I contend that there are multiple problems, not just one.
One problem was people not getting care. So Ronald Reagan signed legislation to force hospitals to treat people at ERs. That solved a problem...but caused another. Hospitals had a cost forced upon them by an unfunded mandate from government.
There was no incentive for people not to go to the ER. People were not buying health insurance, and then costs were going onto others.
Obamacare was a way to force people to be responsible, as Americans didn't want people either dying in the street or dumping costs onto others. (Yes, I realize it also addressed other issues, like pre-existing conditions.)
Going back to pre-Obamacare doesn't solve the issues that led to the passage of Obamacare. Anyone who thinks so is either ignorant or dishonest. Repealing Obamacare will be dumping costs onto others, irresponsibly. We must also, to be fair and intellectually honest, either allow for people dying in the streets, or else pick up those costs as taxpayers.
But it seems many people want someone else to pay.
For starters, if people were dying in the streets, it's only because they didn't make it to the hospital.
When we ran an ambulance call, we didn't ask for insurance or check people's wallets, we stabilized and transported. If we could keep 'em going long enough to get them down the red line or on the helicopter, they got care, period.
Obamacare didn't pay for health care, it is an insurance scam.
The words health care and health insurance were used interchangeably to obfusticate the issue.
There is no reason I should have to pay nearly 30K a year for a healthy family of 4 to have a 14K deductible for health insurance, except that someone else who has not lived a particularly healthy lifestyle is really padding out that tab, or the middlemen in the system are taking one hell of a cut.
That insurance would be for a family with a history of less than 8K a year in medical costs, for quite a few years.
In the interest of making sure people who didn't have health insurance, got health insurance, there were multitudes who had 'lesser plans' to take care of the big events, and who paid the small stuff out of pocket, who lost their insurance.
Total cost for the family of 4 was about 14 K for catastrophic coverage and actual costs, COMBINED.
Half what the insurance alone (not counting deductibles and co-pays) would cost under Obamacare, for the whole shooting match.
So who is getting fat off this deal?
For starters, Obamacare mandates coverage that may not be needed by the individual, ever, (by that I mean things like prenatal care and contraceptives for post menopausal nuns), and that ordinarily would not be present in a plan a family or even a group might seek. OB coverage? not at our age. Contraceptives? Nope. Drug or alcohol rehab? No, thanks, don't do either. Prescription drug coverage? No thanks, aside from the occasional antibiotic, we don't do those either.
All of these considerations are high dollar items, and the more paperwork filed, the more expensive they are to provide coverage for.
Since ours covered events which led to ER visits, day surgery (or more) or hospital admissions, the rest was pretty much out of the HSA. This meant a reduction in paperwork, not only for the insurance company, but the hospital, too. Give me the bill, I pay the bill. Done. If for some reason I had not been able to pay, I could talk with the provider and set up a payment plan. People did this on a regular basis.
But Obamacare, the outfit that couldn't put up a working website, was geared with the Omnibus in mind, with
everything covered in the insurance, and which added a whole bureaucracy in the middle.
There is little the private sector can't do more efficiently, faster, and cheaper than the Government, and this is just another example. Except the private sector can't strongarm the public, not like the IRS.
Overall, If we had just paid the bills for those who couldn't (something we were all doing anyway, either through Medicaid or on our own doctor bill), it would have been cheaper, but there was a whole subsidy scam set up which amounts to medical welfare, and is structured similarly with means testing for benefits, and which also masks the actual costs from those who are subsidized--costs which go beyond the cost of health care, because at the bottom of it all are the federal bureaucracies dealing with means testing and the distribution of subsidies.
Well, we didn't qualify for a subsidy, nor medicaid, we just fell through the cracks while the plan we had which worked went the way of the dinosaurs who watched the bolide come in. No work for a year=no money coming in, but we didn't qualify for any of it. Now people who had insurance can "die in the streets" and be penalized for the privilege.
I refused to pay 28K a year for insurance, especially with a 14K deductible. That's nuts for a family whose normal medical costs were under 8 K a year.
Would you save 20 grand a year?
I knew you would.
Typical of Democrat programs, there are unintended consequences. The whole setup catered specifically to poor people (who were already covered under medicaid, for the most part), and "working poor" who may still be working part time, or who may have lost their full time job because the employer could not afford to buy them the Cadillac plans mandated--job loss being another unintended consequence, along with the loss of "inferior" insurance plans.
This is what happens when you have people with a benefit package to die for, who don't have to show a profit in what they do, making rules for people who never had a 'wish list' plan, but who do have to run in the black on the bottom line.
But the other thing is that there were people who were going to be covered who have conditions who were uninsurable under ordinary policies because of lifestyle choices. I'm not talking about little Billy with the childhood cancer (Ever hear of St. Jude's Hospitals for Children? The Shriners have one, too.)
I'm not talking about needle junkies who were going through rehab on the State tab anyway (which has burgeoned into a whole 'nother scam).
I'm talking about a trillion dollar medical liability that largely belongs to a group who is disproportionately
represented in Washington DC for a disease that is primarily related to behaviour.
Yes, that one.
One million three hundred thousand and growing segment of the population who caught a disease either because they shared needles or homosexual contact, for the most part. and the bill for the known and already existing population is estimated at one trillion dollars. If they need a program to pay for that care, set one up and leave the rest of us out of it as much as possible. But had that been done, the backlash would have been predictably severe.
In the meantime, the whole bit about people dying in the streets evokes imagery that might engender a more sympathetic response from the people about to get it up the a$$, whether they swing that way or not.
Repeal this crap, lock, stock, and barrel.
