Tag: ObamaCare

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free trade & free markets too much government

The Freedom Cure

To solve our problems, we need the freedom — to plan, to create, to market and profit. We need the freedom to use the capital we gain by solving problems — whether the capital comes in the form of money, knowledge, or reputation — to solve other problems.

That’s as true in medical industry as in any other productive endeavor. But medical freedom is shrinking thanks to taxes and regulations imposed by Obamacare and numerous previous interventions.

Consider the many life-saving gadgets and drugs that we now take for granted. Medical doctor Paul Hsieh observes that creating these does not happen automatically. Even slightly higher taxes or tighter regulations “can mean the difference between a product coming to market— or being abandoned as not worth the effort.” We know how existing devices save lives. What we don’t know is what lives will by lost for lack of inventions that never maker it to market but, in a freer political environment, would have. It is the difference between what Bastiat called “That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen.”

How can we ensure the largest possible field for the invention and propagation of life-saving technology, like genetically cased medicine or 3D-printed body parts? For starters, get rid of new taxes on medical devices and eliminate FDA regulations. Chuck the whole apparatus of Obamacare. Then enact ever-more fundamental market reforms until patients, doctors, drug and device companies use their judgment completely unimpeded.

The debate about freedom in medicine shouldn’t be just about whether you will be allowed (!) to “keep your doctor.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture media and media people too much government

Got Ads?

First the hush-hush secrecy; then the lies. Now something even . . . worse?

President Barack Obama doesn’t think the American people can handle the truth. Neither do several progressive non-profit groups in Colorado that have produced a plethora of cringe-worthy ads promoting Obamacare.

One print ad, “Let’s Get Physical,” pictures a young women giving a thumbs up sign and showing off her birth control pills standing next to a scruffy-faced man-boy, with the text: “OMG, he’s hot! Let’s hope he’s as easy to get as this birth control. My health insurance covers the pill, which means all I have to worry about is getting him between the covers.* I got insurance.”

No worries, eh? The asterisk informs readers that, “The pill doesn’t protect you from STDs.”

Another advertisement, “Brosurance,” reaches out to young . . . drunkards. “Keg stands are crazy,” we’re informed. “Not having health insurance is crazier.” It continues: “Don’t tap into your beer money to cover those medical bills. We got it covered.”

Gee, thanks. In fact, both print ads end with the “thanks obamacare!” slogan.

So, can floundering Obamacare be saved by harnessing the awesome power of sex appeal and inebriation and huge dollops of kitsch and irony? Only if young people are as vacuous as these ads insinuate.

“Younger Americans may indeed be reckless enough to do keg stands and have unprotected sex on a regular basis,” Nick Gillespie wrote in Time, “but they’re not so dumb as the ‘Got Insurance?’ ads — or the architects of Obamacare — seem to think.”

Because, as Gillespie and others point out, Obamacare overcharges young people to supposedly lower costs for others. Let’s get real, bro.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
individual achievement insider corruption

TheHealthSherpa.com

Government incompetence is no mystery. It’s very similar to government competence: throw enough money at a problem and something will happen.

It may not be what you want, or what you expected, but something will indeed happen.

The ObamaCare rollout is a grand example of governmental hubris and incompetence, as I explained this weekend at Townhall.com.

But the story has a more amusing twist. Three young professional website technicians saw the fiasco of healthcare.gov and decided to try a different approach, cooking up a website in their spare time.

They found enough information and access to information buried in the multi-million dollar contractors’ code, and reconfigured everything.

Their insight? The main ObamaCare website had it all backwards. People want to be able to start shopping immediately. So that’s what they allow visitors to do, start shopping without sign-up.

On e-commerce websites, you can sign up at almost any point.

The young men’s TheHealthSherpa.com is up and running, allowing people not served by a state-led marketplace to check out the “competition,” select the policy that’s right for them, and go directly to the company offering the service.

So how could three guys working pro bono do a better job than the inside-the-beltway “Internet” professionals who were paid millions?

The well-connected insiders were thinking as insiders do. Instead of seeing that their job was to entice customers, they tried corralling citizens, requiring people to first “sign up.”

Of course, the real and enduring problems of ObamaCare are on the “back end,” behind the websites, where the regulations and taxes and mandates (and pride and hubris and incompetence) will do the most damage.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture too much government

Surprised by Obamacare

So, wait, Obamacare is not free?

Pre-Obamacare, George Schwab paid $228 a month for health insurance. Now he must pay $1,208 a month for a comparable plan. “The president told the American people numerous times that ‘If you like your coverage, you can keep it.’ How can we keep it if it has been eliminated? How can we keep it if the premium has been increased 430 percent . . . ?” He sounds surprised.

Michael Hood paid $324 a month. Now it’s $895. “The president told us Obamacare would make health insurance affordable and reduce costs. It is now impossible for our family to afford private health insurance.” He sounds surprised.

Tom Waschura is getting socked with a $10,000-per-year addition to his family policy. “I was laughing at Boehner — until the mail came today.” He sounds surprised.

Cindy Vinson must pay $1,800 more a year. “I want people to have health care. I just didn’t realize I would be the one who was going to pay for it personally.” She sounds surprised.

At the Healthcare.gov Facebook page, Dema Zinger says “I am so disappointed. These prices are outrageous and there are huge deductibles.” She sounds surprised.

If government massively transfers private insurance policy costs from each according to ability (younger, healthier, richer) to each according to alleged need (older, sicker, poorer), there’s a good chance the former will end up paying more whether they liked their pre-Obamacare policies or not.

Which is a surprise because . . . ?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
media and media people national politics & policies too much government

The End—er, ACA—Is Near

First, NBC’s Nightly News anchor Brian Williams reported that the “website for the president’s new health care law is back up tonight after yet another technical problem over the weekend that prevented people from signing up for health insurance . . . yet again.” Then he went on, bemoaning, “For many middle-class Americans who buy their own health insurance, there could be another frustration and that is ‘sticker shock’ — after some learned they must buy new policies that cover more, but cost more as well.”

Couldn’t be. In pushing the Affordable Care Act (ACA), President Barack Obama had promised, “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan.”

And presumably “afford” your plan, too. (Well, there are good old-fashioned government subsidies!)

Williams then turned to correspondent Peter Alexander, who announced that the absolute catastrophe of the healthcare.gov website “is masking what is the real issue here, how much these plans will actually cost.”

At Forbes weeks ago, the headline to Avik Roy’s column suggested a connection: “Obamacare’s Website Is Crashing Because It Doesn’t Want You To Know How Costly Its Plans Are.”

A website that crashes to hide the cost of insurance the law demands you purchase seems far-fetched. Next they’ll claim the Administration somehow knew so many folks would lose their insurance policies.

Er, well, “That millions will lose or have to change their individual policies is not a surprise to the administration” noted Alexander.

Say, what?

NBC News found “buried in the 2010 Obamacare regulations language predicting that ‘A reasonable range for the percentage of individual policies that would terminate . . . is 40 percent to 67 percent.’”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

No Waiting for the Lies

From the beginning, Democrats urged us to reserve judgment about their beloved “Affordable Care Act.” Wait, they said, until enacted . . . “to find out what’s in it.”

Then they said: wait till we see how it works.

Now, they tell us to wait some more, while they figure out how to bring some competence to the “glitch”-ridden healthcare.gov.

Waiting was the thing some folks feared most. The closer the country got to socialized medicine, the more queues, lines, and waiting lists would get set up, as bureaucrats scrambled to prevent disastrous cost overruns. Hobbled with regulations and mandates and increased demand (without properly paying for said demand — such is the way of politicians’ promises), it was never unreasonable to expect that “death by waiting” would eventually become the integral feature (not a bug!) of the new system.

Still, in one thing, there was no wait. Though the president may have been lied to right up until healthcare.gov’s launch — misled about the testing and integrity of the IT system — there was at least one lie known from the beginning as a lie: that we could all keep our current insurance policies.

Considering the extent of Obamacare’s regulations, that was impossible. Only a small set of choices would be available to Americans. Most legacy policies just wouldn’t cut it, short a special waiver from Washington.

Now, hundreds of thousands of Americans are getting cancellation notices from their insurers. Others, more “lucky,” are being informed that their policies will be upgraded to the nearest Obamacare-acceptable alternative, at raised rates.

This is the Honest Truth about Obamacare: Obama lied; his staff lied; Congress lied.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Obamacare as Bad as Windows 8?

The spectacular failure of Healthcare.gov to sign people up for the much-promised easy-to-access “healthcare” plans, has now gone mainstream.

So, how bad is it?

Worse than Windows 8?

Just as I know of no one, personally, who has bought a medical coverage package through the new Obamacare system, I also know of no one, personally, who likes Windows 8 . . . at least, on a non-touchscreen computer.

So, are the disasters comparable?

Healthcare.gov fails to hook customers with insurers; Windows 8 fails to do basic o.s.-type tasks, like allow you to do your work.

Still, people are buying Windows 8 computers. Voluntarily. But sales are down, far enough that a number of manufacturers have been selling computers without operating systems installed. And Microsoft is offering discounts to manufacturers for including Windows 8.

Surely Microsoft will speed up the delivery of Windows 9, or at least some fix that makes Windows 8 more usable.

But what will the Obama Administration do?

There are a lot of expert Web technicians out there. For hire. Big companies — Amazon, Travelocity, Priceline — find them and manage to put together successful online trading services. So, surely if the government spends two or three times what businesses spend, it will get a workable system about half as good.

It’s what we expect from government.

Of course, Microsoft could fail, and isn’t too big to fail. But I expect it will survive, simply because of the possibility. The fear. The disincentive.

Those who believe in government über alles, however, forswear such incentives. Bad programs are expected to continue forever and ever.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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

Affordable [sic] Healthcare [sick]

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”?

  1. 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.

  2. 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.
  3. 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.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Resistance Is Not Futile

Who says signing up for Obamacare is all snarls and snafus?

Thirty-year-old law student Brian Mahoney already had a high-deductible, low-premium insurance plan. But the day the Obamacare exchanges went online, he decided to check it out. For him, unlike thousands of others, signing up was easy.

Great. Except that . . . Mahoney had been paying for medical insurance, and now he’s on Medicaid. The website told him he was eligible. Thus, the “success” here is the triumph of making a capable adult less self-responsible and more dependent on government handouts.

And that’s bad. If we care about our freedom, what we must do is resist appeals, or demands, that we forfeit control over our lives — even if offered a mess of pottage in return. Refuse to cooperate with the bureaucrats and politicians. Not become martyrs, but resist to the extent that we can resist. Even if it’s, well, more than a tad inconvenient. Certainly we should not submit to new chains and crutches eagerly.

A reader at the Hot Air blog reports that when he asked his doctor about “about how our electronic records would be used and protected” under the Obamacare regime, the doctor replied: “We’re not keeping electronic records. We refuse to comply with Obamacare. We’re not switching over.”

Good for you, Doc. We need more like you.

I certainly don’t want my medical records in the hands of government . . . to name just one of the things having to do with me, my rights and my life that I don’t want government anywhere near.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies

The Apple of Their Own Eyes

“Consider that just a couple of weeks ago, Apple rolled out a new mobile operating system, and within days, they found a glitch, so they fixed it,” President Obama recently told an audience. “I don’t remember anybody suggesting Apple should stop selling iPhones or iPads or threatening to shut down the company if they didn’t.”

Acknowledging the many problems that popped up in last week’s rollout of the online healthcare exchanges, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius offered, “[H]opefully you’ll give us the same slack you give Apple.”

Let’s review. Apple fixed its problem. And customers continued to voluntarily purchase its products.

That’s where the president’s and the secretary’s analogy badly breaks down. Obamacare’s problems are myriad and metastasizing . . . and hardly being fixed.

Even Obamacare enthusiasts Ezra Klein and Evan Soltas, writers of The Washington Post’s “Wonk Blog,” objected to the ridiculous comparison between Apple and Obamacare in a story headlined, “Obamacare’s Web site is really bad”:

The Obama administration doesn’t have a basically working product that would be improved by a software update. They have a Web site that almost nobody has been able to successfully use. If Apple launched a major new product that functioned as badly as Obamacare’s online insurance marketplace, the tech world would be calling for Tim Cook’s head.

The differences between Apple and Obamacare hardly end there. Did I mention that no one is forced to buy Apple products?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.