7 thoughts on “ObamaCare Explained”

  1. I admit to finding the problems with Healthcare.gov heartening, and I will argue that this is not Schadenfreude or snark.

    Wouldn’t you rather see the rocket engine for the first crewed Mars expedition blow up on the test stand, or maybe on the launch pad with a functioning escape rocket to rescue the crew rather than, say, in Mars orbit?

    What I worry about the unfolding disaster is whether this is comic relief like the “Mercury-Redstone 0” launch where a sequencer kept going and the spacecraft parachute popped or is going to turn into something more like the Nedelin catastrophe in Soviet Russia.

    This thing has the potential of wrecking the entire health insurance system with a kind of cascade of market failures inducing yet more market failures, even for those of us with “good” health insurance.

    I not sure whether the Senator Ron Johnson/Congressman Upton “You can keep your health insurance” bill is the right thing to do. Legislate in haste, repent in leisure, and this is certainly in haste.

    One strength of the Republican position is so far they have not had “a hand in this” — at all. Should Republicans put their imprint on Health Care reform by passing a fix, a hastily patched together fix, when we may be beyond the point of no return of a quick fix?

    The Republican’s “shut down the Government” because they first put forth Obamacare repeal, and the President agreeing to kick aside his signature legislation was a non-starter. Then the deal changed to “delay by one year”, which in hindsight would have been a great deal for the President. If the President had the slightest clue as to what was going on, he could have ‘”caved to the Republicans” on the year delay, and tacked on a long wishlist of his own as a counter-offer and a deal-sweetener for him.

    But I guess the President didn’t not have a clue, but I suppose we are not too worry because he is not more clueless than the prior President, where the present office holder won election by advancing himself as a lot more clued in? Take it away, Jim!

  2. Ask an average Obamacare supporter what Obamacare actually is and in what ways it is designed to make health care “affordable” and I’d be surprised if even 5% of respnses were close to correct. Obamacare is like Obama in regulation form, an opportunity for people to vote for and support their hopes, dreams, and fantasies, never mind the reality.

    The ACA is one of the most convoluted pieces of legislation ever passed. It’s also a regressive tax on the poor and a handout to rich health insurance companies. How anyone supports this sort of crap is beyond me.

    It would be nice if our political process wasn’t so mired in fantasy ideologies (from every end of the political spectrum).

    1. Not to argue, as I agree with your first para, but could you explain “regressive tax on the poor” and “a handout to rich health insurance companies”?

      1. The penalty designed to enforce the individual mandate has been found by the Supreme Court to be a tax. And that tax is incredibly regressive. Firstly, it targets the uninsured, who are generally the poorest. Secondly, it would effectively double the tax rate of those just at or below the poverty line (almost all of the tax they pay is the payroll tax). The purpose of that tax is to drive people into buying health care insurance which, theoretically, should be cheaper than the penalty tax.

        The individual mandate is effectively a tax either way (the penalty definitely, the insurance premiums through coercion). Insurance companies are for-profit entities. So here you have people *below* the poverty line being coerced into paying premiums which could be as high as a quarter of their net income, and that money is going to pad the profit margins of the health insurance companies. Obviously there are supposed to be subsidies and so forth which in theory bring down those costs, but on the surface it looks like a pretty raw deal for the uninsured. For example, the CEO of UnitedHealth (the largest health insurance company in the US) earns around $50 million a year. Soon some of his wealth will come out of the paychecks of the poorest of Americans due to government mandated insurance.

        I don’t understand how anyone bought off on this scheme.

  3. This is the age-old problem of Fabian Socialism.

    The Left enacts some redistributionist scheme, the Right takes on the role of being the heartless meanies to enforce something almost but not completely unlike market discipline on that scheme, while the Left gets to villify the Right for doing this and get their first down too, keeping the scheme in play.

    I thought that E. J. Dionne was a kind of moderate Lefty, but his recent remarks that yes, PPACA has its “glitches” but that the Right has its heart in the same place it always has, that is, seeing the poor die, in being heartened by what is going on (see my first post on this thread).

    That is why I am wondering if the Republicans should even touch this thing (I am talking to you, the Honorable Ron Johnson, senior Senator from Wisconsin).

    1. It is kind of like “these people don’t give up.”

      The latest proposal is from the Administration for, drum roll please, an Administrative fix. That fix is largely one of “jawboning” the insurance companies.

      Among the remedies, is that the insurance companies in allowing a person to “keep their existing insurance, period” will be required to explain what features are missing from the “substandard plan” the client wants to keep.

      Substandard plan, substandard plan, substandard plan. These people never learn. Arrogance got them into this mess so arrogance is going to get them out.

      Maybe I have this wrong. Maybe “substandard” is Newspeak for “what benefits you but we don’t like.” Remember,

      War is Peace
      Ignorance is Strength
      Freedom is Slavery

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