We Told You So (Obamacare is making health care less affordable)

RCM ^ | 01/20/2013 | Robert Tracinski

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As the Affordable Care Act--otherwise known as ObamaCare--begins to be implemented, we are seeing its first big consequence: it is making care less affordable.

The New York Times reports that "Health insurance companies across the country are seeking and winning double-digit increases in premiums for some customers, even though one of the biggest objectives of the Obama administration's health care law was to stem the rapid rise in insurance costs for consumers."

"Even though"? In fact, Obamacare is simply doing what a lot of people predicted it would. Critics of ObamaCare warned that it would produce precisely the kind of premium increases we are now seeing, for precisely the reasons that new reports are now citing.

I was one of those critics, and I take no joy in pointing out that we told you so.

In 2009, as ObamaCare was being crammed through Congress, I gave three reasons for predicting disaster.

The first is "guaranteed issue," which requires insurance companies to cover you for a pre-existing condition. This forces insurance companies to take on extra costs, while reducing the incentive for healthy people to pay their insurance premiums. Why pay premiums for years, if you can just wait until you're already sick to buy coverage? So insurers are mandated to take on extra costs while losing revenues. As I wrote back in 2009, "Rather than increasing the number of insured by making health insurance more affordable, this bill makes health insurance more expensive and increases the incentive to simply drop your insurance until you need someone to pay for your medical bills."

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From the article: But I don't think that's any kind of mystery. The consequences of ObamaCare--particularly the built-in "death spiral"--are so predictable that I don't think the legislation's architects can profess innocence. From the beginning, I have had suspicions, so to speak, that a stable health insurance industry was not the goal of ObamaCare. Rather, I warned: "It is an attempt to turn health insurance into what the left really wants: another welfare program in which everyone is entitled to free benefits, mandated by the government."

It is obvious that the "architects" want to go one step further. Once the government is the single payer except for a handful of plans, they will dictate terms to the health care industry. Unlike today's debacle in Medicare in which the hospitals can shift costs onto better paying private plans, that option will no longer exist. So hospitals will shut down and be replaced by government run clinics "for the children, etc".

That will be the death of our health care system, a lot of vulnerable patients and a large portion of the economy including the mainly American industries that supply health care. More than likely the architects will pick up the slack by importing deadly "medicines" from China and foreign workers (rather than Mexicans, your pills will probably be pushed by someone in a burka).

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I should add that pills are cheap. Not the ones you might actually need like a new cancer drug. Those will simply no longer exist. But take a look inside any nominally government-run institution like many nursing homes are today. The pills they push are happy pills that keep the patients loopy and docile. They cost a buck or two a month. They are often abused by the staff and/or sold on the street for a profit.

The final step in Obamacare is to replace any actual care that costs money with happy pills. DId you just pull a ligament? No MRI for you, or if you get an MRI it will be read by a government-appointed specialist who has been mandated to give you the "right" treatment (the government will use stories about children who were denied the "right" treatment by evil profit-seeking medicine). The right treatment in your case will be happy pills because surgery costs money. Physical therapy costs a lot too compared to pain pills.