It was Ronald Reagan who said: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”
He was right.
Throughout my lifetime, I have seen the government meddle in everything from other country’s affairs, agricultural management and education to healthcare and it always turns out to be a disaster.
Prior to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the health insurance system in America was not perfect, but it worked well when compared with many other nations. The wealthiest among the population did not need health insurance except for major illnesses and hospitalization, the poorest received free care through a variety of programs and for the middle class. Insurance was a bit expensive, but it was generally comprehensive and could be obtained easily.
Many people chose to go with “health savings plans (HSAs);” those plans had high deductibles but were designed to kick-in and pay for a catastrophic diagnosis, such as cancer.
That wasn’t enough for the government bureaucrats who claimed HSAs did not provide for preventative care, did not allow for pre-existing conditions and ignored the needy by not offering indigent plans.
There were also people who felt healthcare was an entitlement and should be totally free; that is, supported by taxation.
Prior to signing the ACA of 2010, President Barack Obama was quoted as saying that he favored “single payer” health access, that is, the government would totally fund health care. However, he and the then-Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, knew that a majority of Americans would never support such a scheme.
It is important to remember that the Obama Administration was having to deal with what can be called the Great Recession of the Bush Administration. Taxpayers were already getting the bills and invoices from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and likely would rebel if forced to pay an “insurance tax.”
The ACA bill sailed through Congress based on Obama’s popularity and charisma with very little scrutiny about how the changes would affect an entire industry. The army of lawyers working on the bill project made sure the language was so convoluted that most people would give up after reading the abstract summary of the entire baffling manuscript.
Ironically, thanks to the Supreme Court decision, taxpayers could either accept the new rules, regulations and become forced to buy the higher premiums, or if they didn’t, then they were subject to a tax.
According to Healthline: “The ACA was also designed to protect consumers from insurance company tactics that might drive up patient costs or restrict care.”
That did not happen.
Incredibly, Congress allowed the major health insurers to take a leading role in crafting the legislation that eventually grew to between 900 and 1,900 pages, depending on the source. This is what led to Pelosi stating, “We need to pass the bill so we can all find out what’s in it.”
Well, they passed it, and now we know what is in it.
The plan called for postmenopausal women to pay premiums for possible neonatal care when the chance of them becoming pregnant was nil, almost everyone’s premiums went up and the people with pre-existing conditions found that the available coverage was far too expensive to afford, especially in an economy that was tanking.
Health Savings Plans disappeared overnight.
The Peter G. Peterson Foundation likes to claim the ACA cut the numbers of uninsured Americans by half, but its data leaves out the number of people who were actually paying for insurance before the ACA was signed into law but now rely on Medicaid, which is taxpayer funded.
Since the people in charge of crafting the legislation were primarily lobbyists for the health insurance industry, they were able to add into the mice-type, at the bottom of the pages, coverage loopholes big enough to drive a Sherman tank through with results that boggle the mind.
Participating insurance companies went on a tear of denying or postponing patients’ needed surgeries, which caused doctors to overprescribe opioid medication, and that contributed to the addiction crisis of today.
Once it was discovered that millions of Americans were hooked on opiates, the feds cracked down on doctors, not the insurance companies. Yes, the big pharmaceutical companies paid a fine as the cost of doing business, but the insurance industry bore no responsibility.
Meanwhile, the result was people were then taken off of medications that they had become addicted to, and they then began seeking alternatives on the black market, which led to the current fentanyl crisis.
Even rock stars like Prince and Tom Petty succumbed to that lethal mixture.
The federal government responded by launching its new “war on opiates,” a “war” that actually targets both doctors and individual pharmacies by almost promising them personal liability in the case of an overdose; the result is that many people remain in chronic pain because pharmacy refills are on a strict regime and doctors are afraid to prescribe the proper amount of pain medication.
This has all come about, in my opinion, due to an apparent majority in Congress who were either congenitally insane or irretrievably stupid in believing that a giant government bureaucracy could do a better job than the private sector with offering quality healthcare.
Sadly, most of those elected people who voted for this disaster of a healthcare system are still in office and “we the people” keep voting for them.
The health care system has become so overburdened that I hear of pregnant women who have recently moved to our area being placed on a waiting list for pre-natal care.
Beware of what you ask for, you just might get it…
