small minority of people oppose healthcare reform for the same reason as this guy, but if I'm wrong feel free to correct me in the comments section.

Now that I've got the main benefits out of the way (I won't talk about all the smaller benefits like kids being able to stay on their parents plans until they're 26 because there are just too many of them), I'm going to examine all the main arguments against healthcare that have been made and rebut them (No, "socialism" and "government takeover" aren't arguments)
1. It costs too much- It's completely paid for (and then some). How does it matter how much it costs if its paid for? If a bill cost 100 trillion dollars but would save the US 100 googol dollars would people rail against it because "it costs too much"?
2. It raises taxes- Yes, on the super rich. There is not one tax in here that will hurt those making under $200,000 dollars a year unless they're a medium-sized small business owner (although I think most owners of businesses that size get more than $200,000). Unless you're earning that much or are a small business owner, shut up about this bill raising taxes on you. Small business owners aren't really taxed. They're now just fined if they don't provide healthcare to their workers if they have over 50 employees. However, this bill will make it a lot easier for these businesses to provide their workers with healthcare and most businesses with over 50 employees should and do provide healthcare to employees anyways.
3. Its financed by excessive cuts in Medicare- Yes, in this bill the Medicare Advantage program is severely scaled back. That program has the government give private businesses subsidies so they could offer seniors cheap private Medicare plans rather than government ones. But the government has to pay a lot more to finance each Medicare Advantage plan than they pay for regular Medicare plans. Medicare Advantage isn't working and if the money withheld from it results in price increases, seniors can always switch back to regular Medicare with no problem. Other than that, the bill cuts costs from Medicare by making it more efficient. Currently a lot of government money goes to waste financing unnecessary surgeries. Healthcare reform gets most of its money from Medicare by fixing that waste. And to top it all off, this bill would close the doughnut hole gap in the prescription drug program and make it so seniors didn't have to pay ridiculous amounts for medicine. What's wrong with that?
4. It'll raise peoples' premiums- The Congressional Budget Office says that the bill will lower the average premium, not raise it. The Budget Office also says that Americans will probably end up purchasing more expensive plans because the plans will cover more stuff and thus are more cost-effective. Republicans have seized on that second part and said that reform will raise premiums for everyone, which is not true. However, in reality no one really has no idea what this bill will do to premiums. There are so many experimental stuff in it (like adjusting how doctors get paid) that could significantly lower premiums; alternatively there are so many well-intentioned reforms (such as banning denying coverage to those with pre-existing conditions) that could have unintended consequences and raise premiums. On balance though, the Budget Office has realized that there are more cost-saving measures in here than cost-raising measures.
5. The American people are against it and Congress was elected to serve the American people and not themselves- That's not an argument; that just shows the Republicans played the sales game better than Democrats did. "Government takeover of healthcare" is so much more visceral than "covers all those uninsured people you don't know" so the Republicans had an easier sales job. Besides, any change worth doing is going to be hard and will be opposed at first, but once people start seeing the benefits of the bill I'm confident they'll eventually support it. Also, a lot of people oppose this bill because it is not liberal enough (about one-fifth according to CNN), and when these people are removed from the equation support and opposition runs about even.


So are there any other arguments you have against the bill that I failed to rebut? Are there flaws in my rebuttal of the points I already put out there? Are the benefits I say the bill has not real? Any comments would be appreciated.