Obama(doesn’t)care

You may have noticed, now that the federal government is lurching forward with Obamacare, that a great many numbers are coming out which show just what for a nightmare this program will become. See what you make of this.

● First, I told you a couple weeks back that it turns out that Obamacare lets insurers blast old people with three times (300%) the premiums of young people. It also lets insurers add a 50% surcharge on smokers. Thus, a 60-year-old smoker who earns $35,000 a year could well be hit with premiums in the range of $8,411, with we taxpayers paying another $7,000 to the insurer as a subsidy.

● Then came this little tidbit. A couple weeks ago, the IRS put out guidance which estimated that the cheapest Obamacare plan you will need to buy. . . the stripped down Ford Escort of plans without any bells and whistles will cost a family of four at least $20,000 a year. Hope Taco Bell gives you a raise.

● Now there’s news about the uninsurables which should trouble people. One of the biggest promises used to sell Obamacare was that the law would make it illegal for insurers to turn away people with pre-existing conditions. That provision goes into effect next year. In the meantime, a stop-gap measure was passed. It is this stop-gap that has proven interesting.

To help the uninsurables until they are declared insurable, Congress set up a program whereby anyone with a pre-existing condition which prevents coverage, and who has been uninsured for at least six months, could get Uncle Sam to pick up their bills. A total of 135,000 people got into this program.... before they closed it to the public. That’s right. The program is now closed because Team Obama has determined that they can’t afford to let any more people in. This is because they’ve blown through half of the $5 billion they were given to run the program and they need the rest to get through the rest of this year.

So let’s think about this. 135,000 people cost $2.5 billion to cover for one year. That works out to about $18,500 per person. This turned out to be much more expensive than expected when the program was created. . . as you would expect. What does this tell us about the future? Well, let’s start with how many of these people there are in the general population. According to The Washington Post, there are between 9 million and 25 million such people. In technical parlance, this wide of a spread is called “pulledthenumberfromyourasstimating,” but let’s go with it. Using this number, we see that the Democratic plan to help these people ultimately was available to only 0.5% to 1.5% of the people who needed it before it ran out of money. That sounds like a Democratic plan, doesn’t it?

Moreover, if we project these costs forward, then covering the cost of these 9 / 25 million uninsurables lurking among us like tax-lepers or human tax-sink-holes will cost taxpayers somewhere between $167 billion to $463 billion per year. To put this into perspective, all of Medicare spends only $482 billion a year.

Now ask yourself why Obama didn’t fight to get more funding? Why was he happy to take the $5 billion and then look the other way as the program died? The answer is simple. With the $5 billion, he was able to claim that he did something to help these people... even if it only helped 0.5% of them. But covering them all would be a PR nightmare. Indeed, these people cost too much for the Federal government to pay for them. So Obama’s plan is to “hide” them within private insurance carriers.

Think of it this way. If Obama taxed you $400 billion to cover these people, you would freak out. You might even revolt. But if he instead forces private insurance to cover these people, then insurance rates raise by $400 billion and he can point his finger at evil insurance “price gougers” without anyone ever realizing that he’s basically using the insurers to impose a tax he didn’t want the federal government to carry on its books.

Now consider this. In 2010, about $2 trillion was spent on healthcare in the US. Extrapolating these people, if there are 25 million of them, then this 8% of the population accounts for 25% of the total healthcare spending in the US. It strikes me that the answer to this issue is not to jam these people into the system and let everyone else pay for them... as Obama is doing. No, the answer is to find a better (read: cheaper) way to get these people cared for.

If ever there was a moment where government should involve itself in the healthcare industry directly, it should be to make sure that these people are taken care of without breaking the rest of the system. Yet, here is the government essentially punting on these people and just forcing private industry to pick up the tab. This really highlights just how bad Obama and the Democrats are at problem-solving. Wouldn’t it be better to set up an alternative system, perhaps through medical schools, to treat these people? Or to set up special clinics for these people that reduce the costs of long-term care? Perhaps using a little purchasing power to get the ultra-high cost drugs they need at cost or cheaper? The least effective means to cover these people seems to be just dumping them into private insurers and saying, “you cover them or else.”

What this tells me is that the Democrats suck at problem solving. Even when it comes to using the power of government, they have no idea what they are doing. They are a bull in a china shop. Let’s face it, Democrats suck.

Thoughts?