Tag: ObamaCare

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

Best Plan Is No Plan

Obamacare, ACA, Healthcare, reform, replace, policy, insurance

“Republicans would create chaos in the health care system because they are stuck,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer says, “between a rock and a cliché.”

Oh. Off by a word or two. But I don’t need to fix it.

What needs to be fixed is the whole system. “Head clown”* Schumer gloats that it cannot be done. The “delicate balance” that is the Affordable Care Act makes it impregnable. For all Republicans’ talk of repeal, “for five years now they’ve had nothing to put in its place.”

Schumer sees the trap. He set it when he and his comrades voted Obamacare in without reading it. Any new program with any new constituency always presents a set of … political hurdles … that quickly become “impossible” to jump.

The President-​elect, he notes, has supported three of the “most popular” regulations in Obamacare: “pre-​existing conditions,” “26-​year-​olds on parents’ plans,” and sex equality re: insurance rates.

What Schumer fails to mention is that these are three huge drivers of spiraling insurance prices. The Affordable Care Act “delicately balances” medical markets by shifting who pays for what, hoping that the biggest losers† don’t complain too much and the obvious winners never cease protesting‡ any change.

The truth? Obamacare can be repealed. But replacing it would be a disaster. The best plan is no plan. Repeal all the regulations. The federal government should completely deregulate the markets, and prevent states from ruining interstate markets in insurance and health care.

Do what the Commerce clause was designed to do.

Schumer is counting on Republicans to do nothing. Despite signs they’re cooking up something.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

*What Trump called Schumer. And in the same tweet dubbed Obamacare “a lie.” Truer words never spoken?

† Obamacare presents a huge burden on the self-​employed, self-​insured, and on the previously insured, since it is these people who most obviously pay for all the newly insureds. Of course, in the end, everybody pays … from increasing prices and decreasing rates of progress.

‡ At least they are the focus of advocacy groups. The poor neatly serve as innocent shields of the spoliators.

N. B. Adapted from this weekend’s Townhall column.

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Obamacare, ACA, Healthcare, reform, replace, policy, insurance

 

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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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Common Sense crime and punishment folly general freedom media and media people too much government

At Least We’re Not Turkey

Merve Büyüksaraç

Whenever I feel discouraged by the steady drumbeat of domestic assaults on liberty — from Obamacare to parents being accused of “child neglect” for letting their kids return from a playground by themselves — I try to remind myself:

Things Could Be Worse.

World history provides plenty of support for this dictum, but so does a glance at the newspaper. Like the story of how a single satiric Instagram post “could end up sending a former Miss Turkey to jail.”

An Istanbul prosecutor has been threatening to imprison Merve Büyüksaraç for up to two years for the heinous deed of insulting an official. Last summer she excerpted a satirical piece called “The Master’s Poem” that originally appeared in the magazine Uykusuz. Uykusuz has a habit of mocking Turkish politicians, including President Erdoğan.

“I shared it because it was funny to me,” she says. “I did not intend to insult Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.” Regardless of her motive, her post should not have put her at legal risk.

Buyuksarac is popular on social media — 15,000 followers on Instagram, double that on Twitter — a presence that makes her a target. The Turkish government doesn’t care whether she is an ardent dissident. They obviously just want to intimidate others with a readership who are inclined to ruffle the feathers of the powerful even a little.

So yes, things could be worse. Lots worse. They could also be a lot better. That’s what we have to fight for.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture Tenth Amendment federalism too much government U.S. Constitution

Manly Firmness

“Is repealing the Affordable Care Act an issue of manhood?” asks Alan Rappeport in the New York Times. He’s referring to the “macho language” in a resolution introduced recently in Jefferson City, Missouri, by State Rep. Mike Moon.

Moon’s House Resolution 99 decimates the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, in a dozen whereas clauses, noting the legislation was

  1. “passed under questionable circumstances”;
  2. found constitutional only on the contradictory determination that it was both a tax and not a tax; and, most notably,
  3. resoundingly opposed by Missouri voters, who have twice trudged to the polls to overwhelming pass measures to block this federal legislation.

HR 99 resolves that, “the members of the Missouri House of Representatives, Ninety-​eighth General Assembly, hereby insist that each member of the Missouri Congressional delegation endeavor with ‘manly firmness’ and resolve to totally and completely repeal the Affordable Care Act, settling for no less than a full repeal.”

Among today’s sophisticates, the phrase “manly firmness” elicits giggles, of course. Seasoned Democrats like U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill play the “war on women” card.  She complained that those words come from “a point in time when women were chattels and didn’t have the right to vote. I think we can update our vocabulary.”

Lost on — or purposely ignored by — the senator? The fact that the phrase “manly firmness” comes from the Declaration of Independence, from the fifth listed grievance against King George III.

And firmness is exactly what’s needed: adult, strong, serious standing up as our representatives — rather than representing themselves — and defending our individual freedom and its corollary, constitutionally-​limited government.

That’s what was needed back in 1776. It is every bit as desperately needed today.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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

Subsidy for Everybody!

According to Vice President Joe Biden, the debate is over. Health care, by which he means medical assistance, is a basic right — to be obtained through government, and made effective by the Affordable Care Act — not a “privilege.”

By “right” he means  “something others are forced to provide,” in this case by taxes, regulations, and the full panoply of U.S. law. Today’s “liberals” like to use the word “privilege” to mean anything obtained without direct government assistance. And therein lies a huge problem.

In his first weekly address of the year, Biden touted how great the ACA, “Obamacare,” is. How affordable it is for families, for everyone! It’s a panacea, though Biden didn’t use the word.

Actually, he didn’t say that we have a right medical care. He said we have a right to health “insurance,” which we’re forced to purchase — and for which many are subsidized, too.

How far does he go with this?

“An awful lot of people who didn’t think they could or would find quality, affordable health insurance are actually able to get assistance from the government to help them pay for their health care plans at a cheaper rate,” he earnestly intoned. “A family of four with an income of around $95,000, they can still get a subsidy to lower their health care premiums.”

You can see where the problem is. If a household making $95,000 per annum can receive subsidies, who’s paying for all this?

Perhaps you.

Can you see why Obamacare’s a prescription for financial disaster?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability folly ideological culture too much government

Pot, Kettle; Obama, Putin

President Calvin Coolidge looks more like a sage every day. Confucius would’ve been proud of Silent Cal. Today’s top politicians might take a cue from the man: When you don’t have much to say, say nothing.

President Barack Obama, whose popularity in America up until recently rested, in part, on his sounding more intelligent than his predecessor in office, had the reckless temerity — the audacity of dope, perhaps — to float the notion, in an interview the other day, that Russia’s top banana Vladimir Putin had made a “strategic mistake” by annexing Crimea, and said the latter-​day Tsar was “not so smart”:

Those thinking his Russian counterpart was a “genius” had been proven wrong by Russia’s economic crisis, he said.

For my part, I hope that a collapsed economy in Russia is the least we have to fear. The story isn’t over, and I wouldn’t be gloating over a half-​hatched batch of eggs just yet.

Which brings to mind the title cliché: pot and kettle, each calling the other black. Here we have a world leader with a horrible economic track record, in addition to a chaotic diplomatic strategy, calling his chief competitor for public adoration (yes, Putin’s acolytes are just as besotted as Obama’s) something of a fool.

Well, the man so involved with a disaster to have it named after him, Obamacare, and who hailed extravagant “stimulus” as a cure for a depression that still lingers — reminding us again of the longest Depression, the Great, and the wrong-​headed policies of Hoover and FDR — should know when to keep mum.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.