For quite some time, we’ve been hearing that Obamacare (AKA Affordable Care Act) is destined to implode. The impending doom is a product of poor projections, even poorer implementation and a downright bad product. So, it begs the question — which is barely being touched upon in the media — What happens after the explosion?
Through my lens, I see a powerful move to single payer healthcare. The administration will wail and complain that the opposition scuttled the program and caused its demise —even rooted for it. The administration will ignore the pleas of the insurance industry by painting it with the same brush as they have the banking and financial industries — big powerful fat cats that don’t give a hoot about the people. President Obama will side step any blame for producing this mess, which effectively dismantled the best – if flawed – healthcare delivery system in the world, and proclaim that his administration will step in and fix the problem. Does anyone remember Rohm Emanuel saying “Never let a serious crisis go to waste?”
The original intent of the ACA was to provide some level of insurance for the 30 million people who did not have it. That by itself was untrue. No one, who presented themselves to a hospital, was turned away because they didn’t have insurance. Anyhow, that aside, the plan was to force all Americans to have a government mandated policy. Not government issued mind you, but government mandated and privately issued by those big insurance fat cats that will ultimately be blamed for the collapse.
The left base was never all that happy about the ACA. They didn’t think it went far enough. They were in favor of a pure play government takeover of all healthcare coverage in the country. The prospect of the ACA falling apart has them salivating because they can see their wish about to come true.
The ACA will become the AHA – American Health Act — with no pretense to be anything other than government-controlled. There will be a new tax line on the pay stubs of working Americans to pay for this massive expansion of government. Those who are still foolish enough to work for a living will be footing the added bill.
It would have been less expensive to have come up with a tax plan to cover those individuals that the ACA was allegedly supposed to help. The mathematics would have been more favorable than having all Americans endure today’s higher premiums and much higher deductibles. If premiums are advancing at 20-30-40% for government-authorized policies and deductibles going up by thousands of dollars a year, would it not have made more sense to levy a simple tax across the board to pay for the 10% of the population that did not have health insurance. Make it sub-category of Medicaid, which we already pay for.
Having said all of thi,s the bottom line is that after the drama plays itself out and the ACA crashes and burns and the health insurance industry is in chaos, there will be two choices:
Heap billions of dollars on the insurers to keep them solvent and provide the coverage or a complete government take-over of the health system. Welcome to single payer and socialized medicine country. God help us.