I’m going out on a limb here.. hell… some people think that I really live out on a limb ! Recently one of my former class mates claims that I never get close enough to “the box” to think “inside the box”.
For decades, I have been a student of bureaucrats and bureaucracies. I have never really figured out how to influence a bureaucrat… I don’t have enough “green stuff” to get their attention..
And no matter which party has the majority.. they both tend to function in similar narcissistic ways. They are sort of like magicians … they distract you with one hand.. while they are performing the trick with the other hand.
IMO..Obamacare seems to be one of those of those magic tricks.. It is coming to light that a lot of the promises made during the last election campaign …where known to be false by some or all of those involved.
Before Obama was President, he was on record favoring a single payor health system.
As Obamacare is evolving it would appear that fewer of the “healthy young” are signing up… and the vast majority that are signing up are for Medicaid… with subsidized premiums. The system to sign up has been nothing short of a disaster . The horror stories are multi layered.
The Obama administration tried to “undo” the whole thing and told the insurance industry to go back to “previous policies” until the whole system equalizes.. throwing the insurance industry into a financial tailspin.
Could this cluster-uck be orchestrated or a result of incompetence ? My money is on orchestrated…
Could the Obama administration be setting up the “great solution”… patients discovering that they have 5 K + deductibles … hospitals , doctors, hospitals not getting paid because of these deductibles.. so everyone has to go to “cash up front”… As the general discontent grows… the “great solution” is proposed… everyone is so fed up with Obamacare and anything can be better… and the Obama administration comes to the rescue and throws the doors wide open to Medicare and Medicaid and we have a single payor system. They raise the Medicare tax rate… they start applying it to all income.. including dividends, interest and capital gains. Nothing is exempt.. Congress will have to go along… because if they don’t.. none of them will get reelected. And everyone in Congress primary job .. is to get reelected.
Second option, is that they throw open Medicare Advantage programs.. so that the insurance industry gets to play ball as a major player…
Only time will tell…. unless they have figured out how to turn lead into gold… this bird can’t fly !
Filed under: General Problems
The ACA is primarily based on the conservative Heritage Foundation plan which espoused individual responsibility by requiring everyone to purchase a high deductible health insurance policy. In my opinion, with the exception of all the preventable care coverage, the least costly (high deductible) plans available do fulfill the Heritage objective.
Health Care consumes over 17% of the U.S. GDP. The ACA is not the Free Care Act. All of these preventative services cost money. Just because there is no copay, does not mean there is no fee. The fees are built into the premiums.
I believe the administration would have preferred a single payer system, but with Health Care consuming over 17% of GDP, and the insurance, medical/surgical device makers and the pharmaceutical industry garnering a large portion of this figure, the political reality is that it was not happening in our market driven economy.
The law does need some legislative fixes, but it is highly unlikely that any legislation can get through congress.