Now They Tell Us.

Some of us had a pretty good idea that this sort of thing was coming. One wonders what number of the voters who supported Obamacare would have supported it had they known or even suspected what was in store. Municipalities are going to be damned if they do, and damned if they don't, since cutting all these massively overpriced health care plans down to size will make public employees feel substantially less well off. Given how many of our fellow citizens are employed by government, it is hard to see how this will not have, at least economically speaking, a depressing effect on local economies.

And yet, not massively paring these bloated plans from the system will bankrupt local government, because, who, in our implacably shrinking economy, can afford twenty five and thirty thousand dollar health care premiums? But wait. Not so fast! The whopping tax penalty on Cadillac insurance plans won't take effect until 2018, when Obama, and possibly Bella Pelosi and Scary Reid, will be long gone from the corridors of power.

So, in the mean time, municipalities can continue to hurtle down the path of bankruptcy, paying enormous premiums for overstuffed health care plans on behalf of employees, retirees, and elected officials. As the gory details continue to dribble out, the more one sees of Obamacare the more one gets the sense that, just as with the response by team Obama to the banking system and financial services sector debacle, another can has been well and truly kicked down the road.