Before we get started, as people criticize the idea of insurance companies that can cross state lines and offer their product to people in other states as a "bad" idea, consider that doctors have been doing just that. See, "Growing concern over shifts in N.Y. medical malpractice market," by Dan Goldberg, 4/9/2016, Politico, http://www.politico.com/states/new-york/albany/story/2016/04/growing-concern-over-shifts-in-ny-medical-malpractice-market-033298#ixzz4PDx4iS7Y.
Known as Risk Retention Groups, physicians are allowed to have increased choice for their insurance, the choice to use insurers who are only bound by laws of their state of domicile--where they're established and therefore, by meeting the federal standard bypasses the obligation to be licensed by and comply with insurance rules of each state where it wants to operate. One of the biggest RRGs? MedPro owned by none other than Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway, "The company, based out of Washington D.C., has been growing its business at an exponential rate," http://www.politico.com/states/new-york/albany/story/2016/04/growing-concern-over-shifts-in-ny-medical-malpractice-market-033298#ixzz4PDyG54NQ .
OK, so physicians are getting more choice, but Democrats and Obamacare are reducing consumer choice in a way that should alarm even the most deluded Obamacare fan.
This year's benefit season will see few changes to plans aside from higher prices. Since health benefits are a year-only choice and since the trend of that coverage is to cover less than the year before for more money, it should be pretty obvious that in spite of the predictable exodus by insurance companies from Obamacare exchanges because their payouts from the federal government ended this benefits year(risk corridors and risk reinsurance see http://conoutofconsumer.blogspot.com/2015/12/how-obamacare-shot-itself-in-foot.html), the abysmal policy of Obamacare is in no danger as it winds its way to reducing citizen choice to levels we've never seen before. In fact it's the most anti-citizen choice we've seen in decades when it comes to healthcare.
First, Obamacare reduced our choice to use our dollars and our feet to choose whether or not the consumer financial product of health insurance meets our needs. This choice made by sane Americans who decided that since their insurance left them hanging if the unspeakable physical and financial hardship of unexpected medical need arose was an enormous part of our "healthcare crisis," and Obamacare's brutal individual mandate penalizing that choice with a tax thereby forcing us to purchase that product REDUCED any possibility that consumers could influence the offerings of insurance companies.
Second, Obamacare reduced our choice of services by creating mandatory "preventive" checkup coverage that is used as a means of forcing consumers to jump through hoops as providers optimize the predatory practices of defensive medicine (forcing tests and procedures as a prerequisite to treatment) by making sure that insurance companies paid for these tests. Combined with the INCREASED expenses to consumers for actual needed care in the form of increased deductibles, copays, coinsurance and a higher out of pocket maximum established each year by the federal government, the system jeopardizes both the physical and financial health of citizens by incentivizing (with guaranteed insurance company payment) and rewarding the practice of defensive medicine.
Third, Obamacare reduced our choice of providers, embracing with force of law the old-time insurance company strategy of limiting the choice of providers under their plans instead of establishing requirements for sufficient numbers of providers under plans and raising the bar of insurance company compliance rather than legalizing the bare minimum.
Fourth, Obamacare reduced our choice of healthcare plan to the point of the bizarre by forcing minimum coverage standards for "free" checkups that ridiculously benefit one gender over the other (women over men, the former entitled to yearly checkups, the latter not, the former entitled to free domestic abuse counseling, the latter not, the former entitled to free sterilization, the latter not) forcing males to pay MORE for health insurance in order to cover services to which they are not entitled.
Fifth, Obamacare reduced and discouraged the possibility that consumers could influence the creation of the consumer financial product of health care plans that meet their needs since we're all required to purchase a plan and since the insurers are guaranteed that no matter how bad those plans are they will have forced customers.
Sixth, Obamacare has reduced consumer understanding of health insurance by inaccurately calling Obamacare "group" health insurance and by inaccurately referring to a "single risk pool," neither of which is true. Group health insurance was an employer-insurance company negotiation whereby employers negotiated to obtain the benefits package for their employees. Obamacare eroded that former relationship by establishing minimum standards, negating the need for negotiation and creating an opportunity for employers to mimic the non-group exchange plans, choosing the cheapest garbage that met the minimum standards established by the law and then charging more and more for that garbage. There is no single risk pool: http://conoutofconsumer.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-presidents-backwards-is-new.html.
The catastrophic loss of consumer choice has neither resulted in better medical care (medical error is the third leading cause of death in the US), nor in increased affordability to the majority of consumers of either health insurance (premiums still rising with only the imaginary claim that things would have been worse without Obamacare) or needed healthcare services (copay, coinsurance, deductible, out of pocket maximum all increased).
Yet listening to the Democrats' insanely animated warnings of anyone else's ability to "fix" America has been a Democratic strategy that has worked on us, with Democrats creating problems and coming in with extravagant spending of our tax dollars to "rescue" us from their own failures, like the psychopathic pathetic instances of individuals who jeopardize someone's life so that they can "rescue" them from death.
Each year Democrats warn of a "death spiral" for Obamacare, as if they were neither architects nor beneficiaries of the law and then soothe the citizenry into accepting another year, just a little bit worse to shut us up until, next year's benefits election season when they resuscitate the same warnings that things will be worse without Obamacare and the Democrats.
It's the worst form of citizen denial because it empowers the perpetrators of Obamacare who gradually worsen our healthcare crisis all year long into persuading the public into the false narrative that each year they alone can rescue us from the false urgency of "Republicans" creating a threatened "death spiral," if this fiasco is modified by anyone but other Democrats.
Death spiral? Of course not. Half a brain should tell us that with the swiftness that we were "rescued" from the "fiscal cliff," Democrats in government enjoy the appearance of rescue rather than the reality of improvement.
So we get CNN's stump speech by Tami Luhby on November 4th that chooses to spin reality with her title, "Is Obamacare really affordable? Not for the middle class," and then spends the rest of the article digging up reasons why as bad as it is, things would be worse without it. And so the manipulative article begins, "For 85 percent of enrollees …" Yeah, that's right the government is paying them entitlement money which helps disguise the failure of the law by making their bottom lines not so much worse, (CNN Money, November 4, 2016). Not worth reading.
We must smarten up if we hope to avoid further catastrophic costs and inadequacies of our healthcare system. Obamacare has earned a death spiral, (but does not face one) as an unprecedented cheat and resulting partnership between government and insurance companies for their mutual benefit at the expense, both physical and financial of the American people.
