Thursday, November 21, 2013

There’s No Fixing ObamaCare

Those who thought President Obama had “fixed” the inequities in his signature health-care legislation with an announcement last week should have been paying attention on Monday to the results of a meeting held in the White House with insurance industry CEOs. If the companies thought the administration was planning on helping them deal with the fallout from the president’s edict that those who had lost their coverage as a result of ObamaCare could get their old policies back, they were in for a rude awakening. Shifting gears to allow the president to claim that he is making good on his oft-repeated promise after following the law and cancelling those policies is going to create chaos for the industry as well as cost them a fortune. But though the whole mess is his fault, the president made it clear they will get no subsidies or help. Since the president’s solution will rely on companies to take a bath on this as well as the permission of state insurance commissioners, its highly doubtful that those negatively affected by the legislation will get much relief.
This is significant not just because it shows that the president’s hour-long press conference last week during which he apologized for his false promises–even as he made it obvious that he knew all along that his blanket proclamations that no one would lose their coverage or their doctor was false. Nor is it only important because it is one more of a series of problems about ObamaCare that began but certainly did not end with a dysfunctional website. The real issue here is that the problem that has been dumped on the insurance companies and the states with little hope that they can sort it out to the satisfaction of consumers is a foreshadowing of problems to come that we haven’t even imagined.

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