A very interesting article by CATO’s Michael Tanner about Obamacare is here. He’s wondering if Obamacare is about to fall flat on its face. How popular is this plan going to be, after all, when many young people find that their insurance premiums have increased 169%?! The most incredible part of this article is the revelation that the number of folks who were supposedly uninsured prior to this law’s passage will not change after this law is fully implemented, as many will lose their insurance due to the bill and many others will simply be dumped into Medicaid.
Ah. But there’s the rub. The feds and their health cartel thought that the governors couldn’t resist the federal money. This was the part of the decision by Chief Justice Roberts (removing the teeth of the feds to retaliate against states who chose to reject Medicaid expansion) that left this “president” so glum-faced in his press conference following the ruling. Now that many of the governors (Oklahoma’s Governor Mary Fallin, included) have rejected the Medicaid expansion of Obamacare, more people will be without insurance coverage than prior to the bill’s passage!
If, as Dr. Jane Orient has famously coined, “coverage doesn’t mean care,” what consolation is “no coverage” for those who had it, who now don’t because their employer dropped them or the premiums became unaffordable? Thank you Uncle Sam!
In one section of his article Tanner writes: “That’s become a theme for Obamacare: costs more, does less.” Kind of like a postal service that increases the price of stamps and stops delivery on Saturdays. This is the story every time, isn’t it? Any area in which the government at any level (but the federal government, in particular) becomes involved, the crowding out of any private sector competition inevitably results in higher costs and watered-down, rude service. I wonder if in the not-too-distant future, Obamacare supporters will figure out that the best thing that ever happened to their health was the melt-down of Obamacare, a meltdown which Tanner believes to be inevitable.
G. Keith Smith, M.D.