More Bad News On Obama Care - Strikes One, Two and Three

Trust me when I tell you that I do not go out looking for bad news on Obama Care, the health care reform legislation that the Democrats forced through the back door of reconciliation for passage in the spring. It is just that the bad news and pending failures of the legislation just keep on coming.

We have already covered the fact that many major corporations including AT&T, Verizon, John Deere, and Caterpillar have made very public overtures that they may drop their health care insurance plans for their employees and retirees since it is less expensive for their companies to pay a government fine for not having a health insurance plan than it would be for continuing to have employee and retiree health insurance. The Associated Press reported several months ago that the much touted ten year savings of $135 billion for the Federal government was really closer to a ten year savings of less than $25 billion since the Congressional Budget Office's estimate of $135 billion did not include all of the programs and their associated costs that went into the final legislation. The CATO Institute's detailed analysis of every component of the legislation led them to estimate that rather than reduce the Federal deficit by $135 billion it will increase it by over $2 TRILLION.

Now, consider some recent bad news:

- According to a recent article in the New York Times by Reed Abelson, as the Obama administration rolls out components of the health care reform legislation they are finding that they have to already start issuing waivers to prevent some insurance companies and employers from terminating their current health insurance plans in order to stay in conformance with the legislation. The article also points out the administration has already promised to issue more waivers going forward.

The administration has already issued 111 waivers covering about 1.2 million American workers, workers that would not have been able to continue to get health insurance from their employers, because of Obama Care guidelines, without the waivers. Apparently, those in Washington who put the law together never took the time to do some elementary homework and understand the impact it would have on these million plus American workers before the legislation is even ten months old.

- Talk about unintended consequences. Another New York Times article, on November 21, 2010, discussed how the new health care reform legislation would lead to a "merger mania" in the health care industry. This mania would occur as hospitals, medical clinics and doctor practices merge together to save costs and cash in on the incentives in the legislation. The article described the merger activity as a "growing frenzy."

As a result, many in the medical industry have hired and sent lobbyists to Washington to persuade the Obama administration to relax or dump existing laws and regulations that attempt to prevent health care monopolies. Some health care experts fear that this merger mania will reduce competition within the industry and by creating a more monopolistic environment, actually drive up costs for providing health care. It would create incentives, under Obama Care guidelines, to short change the health care given to patients in order to collect cost savings bonuses under the legislation. According to an expert on the health care industry quoted in the article, Thomas L. Greaney from St. Louis University: "The risk that dominant providers and dominant insurers may exercise their market power, individually and jointly, has never been greater." Great, a law that was intended to reduce costs will probably increase costs.

Great piece of legislating, folks. A law that was supposed to foster competition, provide health care coverage for more Americans, and reduce the nation's health care costs, is actually likely to suppress competition, throw more Americans into the pool of the uninsured, and will lead to skyrocketing health care costs. Strike one, strike two, strike three, you're out.

The only way out of this fix is to start over. The batter known as Obama Care has already struck out and we are still in the first inning of passage. The process established in the Social Issues section of "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" provides a process and approach to identify the root causes of our rising health care costs, formulate solutions that directly attack those underlying root causes, and does it all without lobbyists and politicians. Obama Care never understood or attacked the root causes, it just moved money around within the current system, loaded on way too many new rules and regulations, and stirred in some additional taxes on top of everything. As a result, we get the mega problems we are seeing already with the legislation. Throw out the existing law and bring in some new players that know how to play the game of solving a problem.

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