While the Sept. 27 front-page article persuasively illustrates
the problems inherent in Obamacare, it’s important to understand
that once fully implemented our system will be regulated by the
Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), with its 15 bureaucrats
charged with rationing care. Their decisions will be at once
divorced from marketplace realities and based on an authority
without independent oversight, which will inevitably lead to
politically biased changes to benefits, determined by fiat.
When you require insurance companies to cover patients without
regard to health history, you can be guaranteed that the already
commonplace phenomenon known as cost-shifting will become rampant,
which drives up the cost of the healthy among us. Imagine a life
insurance company being mandated to write policies without regard
to an actuarial analysis that estimates longevity and you can
appreciate the absurdity.
The other market distortion is the percent of health insurance
expenses consumers pay. In 1960, patients paid about 48 percent of
the total bill. Today it’s only 12 percent. Artificially masking
the true costs of a service results in a silent subsidy which, in
turn, results in over-utilization.
Although President Obama and the Democrats in Congress dismissed
alternatives to their command and control “reform” bill, there were
— and are — ways to reform the system without forcing consumers
into a heavily regulated system.
Here are four: First, provide tax credits (or refundable tax
credits for the 45 percent who don’t pay federal income taxes),
which consumers could use to purchase policies that fit their needs
and budgets; second, allow the purchase of policies across state
lines, which would expand competition and reduce costs; third,
expand Health Savings Accounts, which Gov. Mitchell Daniels of
Indiana has successfully done with state employees; and, fourth,
pass tort reform — about 23 percent of tests and procedures can be
attributed to defensive medicine.
But, of course, the American Bar Association, which has a
stranglehold on Democrats in Congress, has refused reasonable
reform. Those simple, free market principles, would preserve
individual choice and begin to reverse the unsustainable trends in
cost escalation.
Perhaps the most damning aspect of this so-called reform is the
duplicitous, insidious way in which it was passed. Regardless of
their questionable efficacy, both the New Deal and Great Society
passed with solid majorities, whereas Obamacare, which effectively
puts under federal control one-seventh of our GDP, passed by the
slimmest of margins, and against the wishes of nearly 60 percent of
citizens.
Sincerely,
Phil Mella
Woodland Park