BLANKET AMNESIA
The Obamacare tsunami is on the way. It will hit sooner than you can imagine and the damage will be vast and undeniable. Democrats are about to learn that it is far easier to pass really stupid and irresponsible legislation than it is to implement it. Three years ago Democrats were celebrating the passage of Obamacare. I predict that by the end of this year Democrats will start to develop a severe case of blanket amnesia. It may be harder to find a Democrat who admits to supporting Obamacare that it is to find one who admits supporting the Iraq war.
The first wave has already started to hit shore. Health insurance carriers are increasing rates by astronomical amounts. This is so obvious that even the New York Times noticed:
Obamacare was supposed to lower costs. What happened to that? Some extremely naïve liberals probably still believe that savings will miraculously appear in the future, but they are hopelessly delusional. Democrats will try to solve the problem, as they always do, by trying to prevent insurance carriers from increasing rates. But that never works. Ultimately, you can’t force insurance companies to operate at a loss.
Because of community rating, younger people will be the first to feel the impact. They will be seeing huge increases, with some estimates as high as 50%. The following article from Forbes explains the problem:
This will put individual health care plans into a death spiral. More and more young people will go uninsured. They already think they are immortal. The problem will be aggravated by the Obamacare requirement that health care plans must insure everyone, without regard to pre-existing conditions, starting in 2014. That sounds great, until people start waiting until they are sick before buying health insurance. Raising rates will not solve the problem, because if rates are increased more healthy people will drop out of the system.
The problem is worse for individual plans, but employer sponsored plans are going up too. Employers are already working reduce the impact of these costs by either reducing the number of people insured or increasing employee contributions. This is why you have been hearing about companies switching from full-time employees to part-time employees. Obamacare, which promised to reduce the number of uninsured, will instead do the exact opposite. There will be more people uninsured than before.
The Supreme Court dealt a death blow to Obamacare last summer. The court ruled that requiring someone to purchase health insurance is unconstitutional. The law was upheld as a tax and only if the tax is not prohibitive. If the tax is raised, it will no longer be constitutional.
Perhaps some delusional liberals think this is great, because it will result in a single payer health care system run by the government. But the problem is that the government doesn’t have any money. Every government program costs more than private sector alternatives. Why would healthcare be any different? If we continue on this path, Amtrak, the Post Office, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will all look wonderful in comparison. I think there will be bi-partisan support in congress for the health insurance industry to come up with a solution because they will be totally out of money and out of ideas. The loudest voices calling for repeal of Obamacare may come from Democrats.
In a delicious irony, unions will also have a major problem. Obamacare eliminates caps on medical benefits and prescription drugs and it requires plans to insure children until age 26. That will result in much higher costs for union sponsored health plan. Here’s the rub. Individuals can’t get the subsidy to buy health care insurance if they have access to union sponsored insurance. Non-union employees will pay less for health care than union employees, because the government subsidizes the rates. This means that in some cases, joining a union means you get a smaller paycheck. Unions have just figured this out, and they are already screaming for change. I doubt that Republicans will consider this a top priority.
This is going to be really bad and it is coming at warp speed. Even the fawning main stream media can only cover up the stench of Obamacare for just so long.
TDM