So How Does That Work?

A liberal is someone who wants you to think just like they do.

A conservative is someone who just wants you to think.

            So Obama said he would “allow”, that is, look the other way if insurance companies wanted to let people have the health insurance policies that they liked and wanted to keep, period.  But imagine you are an insurer and how does that work?  Say you sell a now illegal policy that is not allowed by the law.  Someone gets sicker or dies because of this “substandard” policy and sues your company—because an Obamacare policy would have covered what they needed.  Do you think your lawyer could successfully argue that in court—that you knowingly sold an unlawful policy to someone and thus they should hold you harmless?

            So my guess is that few, if any, insurers will re-issue policies which gives Obama and the Dems a straw dog but solves nothing for the people.  Consider, if the law now demands that insurers have no ability to drop a policy holder, that in itself makes it a radically different policy.  I am no insurance expert but consider that all policies seem to be a contract that insurer will cover you for a certain price for one year.  And a clause may protect your continued renewal for a period of years.  But what if we add the proviso of renewability ad infinitium? In your second year of coverage you took up the hobby of skydiving and driving slingshot dragsters, doing drugs and smoking and drinking heavily. Wouldn’t that be asking the insurer to cover this radically increased risk at same-old pricing?  It can't be done economically!  Same thing happens when the insured develops a severe medical condition.  People say they got cancelled, but in reality they were not renewed. 

            Just like my hotel fire insurance failed to renew me when the FBI told them I had a bunch of long-term guests making bombs for terrorism in their rooms.  No, I am kidding.

            Point to be made is that by guaranteeing renewability ad infinitium requires a new actuarially calculated risk which surely drives up a policy’s cost by a large percentage.

            So then the House passed just what Obama said he was going to allow. That would make it law.  He will veto this, according to numerous sources.  That is because if you legally allow a large number of people to revert to their catastrophic policies, it changes the pool of people left over in Obamacare policies.  That screws up the actuarial calculations for the insurance companies.  They’ll probably lose their shirts when healthy people keep the former catastrophic policies and the pool is full of sick people.  Once again, don’t look for the insurers to re-issue the former policies. 

            What we come down to then is that ALL policies will change as they meet Obamacare requirements.  And the cost of such changes, as measured by the changes seen so far are about $2000 increase per adult per year.  It is a new tax as the Supremes told us.  Just pay up and tell yourself how much better off the country is. Stop crabbing about the evil insurance companies (half are mutuals!) and the lack of doctors after this thing is implemented.  Don’t cry to me if your personal data gets misused by feds or hackers.  Alternatively, let me cheerlead as you join the Tea Party.

            “Well the R’s haven’t proposed any solutions!” the D’s are fond of saying.  Strange since R’s have proposed marketing across state lines and high-risk pooling by the states.  Here’s my bipartisan okay-I’ll-agree-to-yet-another-entitlement solution.  Remember we had 46 million without insurance.  But 12 M were illegals who don’t require insurance (and so will be preferentially hired by employers). Scratch also 6M of the 8M who don’t bother to sign up for Medicaid and experts say never will until they get sick. There are also 18M healthy, mostly young who can afford insurance but choose to buy a new car instead. Leave them alone.  There remain then about 8 million who have difficulty getting insurance but want it.  For these folks, why not create Medicaid II, a program that would guarantee they get fundamental & customary care.  If that costs 3 times what normal Medicaid does per person, that is still about $10K per year or $80 billion annually.  (And let recipients pay for much more radical treatments beyond normal coverage) This is far less than the $140 billion that Obamacare ORIGINALLY estimated—a lowball used to get the ACA passed.  But now CBO estimates ACA goes $2.3 Trillion in the red for 6 years 2015-2020.  That’s almost $400 billion a year—not too far under the cost for National Defense. We’d get as many new people insured as Obamacare will for 1/5 the cost.

            And you could still find a doctor.