The Obamacare deathcare system is foundering and insurers are either dropping their Obamacare coverage or suing the federal government for bailout funds while consumers are being saddled with ever-higher health insurance premiums and impossible-to-meet deductibles.
It’s failing because people who are signing on are older and/or chronically unhealthy and are being incentivized to overuse the system while the young and healthy are avoiding the system, seeing no benefit in paying high premiums for plans with deductibles and co-pays they will never achieve short of some catastrophic health event for coverage on one-size-fits-all “benefits” they will never use. In other words, Obamacare has turned out exactly as I told you it would three and a half years ago, and again two and half years ago. And it’s turned out exactly opposite of what the central planners predicted.
From The Fiscal Times:
The volatility and risk was supposed to have receded by now. After three full years of utilization and risk-pool management, ACA advocates insisted that the markets would stabilize, and premiums would come under control. Instead, premiums look set for another round of big hikes for the fourth year of the program.
Consumers seeking to comply with the individual mandate will see premiums increase on some plans from large insurers by as much as 30 percent in Oregon, 32 percent in New Mexico, 38 percent in Pennsylvania, and 65 percent in Georgia.
Thus far, insurers still claim to have confidence in the ACA model – at least, those who have not pulled out of their markets altogether. However, massive annual premium increases four years into the program demonstrate the instability and unpredictability of the Obamacare model, and a new study from Mercatus explains why.
Big Insurance and other crony corporations signed onto the plan with promises of a captured market forced into the system with guarantees of federal subsidies should the plan fail. Meanwhile, Obamacare-supporting politicos – like Senator Max Baucus and his crew – made out like bandits.
More from The Fiscal Times:
Galen Institute senior fellow Doug Badger, one of the study’s co-authors, wonders how long insurers will continue to publicly support Obamacare. In an interview with me this week, Badger noted how critical that political cover is for the White House, but predicted it won’t last – because the system itself is unsustainable, and no one knows this more than the insurers themselves, even if they remain reluctant to voice that conclusion. Until they speak up, however, the Obama administration can keep up their happy talk while insurers quietly exit these markets, an act that should be speaking volumes all on its own.
Even the Kaiser Foundation, which has supported Obamacare, has admitted that the flood of red ink has become a major issue. “I don’t know if we’re at a point where it’s completely worrisome,” spokesperson Cynthia Cox told NPR, “but I think it does raise some red flags in pointing out that insurance companies need to be able to make a profit or at least cover their costs.”
Red flags have flown all over the Obamacare model for six years. Instead of suing the federal government for losses created by a system for which they bear more than a little responsibility, insurers should finally admit out loud that the ACA is anything but affordable – not for insurers, and certainly not for consumers or taxpayers. When that finally happens, we can then start working on a viable solution based on reality rather than fealty to a failed central-planning policy.
Obamacare is known by its official name: the Affordable Care Act. As I’ve said often, one constant in politics is that the law being considered will do the exact opposite of what the politicians says it will do. Another constant is that politicians will create a problem, create a solution for the problem they created that creates more problems, then create another problem-causing solution to follow. And they always require more money.
Obamacare is no exception.
The solution is to turn to a free market in which consumers either negotiate costs directly with insurance companies for coverage they need at a cost they can afford, or better, where the consumer negotiates prices and treatment directly with the healthcare provider.
Of course, the best solution of all is for Americans to take charge of their own health and avoid modern medicine at all costs. Obamacare’s real costs are not counted in dollars. That’s because modern medicine is not “healthcare,” but sickness care.
Central planning fails every time it’s tried (see Venezuela, Soviet Union, Cuba, North Korea, etc). But there’s not been a free market in health care for more than 60 years – a period which has seen treatment costs rise exponentially as government intervention in the marketplace has increased.
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