Another “study” reported in the “Washington Times,” by Valerie Richardson, 10/28/2014,notes big increases in premium costs in her article, “Obamacare sends health premiums skyrocketing by as much as 78 percent.”
Statistic and study weary we can say two things, first, it makes sense since we know that the real problem of unbridled increases in what we’re charged for even the most rudimentary care in the non government-provided healthcare “market” place are not addressed by Obamacare and second because those rising costs are used to justify insurance company increases to pay for both newly mandated preventive coverage and are disguised within Obamacare exchanges where actual premiums matter little to those receiving subsidies.
But if missing the point was money we’d be solvent. Neither side is willing to toughen up and address what we’re being charged for even the most basic medical care for illness. Instead the teaming up of providers, government and insurers has resulted in a mammoth and deliberate effort to use citizen wallets to finance a bureaucracy of getting people paid lots of money at the expense of citizens, often before an individual actually needs or utilizes a single healthcare benefit.
But the problem is that neither Republicans nor Democrats will touch the issue of what we’re paying for health services.
Republicans are lost in the pedagogic non-reality of an ideal “free market” that does not exist and therefore are loathe to address the real problems of what is being charged for medical care. Regulating insurers without addressing the problem of what needs to be covered and the cost of that service is an exercise in stupidity as insurance follows the trends and also raises its charges on consumers.
The government worsens the situation as it latched onto “prevention” as a copout figuring if it covered enough comparatively inexpensive stuff no one would notice the diminishment of excellence and capability in terms of medical care available to people who are actually sick. It’s like paying for a steak dinner and getting bread, rice, corn and even dessert but the piece of steak is small and awful.
Even if our costs had stayed the same post Obamacare consumers are losers because so much coverage has already been reduced justified by the mandatory coverages of Obamacare.
What we don’t need is more phony outrage. Each side is protecting the healthcare bureaucracy in its own way and NOT adequately protecting citizens. It’s like the phony outrage of those reciting Hillary Clinton’s statement criticizing trickle down (the rich will employ and therefore their wealth will trickle down).
She is not wrong. Tax loopholes for wealthy individuals who often put money offshore, businesses sitting on enormous amounts of cash because of ‘uncertainty,’ and outsourcing are real and persistent examples where NONE of the money the rich individuals and companies have accumulated trickles down to Americans are more powerful than some imaginary or at best historic notion put forth by the rich.
On the other hand the conduct of government has been equally ludicrous reducing socially responsible programs to pay for public employee benefits, cushy jobs where taxpayers pay for wasted public employee time or idiotic over-spending on pet plans or pet projects which have failed to trickle OUT to Americans and instead create a government class with better benefits, job security and salary than many ordinary citizens.
Hillary Clinton wasn’t wrong any more than every Obamacare “repeal advocate” is wrong. The problem is that citizens are left out of solutions offered by either side. We are the classic tail wagging the dog country right now. The first place to start is to advocate stopping the trend of “the individual” and returning to bona fide group insurance plans where the traditional exchange of more patients for a group rate has some real teeth.
