Posted by Kromey at 5:43pm Nov 20 '13The proponents of Obamacare are always quick to cite that the US spends far more on health care for far less (never mind that the "far less" bit is in fact highly debatable), but meanwhile there's not one thing in Obamacare that lowers those costs!
For the small fraction of people who have expensive pre-existing conditions, Obamacare helps them. Contrary to the slurs and slanders, no one is arguing that's a bad thing.
The problem is that despite this upshot, not one thing is done to lower the actual costs of their care -- meaning that in order for them to get lower-cost insurance (which contrary to the persistent conflation is not the same as care), the rest of us have to have higher-cost insurance.
Naturally, the "solution" the Democrats have adopted is to once again buy votes by using taxes to provide subsidies to ~54% of Americans. The problem with this is that the majority of Americans are still not paying less, because (assuming for a moment that it's not yet another unfunded mandate) taxes must go up to cover that.
But even if we give the subsidies the benefit of the doubt and say that they magically come out of nowhere, you still have a high percentage -- potentially a majority, although the numbers are impossible to find -- paying more for insurance because of out-of-control rate hikes as a direct result of Obamacare, as insurance is required to cover more care (which naturally means more costs), and care itself becomes more expensive as a result of new taxes such as the "medical device tax".
The end result is that when it's not the Unavailable CareInsurance Act (not just a slight at the failure of the Obamacare website -- for which much of the infrastructure was never even built! -- but also a reminder of the growing number of doctors who are closing their doors to new patients, to Obamacare patients, or even just altogether), it's actually the Unaffordable CareInsurance Act, as premiums soar through the roof in direct opposition to the oft-repeated promises (that were themselves contrary to basic economics) that they would go down.
Just ask Obamacare "success story" Jessica Sanford, for whom a series of glitches that once made her seem to be exactly the outcome we were all promised (and was cited as precisely that by Obama himself), now cannot afford insurance under Obamacare.
The bottom line is that Obamacare is actually worse than the status quo, which contrary to the oft-repeated party line never was a market approach because of the obscene amount of government regulation and red tape that created the high costs in the first place, and the literal impossibility for consumers to shop around for the best service at the best prices.
And yet - Kromey