Obamacare can't function--exchanges

            A healthcare exchange is a place where people go to find a policy.  It’s like going to a row of car dealers to see what’s available.  But under Obamacare there is only one policy, the one the government defines, a one-size-fits-all.  So it’s like all the care dealers selling the same vehicle outfitted with the same options (so they are really not options).  But if all sell the same thing, you ask, why would companies even be interested in selling insurance?  How could they make more profit?  How could they best the competition?  Answer: by selling only to the best risks.  But if they have to charge the same to everyone and cannot refuse anyone, how would they do that?  Perhaps by offering certain privileges.  So imagine one company says, “Overnight claims service and free flowers in your hospital room for those who belong to our Fitness Club.” Fitness Club might be open to those who are under 40, don’t smoke, have a healthy weight.  Thus you target the young and fit who have few claims. “And if you don’t belong to our Fitness Club, you can still process claims via our usual 800-number with 45 minute wait times and fill out our easy-to-use 14-page questionnaire for each doctor visit.” There.  The others won’t apply for your coverage.

            Healthcare exchanges, oddly enough can only be set up by the states.  Many think that when Obamacare was written it intended to demand exchanges—set up by feds if the states didn’t.  But some wording was inadvertently left out and the feds cannot do it, unless Congress passes a law to allow HHS to do this.  What happens if your state does set up an exchange?  Then HHS can administer a bunch of rules about how the exchange does policies (see above).  They can raise income threshold that gives people Medicaid to about double the number of people on “welfare medicine”.  But states pay half of Medicaid.  OK pays $1billion a year--1/6 of the state budget.  To raise another $1 billion would require that the state raised income tax about 50% or sales tax by 20%.  So a lot of state governors are saying they won’t set up an exchange for HHS’s pleasure. OK is in the forefront of this battle.  We sued Uncle Sam for trying to mandate we double Medicaid, and thereby telling the state how to run tax policy.  But if a state doesn’t set up an exchange they forfeit Medicaid, which is the federal $1billion in OK.  Then what?  The state has to pony up the full cost of  welfare medicine.  Would that raise OK income taxes by 50%?  Probably not that much because OK could then, free of federal regulations, institute ways to save money.  Medicaid fraud is a whopping 20% of cost.  The state could go paperless and make far faster checks on fraudulent claims.  The use of more PA’s and clinics could reduce costs and free docs from having to see these poor patients.  It might even improve care.  But look for a jump in tax revenue needed if the state has to fund it entirely.

            Could the feds simply fix Obamacare to allow HHS to set up exchanges?  Yes, but Congress is divided.  If the R’s in the House have enough backbone to say NO, then the program must continue as it is written.  Could HHS simply deem itself as logically having to set up state exchanges for reticent states?  Obama would try this, I believe.  O’care already gives HHS broad powers to make things up as it goes along.  If they try to do this, it is here that I would pray that our Congress would put its foot down and impeach the President for trying to make a government of men, not laws.  For a free people should be governed by Law and not by the whims of man.  This was a constant theme of our founders and one of the boldface reasons for our Declaration of Independence.  To be governed by the whims of bureaucrats given a free hand to legislate is to be subject to the ever-changing capriciousness of those in power. This is tyranny at its worst.  In such a society, nothing is dependable.  No rights are secure.  The Law is supposed to be designed to provide certainty about how things will be handled.  No certainty implies no “freedom to act” as the writers of the Federalist Papers noted.  “No man will contend that a nation can be free that is not governed by fixed laws.”—John Adams.  “Where there is no law, there is no freedom.”—John Locke.  And concerning the complexity of Obamacare, so complex that we still haven’t figured it out yet, “if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood…that no man, who knows what the law is today, can guess what it will be tomorrow…how can men be free?”—Madison, Federalist #62. 

            If we can’t impeach for things like this, when and for what reason can we impeach?  This ain’t a Clinton sex scandal.