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ACA must be improved, not simply destroyed; Delbert Linville (DL); Beaver County Times; January 27, 2017.
Below is a detailed critique of the subject letter.
“I was just told by a friend that the Affordable Care Act was dying on its own. If so, why did we see membership numbers climbing by more than 600,000 this past month?”
[RWC] I didn’t try to verify DL’s claim, but here are a couple of potential reasons.
First, open enrollment is open only during November and part of December for coverage beginning on January 1st.
Second, you’re breaking the law and you must pay a penalty collected by the IRS if you don’t buy a policy.
“Many naysayers want to see the ACA repealed. They are saying that they want Donald Trump to keep his promise to repeal and replace. But replace with what? Vouchers? Health savings accounts? And how do such accounts compensate those who have no money at all to save for anything, let alone the stupendous costs of health care?”
[RWC] Let’s say you had a disease your doctor had been treating unsuccessfully for 50+ years. (Please ignore the fact no one would let this situation fester for this long.) Not only were you not cured, your health got worse. If your doctor then told you he could cure you simply by doing more of what he had been doing, would you have any reason to believe him? This is exactly what’s going on with U.S. healthcare. Government has been tinkering with medical care policy since at least WWII, the result of which is the huge healthcare mess we now have. The solution offered by lefties? A government-run, taxpayer-funded healthcare monopoly (aka “Single Payer …”), of course.
“With the repeal of the healthcare act, will we return to the days when millions of Americans in the United States died because they had no coverage?”
[RWC] “When [did] millions of Americans in the United States die because they had no coverage?”
“True, the ACA must be improved, but surely not destroyed. Even President Trump has suggested several times that health insurance be available to all. But be sure that it is real health insurance for real workers who need it.”
[RWC] The only way to “improve” Obamacare is to repeal it and not replace it. Obamacare is bad economic policy and unconstitutional.
Yes, I know the Supreme Court ruled Obamacare is constitutional, twice. The problem is, the effect of the first decision (National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius) is the federal government can force individuals to purchase anything as long as the law – or the Supreme Court - calls the penalty for noncompliance a tax. That’s exactly the kind of thing the Founders tried to avoid when they granted the federal government limited responsibilities. To make sure their intent was not misunderstood, the Founders added the Ninth and Tenth amendments. Despite the Supreme Court’s ruling to the contrary, Obamacare is unconstitutional.
Leftists want a government-run, taxpayer-funded healthcare monopoly (aka “single-payer,” “universal care system,” and so on). Citizens cannot be dependent on their government for medical needs and remain free. Let’s say you believe your medical insurance provider, doctor, and so on is doing something illegal. If the provider is in the private sector, you can present your case to our legal system. If the provider is the government, to whom do you go when the wolf is guarding the henhouse?
A free market represents the best approach to providing the best combination of healthcare accessibility, choice, price, quality, timeliness of treatment, et cetera. Where we are now is the result of our government meddling with medical care since WWII.
No approach – either private or public – is perfect and some people won’t be able to afford healthcare or healthcare insurance no matter how inexpensive it is. Do I believe people who need help because of unforeseen circumstances should get it? Of course, but via private charities funded by voluntary contributions. There’s more detail in my healthcare paper.
What happened to BHO’s claims that I could keep my policy and my premium would drop? I couldn’t keep my policy of 10+ years because it was not Obamacare compliant. Effective January 1st, my medical insurance premium increased 57%, continuing an ugly trend. Even though I monkeyed with co-pays, deductibles, and so on to cut benefits, and hopefully my premium, my medical insurance premium has increased 283% since Obamacare was signed into law in 2010. For details, please read my comment for “Republicans fought Obama … .”
I don’t know if Obamacare authors and supporters designed it to fail to hasten the coming of their government-run, taxpayer-funded healthcare monopoly. That leads to the following question: if Obamacare wasn’t designed to fail, how did so many smart Obamacare authors and supporters get it so wrong?
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