Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

ObamaCare: a Downward Spiral of Rising Costs and Deteriorating Quality
Cato at Liberty ^ | September 16, 2010

Posted on 09/16/2010 10:46:22 AM PDT by La Lydia

...The new health-care law’s mandates are already causing health insurance premiums to rise 3 to 9 percent more than they otherwise would. Its price controls are pushing insurers to abandon the market for child-only coverage and will soon begin rationing care to Medicare patients, partly by driving nearly 1 in 6 hospitals and other providers out of the program. Starting in 2014, when the full law takes effect, things will get really ugly. ObamaCare’s “individual mandate” will drive premiums even higher – assuming the courts have not declared it unconstitutional, as they should. Because the penalty for violating the mandate is a fraction of those premiums, healthy people will wait until they are sick to buy coverage, driving premiums higher still. This is already happening in Massachusetts, which enacted a nearly identical law in 2006. ObamaCare’s price controls will force insurers to cover sick patients at artificially low premiums, guaranteeing that insurers will avoid, mistreat, and dump the sick, because that’s what the price controls reward. ObamaCare’s private health-insurance subsidies will expose low-wage workers to implicit tax rates higher than 100 percent, potentially trapping millions in poverty.

With real reforms like Medicare vouchers and large health savings accounts, and letting consumers purchase health insurance across state lines, a free market would reduce costs and improve quality through innovations such as integrated health systems, nurse-practitioner-staffed primary care clinics, telemedicine, and insurance that offers even sick patients a total satisfaction guarantee.

But until Congress or the courts discard ObamaCare’s mandates, price controls, and new entitlement spending, there is literally nothing that can arrest this downward spiral of rising costs and deteriorating quality....


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Front Page News; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: bhohealthcare; democrats; economy; fail; healthcare; liberalfascism; obama; obamacare; socialisthealthcare; socializedmedicine
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-22 next last
It is only going to get worse if they don't repeal it.
1 posted on 09/16/2010 10:46:25 AM PDT by La Lydia
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: La Lydia

This should be the number one issue in October for all R’s to run on. Even ahead of the economy. They should unify on this issue and blast it out across the airwaves.


2 posted on 09/16/2010 10:47:57 AM PDT by samtheman
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: La Lydia

Think of Obama designing an airplane.

Would you even want to be out of a shelder during it’s first flight test?

Health care? Feggedabowdit!!

These people are stupid.

Period.


3 posted on 09/16/2010 10:49:48 AM PDT by Da Coyote
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: La Lydia; Nachum

DeathCare is DeathCare. It must be repealed or we can all bend over and kiss our rears goodbye before Obama’s Death Panels decree it.


4 posted on 09/16/2010 10:50:26 AM PDT by ExTexasRedhead (Take back our country on November 2, 2010.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Da Coyote

OK, shelter, d*mmit. It was the typewriter’s fault.

No, wait, it was GWB’s fault.


5 posted on 09/16/2010 10:50:37 AM PDT by Da Coyote
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: La Lydia

This monstrosity is poised to kill off not just America’s but the whole world’s fountain of new medical discoveries and treatments. But that’s one of the things that comes from the false humility of insisting that an exceptional country now ought to act “unexceptional.”

No socialized medicine system has ever attempted to embrace the scope of numbers of people that Obamacare does.


6 posted on 09/16/2010 10:50:41 AM PDT by HiTech RedNeck (I am in America but not of America (per bible: am in the world but not of it))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: La Lydia
it is going to get worse.

it will never be repealed. no such monumental power grab can be.

egalitarian principle and practical political reality dictate that we all face the same hell.

wait until the hospital closures begin.

7 posted on 09/16/2010 10:58:17 AM PDT by mmercier (conundrums)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: La Lydia; All
"It is only going to get worse if they don't repeal it."

Photobucket

8 posted on 09/16/2010 11:02:21 AM PDT by musicman (Until I see the REAL Long Form Vault BC, he's just "PRES__ENT" Obama = Without "ID")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: La Lydia

Warning. Go to doctor have MAJOT diagnostic physical and treat anything you have now. It will get so bad you will not believe it under Obamacare. It is going to be a nightmare.


9 posted on 09/16/2010 11:04:12 AM PDT by screaminsunshine (counter revolutionary)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: La Lydia

Everything—EVERYTHING Øbambi and the Dem congress has “accomplished” has lowered the U.S. standard of living across the board.

How can ANY Democrat gain satisfaction from the “New Normal” our children will be living under?


10 posted on 09/16/2010 11:10:06 AM PDT by TruthHound ("He who does not punish evil commands it to be done." --Leonardo da Vinci)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: La Lydia
Obamacare
11 posted on 09/16/2010 11:11:52 AM PDT by TruthHound ("He who does not punish evil commands it to be done." --Leonardo da Vinci)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: La Lydia

Pushing insurers to abandon markets was the intent of the bill.


12 posted on 09/16/2010 11:26:31 AM PDT by ArmstedFragg (hoaxy dopey changey)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: musicman
.

.


13 posted on 09/16/2010 11:29:02 AM PDT by Cobra64
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: ArmstedFragg

That is exactly the intent of the bill, and that is why it needs to be repealed before it destroys the private insurers and leaves us all to the not-so-tender mercies of Obamacare socialized medicine and its death panels.


14 posted on 09/16/2010 11:31:05 AM PDT by La Lydia
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 12 | View Replies]

To: La Lydia

Below is part of a e-mail sent to us by our CEO. (I replaced the company name with xxxx)

The soaring cost of health care, which for decades has exceeded the rate of inflation, has had a profound impact on our company and our ability to offer superior products at competitive prices. The Health Care Reform Law passed earlier this year, while broadening access to health care, could further add to the company’s costs over the next several years – and in 2018, could subject xxxxxx to a substantial tax on health care plans exceeding a certain threshold.
Today, xxxxx pays about 89 percent of total health care costs for employees, far above peer companies such as Lockheed Martin, General Electric and 3M, which pay about 70 percent. The company expects to spend more than $2.4 billion on health care this year, which adds about $2 million to the cost of every airplane we build. Costs could reach $3.1 billion by 2015.
We’ve got to work together to manage these costs. The company will continue to offer excellent health-care benefits and to bear most of the financial burden. But beginning in 2011, nonunion employees will be asked to pay a greater share of their health care costs. Health-care coverage for employees represented by unions is governed by collective bargaining agreements and will be discussed as those contracts are renegotiated. Detailed information about coming changes will be available in October when letters go to the homes of xxxxx employees in advance of the 2011 enrollment period.
Change is difficult, but necessary to compete in the ever-changing environment we face. The essence of xxxxx is its people – the tens of thousands of workers who put on their badges every morning, come to work and do the amazing things we do. We have an obligation to do what is required, now, to ensure our competiveness and the future of xxxxx and its workers for generations to come.
xxxxx people know how to build airplanes better than anyone in the world. While our competitors are working on today’s airplane, we are working on the airplanes of the future. Thanks for your continued support as we move into these challenging but exciting times…JIM


15 posted on 09/16/2010 11:33:56 AM PDT by NavyCanDo
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: La Lydia
I was going to buy a car in 2011, (stimulating the economy), but until I know what I will be paying for my health care next year after the company raises our contribution amounts, I'm staying well away from any major purchase. Most people I think have the same concerns as well as small business.
16 posted on 09/16/2010 11:37:42 AM PDT by NavyCanDo
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: La Lydia

Get ready for follow group visits, even more forms to fill out that you may have to directly enter into a computer, physician extenders with even less training. The 0bamacare exchanges will likely be of the same quality as Medicaid. The problem is that it will be very expensive for those in the upper middle and upper classes that do not qualify for subsidies and subjected to expensive fines if they opt not to buy insurance.


17 posted on 09/16/2010 11:38:38 AM PDT by grumpygresh (Democrats delenda est)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: ArmstedFragg
absolutely and its working like a charm.......

locally, there are layoffs at hospitals....premiums going up....less care,more money

18 posted on 09/16/2010 12:04:51 PM PDT by cherry
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 12 | View Replies]

To: NavyCanDo

Uh oh. Your CEO is going to be turned over to the Obama Gestapo for ‘re-education.’


19 posted on 09/16/2010 12:12:29 PM PDT by TigerClaws
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 15 | View Replies]

To: cherry

I went to the hospital and said “give me my free Obamacare please.” And they said it doesn’t start for a few years yet and even when it does, it will not be free. And I was like WTF????


20 posted on 09/16/2010 12:14:12 PM PDT by decisis
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 18 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-22 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson