Obamacare may be on the way out.
According to The Atlantic, “the powers of the incoming Health and Human Services secretary are broad enough to cripple the [Affordable Care Act] so it has to be replaced.” Which is significant since the new President has just “signed an executive order empowering his administration’s agencies to do all they can — within the bounds of the Affordable Care Act — to undercut that law.”
The Atlantic’s Vann R. Newkirk II suggests this is . . . “ironic.” The executive leeway Trump is taking is not without precedent. “The irony of that component,” he writes, “is that it rests on precedent set by the Obama administration, which used executive and regulatory power liberally to make the law work in the face of Republican opposition.”
Irony? How about chickens returning to the home roost?
Obamacare itself undermined Obamacare. The plan, from the beginning, was so gimcrack with hidden redistribution that, to both opponents and proponents, it was designed to fail . . . to usher in the Glorious Era of socialized medicine.
Since Obamacare increased “insurance” costs for hundreds of thousands of previous insurance policy holders, and increased medical costs generally, too, it actually discouraged participation from the healthiest, many of whom would rather pay the exorbitant fines, er, “taxes.” Throwing the insurance industry into a death spiral.
So, putting the system out of our misery sooner seems sensible.
But Congress and Trump cannot stop there. Either they repeal more federal regulation and subsidy*, or keep parts of Obamacare, despite a lack of financial stability. A new bill in the Senate promises to do the latter.
We haven’t seen much hint of the former.
But can hope. Audaciously.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* To let markets work. Note that The Atlantic tends to miss the point of Obamacare critics. In describing more market-based options, the magazine characterizes the Medical Health Savings Account approach as “For people sick of high deductibles, Republicans offer high-deductible plans as replacements for Obamacare.” The idea is to incentivize people to pay for their own care, which would bring costs down generally.
1 reply on “Out of Our Misery”
The elevation of basic human needs, including health care, to rights (actually entitlements) for all is the root of the problem.
That falsity could only arise and appear practical in very recent human history. The “isms” could developed only following accumulated capital of society reached the level where it could be taxed and dissipated without immediate and apparent insolvency. That accumulation was created by industrialization, divlvision of labor, advancing technology and most importantly free, open and voluntary market exchange.
The various “isms” are simply faster or slower way by which to kill the golden goose.
Socialized medicine is nothing more than a single payer, single revenue source means of providing the resources required in order to motivate ever less free persons to provide medical services. Because their are no market restraints on the demand and therefore the suppliers, because payment of the cost can and will be mandated with bayonets, not economic choice, rationing will be the only control, wicked and ugly.
There are very few in the US that actually could not afford medical insurance or services, especially if the market regulated its price and availability. We have taught the population that insurance and payment for medical services is unnecessary, that they will be provided regardless and yet act surprised when the lesson is learned.
It is the symptoms of the previous market manipulations which are the base of the current complaints and problems, and more manipulations, or eliminating the market altogether, will not make it better.
It has taken fifty years to make a total mess of the medical services sector, and will take years for it recover if the foolishness is stopped. On the other hand we can wait for the collapse, after which there shall be a much more rapid, but much more painful, return to free market economics.