The Pelosi-Obama Affordable Care Act was passed as a pig-in-a-poke. Now with that poke open, with the pig fully emergent as of next year, what do we know about “Obamacare”?
- It’s not socialized medicine, but it is heavily regulated- and subsidized-medicine, almost designed not to work. Its inevitable failures will be said to require more government as “fixes,” eventually (some Democrats hope) going all the way to, yes, socialized medicine.
- It’s chockfull of new subsidies, which raise medical costs by making demand for services even more inelastic … and thus can only increase taxpayer burdens and more strain on budgets. The original reason so many Americans opposed the reform was that promoting a new “entitlement” even as the old entitlements of Social Security and Medicaid teetered further into insolvency was the very opposite of common sense.
- It’s filled with new “mandates” at every level, for businesses as well as individuals. A few have been postponed, but the bulk of the increased regulations are indeed going into effect next year. That will generally raise prices.
But by how much? Well, a new all-state study predicts that
insurance premiums will increase under the first year of Obamacare in 45 of 50 states. This finding flies in the face of President Obama’s promise that his health care overhaul would cause premiums “for the typical family” to fall by $2500.
Why the decrease in five states?
Those had already embraced the goofy over-regulations that Democrats just seem to love.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
2 replies on “Affordable [sic] Healthcare [sick]”
Sebalius will keep her job after the disasterous rollout of Obamacare. To fire her for such obvious mismanagement would acknowlege that someone else did an even MORE incompetent job in selecting and hiring her. Besides, Alinski said that when things become difficult, to press TWICE as hard on the accelerator. Destiny belongs to the bold. Competence has little or nothing to do with it.
Expect that someone will be “selected” to fall on their sword and be fired as the sacrificial lamb on whose head all the blame for the lousy job can be laid. Dangerous place to work if you are not real close to the top.
I believe you err in saying Obamacare is not socialized medicine. It may not be entirely socialized but it is much closer to socialized medicine than it is to insurance. Insurance is a risk management strategy that deals with catastrophic random events that occur with reasonable well known probability. Socializing something is a payment management strategy that ignores risk, essentially sharing the cost of providing something. With virtually no insurance characteristics,Obama cares most closely resembles socialized medicine