Thursday, November 14, 2013

ObamaCare: Panic, Arbitrary Enforcement, Chaos

Six weeks after the launch of HealthCare.gov and the beginning of the ObamaCare implementation, it is starting to degenerate into chaos. Has any administration and Congress combination been so dysfunctional since the Civil War?

Let me try to grasp the key events of the last three months.
  1. Republicans try half a dozen legal efforts to delay the individual mandate in ObamaCare
  2. Republicans threaten to shut down the government and allow the country to default on its debt to stop it
  3. Democrats put up a united front and threaten to allow the country to default on its debt if any changes are made to ObamaCare
  4. HealthCare.gov launches in the middle of the fight and is an complete disaster, allowing only 6 people to enroll the first day
  5. Republicans partially shut down the government, then fold with nothing gained
  6. Deeper issues are exposed on HealthCare.gov, Obama deflects the "glitches" and promises to have the site fixed by the end of November
  7. Millions of individual health policies that don't meet the requirements of ObamaCare are cancelled
  8. Obama claims that cancelled policies were defective and inferior and people will have better plans if they are ever able to get through the bug ridden system
  9. The few that can find replacements on the health exchanges find much higher prices
  10. First month total enrollment in all states totals 106,000 (even counting those with an unpurchased plan in their shopping cart)
  11. Democrats start to abandon Obama, his approval ratings tank to all time lows
  12. Obama panics and tries to unilaterally undo the millions of cancellations for 2014, effectively delaying the individual mandate in ObamaCare! (see bullet point 1). Hey, King George could change any laws he saw fit as supreme ruler, why can't Obama?
  13. The Insurance Commissioner for Washington state rejects undoing the policies and claims it will will destabilize the insurance market
The people that rammed the health care law through in 2010 now don't like key elements of it. The main exchange for 36 states remains bug infested 6 weeks after launch. The supreme leader picks and chooses which parts of the law to uphold based on the how the political winds are blowing each day. In the Health Care games, may the odds be ever on your side.

State insurance commissioner rejects Obama’s proposal to extend canceled policies

Lawlessness: what this morning’s Obamacare announcement means

4 comments:

  1. You make it sound like a legislated disaster.

    That could not be further from the truth! It's unmitigated!

    Yikes. Family blog. Sorry about that. ;)

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  2. Stagflationary Mark,

    It was unmitigated and many other unsavory words. If you listen to the architect of Obamacare (not the web site) from MIT, he wants to make the "genetic lottery winners" pay. Just more of the government picking winners and losers. We were lucky to dodge this bullet, but there is never ending stream being shot our direction. Sigh.

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  3. Generally speaking, I've been a lottery winner win it comes to my health so far. My girlfriend has been on the losing end for decades though.

    I'm not opposed to the winners helping the losers out a bit, but I may be a bit biased. I'm already helping. She'd be bankrupt many times over if not for my significant financial support.

    It's worst than that though. She lives in pain more often than not with my help. Without it she'd be living in agony. No joke.

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  4. The whole idea of insurance is to spread around the risk between the healthy and sick so that every in the pool is covered.

    I think there are many things very wrong with our current system that Obamacare does not even attempt to address. First, there was never a free market for health care. It is cartel controlled by for profit drug companies, the for profit AMA, and for profit hospitals. Second, it is grossly distorted by Medicare and Medicaid. Now, we add a third major distortion via forced policies via taxation, except for all the exemptions that have been handed out, the delays, the exceptions for the privileged. That is, if the half a billion dollar computer system that allows people to buy their government enforced policies worked.

    A lot of people fell through the cracks in the old system. A lot people will fall through the cracks of the new system, after being run over by a steamroller. Gah!

    ReplyDelete