Obamacare may not be good news for taxpayers or consumers, but let’s look at the bright side. At least the law has generated some superb political humor, including funny videos.
*The head of the National Socialist Workers Party finds out he can’t keep his health plan.
*A creepy version of Uncle Sam wants to know about your sex life.
*Young people discover that they’re screwed by Obamacare.
*One of the biggest statists of the 20th century is angry that the Obamacare exchanges don’t work.
We have another addition to this amusing collection. This cartoon video employs lots of snark to expose the illogical underpinnings of Obamacare.
My one complaint with this video, though, is that it merely scratches the surface.
Yes, Obamacare is a cluster-you-know-what, but there are many other government programs and policies that cause inefficiency and high costs
Here’s some of what I wrote on this topic back in 2009, starting with an explanation of how government intervention in the tax code has distorted the insurance market and turned it into an inefficient form of pre-paid healthcare.
Insurance is supposed to be for unforseen major expenses, such as a heart attack. But our gold-plated health plans now mean we use insurance for routine medical costs. This means, of course, we have the paperwork issues discussed above, but that’s just a small part of the problem. Even more problematic, our pre-paid health care system is somewhat akin to going to an all-you-can-eat restaurant. We have an incentive to over-consume since we’ve already paid. Except this analogy is insufficient. When we go to all-you-can-eat restaurants, at least we know we’re paying a certain amount of money for an unlimited amount of food. Many Americans, by contrast, have no idea how much of their compensation is being diverted to purchase health plans.
I then ask readers to contemplate what car insurance would look like if government also intervened in that market. Or to think about the consequences if insurance for houses also was subject to government-caused distortion.
Imagine if auto insurance worked this way? Or homeowner’s insurance? Would it make sense to file insurance forms to get an oil change? Or to buy a new couch? That sounds crazy. The system would be needlessly bureaucratic, and costs would rise because we would act like we were spending other people’s money. But that’s what would probably happen if government intervened in the same way it does in the health-care sector.
The best way of fixing the mess in health insurance, for what it’s worth, is a flat tax. This is because the “healthcare exclusion” is repealed and compensation in the form of fringe benefits is taxed at the same (low) rate as other forms of income.
This presumably will end the incentive for gold-plated Cadillac health plans since workers – once the playing field is level – will prefer a greater amount cash compensation. So health plans gradually will be scaled back so they offer genuine insurance.
This video from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity offers a good explanation.
You also should watch this Reason TV video that shows a real-world example of how prices fall and the system is more efficient when consumers are in charge of healthcare.
For the same reason, I also recommend this story from North Carolina, as well as this example of capitalism from Maine.
It’s also worth noting that there are a few tiny parts of our healthcare system where markets are allowed to operate and consumers are in charge of spending their own money, and in these areas – such as cosmetic surgery, laser eye surgery, and abortion (regardless of whether you approve or disapprove) – we find stable prices and rising quality.
Free markets work…when they’re allowed to function.
[…] you want videos on the topic, here’s a Dutch expert explaining the issue. I also recommend this clever cartoon video that explains third-party payer and this video from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity. And this […]
[…] want another video on the topic, here’s a Dutch expert making similar points. I also recommend this clever cartoon video that explains third-party payer. And this Reason video on how costs are lower when actual markets […]
[…] Funny Cartoon Video Mocks Obamacare […]
[…] want another video on the topic, here’s a Dutch expert making similar points. I also recommend this clever cartoon video that explains third-party payer. And this Reason video on how costs are lower when actual markets […]
[…] want another video on the topic, here’s a Dutch expert making similar points. I also recommend this clever cartoon video that explains third-party payer. And this Reason video on how costs are lower when actual markets […]
[…] another video on the topic, here’s a Dutch expert making similar points. I also recommend this clever cartoon video that explains third-party payer. And this Reason video on how costs are lower when actual markets […]
“ObamaCare Defender Forced to Try ObamaCare says, “I Feel Like a Dupe”.
oh my! such language….
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/obamacare-defender-forced-to-try-obamacare-says-i-feel-like-a-dupe/
[…] consumer tries to buy […]
The interesting thing is that we already spend enough on healthcare to give every adult citizen $3,000 with which to buy healthcare.
The healthcare tax deduction costs $200 billion. Medicaid payments to cover the poor amount to $300 billion. Deducting $3,000 from all on Medicare would raise about $120 billion [for no net change in coverage]. Since there are slightly over 200 million adult citizens, we would have enough to pay out $600 billion.
For those that have no insurance, they could use the $3,000 to buy minimal insurance. For those that do have insurance, [assuming a 25% flat tax to make calculation easy] the $3,000 would be the equivalent of a $12,000 tax deduction per adult.
The government could get out of the way of a free market revolution in healthcare.
pajama boy is back……………….
[…] Funny Cartoon Video Mocks Obamacare […]
Senator Mark Pryor of Arkansas said that Obamacare is working great now!!!
The overriding factor that keeps ObamaCare alive in the mind of voter-lemmings — and what will ultimately bring about the eventual complete nationalization/socialization of all American healthcare — is that ObamaCare is an enormous redistribution vehicle. A redistribution whose bill has not yet come due. Most of it is accumulating as deficit and as erosion of America’s only unique and pivotal social capital in world competition: Self reliance, and the steeper effort-reward curves and productivity it entails.
Because when you give to many according to need, you must inevitably and eventually collect from many according to ability. Or at least think that you will, while maintaining the effort-reward curves that keep your nation most prosperous and most competitive in the world. So good luck with that perpetual motion machine of flattening the effort-reward curves an continue to outcompete seven billion on this planet.
So who will pay for the accumulating redistribution? According to voter-lemmings it will be the rich — that inexhaustible source of vitality and worldwide competitiveness waiting to be ever more communitized.
Alas, Americans will discover otherwise. Americans are firmly en route to experiencing the universal lesson: Mediocre effort-reward curves inevitably lead to mediocre prosperity ranking. And since, for America, this journey towards mediocrity starts from a very high point, it will be a long wretched way down. think Argentina. And since we are living in a fast moving and ever accelerating twenty first century, this decline will unfold much more quickly than most imagine. Most Americans still believe that with some luck they can pass on the problem to their children. Alas, not this time. Not in the twenty first century.
As in the world of business, so in the world of international competition, things are highly non-linear to the point of almost exhibiting discontinuities and hysteresis. No much seems to happen while your once unique competitiveness declines but remains above that of other nations. Then, once it drops below the level of your best competitors, all hell breaks loose. In the ensuing stressful times, you then make ever worse decisions, in an ever intensifying cycle of further and further compromising the longer term just to hang on to the past good reality another day, month, year.
Alas most American voter lemmings will continue to exploit the newly discovered source of prosperity ( which in reality is the proverbial banana peel of civilizations since time immemorial): Mark an X on ballot, get some goodies that “others” produce.
Keep in mind this reality in your personal plans and you may make the best out of a deteriorating situation on the American subcontinent. But the time to make the plans and take action is now. Now that HopNChangers still think we’re on our way to better days. Once reality starts unfolding, the safety exits will be jammed in the stampede.
But also keep some optimism. Perhaps there won’t be a big crisis. Perhaps it will just be a slower, wretched, but orderly decline. A slow, more gradual decline into an inert welfare state. As in France — for now at least.
Amazing how smapple recalls the HMO rise as a government intervention, when it wasn’t.
Here are more facts you may wish not to be bothered by:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/singham/2014/03/05/fake-obamacare-victims/
What a lot of these stories have in common are, first of all, a subject largely unaware of his or her options under the ACA or unwilling to determine them; and, second, shockingly uninformed and incurious news reporters, including some big names in the business, who don’t bother to look into the facts of the cases they’re offering for public consumption.
This oddity caused Kevin Drum to pose the reasonable question: If the opponents who have all the resources to pour into discrediting the ACA cannot come up with even a single plausible victim, does this mean that there is not a single person adversely affected?
This seems unlikely. What is likely is that the people who have been negatively affected are people who are well-to-do and thus not eligible for the subsidies. But well-off people do not make for sympathetic stories. In fact, people are getting pretty sick of rich people whining about how tough things are for them
Got anything other than cartoons? Bugs Bunny is more entertaining, but that doesn’t make his films more historical, nor accurate with regard to ObamaCare.
The scary part to me about Obamacare is that we have been through similar circumstances once before- when the government first stuck its nose into our healthcare business. In the 80’s they began to introduce the concept of HMO’s. the idea being that in order to be healthy, and to control healthcare costs, you needed a maintenance program, not just emergency calls. The idea being that people did not take care of themselves so they needed continuous visits to the doctor to keep them in line with their health, because catastrophic care was what was driving the major costs to insurance companies. If you recall when that happened, there was also a mad scramble as many doctors were not in the plans you were offered. it took YEARS for it to stabilize to a point where you could choose whatever doctor you wanted. It was a mess. Obamacare assumes the same- it will be a mess but it will stabilize, and people will accept it if they can just keep doing executive orders as the slide its various pieces quietly into place. I think they are making an assumption that will not meet truth.
Not to be sexist, but the only ones who take advantage of HMO-type care are women. I still do NOT see a doctor if I don’t think I need one. And even when ill, I do not go unless I am ready to die. So, I guess the question is- will women also make Obamacare work?
Reblogged this on U.S. Constitutional Free Press.