IE Business Daily Business news for the Inland Empire.
The United States Supreme Court this week rescued Obamacare, once again. The President is elated that the Court ignored the actual wording of the law that clearly states that subsidies shall be provided through state exchanges. The Obama Administration, through the IRS, decided to ignore this matter when 37 states failed to create their own exchanges.
While Democrats will use this court decision to pound their chests, Republicans are actually sighing in relief. In the upcoming elections, Democrats will not be able to blame Republicans for 6.5 million Americans losing their healthcare, as shoddy and expensive as their Obamacare policies are. No, the facts about Obamacare will now fall squarely onto Democrat heads and Republicans will be able to sit back and remind voters of the many promises President Obama and Democrats made when they passed a bill they hadn’t yet read.
The facts are becoming all too clear even for Democrats;
“I think it’s going to be the next big problem,” said Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., a congressional leader on health care.
“We’ve got some 17 million more people covered … but they can’t access the care they seem to be entitled to,” McDermott said. “It costs too much to use the care. That’s the deceptive part about it.”
Yes folks, the coverage provided by Obamacare, even after it is heavily subsidized by taxpayers to the tune of $2 billion a year, is, as many people warned, too expensive to actually use by those insured by it. This is probably the reason that emergency rooms remain filled when we were promised Obamacare would fix that. What good is insurance, even if it is free, if it costs too much to use?
This is just one of the conundrums Obamacare has created. Healthcare premiums for the coming year are expected to rise another 10-15%. The expansion of Medicaid coverage (Medi-Cal in California), along with lowered reimbursement rates for healthcare providers has created a glut of patients with fewer doctors and clinics willing to serve them.
Then there was the political campaign by the President and others of his party promising that premiums would DROP by $2,500 per family after Obamacare was passed. If a person really thinks hard, they can remember the President saying that “if you like your plan, YOU can keep your plan” and “if you like your doctor, YOU can keep your doctor!”
Never mind that millions of Americans could not “keep their plan,” could not “keep their doctor,” and NO ONE, save for the seriously ill, saved $2,500 on their healthcare premiums (unless taxpayers are paying for it.) And let’s face facts, most of those people whose care is subsidized can’t afford to use their healthcare either because their co pays are too high.
We must also remember that 30 million Americans are STILL without healthcare insurance. It doesn’t mean they don’t have healthcare, it just means they aren’t insured for it.
Yes, folks, Republicans have dodged a bullet thanks to the Supreme Court. The court decision means that 6.5 million people won’t lose their government handouts. It means that 30 million people will still remain uninsured. It means that premiums will continue to rise at over 10% a year. It means that families will NOT save $2,500 a year. It means millions of Americans enrolled in Obamacare will still avoid using healthcare services they can’t afford (according to Democratic Congressman McDermott.) It means that emergency rooms will continue to remain full.
But most of all, it means that the death-spiral long predicted for Obamacare will continue as premiums become more expensive and even people with subsidized healthcare learn that they don’t want insurance coverage that is too expensive and that becomes ever more inaccessible due to unaffordable co pays even after they pay their portion of premiums.
Democrats can’t blame Republicans for it. They can’t blame the Supreme Court. They can’t blame Mother Nature. It wasn’t Republicans who put money in the pockets of Health Insurance companies through Obamacare (look at their stock prices on Thursday).
Nope. Democrats now own this. They can’t pass the blame onto anyone or anything else.
