May, 2013 Obama Care Update, Part 3: Resolving Root Causes Vs. Government Bureaucracy

This is our third in a series that updates the continuing disaster that is Obama Care. We know from past discussions that its supporters are having serious second thoughts about the viability of this legislation, the legislation is costing billions more than anyone ever imagined, it is resulting in stunted economic growth and the losing of employment time for workers in many industries, and worst of all, for this pain, the legislation is unlikely to work and halt the escalating health care costs in this country.

Today’s post will take a slightly different approach. Rather than just review news accounts, polls, and analyses that many smart Americans have done to uncover the impending fiasco that is Obama Care, today’s post lifts an opinion piece from a May3, 2013 article that appeared on the Tea Party Economist website.

Now, some readers might automatically dismiss this information as biased since from their liberal viewpoint, they feel that everything the Tea Party touches is tainted. However, if you should want to dismiss this information out of hand, consider the basis in reality that it comes from:

- The original legislation was over 2,000 pages long so from the start, any rational person would know that there was going to be serious complexity and complications from any government document that is that long.

- The 2,000 plus pages was just the law. Regulations to enforce the tenets of the law are over 70,000 pages and growing, or more than 35 times longer than the original law itself (double click on the photo for a larger view):

- Even supporters of the law are worried about its implementation, calling it among other things “problematic” and a “train wreck.”

- Existing government programs that have been around for decades are still studies in bureaucratic red tape and bungling (e.g. Social Security, Medicare, IRS, etc.) so to expect Obama Care to be any better or more efficient is a highly unlikely scenario.

Just because the following real life experience relative to Obama Care was reported by a Tea Party communications vehicle does not make it wrong (old saying: just because we are paranoid does not mean they are not watching us.) Thus, the following is a real life example of the disaster that is Obama care, experiences that will be repeating itself millions of times across this country in the coming months, reducing workers’ work hours, stunting economic growth, diverting attention from building the economy from filling out forms, etc.:

Our company is currently undergoing its annual health coverage renewal and massive increase (about 25% to the company and higher co-pay’s all around) fire drill. The insurance guy shared some complete horror stories with our HR guy.

It turns out that the government — I don’t know whether state or local but it essentially doesn’t matter — has essentially zero processing infrastructure to manage any of this [Obama Care] silliness. It has no IT capability, no personnel, no help desk support, nothing. The insurance guy described how government agencies are supposedly inquiring about buying or renting some of these capabilities from existing insurance companies.

Here’s where it gets truly comical-to-absurd and way beyond: apparently some bureaucrat proposed buying or renting the IT system from an insurer for $15,000. You know, a system which probably cost millions to develop, is staffed with a crew of trained specialists who wouldn’t last ten minutes with these knuckleheads in charge, and is purpose-built to a specific workflow and product mix.

Additionally, the government has inquired about renting call centers, as if a roomful of 150 or so people could easily be repurposed to support a massive government program and that the insurance company making it available doesn’t still need these resources on its own. (I worked in a call center in the financial industry back in the day and have interacted with numerous aspects of customer and technical support in many areas since: it’s not always rocket science but there is some knowledge, insight, and workflow required to not make a hash of things on even the most basic level.)

Whatever they think may be coming on line in October, it’s going to take forever for much to really happen (beyond taking you’re money; the government is terrific at that) and compliance and enforcement will be a nightmare (compliance will doubtless trail efforts at enforcement).

It’s like the guy at the coin store told me a couple of years ago when they proposed/enacted a reporting requirement for cash transactions of $600 (to capture meaningful purchases of gold and silver, among other things): “They’ll never be able to make it happen, so don’t even worry about it.”

I’m guessing *something* is going to happen with Obummersnare, but it won’t be what anyone expects and I sure hope it quickly leads to a massive loss of legitimacy and disappointment.

At the very least there should be some quality entertainment value out of this horrendous tragedy.

This is a real life experience that a common citizen has already experienced with Obama Care. Let’s look at some of the descriptors and adjectives this person conjured up via his Obama Care experiences that we can add to the current politician adjectives of “train wreck” and “problematic:”

1. Horror stories.
2. Zero processing infrastructure.
3. Silliness.
4. Comical-to-absurd and way beyond.
5. It’s going to take forever for much to really happen.
6. Compliance and enforcement will be a nightmare.
7. It won’t be what anyone expects.
8. Massive loss of legitimacy and disappointment.
9. Horrendous tragedy.

Describing anything that includes variations of the terms silly, horror, comical, absurd, disappointment, nightmare, etc. is never a good thing. But that is what we may be seeing in the coming months as Obama Care starts to implode and explode all over our lives and the economy.

Let’s get back to basics: why are America’s health care costs skyrocketing:

• Americans eat too much.
• Americans eat too much of the wrong kinds of foods.
• Americans do not exercise enough.
• Americans smoke too much.
• Americans are getting older which makes aging diseases such as dementia, Alzheimer’s, Parkinsons, etc. much more prevalent and expense.
• The government and political class restrict competition across state lines in the health insurance industry.
• The doctor population is aging and nearing retirement without enough young doctors entering the field.

What does the Federal government do in the face of these root causes:

• They provide annual and large taxpayer subsidies to the tobacco industry to grow and produce tobacco products.
• They take the taxes from sold tobacco products and use it to operate other functions within the government rather than helping Americans save their lives via smoking cessation.
• They provide annual billion dollar subsidies to American farmers to grow corn well beyond normal and rational volumes, resulting in extremely cheap corn fructose sugar products that permeate most of our domestic food chain.
• They do not focus research and resources on solving or at least minimizing the impact of aging diseases. Instead they allow various government organizations such as the National Science Foundation to spend taxpayer resources to study the sex genitalia of certain ducks, study the sex lives of New Zealand snails, develop a computer simulation of prom week, study whether dating websites are racist, and hundreds and hundreds of other inane and useless studies.
• They do not have a cohesive or comprehensive public health campaign or strategy that creates the right environment for Americans to WANT to eat less, eat better, stop smoking, and exercise.
• Rather than developing a strategy to encourage more doctors, they implement draconian, top down government regulations that encourage current doctors to retire early and potential future doctors to forego the industry altogether.

In other words, by ignoring these root causes, the political class took a misguided government subsidy issue and public health issue and tried to solve the problem with a massive and expensive government bureaucracy approach that has absolutely no chance of succeeding since when all is said and done, the above root causes will still be present.

Step 28 from “Love My Country, Loathe My Government” is the right approach to resolving the issue of high health care costs in this country. It’s process uses subject matter experts to address the root causes and does not rely on the conspiracy of drug and insurance companies and the political class to come up with a legislative disaster like Obama Care.

It is time to start over. Scrap Obama Care except for the limited positive aspects it may have and replace it with a real problem solving process, a skill that is sadly lacking in Washington.

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http://www.reason.com/
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http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w