Obamacare won't work because it doesn't address the principle issue here and that is skyrocketing costs. Oh it got a few things right with consumer protections, making sure insurance can't just drop you once you get sick, making sure you can get coverage with pre-existing conditions, stuff like that. But it did nothing to stem regulation costs or big pharma costs of end of life care costs. Those are the big three driving medical costs way too high, plus obscene profits by insurance companies. And instead of trying to reign costs in all we did was subsidize those companies and further remove value based decisions from the patient.
There's this old anecdotal story, I don't remember where it comes from, but say you're in your 20s or 30s or whatever and someone comes to you and says hey, someday you are going to die. But if you pay me a million dollars right now I guarantee to add an additional year to the end of your life. You'd probably be like shutup you're nuts, I don't have a million dollars and besides I have plenty of time left. But that's exactly what we do with end of life care now, we pay obscene amounts of money to try to squeeze a couple more years out of people who have already lived a very long time. It just doesn't make sense, but because your insurance covers the costs and you don't directly pay for it of course you're going to take all those procedures. I mean how many cancer patients would give up treatment if instead of spending thousands on their care the insurance company said hey you can give this money to your children instead?
And this issue is not unique to health care. Look at the costs of college. They skyrocketed when the government started providing loans at super low rates. You change who's paying for it, increase the easily available money, and the business (in this case colleges) are going to take full advantage.
And that's what obamacare does, just subsidizes a whole industry. And you can't just say, well price control procedures because doctors will suffer the most from that. Insurance companies aren't going to say it's ok, we'll still pay doctors the same, just give us less premiums, no way. Doctors deserve to make a lot of money because it's a highly skilled and difficult job. We need to somehow get our money back from corporations that basically just push paper and act as giant banks.
Maybe I have no clue what I'm talking about, but the experience is surely real. My premiums went from 100% company paid two years ago to an 80/20 split now where I pay $300 a month. And my out of pocket max went up 25%, which directly affects me since I'll probably have another kid in the next couple years. My first kid cost me a grand total of $3000 to have. My next one including the new premiums will cost around $8000. Over 250% increase in less than 5 years. And my costs are still low compared to most people, I count myself lucky, but premium wise it's basically a ~2700 pay cut since it's pre-tax, and my company did it purely because costs are rising and they can't afford to cover it 100%. Them paying 80% they still pay more today then they did back when they paid 100%.
American health system is broken and if single payer will fix it I'm all for it. Nationalize all the health insurers if that will work, I'm just very skeptical because I envision single payer her not as nationalization but as government simply footing the bill to the insurance companies as they laugh all the way to the bank.
I forgot to comment on the court decision, I think the interpretation was fine but I do find it a bit funny. Gruber one of the chief architects said the whole reason that clause was in there was to pressure governors to setup exchanges by threatening zero subsidies for their states if they didn't. Well a few governors called the feds bluff. I say good for them, since I believe obamacare is basically a huge corporate health insurance subsidy, and the feds are trying to make the costs look smaller by pushing as much as they can onto states.
Let us hope Cruz is stupid enough to focus his campaign there. Not unlikely.
