Most US Republicans were against the $900 billion stimulus package, designed by Nancy Pelosi, which President Obama encouraged Congress to support. Obama’s package lost even more credibility after the detrimental elimination of Tom Daschle from his cabinet, a hard liner in American health care collectivization. In fact, the package has become increasingly unpopular among US voters for many reasons, but especially because the federal government will receive a large percentage of it. Consequently, there will be stealth implications for the health system, as a leading physician has opinied.
The stimulus bill will increase state subsidies to health care, and therefore enhance federal government intervention. It is basically a bail out of troubled state Medicare budgets, transferring huge state debts to the federal government. These billions will most likely become invisibly absorbed by the health care system, just as has happened in the UK during the Labour government's NHS spending spree.
This is the exact opposite of health care reform, and in some regard it results in middle class tax churning at a time when the US tax burden is ever increasing. Furthermore, thirty billion dollars of the stimulus package will be devoted to the healthcare sector under a program called COBRA, which will provide federal assistance to citizens who earn up to one million dollars per year.
