Obamacare: The Elephant

I was recently asked by a friend what I thought of Obamacare.  Good question.  But, how to answer?

First, I'm not in government.  I'm neither a senator nor a representative.  But, that shouldn't matter.  Few of our elected representatives have actually read the Affordable Health Care Act (Obamacare).  Why should they have?  Writing bills and, later, proof reading them is for staff workers; not for elected representatives.  (I heard that the bill is over 20,000 pages.  Who can blame them for not going through all that dull verbiage?)

Maybe we should borrow from the story of the blind men and the elephant.  One took hold of the tail and said the beast was a rope.  The second grabbed the trunk and said it must be a snake.  The third ran his hand over a leg and said the beast was a tree.  Well, maybe this isn't the best way to examine Obamacare, but what else have we got?

Consider the following:

1. Obamacare was passed by a Democratic Senate and a Democratic House of Representatives under the instigation of a Democratic administration.  It was kept under wraps until it was submitted to the Senators and Representatives for their vote sight unseen.   Am I suggesting the obvious when I say that this probably isn't the best way to pass legislation.

2. The Obama administrations has been quite busy granting exemptions.  (You have a law passed that you're quite proud of.  Then you immediately grant the right of this party, that party and the other to be exempted from the law you're supposedly so very proud of.)  Exempted parties include administration and congressional staff members and dozens of major corporations.  It smells.

3.  Cost:  What little I know of Obamacare is that you don't have to sign up for a health insurance plan if you choose not to.  I also know that you can't be rejected for healthcare insurance if you have a pre-exisitng condition.  So how does this play out?  Well, generally, young people don't see themselves as dying in their foreseeable future.  Diseases like cancer, dementia, or heart disease seem remote.  Buy health insurance?  Why bother?  Even if you're fined, the charge will be considerably cheaper than the insurance bill.  But, suppose you're 60 or older and find you've got cancer, or emphysema, or you need a hip replacement?  Hell, you're going to sign up post haste.

Do the math.  You insure sick people, but you get no premiums from healthy people.  That's going to cost -- really, really cost.  Unless the government shovels gazillions in taxpayer dollars into Obamacare, it's going to collapse of its own weight.

Actually universal healthcare is quite a good idea.  But, first, you've got to set things right..  First, you've got to bring healthcare costs down.  American healthcare costs are so much higher than they are in Canada, or in Great Britain, or in Europe, or in Israel.  Doctors sending their patients to MRI facilities in which they hold a significant financial interest.  Drug companies selling new, more expensive drugs, to replace older drugs that work just as well.  Hip replacement hardware in America that costs three times more than similar hardware used in Belgium; hardware that performs just as well as the American hardware.  The disparity of healthcare in different parts of America makes no sense.  The Mayo Clinic providing healthcare at reasonably low cost compared to the far more costly charges of healthcare facilities in New York City.

Bringing down healthcare costs is not easy.  The people that have grown wealthy from our current system are not going to give up their advantages without a fight.  But, that's why we vote for our representatives.  That's their job; namely, to correct the system.  After they've done the hard work, they can then begin to take up the worthy job of building a proper universal health care system.