Whither Obamacare

Published November 19, 2013

by Gary Pearce, Talking About Politics, November 18, 2013.

Judging from Obamacare, Democrats can’t make government work. Judging from the October shutdown, Republicans don’t want it to work. What’s a democracy to do?

 

Obamacare is essentially an old Republican idea, hatched by the Heritage Foundation as an alternative to single-payer health insurance. It’s essentially Romney care. The idea is to put everybody in a big insurance poll – through the free market – that spreads the risk and the cost.

 

It tries to solve the problem of 40 million Americans who have no health insurance, Medicaid or Medicare. So they don’t get preventative care. They wait until they’re injured or until they’re really sick, and they go to the emergency room. Then they run up hospital bills in the tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. Which they can’t pay. Which all gets shifted to the rest of us.

 

The idea behind Obamacare is simple: Get those people into cheaper care earlier. Make them pay something (if they can) instead of sticking us with the bill.

 

But the execution of Obamacare is complicated. Because it relies on insurance companies. And because Chief Justice Roberts ruled that states could opt out of Medicaid expansion. Which most Republican-run states like North Carolina did.

 

So you could blame Obamacare’s problems on insurance companies, the Supreme Court and Republican governors and legislators.

 

Now American has three choices. First, muddle through with Obamacare. Second, go to a single-payer system by putting everybody under Medicaid/Medicare.  Or third, the Republican solution, which is … what?

 

Oh, that’s right. They don’t have one. In his column Sunday, the N&O’s Ned Barnett had this great quote from John Kennedy in his 1960 campaign: “I have been in the Congress for 14 years, and I know all about the record then, but I have yet to hear of one single original piece of new, progressive legislation of benefit to the people, suggested and put into a fact by the Republican Party.”

 

Some things never change in politics.

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November 19, 2013 at 8:12 am
TP Wohlford says:

Which is complete bee-ess. Most assuredly, they've got more plans, drafted to look like actual House/Senate bills, than Candidate Obama had in 2008 with his "my plan."

But hey, I guess you can make a living repeating stuff like this.

November 19, 2013 at 10:34 am
Vicky Hutter says:

Gary, I think you've fallen for the Obama line of blaming everyone for his problems except himself. Obamacare is flawed public policy and should never have been passed, much less signed into law.

November 19, 2013 at 9:21 pm
Tom Hauck says:

We keep hearing that the origin of the PP ACA is The Heritage Foundation and Romney Care. I'll bet neither Heritage nor Romney contemplated 12,000 pages of law and regulation.

November 19, 2013 at 11:26 pm
Norm Kelly says:

What's missing in this editorial? Since it was written by a true leftie, the answer is obvious. It's a trick question. The truth is missing from this editorial.

Simply stating the same lie often enough, in enough different places, and loudly enough to drown out the truth, actually does get a segment of the left to believe the lie. But it's still a lie.

Like claiming that Republicans didn't or don't have an alternative to socialized medicine. Just because it's either a plan or some plans that lefties don't like, some plan that doesn't involve getting the feds involved in my health care decisions, the lefties claim that the Republicans don't even have a plan. Except several plans were proposed by the Republican party in Washington. But since all of them depended on the (better) private sector for the solution, NONE of the lefties in Washington or the press liked them, so they claimed no plan existed.

Purchase of health insurance across state lines was proposed. Denied by lefties.

Tort reform to limit the amount of 'pain & suffering' damages awarded. Denied by lefties.

Allowing groups of small businesses to form buying groups was proposed. Denied by federal law, lefties.

I know there were/are more, but I'm not the policy wonk. I have a job and family to take care of. Somebody who gets paid to know this stuff should be responsible for getting the info out to voters. But the info is out there to be found.