In 2009, this blog discussed Obamacare issues, including those detailed in the post, “Oh, Obama, Health care reform for the middle class, remember?” it was noted, discussing the 2010 budget how billions in the budget provided little indication that either rates, or coverage would be improved under Obamacare.
The fight was lost in many ways in the earliest days when the President’s ego, and his determination to pass some kind of massive health insurance bill prevailed over common sense. Early on he sacrificed the inclusion of a public option for insurance for ANYONE who chose the public over the private option, the only way aside from states enacting limits on what providers can charge that would directly and speedily stop the ridiculous rise in cost of obtaining needed medical treatment rendering citizens, “One illness away from bankruptcy,” (Pres. Obama circa 2008 in a speech at an AARP Convention).
Years later, as we face the activation of more and more provisions of Obamacare, we see a shift in the promotion of Obamacare from “The Answer,” to promoting Obamacare as “Better than nothing.” Both are falsehoods.
Yet the conversation has been largely one-sided, Republicans sticking to fake notions that the only good public insurance program is no public insurance program, which of course we know is fallacy. We also know that Republicans in government are not anti spending, they’re anti spending that they don’t choose. Only the most ignorant or disinterested citizen can still believe that Republicans worry about spending. The fight is over the type of spending, that’s all, and therefore is largely IRRELEVANT to advocates of small government.
The question remains, what will be the tipping point that will finally overcome the blind loyalty to Obamacare that represents misinformation that ultimately can appear to be no more than a series of tricks by the Democrats to push through a plan that didn’t have a hope without the public option, abandoned long ago?
The answer seems to be that as long as Republicans have no alternatives except those appearing more complicated and troublesome and ill-thought out than what we have, that Obamacare will continue to unfold at the expense of the American people.
It is asserted here that America must reconsider the idea of a single-payer, national health insurance option that is available to every American without restriction in order for any healthcare reform to effectively take root in the nation.
A few things have changed that warrant the reintroduction of this concept. The first is that we currently have Obamacare and that those states that pretend we don’t and refuse to create their own health exchange and opt for expanded Medicaid are merely giving up government dollars this year and for years to come. Though it decreases over time, most of the costs of expanded Medicaid options are paid for by the federal government, meaning that states that opt out simply won’t receive a portion of those federal dollars. Further, as explained in the post, “States that are so Red they’re Blue?” on 11/13/12, the cost faced by these die-hard “red” states is discussed.
Republicans are asked here to make friends with the word, “national,” with the word, “socialist,” which I deliberately use as a merely a word. Get used to it. Your ideals of the Founding Fathers did not prevent Republicans for all these years from opting into and utilizing governmentally subsidized health insurance plans at any stage of life, such as the poor Republicans or old Republicans, veteran Republicans or Republicans with illnesses that make them eligible for participation in national health insurance programs, such as kidney disease. National health insurance programs have NEVER been avoided by Republicans en masse based on principle and therefore dusting off the “Founding Fathers,” to conveniently argue about national health insurance is a fake concern.
The public option is the ONLY way to bring down the prices charged for healthcare without imposing caps, limits on what can be charged for healthcare services. Currently we have a “whatever the market will bear approach” to what healthcare providers can charge, and the US has among the most expensive prices for healthcare in the world (look up articles about medical tourism, “The Republican Private Party,” 8/5/13).
Because of an ideological glitch, the idea that a single-payer health insurance program is Anti-American though we allow for single-payer health insurance programs already, which is ideologically incompatible, we cannot, it is NOT possible for healthcare charges to be lowered in general.
Actually, Obamacare promises to worsen the medical care charges for the rest of us as providers squeezed to charge less for Medicare and Medicaid patients raise their fees for everyone else to perpetuate and grow their incomes.
More dangerously, Obamacare codified the next logical step of the healthcare industry after the public option was disposed of tacitly accepting that health care costs would go up, and up and up, by including provisions for increased “patient responsibility and contribution.”
This squeezing of the patient resulted in Obamacare mandating that Americans purchase ANY kind of insurance in order to avoid the individual mandate tax, even horribly inadequate insurance coverage such as bronze plans and silver plans which cover 60 and 70 percent of COVERED costs leaving those who actually become ill vulnerable to being “one illness away from bankruptcy.”
Still in our need to believe in the benign intentions of a President whose ego was too entwined with the Affordable Care legislation to actually consider what it would mean for Americans, Americans next learned that all sorts of new restrictions on THEM would be instituted to help insurance companies.
This next step was not unforeseen, it, is also was logical. After all, if you can’t keep costs down, you reduce how often you incur costs or you reduce what you are allowed to purchase. Just like your own budget, if you can’t afford eating out every week, you eat out less OR you eat out cheaper. That’s what Obamacare has done. Less coverage or higher prices, and in many cases, less coverage and higher prices.
It is time for Americans to reassert the need for a single payer. This move will be harder for Republicans than Democrats because of a phony allegiance to an outdated notion that has not been true for decades claiming that Republicans desire small and less expensive government. Not so, simply different.
Even IF Republicans’ need to believe prevents them from being logical and advocating a single-payer system, they’ve failed against any standard of fiscal responsibility. First, they admitted they didn’t read Obamacare, sacrificing the opportunity to provide meaningful input into a law they knew would pass because of Democratic dominance in government.
Second, and a sign of their continued laziness is the years-long missed opportunity to go after healthcare providers who defraud both private and public insurance companies through negligence and fraud. Suddenly, when it comes to prosecuting providers who cheat, the BIGGEST number of defrauders both in terms of actual numbers and amounts stolen, the Republicans maintain an untypical silence.
Their lackluster efforts to provide a means of detecting and prosecuting and penalizing those profiting from Medicare and Medicaid fraud, as well as at the State level partnering with State governments to attach meaningful penalties and consequences for insurance fraud which by ALL estimates is usually committed by healthcare providers and institutions, not PATIENTS and costs BILLIONS of dollars a year, is a continued missed opportunity.
Instead, the Republicans give a nod and a wink to healthcare defrauders and pretend that only by cutting Medicaid, Food Stamps and Medicare can they save governmental dollars. Thank heavens the country repeatedly shows it’s smart enough to know better than accept this myth. But it does leave us with nothing else to believe in, strengthening the false belief in Obamacare.
