ObamaCare

Obamacare will not fix health care in America.  There, I’ve said it.  You wanna be angry?  Go ahead, but it’s the truth.  Nobody denies that our health care situation was bad before Obamacare, but it is going to be a whole lot worse now.  Do you know anyone whose health insurance premiums decreased after 2010 without losing out on services and deductibles?  I don’t.  Why is this?  Wasn’t this supposed to make health care more affordable for everyone?  No, it never really was.  It was specifically designed to redistribute the wealth, so that those of us in the middle income and higher brackets would have to absorb the cost of providing health care to the lower income bracket.  In reality, it has caused everyone’s cost to go up, and here are some reasons why.

The uninsured used to pay nothing for health care unless they needed it, and even then, they were usually discounted significantly or could find a free clinic of some sort.  Now they have to pay, even if they don’t want it.  So their cost has gone up significantly.

Small business owners are now required to provide coverage for employees working more than 30 hours per week.  I bet you can see where that’s going to go.  Now imagine that you owned a business and one day the government decided it was going to cost you (oh, let’s just pick a reasonable number) 10% more to employ people.  So now you’re stuck with a dilemma.  Most small businesses are working hard at cutting costs.  Now as a business owner, you’ve got to redo your entire budget, and you’re probably going to find that 1 of your 10 employees has to go.  Or maybe you’re really smart and figured out how to only lose 1 of your 20.  Or maybe you’re a little craftier and figured out how to give all your employees less than 30 hours per week.  Who does that hurt?  That’s right, mostly low-to-middle-income workers.  So that’s fewer jobs, and less hours for a lot of jobs.  And the real kicker is that all those people who have fewer hours now won’t be counted as unemployed, so Obama’s unemployment figures will still be okay.

And what about the big businesses?  Walmart is already cutting hours so that they’ll have primarily part-time employees.  Hobby Lobby is run by Christians, who object to providing abortion services as part of their health coverage.  Obamacare, however, requires it.  Now what?  Hobby Lobby won’t change their policy, so if their argument with the government doesn’t go favorably, a whole lot of people will lose their jobs.

Next we have all the new taxes put in place to pay for this beast of a health care system.  Even though our illustrious president said that we wouldn’t be taxed for this, his lawyers called these new measures taxes when defending the new health system before the Supreme Court.  And that’s really the only legal basis on which Obamacare exists.  As long as it’s a tax, it’s okay. So here’s a partial list of current and foreseeable consequences:

• If you’re uninsured, you have to pay a penalty (health care insurance premium through the government).  If that was a choice to be uninsured rather than a necessity, you’ll likely be very annoyed.
• If you’re already insured, your premiums will go up.  Probably already did, and that’s not the end of it.
• There are now new taxes on your Flexible Savings Accounts and/or Health Savings Account.
• If you have a great employer who pays your medical coverage and it exceeds $10,200, you’ll now have to pay a 40% tax on that.

Insured people pay more than double for health services than uninsured people.  Dump tens of millions of newly insured people into that mix and there’s no acceptable tax that could pay for it.  Demand drives price.  Scarcity, in a government-controlled system, brings about rationing and eligibility requirements for specific procedures.  Are you ready to face the reality that a procedure you need simply may not be available to you?

The biggest problem here is that we really didn’t need a new system.  The old system just needed to be revised and regulated more effectively.  How much money goes to lawyers when things aren’t right?  How about capping penalties and legal fees for health care lawsuits?  How about some measures that require consumers to actually be consumers and hunt for the best value for the health services they want/need?

Nope.  Now we have a new system that looks a whole lot like the old system, but with the government playing puppet master this time around.  Let’s see … what has happened every time the government tries to run a piece of our economy?  Oh yeah, complete failure.

So what can you do about it?  Something everyone should be doing in the first place.  Look after your health through diet and exercise.  If you get those things right, you’re a long way toward never needing expensive medical procedures in the first place.  Take care of yourself spiritually, mentally and physically.  If everyone in this country would do that, we’d eliminate a lot of expensive medical procedures and massively reduce health insurance premiums.