The insurance company CEO reflected on how Obamacare had delivered everything his industry could have hoped for. The new massive bureaucracy had strengthened his industry’s monopoly on private healthcare dollars.
President Obama’s promise to lower healthcare premium costs was just one of the many deceptions he used to sell Obamacare to the public and now each State was mandated to have Obamacare private healthcare insurance exchanges. President Obama’s fraudulent promises dissolved away as insurance companies raised rates and gobbled up the premiums. Combining Obamacare premiums with the funds their healthcare insurance products generated, the healthcare insurance companies now controlled all private healthcare dollars.
Obamacare was really a massive omnibus-like law that touched all aspects of American healthcare. It contained Medicare stabilizing taxes and funded Medicaid expansion by taking billions of dollars earmarked for Medicare and directing it to new Medicaid spending. And mandated all employers with more than 50 employees had to provide standard healthcare. There were also some long-sought-after reforms. Insurance companies could no longer refuse coverage because of preexisting conditions, the million-dollar cap on lifetime insurance coverage was done away with, and families could keep their children on their plan until the age of 25.
All States had to establish healthcare exchanges, and all Americans had to purchase healthcare or be subject to severe penalties. The healthcare exchange financing was achieved by forcing healthy young Americans to pay expensive healthcare premiums; in effect, America’s youth would pay for older, sicker Americans’ healthcare. When the penalties for those who did not purchase Obamacare-mandated healthcare were done away with, the program’s funding imploded. In any sane world, a program without funding would end. But in America, the insurance companies raised premiums, and to keep the Obamacare exchanges on life support, the US Treasury simply printed more money.
President Trump failed on his promise to repeal and replace Obamacare. With the onset of COVID-19, President Biden opened the federal spigots for even more massive deficit subsidy spending.
The insurance company CEO mused that giving Americans access to cost-controlled affordable healthcare would not be difficult. But regardless of any plan’s logistics, no plan would be successful without an irrevocable deal with the American people; in short, those who worked and their families would have access to affordable quality healthcare. Hard work was the universal currency of America’s success, and rewarding Americans for work was the carrot that would make the plan psychologically viable. Able-bodied Americans who refused to work would be left to their own devices.
Parts of Obamacare had to be preserved. The taxes designed to stabilize Medicare and mandating that companies with greater than 50 employees had to provide quality healthcare were essential. Getting rid of pre-existing condition exclusions, allowing children up to the age of 25 to stay on family plans, along with doing away with the million-dollar limit on how much insurance companies would pay needed to stay. Medicaid had to be addressed, but the way Obamacare did it was fatally flawed, and for the country to be fiscally solvent, it had to be revisited. (fixing this will be for another time).
Creating a massive bureaucracy of healthcare exchanges was never necessary. Allowing access to the already available national federal employee healthcare networks would do the trick. The system would work as follows:
Small businesses and the self-employed would be given similar healthcare tax incentives that large corporations enjoyed. Allowing small businesses/self-employed to give an employee up to $10,0000 healthcare-directed stipend would, in effect, pay for the bulk of an individual’s/family’s healthcare insurance costs. Like the tax perks that large corporations and employees under their umbrella enjoy, the stipend would be tax-deductible to small businesses and tax-free to the individual. Healthcare savings accounts with yearly pretax contribution maximums of $5000 could be used for any kind of healthcare expenses, including premiums, and this would finish the needed healthcare financing mechanism. With these policies in place, all working Americans could affordably purchase health insurance and additional funds set aside for possible deductible liabilities.
It is true that the government would be getting less tax revenue, but the tax cuts would be directed toward hard-working middle-class Americans as well as small businesses, the driving force of the economy. Indexed to income, subsidies would be required for lower-wage earners to purchase healthcare insurance. And so, the promise to make affordable healthcare available to anyone who wanted it and worked could be kept.
Working Americans who were not eligible for health insurance through their employer would have access to affordable healthcare. Quality would be assured because the healthcare insurance these workers obtained would be the same as our elected officials/federal employees.
If this workable healthcare plan replaced the Obamacare insurance exchanges with the federal benefits healthcare network, the insurance companies would cry foul. Because these new federal benefit enrollees would be from a different risk pool than the usual federal employees, and cost much more. This claim is dubious but “high-risk pools” of people could be identified and appropriate federal monies allocated to make the insurance companies whole. To make the entire system cost controlled the federal government would have to limit the insurance company’s ability to increase their premiums to inflation -1% and limit all administrative costs at 10%. (See the first healthcare piece).
The medical insurance CEO smiled to himself because he knew this workable healthcare solution would never happen. When Obamacare was first passed the bill had a mandate that all of Congress and their staff had to use Obamacare as their health care insurance. When the members of Congress and their staffs were faced with this reality, the howling and gnashing of teeth became so intense that President Obama illegally exempted Congress and their staff from the Obamacare mandate. They were allowed to continue to use the federal employee benefits program.
There is no way politicians were ever going to take the chance that “their health care” would be compromised. Obamacare and all its problems were for the masses, not for them.
The Obamacare private healthcare exchanges have since evolved into catastrophic healthcare coverage. Many lower- and middle-class Americans take the government’s subsidies but cannot afford the at least $5000 deductible, and if the deductible comes due, they become financially insolvent. The healthcare CEO knew the woke progressive elites needed to keep their base dependent on the government, and they would never prioritize work as a key piece of a successful healthcare plan.
And so, in 2024, when the massive COVID-19 Obamacare subsidies come to an end, the elite progressives will find a way to renew the unnecessary budget-busting subsidies—propping up the unsustainable program with more government deficit spending.
Since the present private/Obamacare healthcare system is unsustainable, the specter of socialized government healthcare looms in all our tomorrows.
But the health insurance CEO was still smiling because he knew:
Private healthcare and private hospitals would spring from the ashes of America’s burned-out private healthcare system. He and his colleagues would only have to deal with the upper echelons of society. The rest of us will be herded like cattle into a socialized rationed healthcare system run by the government with the same care and quality they show our veterans in the VA system.
