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David Harsanyi says don’t give up on obamacare repeal yet.
P.J. O’Rourke once remarked, “Feeling good about government is like looking on the bright side of any catastrophe. When you quit looking on the bright side, the catastrophe is still there.” With all the doom and gloom free-market advocates must be feeling these days, there’s one truth that should bolster their resolve about the future: The catastrophe will still be there.
Conventional wisdom says that Republicans need a major attitude adjustment on cultural and social views in both substance and tone. That may very well be true. But the concern from Democrats regarding the GOP’s miseries has a tendency to inject one exceptionally terrible piece of advice into the mix: namely, that conservatives should stop griping about Obamacare.
As you all know, there is no such thing in Washington as a flawed government program, only a desperately under-funded one. Ideological rigidity, despite what you may have heard, is not a monopoly of the right. Nevertheless, a law so poorly conceived will surely be poorly implemented. Those who support it will be spending political capital defending it for many coming years.
Obamacare isn’t popular today, and there’s no reason to believe its appeal will grow. Let’s start with the expectations of supporters. For those gullible enough to believe that politicians can make them healthier while constructing more efficient and less expensive systems, there is the promise of dissatisfaction. And for those who support the Affordable Care Act for less ideological reasons, they’ll soon realize that the infinite promises of the theoretical Obamacare can’t match reality. …
Jennifer Rubin posts on an item from Reuters.
Practically nothing about Obamacare is turning out to be what President Obama said it would be. The Medicaid expansion is proving unattractive for a number of governors. Some of these (and others who are buying into the Medicaid expansion) won’t set up the exchanges. The medical device tax is now recognized as anti-technology and anti-jobs. The new taxes and mammoth regulations may be responsible for the lag in full-time job growth and the uptick in part-time work. Its contraception mandate (even after revision) is facing multiple legal challenges from religious institutions and individual employers claiming that it infringes on their religious liberty.
It isn’t bending the cost-curve downward. Reuters reports:
“A new study released on Tuesday by the nonpartisan Society of Actuaries estimates that individual premiums will rise 32 percent on average nationwide within three years, partly as a result of higher risk pools. Changes would vary by state, from an 80 percent hike in Wisconsin to a 14 percent reduction in New York. . . .” ..
Yuval Levin with more.
As Obamacare begins to roll out, its champions are beginning to have to confront reality. But because they’re getting a lot of leeway and protection from the political press, the results of this confrontation with the consequences of the law’s poor design and misguided economic assumptions often take the form of little nuggets of truth buried in mountains of frantic, wishful obfuscation. Such was the little nugget buried in the middle of a story that was itself buried in the back of the A section of last Friday’s New York Times.
The story was about the enormous challenges of implementing the law, and while it was careful to inform us (in the mouths of unnamed “supporters of the law”) that a lot of these problems are surely functions of the fact that “President Obama has done little to trumpet its benefits, educate the public or answer the critics,” it also notes the following curious fact:
“Mr. Obama scored his biggest legislative achievement exactly three years ago when he signed the Affordable Care Act. But this week the administration cautioned officials to be careful about suggesting that the law would drive down costs.
After extensive research, the administration said it was unwise to tell consumers that they could get “health insurance that fits your budget.” That message, it said, is “seen as highly motivational, but not as believable.”
This makes it sound like the “extensive research” in question was research into public opinion, which it may well have been. But of course, the more fundamental reason “to be careful about suggesting that the law would drive down costs” is that no one really expects it to do so — not even the administration. …
Michael Tanner from National Review has more on the problems that have surfaced.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare, turned three years old this week. But unlike fine wine, the ACA is not getting better with age. A torrent of recent studies and reports has provided new evidence — as if we needed more confirmation — that nearly everything we were told about this law was untrue.
Compare these promises to what we’ve found out about the law in just the past two months:
“If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your health-care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health-care plan, period.”
— President Obama, June 15, 2009
People are finding it increasingly difficult to do what the president promised. According to the California health-care-consulting firm HealthPocket, in a study of more than 11,000 plans on the individual market released this month, less than 2 percent of existing plans are in compliance with the law’s benefit requirements. While current plans are technically grandfathered in, allowing people to keep them for now, any change in the plans requires that their coverage be brought into full compliance, even if that means more expensive plans that include new and unnecessary benefits. Moreover, because non-compliant plans cannot enroll new members, most of the existing plans will eventually disappear, requiring even those members who have been grandfathered in to switch plans eventually.
The same applies to many business plans, especially for employers in the “small group” market. In a survey of small businesses, the National Federation of Independent Business found that 12 percent of companies have already been notified that their current coverage will be canceled or will not be renewed because it doesn’t meet Obamacare requirements.
At the same time, the CBO has raised, from 4 million Americans to 7 million, its estimate of the number of workers who will be dumped from their employers’ health plans and forced into the exchanges. …
Shikha Dalmia thinks medical care will be this president’s Iraq war.
Not even the most ardent defenders of Obamacare — aka the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act — claim anymore that the law will lower health coverage costs for Americans. How, then, will it achieve universal coverage, its central goal?
The short answer is, it won’t.
Last week, major insurers warned of double-digit premium hikes for small businesses and individuals when Obamacare goes into effect next year. Likewise, the nonpartisan Society of Actuaries this week estimated that costs to insurers that provide coverage to individuals will rise 32 percent on average within the first three years of the law, with premium increases sure to follow.
Similar analyses last year had already forced MIT’s Jonathan Gruber to admit that his projections that the law would lower premiums for young and old alike were wrong — even though his projections were instrumental in securing Obamacare’s passage. Gruber’s revised estimates now show that even the least affected states, such as Colorado, will experience premium hikes of nearly 20 percent by 2016.
Clearly, the word “affordable” should be scratched from the law for the sake of truth in advertising. But what about the “protection” part — namely, universal coverage?
That too is a lie. …