Obamacare was supposed to be a great leap forward in the arena of public health. It would not just provide health insurance, but it would do so at less expense for both the coverage and medical costs. It did neither.
But Obama came to the White House to celebrate, and people fawned over him while the elder-abused guy with his “nameplate” on the Resolute desk puttered about. It was more a celebration of Obama than Obamacare, and why not.
There was, as Joel Zinberg, writing at City Journal, notes, not much to celebrate.
- [U]nfulfilled was Obama’s promise that the ACA would cut annual premiums by $2,500 and reduce spending. National health-expenditure data show that spending rose from $2.60 trillion in 2010 to $4.1 trillion in 2020.
- Nor did the ACA “bend the cost curve” to slow spending growth—inflation-adjusted, annual health-care spending per capita went up after ACA passage.
- Between 2011 and 2020, the average monthly premium per enrollee in the individual market doubled.
- The average deductible for a silver plan offered on Healthcare.gov in 2020 was $4,500—up from $2,425 in 2014.
- The average premium and deductible for exchange plans in 2021 for an unsubsidized family of four was roughly $25,000.
- ACA plans are so expensive that few unsubsidized people buy them. And the ACA’s mandates and minimum benefits package foreclosed cheaper, less comprehensive insurance that many would have preferred.
- The young and healthy rejected overpriced, all-inclusive insurance coverage that forces them to subsidize premiums for older, sicker patients.
The government made a list of impossible promises. Their media stenographers took the cribbed notes and passed them off as unbiased reporting. Dissenters were shamed or silenced, but in the end, they were correct. The political takeover of health insurance was good for the government but no one else.
We see the same strategy with Long COVID – by which I mean the infection of policy and strategy upon public health infrastructure, not the actual virus in people. From 2022 to 2022, Hospitals and pharmaceutical companies became Made Men of the DC crime family and the party of death.
Hospital policy became whatever policy the bean counters in DC would pay them to follow, and a lot of people died. Many more will. And while some doctors and nurses won’t like that, it’s fine with everyone running things. The politicians have made it increasingly difficult for doctors and nurses to work outside their control.
In the absence of competition, there’s nowhere else to go.
And Obamacare is still around, mostly as expanded medicare, a win for the statists but a loss for health and care. Obamacare never added the 25 million, and these days the number is closer to 10 million. Most of those beans only counted because they were trapped with crappy Medicaid coverage many providers still won’t accept making Medicaid good for only one thing; waste, fraud, and abuse.
Just like the federal government.
