Much to the dismay, once again, of the insurers.
It's so hard to believe this isn't working out. You let a bunch of liberals who understand nothing about how insurance works set the rules for how insurance has to work. Then, when everyone starts losing their coverage and premiums are soaring - and no one can sign up for new coverage even if they want to - you make up new rules on the fly for how to "fix" all this. And the result is that you completely destablize the market you were so sure would work better if only you could run it.
Late yesterday the White House announced the latest fly-by-the-seat-of-its-pants "fix" to ObamaCare, which on the surface is actually somewhat appealing, but is functionally a disaster in the overall context of how the law has screwed with the market. The gist of it is this: If you had one of those "substandard," "bare-bones" plans and it got cancelled because it didn't mean ObamaCare "standards" (in other words, it costs a lot more and provides you with all kinds of "benefits" you neither want nor need), you can get a "hardship exemption" to the tax penalty they sock you with for not having insurance, while some people under 30 can buy less expensive plans that primarily offer catastrophic coverage.
Now I like plans like that. They reflect how health insurance actually should work. The whole idea of insurance is to protect you against risk, which in this case means extraordinarily large costs from an unforeseen issue, rather than to pay all your bills (or a portion of all your bills) right from the get-go. It's because health insurance has evolved such that people don't really feel the costs of the care they receive that it and health care in general have become so expensive. You say people can't possibly pay their own bills without insurance, because it would cost too much, but to the extent that's true it's because you made it that way by making them all dependent on insurance.
So you might think it would be a welcome move that the Obama Administration is going to let some people maintain policies like this. But any insurance market can only function to the extent the entire market is healthy, and that is not the case - precisely because of ObamaCare, which mandates exceedingly generous benefits for everyone. That's a promise that insurers can only fulfill if massive numbers of people who don't need such coverage - and will not use it - are forced to buy it anyway. That's what ObamaCare says must happen, so the health insurance industry ramped up to adjust its models accordingly.
Now, at the last minute, with the whole thing imploding, the White House changes the rules again and the insurance industry is left with its collective head spinning. The Washington Post:
"This latest rule change could cause significant instability in the marketplace and lead to further confusion and disruption for consumers," said Robert Zirkelbach, spokesman for America'sHealth Insurance Plans .Only Wednesday, the industry had announced its own accommodation - giving consumers an extra 10 days to pay January's premiums.. . .Democrats generally praised the latest steps as a commonsensebackup in a difficult situation. Republicans panned the administration action as another patch to an unworkable law.Insurers are concerned that healthy customers who potentially would have bought full coverage may now stay out of the market, leaving the companies with a group of patients in worse health overall.
Not a tear should be shed here for the health insurance companies, who got in bed with the Democrats to help craft ObamaCare on the expectation that they would benefit from the individual mandate. I really don't care what happens to them. Unfortunately, the system has been set up such that everyone has to depend on them, and if they can't do what they're supposed to do, a whole lot of people are going to be left without any reasonable way to access care. You can't force everyone to rely on insurance and then destroy the ability of the insurers to cover costs. But that's exactly what ObamaCare does because its scheme for reconfiguring the risk pool doesn't work, and its make-it-up-as-we-go-along "fixes" only make the problem worse.
What a mess. The only way to fix ObamaCare is to repeal ObamaCare. Democrats need to let go of their pride and their fear of political consequences, admit they screwed up and clean up their mess before it destroys the entire health care system. And if Obama refuses to sign the repeal because of his own narcissistic pride - which is likely knowing him - then enough Democrats need to find it within themselves to put the nation ahead of their party and vote to override his veto.
If that means they face an electoral bloodbath next year, tough. That's what they deserve for passing this monster. Maybe it will teach them a lesson about not abusing your power and screwing around with what you don't understand.
These people need to stop their nonsense and do the right thing before the law they passed pushes the health care system in this nation into total collapse.
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