Tuesday, September 29, 2015

What Hillary Clinton Would Do To ObamaCare

by JASmius



Here's a hint: She wouldn't repeal it:

As [Emailgate] hounds her, she’s trying to lose the scent by announcing a plan to expand and improve ObamaCare. Trouble is, her health claims are whoppers too.

While praising ObamaCare, she told a Baton Rouge campaign audience, “fewer people without insurance leads to fewer visits to the emergency room.” That’s untrue. Emergency room use is rising, according to the American Association of Emergency Physicians, because people enrolled in ObamaCare or added to Medicaid rolls still can’t find a doctor.

The "freer" you make a commodity, the more expensive it gets, and to "hold down the price," the only other alternative is to cut back on its accessibility.  It's Economics 101.

We have, of couse, discussed on many a previous occasion how O-Care has premium rates and deductibles skyrocketing in tandem:

Or, their deductible is so gigantic they can’t afford to actually go to the doctor.

For an “affordable” Obamacare bronze plan, the average deductible is $5,200 for a single person and $10,500 for a family. A healthy thirty-something guy has to shell out $5,200 of his own money after paying premiums before he’s covered.

Even higher-priced silver plans have staggering deductibles: $2,900 for individuals and $6,000 for family plans.

People who get coverage through an employer are getting clobbered with higher deductibles too. The health law makes employer provided health insurance more expensive.

These two items are supposed to be inversely proportional, not directly so.  That dynamic has reversed because insurance carriers, being forced to provide "comprehensive plans" that most people do not need, have to recoup their costs anywhere they can, and delaying the threshold where they must start providing benefits is a prime means of recoupment.

Mrs. Clinton would take ObamaCare's perverse incentives and exacerbate them to horrifying proportions.  More "free stuff," more goodies that drive up premiums and deductibles even more and reduce access to doctors even further.  Recall that back during the 2008 Democrat primaries, her primary criticism of what eventually became ObamaCare was that it wasn't coercive enough.  It relied too much on carrots and sticks when to ensure the facade of "universal coverage," it needed to be an open health care police state.

And Her Nib has every intention of "fixing" that "mistake":

Hillary Clinton needs a dose of truth serum before she rolls out her promised plan to expand Obamacare. About 9.1 million Americans are enrolled.

That leaves an estimated 10.5 million uninsured people who are eligible but won’t sign up. They’d rather make a car payment or just see it as a lousy deal.

The Obama administration is using street fairs, television ads and penalties to coax people into enrolling. But the Congressional Budget Office estimates that 90 percent of the uninsured will weasel out of any penalties thanks to dozens of exemptions the administration recognizes.

The Obama administration is allowing people to say "no" to insurance.

Don't expect that from a Hillary Clinton administration. In 1994, when she proposed her Health Security Act, she said anyone who showed up at a doctor’s office without insurance would be automatically enrolled. People who failed to pay the premium could have their wages garnished....

Count on Hillary, if she gets elected, to be the Health Care Commissar. If her past is any indication, she'll track down and punish anyone who goes without insurance.

If you think health care is in a death spiral and single-payer is right around the corner now....Suffice it to say we will not have averted ClintonCare, but merely delayed it for twenty-three years.  Only this time she'll just make whatever changes she wants via Executive decree.

It's enough to make you sick, isn't it?

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