Since 1997, 13 years before the passage of ObamaCare, it has been illegal for health insurers to drop someone because they are sick — and, even before then, the practice almost never happened.
Those concerned that ObamaCare would produce an American health-care system that’s all-too-similar to Britain’s National Health Service will find no solace in President Obama’s nomination of Donald Berwick, Harvard professor and staunch advocate of the NHS, to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
If nothing else, ObamaCare may prove a stimulus to the paper industry, as its expansive utilization of IRS Form 1099 would force Americans to spend countless irritating and unproductive hours filling out and transmitting additional federal paperwork.
Insurance companies largely supported ObamaCare because it would require all Americans to buy their product under penalty of law, but ObamaCare’s requirement that insurers cover higher costs without raising prices puts a noose around insurers’ necks — and while they deserve their predicament, the rest of us don’t deserve to be shuttled into government-run health care after the private insurance market’s inevitable collapse.
ObamaCare is causing insurance companies to buy up medical clinics and doctors’ practices so that they can manage doctors more closely and thereby comply with ObamaCare’s myriad of mandates, restrictions, and requirements, while doctors are selling their practices to hospitals — all of which would mean longer lines, more impersonal treatment, and less patient choice.
The truly effective way to lower health-care costs — and to increase fairness at the same time — is to allow all Americans to deduct their full health-care costs (not just their insurance costs) from both their income and payroll taxes, thereby leveling the playing field between those with employer-provided insurance (whose taxes wouldn’t change) and those who purchase insurance on the open market (who would no longer be the only ones taxed on income used to purchase health care). Not only would this actually bring down health costs — while ObamaCare would raise them — without increasing the size or reach of the federal government — while ObamaCare would increase these dramatically — but it would foster adult self-reliance and self-respect, not childlike dependence encouraged by a paternalistic government.
The Massachusetts health-care experiment foreshadows the almost inevitable results under ObamaCare: rising health costs, insurers struggling to stay in business (with the government poised to take over), increased wait-times to see doctors, and a shrinking numbers of doctors willing to accept new patients — except that, under ObamaCare, relying on the federal bailout money that has kept the Massachusetts program afloat won’t be an option.
In its “taxpayer-funded propaganda” fliers that it mailed to Medicare recipients to try to sell them on ObamaCare, the Obama administration neglected to mention that — according to the government’s own projections — ObamaCare would cut Medicare by more than $500 billion, would cause 7 million seniors to lose their Medicare Advantage benefits, would increase seniors’ Medicare Part D prescription drug premiums, and (because of cuts in provider payments) would possibly jeopardize seniors’ access to care.
The assurances given to hesitant Democratic lawmakers that ObamaCare would gain popularity over time seem to have been wishful thinking, as a solid majority of Americans have registered their discontent toward the overhaul in the two months since its passage, and as it’s becoming increasingly apparent that Americans aren’t too eager to follow in Europe’s social-democratic footsteps.
Despite efforts to roll out “popular” provisions ahead of schedule, polls show that ObamaCare is getting less popular all the time — as independents now favor repeal by a margin of 50 points (72 to 22 percent), less than half of all Democrats oppose repeal, and younger voters are jumping ship. And once ObamaCare is gone, there will be no shortage of ideas that can replace it.