Obamacare and running out of other people’s money
Ah, those evil health insurance companies, refusing to enroll sick people in their individual programs (although they were covered in large group insurance), and forcing them into high risk pools. Greedy nasty capitalists, sucking our blood like the vampires they are!
Well, now we hear that the the high risk pools under Obamacare, the ones that start filling in from this Thursday until 2014 when the main feature kicks in, may have to turn people away, because the program will run out of money before 2014 otherwise:
Healthcare experts of all stripes warned during the healthcare debate that $5 billion would likely not last until 2014. Millions of Americans cannot find affordable healthcare because of their pre-existing conditions, and that amount would only cover a couple hundred thousand people, according to a recent study by the chief Medicare actuary.
Plus, many enrollees will have to pay fairly hefty premiums from the start, the exact amount depending on location and state.
Then in 2014, when the main part of Obamacare begins, and no one with a pre-existing condition can be banned, I’m sure everything will be peachy keen and hunky-dory and raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, fiscally speaking.
If you detect a note of sarcasm, you would be correct. Could it be—could it possibly be—that insurance companies, their CEOs and their actuaries and all their other employees, are no better or worse, no more cruel and rapacious, than the general run of the human race, and that their policies are dictated by market realities? And that, although those realities operate somewhat differently for the federal government (no absolute need to make a profit or even operate in the black), they still operate in their own way, and that enormous deficits and borrowing from countries such as China cannot go on indefinitely? That the piper still must be paid, even by government, and that if we ask for a comprehensive social welfare state we eventually not only run out of “other people’s money,” but our own?
[NOTE: For the historically inclined, here’s the original Margaret Thatcher quote in context:
…Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people’s money. It’s quite a characteristic of them. They then start to nationalise everything, and people just do not like more and more nationalisation, and they’re now trying to control everything by other means. They’re progressively reducing the choice available to ordinary people.
Hey—maybe that’s why they call themselves “progressives!”]
Progressives in government are like progressive cancer. Growing, spreading, or getting worse until ultimately the host dies. The only hope is aggressive treatments that involve significant risks in hopes of remission with constant vigilance for signs the disease is reasserting itself.
And oddly, just like in touchy-feely medicine everything is promoted as being peachy keen right up to the point your insurance runs out.
Don’t worry Neo,
Obama will never let it happen. He can keep printing out Monopoly money to pay all our bills (snark, snark)! Because in Obamaland fiscal discipline involves fiscal profligacy. Hooray…
The entire anti-business climate of the Dem party has as its purpose to create a common enemy. Like the Ayatollah Komeni in the late 1970’s, the image of “The Great Satan” permitted him to unify otherwise factious components in Iran (anti-Shah and anti-U.S.).
The Dems constantly demonize business (it’s always labor good v. management bad) and paint the Republicans as pro-business (i.e., pro-enemy). Without such a common enemy, the Dems fall into chaos as each party faction (the women’s caucus, the black caucus, the labor unions) battles with each other.
There you go again neo, confusing the issue with logic and facts!
“…Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people’s money. “
Yes but unfortunately liberals always accept the left’s assurance that the evil rich are hiding their ill-gotten gains from just taxation, thus perpetuating the delusion.
And like all delusions, it is not amenable to reasoned, factual persuasion, such as “if the Government confiscated everything, the social programs would still be $50 trillion short and the Government would still be bankrupt.
Furthermore, no company or individual would be left with anything.”
Faced with that reality, the liberal left simply denies it, a good working definition of insanity being the inability to accept reality, which leads to such efforts as, “IRS Targets High Wealth Individuals” by attempting to institute treaties facilitating global pursuit of high-wealth individuals.
Liberals do so because they fail to appreciate a larger reality; to the degree that we reduce individual freedom, (including the freedom to behave unethically but within the letter of the law), to that exact degree, do we hinder and even destroy wealth creation and civilizational progress.
Liberals in their infantile protest against life’s essential inequality of results utterly fail to understand that it is fundamentally necessary and implicit to advancement.
Committee’s invent nothing, nor do they result in entrepreneurial growth or increased standards of living.
Ah, if only Thatcher’s party were in power over here:
“As the British Coalition government settles in, it is becoming a kind of foil for the remnants of American conservatism. In the US, the Republicans rail against any subsidized access to health insurance for the working poor. In Britain, the Tories have quarantined the health service from any spending cuts.”
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/07/conservatives-against-torture.html
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Simon–you could ask whether today’s Tories are really Margaret Thatcher’s party.
“”Liberals in their infantile protest against life’s essential inequality of results utterly fail to understand that it is fundamentally necessary and implicit to advancement.””
Geoffrey Britain
These same libs have nothing but praise for this same inequality in the natural world. They call it a diverse ecosystem and it’s beautiful.
If liberalism’s disorder infected honey bees i suppose they’d vote to kick the queen out of the hive and give all worker bees the summer off.
The certainty for Obamanomics is that spend, spend, spend results in debt, debt, debt; this certainty requires the need for power if the electorate is not so debased as in Europe.
Obama has made one thing clear: America is still America. After a hideous attack within by a fifth column, she endures. Obama has neither the votes nor the power. The tide has turned. The question is, will America continue her renewal?
Obama, like Hitler and his decree that Germany and her people were not worthy of him and must be destroyed, seeks to destroy. Hitler asked, “Is Paris burning?” His visage, standing with his arm outstretched in salute, reminds me of Obama’s favorite pose with his own head raised at the same angle as Hitler’s arm. Both men succumbed to a will to power born in rage against imagined atrocities.
But the WWII analogy extends only so far. The tide has turned, but there may not be a decisive outcome. The base will be placated so that all may not be lost. The word will go out: Obama was betrayed by his advisors. He was not able to go far enough. The lie will spread and grow and we may yet be alive for the real showdown.
Massachusetts’ health care plan was supposed to be the model for national health care. My understanding is that it is now the most expensive in the country, doctors have left Massachusetts in droves, and that it is essentially broke. (I’m from the other side of the country, so I rely on press reports) And it’s only been a little over 3 years.
ObamaCare has far more goofy mandates — like the 100 new bureaus, and all kinds of things that studies have shown do not work where they have been tried. I desperately hope it can be repealed, for the only thing sure to cut costs is cutting treatments and services allowed for Medicare patients, which as deep admirers of Britain’s NHS and NICE they are looking forward to.
So how long (if it is not repealed) would you give it before it goes bankrupt? Or will they do like the Germans, and keep goosing it along with constant tinkering? By that time there won’t be any money left to invest in the program.
A cynic would say that Obamacare never was supposed to work. It is a Trojan horse designed to crash so badly that a government run health care plan will look like the only option. The Democrats know this and are waiting for the day.
They present providing government services as a moral good, forever assuming we can afford them. (I could argue that they are morally mixed, regardless of affordability, but that’s another discussion.) If one tries to argue the morals – is it more important for people to have jobs or health care – they evade that by insisting we can have both. If you go after that practical assumption – can we indeed afford both – they turn it back into a moral question, that we must afford it because it is right. You see the trick? Answer the moral question with a practical answer, the practical question with a moral answer, always refusing to actually discuss the morality or practicality with any precision.
It’s not a trick, actually, nor a tactic, at least not for most. They actually do think this way, and so it just spills out of their mouths. Precision in thought is avoided. The fact that some people are rich means that there is extra money floating around in society which should be available for “better” use.
The upcoming elections should have a new bumper sticker REPEAL OBAMA……CARE!
>>A cynic would say that Obamacare never was supposed to work. It is a Trojan horse designed to crash so badly that a government run health care plan will look like the only option. The Democrats know this and are waiting for the day.>>
Bingo.
Guess I number among the cynics…
If a “portable health insurance” were a reality, many of those “victimized” by pre-existing condition clauses would have had coverage.
Guess who has the equivalent of a portable heatlh insurance requirement? Correct, federal workers! I assume that many state employees have similar insurance-provider choice arangements. Large private firms’ HRs could handle multiple insurers, but small firms can resort to the HR-contract firms that many small companies already use. These are HR-specialist outfits that act as the HR office for a multitude of small business clients. Such outfits already have to carry policies from multiple insurance companies. The difference under a portable insurance mandate would be that the employee clients would not be differentiated by which firm they’re employed, but by who their insurance company is.