“Hayek’s most famous insight, about the indispensible informational function of the price mechanism, in his most famous paper, ‘The Use of Knowledge in Society’, comes in the course of an argument to the effect that central economic planning boards are bound to fail. On it’s face, it’s hard to agree that the Affordable Care Act does much to incorporate the fundamental Hayekian lesson when one of its key provisions is the establishment of the Independent Payment Advisory Board, a sort of central price-setting committee thought by its advocates necessary to contain the runaway cost of the American health-care system.”
ObamaCare gives the government sweeping new powers to micromanage insurance policies. Their one-size-fits-all decisions are almost guaranteed to fail. “Draw up a package that is too bare-bones, and millions of Americans could be deprived of meaningful health-care coverage when they need it most – undercutting a central goal of the new law. Add in too many expensive benefits, and premiums could spike to unaffordable levels.”
“But that aside, Obamacare’s fiscal failure comes down to something a lot more basic: Government agencies nearly always overestimate the revenue generated from tax increases, and nearly always underestimate the new spending caused by new entitlements. Americans are a lot smarter than they look from inside the Beltway, and they modify their behavior to avoid new taxes and obtain new largesse. Federal bureaucrats may be good with calculators, but they’re weak on human nature.”
“The long-term care pharmacy lobby says a proposed regulation that aims to reduce waste would end up raising prices for the Medicare Part D prescription program and taxpayers with little benefit to show for it.”
“Florida officials have joined a growing number of states and companies seeking waivers from the new medical-loss-ratio requirements imposed by the federal government under President Obama’s health care law.”
“Calling these rules ‘consumer protections’ implies that the people harmed don’t matter, or one has clairvoyance to know that the benefits outweigh the costs.
ObamaCare supporters should call these supposed consumer protections what they are: regulations that can hurt even more than they help.”
“Defenders of ObamaCare have seized upon a Jan. 6 letter from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to House Speaker John Boehner alleging that repeal would ‘increase the deficit.’ Don’t be bamboozled. When big spenders call for ‘deficit reduction,’ they mean raising your taxes. That is what ObamaCare does.”
“Of all the claims deployed in favor of ObamaCare, and there are many, the most preposterous is that a new open-ended entitlement will somehow reduce the budget deficit. Insure 32 million more people, and save money too! The even more remarkable spectacle is that Washington seems to be taking this claim seriously in advance of the House’s repeal vote next week. Some things in politics you just can’t make up.”
The American voters, most of whom have been around long enough and who have grown skeptical enough about politicians’ math skills, understand this intuitively. They see the pile of debt, a huge new program and shout: ‘Stop!’ In electoral terms, ‘stop’ means 63 House and 6 Senate seats. That’s why the Democrats would be wise to junk the ‘covering millions more saves money!’ argument. It’s not working, and by repeating it they simply convince voters that they are out to lunch.”
Even a liberal columnist and ObamaCare supporter doesn’t believe the law’s deficit projections. “But the costs of the new law are far more certain than the savings. Anyone who’s spent any time in Washington knows better than to assume that health-care reform will end up as a money saver. Democrats will, I suspect, have ample opportunities to accuse Republicans of hypocrisy on fiscal responsibility. This isn’t one of them. And there are stronger defenses of the new law than to claim that repeal would be a budget buster.”