You Can't Make It Float

Someone once told me that you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him float.  I have some brief observations about the train wreck I call Obaminacare.

1.  Insurance companies' role in life is actuarial - they calculate risk and underwrite it for profit purposes.  Obama has cut the underwriting legs out from underneath the insurance companies by commanding them to insure everyone regardless of their health conditions.  This will ratchet up the cost of coverage for everyone.  Gone are the exceptions for pre-existing conditions.  Gone are lifetime reimbursement limits.  Young adults can stay on their parents' policies.  All this lovely extra protection costs money.

2. Obama is a liar.  He campaigned for months with the refrain: "If you like your plan you can keep it."  Sadly, he and his cronies ABSOLUTELY knew that likely seven million people would be forced off the policies they liked because he, Obama, was going to compel those insurers to alter the coverages included in those policies.

3.  We are learning now that the HHS administration contemplated allowing folks to browse the Affordable Care website anonymously to peruse the new rates.  This idea was scrapped at the last minute - why? - because the A-holes on Obama's political team KNEW that people would get instant sticker-shock from seeing the huge new premiums, and would run for the hills.  So now, if you want to know what your new premiums will be, you have to sign on and cough up your entire family's bio' before you see any options and pricing.  One applicant told the navigator on the other end of the phone line that the premiums were too high and she was deciding against getting coverage at this time.  The navigator told her it was too late - they had all her info' now, and she was legally required to obtain coverage.  After all, it's "a tax", right?

4.  The Healthcare.gov website slated to enroll millions of previously uninsured Americans is broken.  The website creators cannot offer any reassurances as to when the site will work properly.  Only 26,000 people have signed on to the federal insurance exchanges, and that means NOTHING, because none of those people has paid a single dollar of premiums yet.

5.  Think about this - if you never had health insurance before, and now you have a monthly premium of $550 a month, how will you pay it?  What if you have to decide whether to pay your mortgage or your insurance premium?  Now I know you know that if you fail to pay your car insurance premium, you will be in deep doo-doo, but is it so awful bad if you cannot send a $550 check to Blue Cross?  Missing car insurance premiums spells huge problems - you could get a citation; you could lose your good driver credentials; your lender could slap some crazy, force-placed Collateral Protection Insurance on your car loan.  It's not worth it, is it?  But if you skip a health insurance premium, what's the fallout?  Maybe you end up in the emergency room from a cycling accident - you get hit with a $5,000 hospital/doctor bill and you plead poverty and make $50 a month payments - or include it in your next bankruptcy.  Try scrounging up an extra $550 when you are living paycheck to paycheck.

6.  Many Democrat politicians are running for cover.  Some are even calling for a bill to compel insurers to restore the canceled plans that Obama once promised would not be canceled.  Good luck!  The government cannot command private insurers to reinstate a product they have dropped.

7.  Obama's solution to all of this is to entice all these disappointed shoppers with subsidies - "Just sign up, and we will give you a huge tax credit at the end of the year to offset the huge premiums you are paying."   - - - unless you are middle class, and make a moderate income and don't qualify for subsidies.

8.  You don't have to be a rocket surgeon to realize that this is about redistribution of wealth.  Through this program, 400,000 people have just barely added themselves to the Medicaid recipient rolls.  Obama must raise taxes or insurance premiums on the middle class to recoup the costs of that - and we've only just begun.

9.  The employer mandate has not yet gone into effect.  When the insurance companies have to find a way to pass on the huge extra expenses, they will raise the premiums on employer-sponsored health-care plans.  Many employers will dump those programs and kick their employees onto the federal exchanges.

10.  Some idiot liberals - Bob Beckel and Alan Colmes, for example - have wasted no time saying that this Obaminacare train wreck is further fodder for the argument that it is time to go with a "single-payer" health care system (translation - nationalized socialized medicine).  Frankly, if the federal government cannot successfully run a complex website, I wouldn't trust it with running all of America's health care systems.

11.  I am inclined to see liberals more as diabolical than stupid, but one would have to think that the Obama posse saw this train coming down the tracks.  For three years, opponents have been trumpeting the drawbacks and risks.  Republicans held hostage the debt ceiling increase to try to wake up the liberals to the insanity of this legislation.  The democrats accused them of ruining our country.

12.  Where do we go from here?  I'm not sure.  It seems certain that the Obaminacare machine will melt down.  Millions of people have lost their coverage, and tens of millions more will lose theirs.  Yes, the democrats will likely suffer a huge political setback.  The Republicans could retake the Senate.  Obama will not be able to push through amnesty for the 20 million illegal aliens.  He will not be able to start taxing you for your carbon footprint.

13.  OR - - is this a bigger event?  Will this social catastrophe be the trigger for a complete implosion of the American economy?  Remember that the world bankers have that as their ultimate goal.  I am fascinated to watch this unfold.  Each day brings new revelations.  Who knows? - just keep your lamps trimmed.