Tag: Affordable Healthcare Act

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Accountability folly free trade & free markets general freedom moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies

Bailed — Before Bailout

health insurance, experts, obamacare, insurance, costs, illustration, meme

Last Wednesday, UnitedHealthcare Group Incorporated (UNH) announced that it will drop coverage of plans under Obamacare in all but a few states by 2017.

The market signaled a thumb’s up: UNH stock prices shot up over 2 percent.

The company, described in the news, somewhat vaguely, as the country’s largest insurer, is sending us a signal: the Affordable Health Care Act and its “Obamacare”?

Not affordable.

An insurance policy must make sense to both parties, the insured and the insurer. The insured gets peace of mind … and coverage when the rare events insured-​for take place. The insurer has written enough insurance contracts out there, prices based on actuarial risk, to allow it to make a profit even with payouts.

The problem with the ACA is that it raised costs (in part by forcing insurers to take on patients with pre-​existing conditions) while regulating terms of policies offered … and prices, too.

Plus, face it: the idea that one should insure for regular checkups is just one of the many absurdities built into the system.

It’s just too much meddling to work, in the long run. Bailouts and subsidies of those insurance companies that stick with the plan will then make the program unaffordable … for America’s taxpayers.

Over-​regulated and over-​subsidized, Obamacare suffers from the preposterous idea that a bird’s eye view of the economy from the politicians’ perch gives enough information to run complex systems servicing millions of people with diverse needs.

Expect more big stories with tags lines ballyhooing a “serious blow to Obamacare.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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health insurance, experts, obamacare, insurance, costs, illustration, meme

 

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free trade & free markets national politics & policies too much government

Demanding Demand

Midnight tonight marks another witching hour for Obamacare: the deadline for individuals to sign up for insurance on the federal and state exchanges.

Well, sorta … kinda.

The deadline was extended last week.

The dominant feature of the misnamed Affordable Care Act’s tedious rollout has been the incessant presidential fiddling with deadlines, especially those that might otherwise precede a national election. We’re told this extension is only for a couple weeks, though, and only for those who have attempted but been unable to sign up on the creaky websites.

Then again, there is absolutely no way to determine whether an individual actually attempted to purchase insurance. So, if you started the signup process but didn’t finish or just wish to so claim, you now have until mid-April.

Last week’s other big news was the administration’s self-​congratulatory announcement that healthcare signups had surpassed the goal of six million.

This “success” comes only after downgrading the original goal of seven million, meaning one could more honestly claim the administration is nearly a million short of its goal. Additionally, these signups include people who “signed up” in the sense of having clicked “Yes, I can” but not having actually paid for it — something required by health insurance companies even under Obamacare.

Amidst all the boasting about how “popular,” how much “demand” there is for the taxpayer-​subsidized insurance, a stark, but unspoken reality looms: There is no sign of legitimate demand for Obamacare.

It’s called “the individual mandate.” Mandate doesn’t mean free choice. Even forcing folks to sign up by penalty of law, the signups come slowly.

That’s popular?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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ideological culture

The Race Card, Again

Are persons necessarily racist if (a) white and (b) opposed to expansion of the welfare state — that is, merely for opposing such expansion?

In the New York Times, journalism professor Thomas Edsall, echoing a now-​familiar charge, implies as though it were self-​evident that many who oppose Obamacare-​ized medicine do so because of the race(s) of the recipients:

“Those who think that a critical mass of white voters has moved past its resistance to programs shifting tax dollars and other resources from the middle class to poorer minorities merely need to look at the election of 2010.… [Obamacare] forced such issues to the fore, and Republicans swept the House and state houses across the country.”

Poor(er) people can come in all shapes, sizes and colors. But for the sake of Edsall’s freighted non-​argument, let’s stipulate that the poorest Obama-​subsidy recipients are slightly or much more likely to be minorities than not. Why must this fact motivate an individual’s opposition to seeing more and more of his hard-​earned income coercively transferred to anybody?

Change the context to a street mugging. If a mugger is non-​white, does the victim’s dislike of being mugged necessarily hinge on the race of the mugger?

Of course, any victim of crime may be a racist. But you wouldn’t simply assume it.

Gratuitous charges of racism are one sign of desperation by friends of Obamacare — a program the color-​blind horrors of which will only grow more evident over time.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.