Obamacare for dummies

I renew my health insurance every July.  This year I asked the insurer, “Does this policy meet Obamacare requirements or am I going to get fined?”  The answer was, “We don’t know.  A lot of things haven’t been announced and exchanges haven’t been set up yet.”  Comforting, hunh?  It was the same when Senator Ted Cruze asked rhetorically about hiring.  Since health insurance costs an average of $7700 per employee and illegals (well what would we call them after immigration reform, pathwayers?) are exempt from Obamacare, would employers hire pathwayers preferentially over American Citizens?  Just asking, you know.  The news media thereupon asked the Gang of Eight and nobody could say.  Well, except John McCain who yelled testily, “Get out of here! I don’t have time to answer it!” 

     What a mess Obamacare is in.  No state exchanges in 24 states.  Feds hadn’t planned on this and aren’t ready with any federally run exchanges, so they punted for a year.  No employer mandate, so they have no data to assess who is eligible for a subsidy from an exchange where those do exist.  And then they announced that the exchanges would therefore not verify either your income or your eligibility.  So now Bill Gates and Warren Buffet can say they only make 10K a year and they need subsidizing.  But other than that, there won’t be any fraud to speak of.  Comforting, hunh?

     And half the states haven’t complied with the Medicaid expansion to 138% of poverty level.  So there will be a lot of lower middle income folks heading for an exchange if they can find one to buy subsidized insurance.  The Medicaid ploy was to force states to pay for much of Obamacare costs.  Now since that isn’t working, Obama has asked Congress to increase the subsidies by more than double—a 107% increase.  That’s the game.  Get as many people to sign up for the program in some way where some government gives freebie insurance or near freebie insurance.  That way, the people will be sucked into the entitlement and will raise cain if anybody tries to repeal it.   

    My better half has been talking to her doc about a surgery and he warned her he is soon not to be in private practice.  He will be part of the hospital, paid on a fee for services arrangement.  You see docs get reimbursed by roughly half as much from Medicare as hospitals do, for many procedures.  Hospital corporations have figured a slick fix to this.  Hire a stable of docs and pay them as employees.  It’s forcing doctors out of practices and into hospital run umbrellas where individual diagnoses will be set aside for more common procedures, another Obamacare mandate, to save costs.  "Just go home and take this pill," Obama said.  Death by bureaucracy, in other words.  Comforting, hunh?

     Comes now the CBO report that shows the effect of Obamacare will probably not put, as promised, another 15 million into affordable health care but will increase the ranks of those without health care by 30-48 M. Smaller employers are terrified of the prohibitive costs.  Pools of the already insured are soon to be joined by a whole lot of sick people, driving the price up by maybe double.  That is, unless the 20-somethings who don’t have health insurance can be induced to sign up for several thousand a year by the cooing and comforting sirens from the NBA and the city librarians.  I’m betting on the kids opting for the fine and insurance costs doubling for the rest of us.

     Meanwhile Obama is telling us what part of the law he intends to enforce when and how.  Like DOMA. Does this seem a violation of Article II, Sect. 3 of the Constitution which mandates a President “shall take care that the Laws be faithfully Executed.”?  (Oh, it’s just some musty old document he swore to uphold in his oath of office.)  I can’t wait for a Conservative Republican to get in charge and tell the Dems he likewise intends not to enforce any Labor Acts or Food Stamps because he doesn’t believe in them and they are old and out of date.

     No, seriously, here’s what the R’s should do.  Since Obama’s ploy with dropping the business mandate of Obamacare is to drive more people into uninsured state whereupon they flee to the healthcare exchanges which grant them insurance almost for free, they should designate a spokesman Senator from an exchange-less state who doesn’t have to run for several years.  He could say, “Well, of course the IRS will audit posthumously all who apply at an exchange in order to catch fraud.”  And then he could say that Congress just won’t pass a 107% increase in subsidies.  It’s exorbitant.  The Obamacare bill should operate as designed, and let the people decide what they want to advise us to do about it in the future.  And then he could say, " Since we have a Prez who decides capriciously what laws to enforce, this violates his Oath of Office and the Constitution, we begin impeachment hearings tomorrow. Comforting, Mr. President, hunh?" 

   If they think this is not enough evidence to impeach, I have a list of 34 Presidential violations of our rights I would be glad to share.