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Health See other Health Articles Title: The coming single-payer health insurance system The coming single-payer health insurance system Posted by: Jon Dougherty August 4, 2014 Submit to reddit Share By Keven Card A federal appeals court handed down a ruling recently that many news outlets are calling a blow to Obamacare. Despite an IRS rule to the contrary, the Affordable Care Act, the court said, specifically says that subsidies can only be provided to enrollees who purchase health insurance coverage through exchanges established by the states, not the federal government. The Blaze/AP reports the D.C. Circuit Court’s 2-1 decision could mean health insurance premium increases for more than half the 8 million Americans who have purchased taxpayer-subsidized coverage under the law. The ruling affects consumers who bought coverage in the 36 states served by the federal insurance marketplace, or exchange, but which chose not to establish a state exchange; the 2012 Supreme Court ruling legalizing Obamacare’s individual mandate, you may recall, also found that the law could not force states to expand their share of Medicaid payments by establishing state Obamacare exchanges that would ultimately be subsidized under the long-standing federal insurance program for the poor. So, what does this mean for you and me? If this ruling is allowed to stand the first thing you’ll see will be skyrocketing premiums. Indeed, premiums are already rising for millions of Americans. Understand that insurance companies have had to massively overhaul their policies and systems to prepare for the exchanges; they were also forced to take on people with pre-existing conditions, which raised costs, and thus tipped the claims experience into the red. They aren’t going to simply absorb these expenses. They’ll pass them on to us in the form of premium increases. They’ll have to in order to survive. Think about this for a moment: In 2013 you could buy an insurance policy for nearly half of what you can in 2014, and had better benefits and a smaller deductible. Why? Skyrocket: Health insurance premiums, which are already on the rise, will skyrocket further under court challenges to Obamacare, but that’s the administration’s fault for trying to manipulate the law to provide a subsidy it may not allow. Because insurers anticipated their increased costs and added it to your premiums, which is how capitalism is supposed to work. Of course, these increases will create the next crisis, of which President Obama and his administration are certain to take advantage. When people who enrolled in Obamacare with the understanding that they’d be paying low premiums, if anything at all, because of subsidies get a bill from the insurance companies, they’re going to drop their coverage. It will become unaffordable to them. With the loss in premium payments insurers’ claims experience will skyrocket sending their balance sheets heavy into the red and they’ll try to pass that increased cost onto the paying public. Yes, the next health insurance premium crisis is on the horizon. What will the President do about the looming catastrophe headed toward his signature legislation? Well, he’ll do what he always does. He’ll write another executive order to thwart the rule of law, the same way he’s done 42 other times when it comes to Obamacare. With no subsidies to hide behind there’s a significant probability that he’ll criticize Congress for not acting to solve this problem. Then he’ll try to tell us that he’s been forced to mandate premium controls with the insurance companies who offer plans through the federal exchanges to save the poor helpless people who’ve been wronged by skyrocketing premiums, which his own law created. Not a surprising move for anyone who understands history. The fact is price controls are something Progressives always use when their legislative interference into the market creates escalating prices. During the Great Depression, under FDR’s New Deal the NRA was created. Not the National Rifle Association, the National Recovery Agency, which created codes of fair practice and set prices. Boycotts were levied against businesses that didn’t participate in the NRA program. The program was eventually ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1935, two years after its enactment. Single payer: The president has voiced his support for a European-style, government-managed single-payer health insurance system, a system in which bureaucrats decide what Uncle Sam will, and will not, cover. There is another possibility. The Administration could work some behind closed door deal with insurers to offset the losses they are certain to incur in conjunction with setting premiums on low to medium income participants. It’s possible but it has significant challenge, one being where that amount of money would come from. Will they dip into Medicare and Medicaid? Or will Congress be so blind as to be hoodwinked into providing the money in some stimulus package? Only time will answer that question. Most likely the President and the Administration will let this play out and use it as a club to continuously bash the Republicans in Congress. But it’s a con; Obama doesn’t care about the people who’ll lose coverage or be forced to pay much higher premiums because it’s a means to his socialist ends. I believe he sees this as an opportunity to force his desire for a European style single-payer system on the American public. The only way to realize that dream is to completely collapse the current system. He’s stated multiple times, before he denied it, that he’s for a single payer universal healthcare system. He appoints others who are on record as sharing his views on the subject. How does he get there from here? Simple really: 1.Implement premium controls and strict regulations on the insurance industry to push insurers out of the exchanges leaving Americans with no coverage. 2.Retract his executive orders to delay certain aspects of Obamacare like the employer mandate to further bring the entire industry down in a calculated way. When there are no insurance companies left standing he’ll have no choice but to take over the industry to provide people access to the health care they need. At least that what he’ll tell all of us. It’s time for the free market to introduce new solutions to this problem before Obama can fully implement his plan. Otherwise, someday soon we’ll wake up in a universal healthcare nightmare, where everyone is covered equally – badly. Poster Comment: Make way for socialized medicine. It's just the way things are going. That is what they now have in Canada. ;) Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
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