The Daily Oklahoman, our local newspaper, while initially in opposition to Governor Mary Fallin’s rejection of the health exchanges of the Unaffordable Care Act, is now happily printing supportive editorials of her decision. April 16th’s editorial title, “With Obamacare, Nearly Every Promise Going Unmet,” is perhaps more true than the author(s) has any idea.
Here are some of the unmet promises in the article:
You can keep you doctor. Not with the more restrictive network “panels” and certainly not if as many of the physicians quit practicing as polls show!
You can keep your insurance, if you like it. No you can’t, and even if you wanted to, you will probably not be able to afford it.
This law makes healthcare affordable….you know…the Affordable Care Act….my personal favorite unmet promise.
The cost estimate for setting up the exchanges is now double last year’s estimates. Wow. This has never happened in government, has it?
And soon to be realized by states embracing Medicaid expansion, will be the lie of how the federal government will pay for all of this. The federal government has never promised to pay for something, only to not pay for it have they? Oh, and then there’s this…the federal government is broke.
Here is the part, the editorial left out. When they said that nearly every promise has gone unmet, they were correct, in that several promises that were made have been delivered on, though none the current regime would like to have discussed.
Incentives have been created to force more private practice physicians into the indentured servitude of hospital employment. This allows the hospitals to make money off of these hapless doctors and makes the physicians easier for government bureaucrats to control, corralled into groups.
The Medical Loss Ratio is indeed creating the consolidation of the insurance industry it was meant to create, benefitting the big insurance companies who came up with this, a scheme meant to crush their smaller competitors.
The health information technology industry has made off with billions in revenue they would not otherwise have collected, as a result of the federal government making the purchase of their product essentially mandatory. Physicians are, after all, paid less by Medicare, if they don’t buy these systems and subscribe to this insanity.
I wrote prior to Justice Robert’s ruling that the players involved in the creation of this law, really didn’t care how the supreme court ruled, as they had already accomplished many of their goals, identical to the list above. This law was never about healthcare. It was, rather, like almost everything else that oozes out of D.C., a diversion of wealth from the many, to the well-connected.
While national and state legislators harp, “..get over it….Obamacare is now the law of the land,” keep this quote from Kathleen Sebelius in the Oklahoman’s editorial in mind:
“It is very difficult when people live in a state, where there is a daily declaration, ‘We will not participate in the law.’ “ This rare show of weakness and frustration by one of this law’s architects and primary henchmen should buoy the spirits of those involved in what the French would call, La Resistance.
G. Keith Smith, M.D.