We have a very interesting question from a reader in Nebraska. Is Obamacare such a cluster-you-know-what that the law will self-destruct?
Well, I’ve already explained why I’m optimistic about the possibility of turning Obamacare lemons into free-market lemonade.
Simply stated, the law took a healthcare system that already was a mess because of government intervention and subsidies and it doubled down on that misguided approach!
And since it’s highly unlikely that more government is the solution to problems created by government in the first place, I think we’ll have great fun being able to highlight all the bad consequences of Obamacare and make a principled case for pro-market reform (meaning not only Medicaid reform and Medicare reform, but also tax reform to help deal with the third-party payer crisis).
That being said, I don’t think Obamacare will collapse on its own. We’re going to have to give it a push. A big push.
This is because legislation will be required to undo all the taxes and subsidies in the law. And even though we have the bizarre situation of the Obama Administration deciding to deliberately ignore a legal requirement to impose an employer mandate beginning in 2014, we’ll also need legislation to undo both the individual and the employer mandate.
In other words, the fact that the law won’t achieve any of its goals (such as lower costs and universal insurance coverage) won’t cause the bad policy to disappear.
But it will make the law even more unpopular – particularly if we do our job.
That’s why we should relentlessly highlight examples of wasteful Obamacare spending. The Washington Post, for instance, is reporting on “the extreme measures states are taking to get young people signed up for Obamacare programs.”
And when even the Washington Post thinks politicians and bureaucrats are going above and beyond in their efforts to waste money, you know it’s something especially foolish. But when you’re trying to trick young people into signing up for insurance policies designed to subsidize richer seniors, you don’t really have much choice.
Oregon might do branded coffee cups, for example, whereas Seattle is looking at doing outreach at music festivals. It only makes sense, then, that Kentucky would be doing outreach at multiple bourbon festivals across the state.
From a big picture perspective, this type of waste in just a penny or two on the dollar, but it’s very symbolic of a law that is poorly designed and unworkable.
I also think political cartoonists are very helpful allies since they’re so effective at illustrating some of the worst parts of Obamacare. So let’s wrap up this post with a new batch of cartoons.
We’ll start with a couple that skirt the edge of appropriateness by playing off the recent airline crash in San Francisco. The first one is by Steve Breen.
And the second one is by Eric Allie.
The donkey pilot blaming the elephant passenger is a good touch, and you find that theme in this Gary Varvel gem.
Let’s close with a great Rick McKee cartoon that focuses on exploding costs, a message near and dear to my heart.
One final warning. We’re not guaranteed of victory simply because Obamacare is leading to bad results. The statists are going to try and seize control of the narrative by asserting that the higher costs and greater inefficiencies could be fixed by squandering more money in the short run and imposing a single-payer system in the long run.
That’s a very perverse example of Mitchell’s Law and it surely doesn’t make sense to normal people. But it’s an approach that plays to the worst instincts of politicians, many of who will grab any excuse to increase the size and scope of Washington.
[…] to protect and restore economic liberty, I’m just glad that there’s growing recognition that Obamacare is a turkey that needs to be repealed. No wonder I’m getting more optimistic with each passing […]
[…] and restore economic liberty, I’m just glad that there’s growing recognition that Obamacare is a turkey that needs to be repealed. No wonder I’m getting more optimistic with each passing […]
[…] the law won’t collapse on its own. Indeed, its failures will be used as excuses for even more […]
[…] not just our chance to repeal Obamacare. We may actually have a chance to deal with the larger government-caused problems in our healthcare […]
[…] not just our chance to repeal Obamacare. We may actually have a chance to deal with the larger government-caused problems in our healthcare […]
[…] bad policy based on bad economics. But failure doesn’t mean the law blows up and disappears. Legislation will be required to undo the damage, which is why it’s good that some lawmakers continue to […]
[…] with a serious point. While it’s increasingly obvious that Obamacare won’t work, that doesn’t mean it will collapse on its own. You need new legislation to undo the damage caused by previous legislation (as well as all the […]
I think the Affordable Care Act will collapse because our government bureaucracy has finally found a law so complex and convoluted that they cannot translate it into workable government programs. Although I would enjoy a dramatic “Release the Kraken” collapse of the Affordable Care Act I am afraid we are destined to endure a “Erma Bombeck” type collapse. One day we will look at our newly planted garden and realize that the green stuff growing out there is just weeds and that may be we should restrict our future experiments in gardening to the vegetable section of the grocery store. The Affordable Care Act is just a bunch of weeds in our health care garden and no amount of weeding by our government bureaucracy is going to make it work better than our existing health care system. Ultimately the law fell prey to the main instigators of economic entropy, Murphy’s law and the Peter Principle. So let me count the ways the Affordable Care Act has failed us.
1. A remark by Juan Williams reminded me that there is an easy alternative to the Affordable Care Act. As a healthy person who purchases their health insurance through the individual market, I was better off with the health insurance I got before the Affordable Care Act. I can safely say that I would be much better off if the Affordable Care Act quietly disappeared. So I am quietly rooting for Team Murphy to triumph.
2. Although many people complain about the Individual Mandate there are very few people who can explain how this arbitrary method of cost shifting is better than the existing system. The problem is how does society pay for the health care of those who are uninsured and chronically ill. The Affordable Care Act solution is spread these costs over the smallest insurance group market, the individual health insurance market. In comparison the existing system is far more equitable since it spreads the costs over a larger population. When we realize that we are sacrificing one of our freedoms so that we can implement a less equitable cost sharing method, we come to the inevitable conclusion that the person who crafted this part of the law was in over their head. Way to go Peter!
3. The big question in 2014 is what will a bronze level plan cost? Will it cost closer to the individual market rate of $5,000 for a family or the large group rate of $15,000? There are several unions having a panic attack right now because they think it will be closer to $5,000. Businesses look at this price as a golden opportunity to dump their employees into the exchanges and get out of the health insurance business. I realize the long term goal for businesses was to get out of the health insurance business but I do not think the unions or businesses expected it to happen this quickly. This is as close to a “Release the Kraken” moment we are going to get. Chalk this one up to Team Murphy!
4. The employer mandate has been delayed for at least one year and Ezra Klein is arguing that “the employer mandate shouldn’t be delayed, it should be repealed”. If there is no employer mandate, the Affordable Care Act becomes an even a bigger mess to implement. One of the reasons some businesses were lobbying for Medicaid expansion was to reduce the size of their employer mandate penalty. I suspect they are no longer interested in Medicaid expansion. Good luck with gathering support for that Medicaid expansion. Chalk this one up to Team Murphy!
5. So let’s not forget this Heritage Foundation list.
1. The CLASS Act: ABANDONED, THEN REPEALED
One Democrat famously called this new long-term care entitlement “a Ponzi scheme of the first order, the kind of thing that Bernie Madoff would have been proud of”—and so it proved. In the fall of 2011, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) admitted CLASS could not be implemented in a fiscally sound manner—and Congress eventually repealed the program outright.
2. Exchanges: MISSED DEADLINES
Most states resisted Obamacare’s call to create insurance exchanges, choosing to let Washington create a federally run exchange instead. However, a Government Accountability Office report released last month noted that “critical” activities to create a federal exchange have not been completed, and the missed deadlines “suggest a potential for challenges going forward.”
3. HHS mandate: DELAYED; UNDER LEGAL CHALLENGE
Last year, the Administration announced a partial delay for Obamacare’s anti-conscience mandate. However, many employers have filed legal actions against the mandate, which forces them to fund products they find morally objectionable or pay massive fines.
>>> Get the latest on Hobby Lobby’s case against the HHS mandate
4. Small business plan choice: DELAYED
The Administration announced in April that workers will not be able to choose plans from different health insurers in the small business exchanges next year—a delay that liberal blogger Joe Klein called “a really bad sign” of “Obamacare incompetence.”
5. Child-only plans: UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES
A drafting error in Obamacare has actually led to less access to care for children with pre-existing conditions. A 2011 report found that in 17 states, insurers are no longer selling child-only health insurance plans, because they fear that individuals will apply for coverage only after being diagnosed with a costly illness.
6. Basic health plan: DELAYED
This government-run plan for states, created as part of Obamacare, has also been delayed, prompting one Democrat to criticize the Administration for failing to “live up” to the law and implement it as written.
7. High-risk pools: UNDERPERFORMING; FUNDING LOW
This program for individuals with pre-existing conditions faced higher costs and lower enrollment than advertised. Though it was originally projected to cover up to 700,000 individuals, only about 110,000 have enrolled—yet the Administration had to halt new enrollment and take other radical measures to prevent the $5 billion program from running out of money.
8. Early retiree reinsurance: BROKE
The $5 billion in funding for this program was intended to last until 2014—but the program’s money ran out in 2011, two years ahead of schedule.
9. Waivers: UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES
After the law passed, HHS discovered that some of its new mandates would raise costs so much that employers would drop coverage rather than face skyrocketing premiums. Instead, the Administration announced a series of temporary waivers—and more than half the recipients of those waivers were members of union health insurance plans.
10. Co-ops: DEFUNDED
Congress blocked additional funding to this Obamacare program in January, and with good reason: In one case, a new health insurance co-op was called “fatally flawed” by Vermont’s state insurance commissioner.
11. “Employee free choice”: REPEALED
This provision, which would have allowed certain workers to use contributions from their employers to buy exchange health plans, was repealed in April 2011, as businesses considered it too complex and unworkable.
12. Medicaid expansion: REJECTED BY MANY STATES
the affordable care act is a POS legislation… it’s implementation would be a disaster for the economy as well as the healthcare system… it’s implosion would be a gift from God… but sadly…at this point… there doesn’t seem to be a viable plan for repealing it… it would seem that our only hope is the republicans… and they are busy singing love songs… chasing goats around the pasture… and wondering why they keep losing presidential elections… all ye who enter here… abandon hope…. the end is near…
The biggest problem is that when Obamacare does collapse, there is no clear path to a true free market approach.
Currently there are four groups that need to be addressed:
1. Those who can pay for their own healthcare arrangement. [Many of these currently receive healthcare through their employer.]
2. Those who are healthy but cannot pay for their own healthcare.
3. Those on or expecting support through Medicare.
4. Those with pre-existing conditions, who may or may not be on Medicaid.
Group 1 needs a true individual based approach to free market healthcare, see:
Group 2 should have safety-net support that includes provision for minimal healthcare support for catastrophic problems. [Sorry, premium support for everyone is utopian and just not practical.]
Groups 3 and 4 are transitional cost problems. Our government has made commitments to individuals that must be kept. However, if Groups 1 and 2 are encouraged to purchase healthcare support, in 50 years there will be no one in Groups 3 and 4.
One free market approach would be to buyout commitments made to Groups 3 and 4, with enough funds to cover the same level of care received currently. The cash required for this buyout would decline with the number of outstanding commitments.
For an intergrated plan for accomplishing this, see:
Obamacare is designed to collapse. The phase 2 part, that they didn’t dare include, was the creation of a single, government controlled, regulated and rationed healthcare system. They knew that would be sumilarly rejected, so they left it out. Plan was to wait for the collapse, the loss of healthcare for the majority of Americans, and then they could ride to the rescue with a government rationed program that will be “better than nothing”, all the while trumpeting that they are rescuing America from the evil GOP that somehow magically caused it to collapse.
I cannot believe how inefficient and non-opportunistic the GOP is on Obamacare … They spout regurgitated rhetoric with the seeming belief that if they do so enough times – like a mantra – it will magically change the outcome … a true definition of insanity. The missteps and outright flagrant disregard for their (democrats) own law should be enough to spur the GOP into real action to void this law, yet, they don’t even seem to have any sense of urgency about the issue. This is a no-brainer … either the law is put into place in its entirety or the whole law is delayed until all facets can be properly implemented … Unfortunately, it seems that the GOP is as much a statist organization as the socialists/progressives/democrats … Everyone talks about the relevancy of the Constitution when, in fact, what we should be discussing is the relative inefficiency of our two party system … How about the Founders Party? A Party committed to the principles – and ideals – espoused and established by the men who founded this country … limited government. In today’s light, term limits for the House, Senate AND Supreme Court – a Justice past twenty years has missed a generation in colloquial relevance; And that holds true for Senators and Representatives as well … The time has arrived.
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