Confusopolies

Scott Adams is right again ... nobody really understands all the ins and outs of Obamacare or Trumpcare ... "confusopolies" -- laws designed to confound voters with complexity ... see: Dilbert Blog. However, there are some Occam's razors that can cut through some of this complexity. Let me offer a few that I think clarifies things a mite:

- In 1980, healthcare costs consumed 10% of the US economy. Today, after over 36 years of "solutions" this sector has grown to almost 18% ... see:  Commonwealth Fund. So, none of these schemes, including Obamacare, has bent down the cost curve. And, it seems problematic that Trumpcare will succeed where other confusopolies have failed.

- One reason for such a large share of our GNP, that healthcare consumes, is the false notion that healthcare insurance (including Medicaid and Medicare) equals healthcare. For years every American, including immigrants ... legal and illegal ...have been guaranteed healthcare. When you insert a middleman between a patient and a doctor, you by definition increase costs. The bill of goods that liberals have sold to Americans is that everyone needs healthcare insurance (i.e., a middleman). Why? Since this is one major reason for our inflation in healthcare costs?

- Flash ... the liberals ultimate solution to this confusopoly, single-payer healthcare (i.e. socialized medicine), does not eliminate these insurance middlemen ... it just replaces them with government bureaucrats. When was the last time that government was more efficient and effective than private industry? Conservative Charles Krauthammer believes that, within 7 years years, we will be forced into having a single payer system ... the sotto voce goal of Obamacare. This will mean the ultimate distruction of what was once the world's  premier healthcare system.

- Another reason that U.S. healthcare costs are so high is that, because of the insertion of insurance companies between patients and doctors, free-market forces have disappeared. A patient who gets a knee replacement does not know (nor care) if it costs $2,000 or $20,000 ... and, in fact, seldom actually sees the ultimate bill? So, what do you think the cost turns out to be?

- To make matters even worse, liberals have sold Americans on the notion that, even without mandated healthcare insurance, people can wait until they are sick to buy such insurance ... or what has been known as "no denial for pre-existing conditions." This is like allowing you to buy home fire insurance just when the fire engines are on their way ... clearly fiscal insanity.

The real resolution for run-away healthcare costs, if the American people want a solution, would be disintermediation ... the elimination of the healthcare middlemen ... and the unleashing of free-market forces. Trumpcare takes baby steps in this direction. Will it, or its Senate remake, continue on this path? The 2018 midterm elections will be determinative. Let's hope Krauthammer is wrong for a change.

An easy way to tell whether the American consumer will be the winner when the Obamacare fix is finished ... watch to see if the stock prices of the healthcare insurers tank. If so, we win.

Smoking Gun

Don’t be bamboozled by all the newspeak coming out of the Obama administration and from our fearless leader.  They and he knew all along how Obamacare was going to devastate current health-care insurance … both individual plans and company plans.

The following Federal Registry chart (published 6/17/2010) has been highlighted by John Hinderaker of the Powerline blog.  It is the smoking gun that clearly shows the administration’s shocking predictions of the percentages of employer health-care policies that would lose their grandfather status and be canceled (now postponed until next year by Obama's recent ukase) as a result of this wack-a-doodle legislation (click on the chart to enlarge it):

 To read John’s further and deeper thoughts on this depressing revelation go to his blog entry HERE.

Let’s face it … we’ve been had.  Obama and his cronies had clearly decided early-on to remake our health-care system in its entirety.  Because our then-current system had eczema, their cure was euthanasia.

Bad Apples

President Obama just labeled those health insurance companies which are now dropping hundreds of thousands of their clients as “bad apples.”  Quite a tame appellation … no?  Particularly for our pugilistic President.  I kinda think that Mr. Obamacare’s real feelings are quite a bit darker.  Health insurance companies are dropping their clients pell-mell because they can’t afford to insure them under the tenants of Obamacare.  And when the employer mandate kicks in next October (perhaps delayed again until after the mid-term elections?) the total number of Americans who will eventually lose their current policies was secretly estimated by our government at around 93 million!  (See: Forbes Blockbuster Story).

Now, these healthcare insurance companies greedily went along with Obamacare in the first place because they thought that they would tap into a huge 30 million or so block of the then uninsured.  (I almost said uninsured Americans, but I think that might have been misleading.)  In essence, our nanny government was promising to reward them for not objecting to Obama’s takeover of healthcare by making them partners in this crime.  Now comes the cruel light of dawn.

These “bad apples” trusted our fearless leader and will, unfortunately, never recoup anywhere near the number of clients that they will be losing.  And this is not because of a non-functioning HealthCare.gov website (it eventually will be kludged together).  It is because something like 90% of those now getting replacement healthcare insurance coverage are getting it under “expanded Medicaid” (a sotto voce part of the Obamacare law) ... see: Powerline Story … for details about this newest government entitlement (see: Affordable Care Act Tenant).

In a way, these “bad apples” will get their comeuppance for trusting President Obama and his Chicago consiglieres.  The real crime now occurring is not the mendacity of the Obama administration in its false promises about "keeping your insurance and doctor … period."  It is the coming devastation of America's healthcare insurance industry … to be followed by the likely gutting of the healthcare system itself.

How’s that for audacity?