22 Reasons Not To Like Obamacare

You have to pass the bill to find out what is in it, we were told.  

That was in 2010, and over three years later, people who know what is in it like it less and less. Its proponents really aren’t trying to advance Obamacare though. They are trying to advance a Utopian health care system, which they wish Obamacare was. 

As I said last year: when you understand it, there is literally nothing about Obamacare to like.

  1. Obamacare is 2700 pages of additions and edits to legislation, a foul bucket of regulatory spaghetti thrown at America from Washington, DC. Telling its intended and unintended consequences is sometimes impossible.
  2. Obamacare continues and deepens the mistake of third party payer, which is a fundamental and irreparable error. When neither the customer nor the provider care about price, there is no way to control cost.
  3. Obamacare expands Medicaid; a program that is already bankrupting many states, and offers inferior medical outcomes. It won’t keep people out of the emergency room, because under Medicaid the ER is free to use.
  4. The model for Medicare savings under Obamacare is price controls. They never work.
  5. Under Obamacare, businesses are compelled to offer their employees comprehensive and micromanaged insurance that is “affordable”. As a result, companies are moving their staff to part time and offering policies that only cover what they have to in order to pass muster with Obamacare.
  6. Obamacare forces insurance companies to use 80% (85 in the group market) of premiums for medical costs, or give rebates to consumers. This is called the Medical Loss Ratio, and it’s government meddling ever more in the private economy.
  7. Under Obamacare, doctors effectively cannot own hospitals.
  8. Under Obamacare, the Secretary of HHS has incredible power, which means the president will have incredible power.
  9. To defray some of the costs of Obamacare, the federal government took over the student loan industry, which is unconstitutional.
  10. To mollify Medicare recipients, they’re continuing Medicare Advantage as an “experiment“.
  11. Covering people with pre-existing conditions is fine, but it’s not insurance.
  12. Obamacare forces companies to charge the same premium to people of different ages and wellness. Young people will get ripped off paying for coverage they don’t need to subsidize coverage for older, sicker Americans. 
  13. Obamacare decimates Health Savings Accounts and other consumer-driven health plans in favor of a one-size-fits-all straightjacket.
  14. By making insurance such a high-cost thing, employers are driven out of the health insurance market.
  15. By making insurance unaffordable, Obamacare forces more and more people onto government plans.
  16. Many of the state exchanges will be little profit centers for corrupt state policy makers.
  17. Obamacare does nothing to rein in high malpractice insurance rates that make the practice of medicine untenable.
  18. Obamacare will force a shortage of doctors.
  19. The IRS will have no less than 46 new powers.
  20. Obamacare will create a massive hub of Americans’ personal information.
  21. Restriction on policies such as bans on lifetime limits, minimum annual limits, etc. increase prices and deny consumers choice. 
  22. Obamacare creates a function called Navigators, a group of people who will guide citizens through the complexities of the law. As with the IRS, their information will probably not be accurate. In any case, Americans should not need a guide in how to use their government. If they do, it’s too big.

The key to understanding why Obamacare is destined to fail is that health insurance ultimately is not an efficient way to pay for health care.  Obamacare forces health insurance companies to limit their overhead+profit to 20% of the their premiums in the individual market.

The Medical Loss Ratio, therefore, shows that your money would go 25% or more further if you saved it yourself. And contrary to the propaganda, limiting overhead and profit to 20% of premiums gives companies every reason to increase premiums, to make their cut as big as possible.

The American left has managed to convince the public that getting health care means having health insurance, and that not having health insurance that covers expected expenses means those things are denied to you. 

For Obamacare proponents, expanding the population of insured people has become an emotional proxy for universal “free” health care. No matter what the actual result of Obamacare, they want it implemented because its intentions are, to them, so good.

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