Repeal Obamacare? Don’t make me laugh.  Why stop there?  Tricky Dick Nixon’s 1972 HMO Act and the modification of the tax code allowing for the employer (not individual employee) to make a “pre-tax” purchase  of health care represent a one-two punch for health care in the U.S.  HMO’s or restrictive PPO insurance policies are not products that any individual would purchase for themselves.  The only way the insurance industry was able to peddle these products was to make sure the purchaser (employer) was different than the beneficiary (employee).  This qualifies, I think, for an extended definition of moral hazard.  Put yourself in the shoes of the insurance exec.  ”How can we offer an insurance product that essentially ratchets down the availability of health care and hence, our liability and exposure, and ensure that its purchase is guaranteed?”  Ah, a brilliant, one-two punch courtesy of Uncle Sam.  This gift (subsidy) to the insurance companies could have been repealed long ago.  Why hasn’t it been repealed?  

Having said that, why would anyone think that the passage of the Unaffordable Care Act is anything but another pay to play gift to the various cronies and players, the usual suspects?  Why should someone be handcuffed to their job because of the health insurance associated with it?  Hmm.

The idea that a solution to “the health care crisis” can come from those who created it is bizarre.  The most obvious solutions seem untouchable for some reason.  Obamacare serves as a useful distraction, a false flag of sorts, one that keeps our attention diverted from the very simple and obvious solutions.  As Murray Rothbard pointed out, cartels and monopolies cannot exist in a market of free and open exchange.  They require the sanction and blessing of the full force of government’s fist.  My apologies to Mike Tyson for the comparison.

G. Keith Smith, M.D.