Democratic politicians like Nancy Pelosi (D, California) are
ecstatic that the Republicans failed to replace Obamacare yesterday. It seems
to me their joy is a little premature, since all that will happen now is that
ObamaCare will continue in its death spiral, with premiums rising (average rise
in 2017 across all plans is projected to be about 22%), more insurance
companies pulling out because they are losing money (Humana is the latest), and
the few remaining state insurance coops failing.(as of July last year only 7 of
the original 23 are still operating, and most of those are expected to fail
this year, at a taxpayer loss of more than $1.7 billion).
What that means is that it will be plain for all to see over
the next year or two how poorly the Democratic ObamaCare bill works, and that
anger will no doubt fall primarily on Democratic candidates. The Republican bill was far from perfect, but
if it had passed it would be the Republican candidates taking the heat for the
inevitable health care problems, rather than the Democrats.
By the way, the only reason ObamaCare got more people insured
is that it essentially subsidized a lot of people’s insurance. Just under 90% of people newly insured under ObamaCare
are subsidized by taxpayers. That means Obama could just as well have directly
subsidized them in the first place and avoided the whole expensive mess that
lost so much money in the failed state cooperatives and expensive ObamaCare bureaucracy,
and let us keep our original health care plans and doctors as he promised.
I think the Democrats will come to rue the fact that Republicans
didn’t kill ObamaCare and thereby inevitably inherit the public anger about health care.
Posts
