Analysis by Kyle A. Lohmeier
I’ve long since given up on the notion that anything government does can make life better – a side effect of having been sentient these last 40 years. As such, Trump’s campaign promise to end the boondoggle that is Obummercare sounded like a wonderful promise that would never be delivered on. Yesterday, Trump made his waffling official when his administration announced proposed rule changes to the Obummercare fiasco that don’t involve ending the program in any way. In fact, the only ones who’d benefit from the changes are the crony insurance companies Obummercare was designed to benefit in the first place – and failed even at that.
“The changes would tighten enrollment processes and allow insurers to collect unpaid premium payments, making it tougher for people to move in and out of insurance plans. Insurers say ‘gaming the system’ has created an unprofitable mix of healthy and sick customers.
The Affordable Care Act aimed to chip away at soaring healthcare spending, but data shows costs are still rising. The U.S. government reported separately on Wednesday that total U.S. medical spending in 2017 is estimated to rise 5.4 percent to $3.36 trillion after a 4.8 percent spending uptick in 2016,” Caroline Humer and Yasmeen Abutaleb wrote for Reuters.
Given that annual GDP growth for 2014 and 2015 was just 2.4 percent, it’s safe to say total spending on healthcare will continue to outpace the economy. That this is unsustainable is pretty obvious. That making Obummercare a bit less awful for insurance companies at the expense of consumers won’t help the average Americans who voted for Trump is also pretty obvious.
According to Reuters, individuals are getting some relief insofar as that the IRS has said it won’t reject tax returns which fail to indicate whether the filer had medical insurance or are paying the fine for not having it. So, at least if the “Affordable Care Act” priced you out of buying insurance, as it did for a lot of people who actually work and provide for themselves, at least the government won’t further rob you for failing to comply with its dictates.
The proposed rule would also allow insurers to collect unpaid premiums from members should they leave a plan and then sign back up with the same insurer later. Wall Street signaled that this move might help protect the profitability of insurance companies, but couldn’t say by how much.
Slogging through the details of this proposed rule change, I’m reminded of the cat-box meme I made just before the election. Obummercare is very much like a litter-box overflowing with ass-rancid cat turds and clumps of acrid, ammonia-reeking piss. The Trump solution appears to be to simply re-arrange the turds and piss-clumps in a slightly different way. This, of course won’t make being in the same room with the cat-box any more bearable; indeed the only actual solution is to scoop all that filth out, throw it away and start over fresh.
Of course – continuing this tortured analogy – if we still have a government after we “fix” Obummercare by getting rid of it; we’ll have eventually have the same problem with the cat-box if we clean it out and still have cats around afterward. As long as there are cats around to fill it with shit, it’ll get filled with shit, just like we’ll have government shitting all over our lives for exactly as long as we have government.
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