Posted on 09/24/2012 5:32:44 AM PDT by rlmorel
"...The exchange is the "front door" of ObamaCare. It is designed to look like a marketplace, where folks can shop for health insurance from a group of approved insurers. In reality, it is a carefully orchestrated faux market, where people will all buy the same federally approved product, albeit with different-colored wrapping paper..."
"...With the requirement of a federal imprimatur for any state-established model, the "threat" of instituting a federally run exchange means simply that should we choose not to set up an exchange, the feds will do for us precisely what they would have required of us -- except at their sole expense..."
"...The bold truth is that moving ahead at this stage, with the incomplete information presently available, is wildly irresponsible, entirely indefensible, and akin to handing the federal government a blank check to our state treasury."
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
I boiled this down to the following points:
Exchanges are the store through which consumers MUST purchase a health insurance product from the government.
The Fed says that states MUST set up their own exchanges, or it will force a Federal one on them.
The Feds say that state established exchanges will enable states to avoid Federal interference, but in reading the act, there are NINE sections of the ACA (Obamacare) mandating that states must set them up exactly as the Feds would have set them up, with the exception that they can offer more benefits than the Feds if they choose.
The Feds are baiting the trap to entice states to set up their own exchanges in two ways, by allowing up to half of the seats on the governing boards of the state exchanges to be held by insurance or other industry, and by enabling large government subsidies if a state exchange is set up.
The states have to have their exchanges "approved" by the Department of Health and Human Services, but the rules for the exchanges are not final, and can be changed at any time by DHHS.
Section 1311 of the ACA provides for premium subsidies to insurances for state exchanges only, NOT federal exchanges.
If the states do not set up an exchange, the Feds will do it for them. But there is no mechanism to provide taxpayer subsidies to a FEDERAL exchange, and THIS is the Achilles Heel.
Now, as the article points out, the only thing that keeps a federal mechanism for providing the funding to do EXACTLY the same thing is Congress, which could change and pass legislation at any time. And I no longer have any confidence that Congress is any kind of bulwark against anything, and as the article also posits, Obama could simply fund it without legislation. Although it is against the law, that hasn't stopped him in the past.
Obamacare is not SUPPOSED to work.
Some states are giving Obama the finger on Obamacare.
I happen to live in one, my employers have not been given any directions in as such about providing health care insurance, in the 18 years I have worked there they only once offered insurance and even then nobody bought into it.
The Federal apparatus has ceased to even attempt to find a legitimate reason for its actions and existence. It now just manufactures what it can and will do out of thin air.
We the People have a horrible problem on our hands here-
The useful idiots think it will, though I suspect the hardcore ones like Obama, Dohrn and Ayers understand better the purpose.
Everyone in your workplace pays out of pocket for healthcare, even those eligible for Medicare?
Correct. obamacare is a tax, not a insurance policy,a/k/a “health care”. but the idiots do not know this, nor do they care.
I believe there should be a Federal government with limitations, as did most of the founders, but this out of control monstrosity with no checks and limits is what they were worried about.
Which is why I am not completely convinced this is really an Achilles heel...if there are no consequences to overreaches of power, then...there are no limits, and I think that is where we are at.
We downsized because of Obama, there is only me a recently hired temp driver and a yard worker. We used to have a workforce of over a dozen people, now its just a skeleton crew until Obama leaves.
Every single day is a struggle to cut any overhead from no excessive idling of the trucks to keeping all the lights off, no OT or weekend work so no OT wages have to be spent.
Its all about survival and if we must break a law we will do so, we just don’t give a dam.
Correct. They are already controlling what we can eat (though at an introductory level) and controlling our healthcare is another facet of that.
BTTT
I understand what you were talking about now.
The founders had no problem with breaking unjust laws. What you refer to is what I call the barnacles on the hull of the ship of industry. All the regulation and restriction, far beyond what is needed or desired from a government of any kind.
BTW..here’s the REAL Achilles heel of this monstrous mess...
Now that the SC declare that this indeed a tax....
“Tax-raising Affordable Care Act started in wrong house of Congress”
I am also in rural Alaska, the land even the EPA is afraid to control.
And with no differentiators in product, you can bet that the levels of corruption that occur as insurance companies strive to increase market share are going to approach Late Roman Empire levels.
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