TRUMP WANTS TO KEEP PARTS OF OBAMACARE…GOOD LUCK WITH THAT!

…Apparently, this is where the Republicans want Americans to receive their health care.

 

Republicans have always hated single-payer, “Medicare-for-All” insurance ideas.

 

As I have been stating for almost 4 years, all those including the current President Elect Trump that have said that they want to repeal Obamacare, they do not understand how the insurance business works.  And this is especially true for those that are now saying that they want to repeal Obamacare, but want to keep some of Obamacare’s features such as not having a “pre-existing condition clause” and the ability to keep the kids on the parent’s policy.

 

The reason that the current Obamacare requires everybody to buy some level of insurance is mainly because of its pre-existing clause issue.  I will try to explain the reason that repealing it, while keeping some of its features is easier said than done.

 

For instance, if you are young and healthy, you probably would not consider buying any health insurance.  But if you came down with a medical problem, or if your child was born with a tumor and there were no pre-existing condition clause, you could then call the insurance company and demand low-cost insurance coverage for your child.  That a $200,000 tumor issue that could then be totally or partially covered.

 

When Obamacare was first approved, remember, it was originally a Republican idea that started out as Romneycare. That was when Mitt Romney successfully introduced it while being the Governor of Massachusetts.  It was the governor’s way of offering health insurance for their state’s citizens, without offering Medicare for All, a single-payer insurance idea which the Republicans have always hated.

 

When the law says insurance companies can’t discriminate on the basis of pre-existing conditions, surely what it means is that they have to charge roughly the same price for all health insurance, irrespective of your pre-existing medical condition. In the language of insurance, that’s a term called “guaranteed issue at community rates.”

 

Unfortunately, in those states that have tried “guaranteed issues at community rates”, the insurance markets have all eventually died. That’s because, if you guarantee everyone the right to buy health insurance at community rates, then some consumers will end up gaming the system. As previously stated, the young and healthy ones won’t buy any health insurance at all—they’ll go without until they are diagnosed with diabetes or a brain tumor or they get hit by a truck.  And when that happens, they will immediately call up the insurance company and exercise their right to buy health insurance at the low community rate, irrespective of their medical condition. It won’t be long before the insurance companies begin losing a ton of money and are then forced to either raise premiums through the roof or stop writing policies altogether.

 

So, in order to fix this, how do you prevent that kind of gaming of the system by consumers? 

 

Well, you just require that everyone buy at least some minimal level of insurance at the beginning of every year, so they can’t buy insurance only after they get sick. That’s called an” individual mandate.”  But because you can’t expect all the poor people to pay $1,000 a month, they will require subsidies to keep their out-of-pocket costs down to something like only 10% of their income.  To pay for those subsidies, a new tax is always required.

 

The point is, that Trump and some others say they want to keep a couple of the good parts of Obamacare.  But if you repeal Obamacare, you would have to scrap guaranteed issue, and scrap community ratings, and scrap the individual mandate and scrap the subsidies as the Republicans propose.  Then you end up where the country was back in 2008, with a market system that inevitably gives way to an insurance spiral upward in which steadily rising premiums that cause a steadily rising percentage of Americans that can’t afford their health care.

 

In other words, sorry Donald, and sorry to any others that want to keep parts of Obamacare.  It’s either you have a single-payer Medicare for all, or you have Obamacare, but you can’t just divvy it up and have it work in the long run.

 

So let’s review. To guarantee that people with pre-existing conditions can get affordable health insurance, you need to have rules requiring “guaranteed issue and community rating”.  To keep insurance companies in business because of “guaranteed issue and community rating”, you need to have the “individual mandate”.  And because poor people can’t afford health insurance, you need government subsidies. If you combine all three, what you have in a nutshell is today called ... Obamacare.  It’s that, or it’s single payer, or it’s nothing.

 

The point is that you can’t have all the good parts of a socialized system with universal coverage at affordable prices without the freedom-reducing mandates and regulations and large doses of subsidies from some people to other people.  As the old saying goes, you can’t there from here without “paying the piper”.

 

Trump and others are trying to sell the false promise of better quality health care at lower cost with fewer regulations and lower taxes.  Anyone who says this is peddling a sack of pure manure.

 

There have been many ideas presented to help fix Obamacare’s problems, but the Republicans always ignored those ideas saying all they want is to repeal and replace Obamacare.  But they never get around to offering a workable replacement program.  All we ever hear is “repeal”, but we never hear what it would be replaced with….?  The explanation I gave you is why that is the case.  Obamacare was a GOP idea, and there hasn’t been any workable ideas from the conservatives since they came up with the original Romneycare.

 

My point is that if they actually go forward and repeal Obamacare, it will take health care away from 20 million Americans.  Oh, some may find other insurance sources, but it’s pretty obvious the majority of those people will then once again go without health care. 

 

Now, those people will either just die, or they will then become a ward of their state.  The tax paying Americans will then be responsible for their healthcare.  These uninsured Americans will then get their very expensive health care through their visits to the local hospital emergency rooms.  That is the most expensive way to distribute health care.

 

And that’s the way it was, long before there was Obamacare.

 

Remember back when I agreed with all that talk saying that if you vote for Trump it would be a vote for going backwards, not forwards? 

 

Well, as to health care, I rest my case.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2016