Steven Brill has an article in Time describing how some of the very people who would benefit most from the Affordable Care Act have been misled by the virulent anti-Obamacare campaign to think that it is a terrible program and would do nothing for them. He also highlights the way that hospital monopolies and the reluctance of people to change providers prevent a truly competitive system from being created that would lower costs.
This is what was obvious to many of us right from the beginning, that the ACA was designed to be a boon to the health insurance, drug, hospital, and physician industry by putting more people into the system without changing the price structure. What we now have is the same expensive and price-gouging health care system that we have always had in the US, except that now taxpayers subsidize the health care and insurance costs of many more people.
The one major good thing about it is that more people can now get medical care without being bankrupted and I for one do not begrudge at all paying more taxes if necessary to achieve that goal. But it does not make sense for taxpayers to increase the profits of the health care industry and we need to move far beyond this and adopt the government-run single-payer system that the rest of the developed world has.
Brill was interviewed on The Daily Show.
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(This clip aired on January 16, 2014. To get suggestions on how to view clips of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report outside the US, please see this earlier post. If the videos autoplay, please see here for a diagnosis and possible solutions.)
1. According to the Congressional Budget office, the ACA will save the Feds $20 billion a year.
2. The present system does not provide free care to the uninsured. People who go to the ER for free care have that care paid for by everyone else one way or another. And it isn’t good care, no preventative care, no long term followup, etc..
3. The ACA will cost some money. It will also save money. By some maneuver I’m not too sure of, it extended Medicare solvency for 8 years. That is a huge savings right there.
The lies and active sabotage of the GOP/Tea Party has been relentless.
And not all that effective. Reports are Republicans are signing up in expected numbers.
IMO, they picked the wrong program to demonize. Like when they occasionally attack Social Security and Medicare. Those programs work and are wildly popular. Running on a platform of maximally damaging your voters isn’t smart.
Enrollment in these programs is slow and back loaded. We won’t know how well Obamacare works for a few years. Some state web sites still don’t even work.
I was definitely helped by the ACA and I certainly want more people to get medical care without being bankrupted and do not begrudge paying more taxes to achieve that goal.
But I fail to be optimistic that we can now move from a system that now entrenches systematic 100% taxpayer funded subsidies to these insurance entities to a system in which they don’t exist. Especially since the insurance companies now will have more money than ever to lobby for lock-ins and special privileges.
Can you cite an example of a time in US history when this sort of optimization of a useless impediment but money making lobbying machine has been set aside?
Sort of related, do you see college educations becoming cheaper? Or going back to a 4 year average stay? If so how?