Obama Care - Still Constitutional And Still A Disaster - Following Up On Loose Ends

A few weeks ago we did an extensive four day series on how disastrous Obama Care is and how bad it will be for the country if allowed to fully deploy. The legislation never understood the root causes of our escalating health care costs and thus, never put together the right solutions for addressing and resolving those root causes.

Besides this obvious shortcoming, we extensively covered the many other reasons why this is one of the worst written and worst thought out laws in the history of the country. It has and will continue to stifle economic growth, it will raise taxes on every American, it will end up rationing health care, and will reduce individual freedom and liberty for every American.

And worst of all, it will not come close to meeting its fundamental goal since ten years from now, according to the Congressional Budget office, tens of millions of Americans will still not have health care insurance coverage.

It is not a pretty picture with little, if any, redeeming positive aspects. Unfortunately, four posts were not enough to cover all of the bad news. We need today to cover the latest bad, and some good, news of what is going on relative to Obama Care (the bad news) and what is going on relative to lessening government intervention in the industry (the good news):

- Anyone with a basic understanding of economics, marketing, or life knows that the best way to keep prices low and competition sharp in a marketplace is to have lots of vibrant, hungry competitors. Obama Care does the exact opposite.

According to an article from the New York Times that was reprinted in the August 26, 2012 issue of the Tampa Bay Times, the exact opposite effect is going on as a result of this law. The article starts by pointing out that Aetna, one the nation's largest insurance companies, is buying Coventry  Health Care, primarily hedging their bets that if Obama gets reelected, Obama Care is unlikely to go away. Coventry is a large provider of Medicaid and Medicare services.

Additionally, Wellpoint is purchasing Amerigroup and Cigna has already bought out HealthSpring. All of these purchases are driven by Obama Care. Thus, rather than increasing competition in the health care business and driving down costs naturally, Obama Care is causing the market to consolidate, giving increased power to fewer companies, which has to restrict competition and drive up costs.

Remember how politicians talked about the five largest banks and how they "were too big to fail?" Same thing is going on in the health care business. Government, politicians, and giant private companies colluding to scratch each others' backs for their own mutual good and to the detriment of lowering costs and helping out Americans.

- One aspect of Medicare that we have not talked about is the Medicare Advantage program. Medicare Advantage allows senior citizens to step up the medical care that get in their elder years by splitting the the cost with the Federal government when they purchase private health insurance.

This allows  them to avoid using the traditional single-payer Medicare process and have more flexibility and control over their medical needs and decisions, all of which is a good thing. Seniors shop and compare various insurance options, back to our competition theory from above and how it increases effectiveness while decreasing costs, and chose the plan that best meets their personal needs. Almost 25% of seniors already avail themselves to this choice option for their Medicare coverage, a percentage that has been growing larger over time.

From a private health insurance company's perspective, Medical Advantage provides them additional flexibility in the coverage they offer, which in turn has resulted in better benefits and service over traditional Medicare. A recent Harvard University analysis found that due to these characteristics, Medical Advantage is actually 9% more cost-effective than traditional Medicare.

Everybody wins. Citizens get better and more flexible health care services, insurance companies like the program and compete for it, and the program is cost effective, exactly what the country is trying to do with its high health care costs. Great idea and good implementation.... until Obama Care came along.

In order to keep the apparent costs of Obama Care down and to fund its components, the legislation was written so that it slashed $156 billion from the Medical Advantage program over the next ten years. Obama has apparently argued that Medical Advantage is too expensive, which is nonsense since according to the Harvard researchers, it is more cost effective than regular Medicare.

If anything, Obama should be learning what makes the Medical Advantage program more cost effective and taking those lessons and applying it to the larger Medicare universe, not slashing and burning what is working better today. Idiocy.

Now, the Obama administration tried to hide this insanity by starting a pilot program to cover the decimating of the Medicare Advantage destruction Obama Care had wrought. However, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently released a study saying this experimental program is a disaster and should be terminated. The New York Times did an article covering this sham (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/23/health/policy/gao-says-medicare-test-project-is-wasting-8-billion.html) on April 22, 2012. The Times article agreed with the GAO's findings, while also citing other authorities, showing how this experimental program does not come close to matching the effectiveness of today's Medicare Advantage plans.

The insanity of this legislation never stops. The one component of Medicare that might actually be working effectively and efficiently and Obama wants to kill it by drying up its budget.

- The Wall Journal Street recognized the economic and reality fallacy of Obama Care fully two years ago when they insightfully and correctly wrote the following passage, before the rest of the world found out how Obama Care was going to take over $700 billion out of Medicare:

"The drastic reductions in Medicare reimbursements under ObamaCare will create havoc and chaos in health care for seniors. Many doctors, surgeons and specialists providing critical care to the elderly—such as surgery for hip and knee replacements, sophisticated diagnostics through MRIs and CT scans, and even treatment for cancer and heart disease—will cease serving Medicare patients. If the government is not going to pay, then seniors are not going to get the health services, treatment and care they expect.

Everyone should know by now that Medicare suffers dramatic long-term deficits and unfunded liabilities, and is in need of fundamental, structural reforms. But effectively refusing to pay the doctors and hospitals that provide the medical care the program promises to seniors is no way to solve that problem."

Again, we keep coming back to the fact that Obama Care never understood the myriad of underlying root causes of our escalating health care costs and the implications of the legislation's unintended bad consequences.

- One aspect of the legislation that we failed to cover over the initial four posts is the insanity of exemptions that the Obama administration has granted. Since the law was signed in March, 2010, over 1,500 waivers to the law's components were granted, delaying compliance with the law  until a later date.

If you do some simple math you find that since the law was signed, on average, almost 13 exemptions were granted to the law's provisions EVERY WEEK on average from the day it was signed. This comes out to more than two exemptions being granted every BUSINESS DAY since it was signed. No one can make the case that this was a well written law if you have to grant so many exemptions to the law's provisions in such a prolific manner.

- There actually is a little good news on managing health care costs floating around that Obama Care has not yet destroyed. A recent edition of Business Week contained an article regarding some good work New York state is doing with its Medicaid program.

New York, like most states, has had a rough economic over the past few years, putting pressure on the state government to run more leanly and cost effectively. New York has overhauled its Medicaid program, a big, big budget item, so that a lot of its Medicaid effort is via private insurance entities. Unlike many other states, New York has set out a risk/reward program for the private Medicaid providers in its state.

If a private Medicaid insurer in the state does not meet performance criteria over a three year period, they can have their contract with the state terminated. If they exceed performance measures, they get financial rewards. New York currently has 45 state Medicaid programs in operation in the state so the competition for Medicaid program approval and performance is high.

What is the result of promoting competition and actively managing the root causes of health care service? New York's Medicaid programs score higher on a whole range of health care criteria, including primary care, ambulatory care, breast cancer screening, and cholesterol control, than other large population states including Florida, Illinois, and California. New York encourages competition which enhances health care delivery while Obama Care wants to kill competition.

- One last piece to finalize the designation of Obama Care as the worst piece of Washington legislation that was ever written. The following video link contains a face-to-face confrontation between Paul Ryan and President Obama a few years ago where Ryan takes apart the program, highlighting many of the negative aspects of Obama Care that have since unfolded:

http://janmorganmedia.com/2012/08/ryan-faces-obama-and-takes-obamacare-down-in-six-minutes/

Ryan is logical, prepared, and correct, he most eloquently states what we have proven over the past five posts relative to Obama Care: yes, it is Constitutional but it is also a disaster that will not work, will increase taxes, will increase the government bureaucracy, will significantly increase our national debt, will stifle our freedom, will restrict health care service, and will stretch the nation's current health care infrastructure until it breaks.

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http://www.unitedstatesofpurple.com/

The United States of Purple is a new grass roots approach to filling the office of President of The United States by focusing on the restoration of freedom in the United States, focusing on problem solving skills and results vs. personal political enrichment, and imposing term limits on all future Federal politicians. No more red states, no more blue states, just one United States Of America under the banner of Purple.

The United States Of Purple's website also provides you the formal opportunity to sign a petition to begin the process of implementing a Constitutional amendment to impose fixed term limits on all Federally elected politicians. Only by turning out the existing political class can we have a chance of addressing and finally resolving the major issues of or times.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.
Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.cato.org/
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http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment