The Train Wreck Approaches

About a year ago I explained in detail why the rapidly approaching federal health insurance mandate under the so-called “Affordable Health Care act,” a.k.a. Obama Care, will not be affordable. (Part 1) (Part 2)

One Democrat lawmaker has described it as an approaching train wreck. He’s right. The president flat out lied to the American people when he told us that the costs of health care and health care insurance will go down dramatically once the law fully takes effect.

Unfortunately, the opposite will be proven true. The costs of health care and health care insurance are going to go up – way up -- instead of down. The nation’s healthy people, who did not need health insurance coverage in the past, will not only be required to start buying it for themselves, but will also be forced to pay the skyrocketing costs of health care and health care insurance for the nation’s sick people.

Those who could afford to buy basic health care insurance in the past will now be essentially paying for the health care of those who could not afford to buy insurance. Since insurance companies will not be allowed to deny coverage or increase individual premiums for preexisting conditions, policy holders with no preexisting conditions will be paying the increased costs to treat those with preexisting conditions. 

These requirements that insurance companies pay benefits for pre-existing conditions and cover children on their parent’s policies until age 26 will drastically raise the cost of premiums for all policy holders.

Since every item and cost of health care will now be covered by insurance, and everyone will be covered by insurance, the demand for health care products and services will skyrocket and the insurance companies will therefore be forced to charge much higher premiums.

Employers and other group entities will be forced to discontinue paying for employee and member health care insurance plans because such insurance plans will no longer be an affordable cost of doing business. That means that individuals who once enjoyed employer or other group paid benefits will be forced to pay the higher costs of individual coverage.

The government will subsidize the insurance premiums for low income people which will require higher income people to pay higher taxes to cover the costs. Thus, Obama Care will become a huge transfer of wealth from the most affluent of the population to the less affluent. The Supreme Court held that the law amounts to a tax, and as we all know it is only the people who enjoy substantial incomes that pay taxes.

The newly created insurance exchanges overseen by the government will administer $681 billion in subsidies over the next 10 years. Armies of new federal employees and agents will be added to the government payroll to fill positions in the HHS and IRS departments. The federal government is about to assume massive new powers, including designing insurance plans, telling people where they can go for coverage and how much insurers are allowed to charge.

The new law amounts to the biggest government takeover and power grab since Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal. It makes Social Security look like small potatoes by comparison. Obama Care is socialized medicine for all and the final costs will be astronomical. It makes a mess of the entire health care system in the United States. The costs to the government, i.e., taxpayers, just for implementing and running Obama Care at the federal, state and local levels will be staggering.

The “Affordable Care Act,” all 2,700 pages of it, is not the half of it. There are currently more than 13,000 pages of government rules and regulations for administering the law with many more to follow. The Health and Human Services Department has been given $billions of dollars so far and the law has not even been implemented yet. New health insurance market places will have to be created in every state which will require more government employees and vast sums of taxpayer dollars.

According to a recent Investor’s Business Daily analysis of a GAO report, the average price for the lowest-cost Omamacare "bronze" plan in eight states is 122% higher than the cheapest plan currently available in those states. Similar cost increases for insurance coverage will prevail in all 50 states. In some states the costs for the cheapest plan will be almost three times higher than the cheapest plans available today.

No matter how one looks at this mess, Obama Care – the “Affordable Healthcare Act,” will simply not be affordable.

And the train wreck approaches.