Understanding Obamacare - Part 1

Understanding Obamacare, for me, has come incrementally. I must admit, that while I opposed it from the beginning, my disdain was somewhat akin to meeting a huge adversary in a dark alley, knowing instinctively he was armed and dangerous, but knowing very little about his identity. And that’s the way the President and the supporters in Congress wanted it. I don’t say that lightly; it was the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, who announced we’d have to pass the 2600 page bill and THEN find out. Like the Stimulus Bill of 2008, the public was told that matters were so urgent that there was no time to delay. Trust us. And how crafty to set a timeline of “implementing” the law by 2013, thus masking its overwhelming effects until after the 2012 election.

To the credit of many “Paul Reveres,” the call of alarm and to arms occurred before the legislation was passed and since then. But the Administration, supporters of Obamacare, and the mainstream media have successfully branded those voices as that of Chicken Little claiming the sky is falling.

Before digging into the danger of our current National Health Care law, I think it’s important to review how the stage was set for accepting it. If it’s SO bad, why was there any acceptance for its proposal?

From the start, I understood the inherent workings of insurance, and despite not liking to pay high premiums myself, understood, that if our society was to become increasingly dependent on a) not having a major medical deductible that must be borne by the insured before his insurance kicked in, and b) we, as a society, were going to continue to subsidize the cost of paying for people who do not contribute, people who practiced lifestyles that led to diseases that could only be slowed, not cured (such as AIDS), and people who ran to the doctor at the drop a hat because with such a small co-pay, it was considered commonplace to do so – well, as my dad used to say, “Money doesn’t grow on trees,” and sooner or later, we have to face the music.

If a sizeable number of people do not contribute to the system, others will have to pick up the tab. Doctors, clinics, and hospitals are still going to provide the service, but they expect to get paid because they have bills to pay and mouths to feed. So, to offset the loss, they place that loss upon the people who are paying. It’s just like when stores lose merchandise to theft; they don’t just say, “Oh well, I guess we’ll have to go out of business.” They increase the prices on the remaining merchandise to make up for the loss. And the honest customers end up paying higher prices.

When people who “enjoy” multiple sex partners finally contract HIV which at some point becomes full-blown AIDS and thus needs treatment exceeding $600,000 (ABC News) – that they don’t have – but they still get the treatment – the care providers are not going to be “compassionate” to the tune of firing their doctors and staff because they didn’t get the money. Again, people who pay for insurance are going to be looking at much steeper premiums because the unpaid bills are going to be transferred to those who pay. Same with all the teenage pregnancies. Same with the drug users who need extensive rehabilitation and nobody has the right to tell them what they can and cannot do. Same with providing abortions. Same with… Same with…

And that experiment we have been trying based on HMOs, Health Maintenance Organizations… Before the days of “maintenance” health, people paid a big, fat deductible under a Major Medical Plan (some still do, and many are going back to it.) But with health maintenance, the public became trained to run to the doctor at the first sighting of something being wrong – with the idea being that it would be cheaper to pay for prevention and early intervention than allowing an illness to get out of hand. But by encouraging people to do so, offering full benefits with very small co-payments, the plan inadvertently led to people thinking they had to go to the doctor for everything and anything. And many did. Then, when the doctors billed the insurance companies, the companies realizing that there was only so much money they had collected on premiums, had to increasingly cut back on what they would pay the health providers for services rendered. (And this is tenfold true of Medicare and Medicaid.) The providers based their budget on actual costs, but were getting short-changed. How would they make it financially? Why, they’d have to increase their prices. And the insurance companies had based their budget on what they projected the claims would be, but had underestimated the insured’s increased trips to the doctors and expectations for inexpensive treatment. Whoops. How would the stay afloat? Oh, that’s right, they’d have to increase their premiums.

And so, people like Obama, Pelosi, and everyone who hates the reality of economics, capitalized on this situation, and attacked insurance companies, attacked medical providers, attacked pharmaceutical companies, etc, and set out to convince the public that the real culprit in this was corporate greed. And 50% of America was happy to get on that bandwagon. It is much easier to blame others than look in the mirror and take responsibility for our own indulgences. When an issue can be removed from local and basic understanding, it becomes easy to think that money does grow on trees. In other words, if we simplified the dilemma, we’d understand that if John and Joe go out to dinner, and Joe won’t pay, John’s bill is going to be a lot higher and the restaurant isn’t going to just say, “Oh well, that’s okay, you don’t have to pay.” And if John and Joe skip out on their bill when the waitress isn’t looking, the restaurant will have to raise their prices on the honest customers. It’s basic. But take the issue up to the national level where the problem is spread across 50 states, countless private organizations, and over 300 million people, it’s become an attack that sounds like this: “Joe is a victim of his circumstances, but he is still entitled to eat in the restaurant – just like John. John isn’t paying his fair share – he’s rich, did nothing to deserve it, and John is expected to pay for Joe. And the restaurant owner? He’s greedy! Why should he be allowed to charge so much for his food?”

My dad also taught me “If something sounds too good to be true, it’s most likely because, in fact, it’s too good to be true.” The Bible says that another way in 2 Timothy 2:3,4 “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.” Despite the logic of having to pay for the actual cost of services, we really do want something for nothing. Out of compassion, we want a person, regardless of his choices in life, to receive the very best care and give that person a chance for recovery, survival, and high standard of care. Granted, you as an individual cannot afford to pick up the tab by yourself, but if the whole nation chipped in… Well, the whole nation isn’t chipping in. The number of chippers is getting smaller and smaller and smaller, and their tab is getting larger and larger and larger. In other words, the number of Joes is increasing, and the number of Johns is decreasing. The owner of the restaurant is having to raise his prices because fewer Johns are going out to dinner. The restaurant is on the verge of going out of business because customers think his prices are outrageous. Meanwhile, Obama and his supporters are convincing as many people as possible that a) every Joe deserves to eat at the restaurant – not just the Johns, b) John is selfish and must be forced to pay for Joe, and c) the greedy restaurant owner is the real problem, and therefore, we need a government restaurant that will provide affordable meals for all. (And if you choose not to eat at either the government restaurant, or at that greedy expensive restaurant), you’ll have to pay a fine – oh, the Supreme Court clarified that, yes, it is indeed a TAX – for not eating.)

In my next blog, I will go more into the danger of the Affordable Health Plan, aka Obamacare, at least to the extent I’m understanding it. Thank you for reading. Oh, and my apologies to anyone out there whose name is Joe.