Posted on 07/15/2013 6:02:39 AM PDT by Kaslin
We have a very interesting question from a reader in Nebraska. Is Obamacare such a cluster-you-know-what that the law will self-destruct?
Well, I’ve already explained why I’m optimistic about the possibility of turning Obamacare lemons into free-market lemonade.
Simply stated, the law took a healthcare system that already was a mess because of government intervention and subsidies and it doubled down on that misguided approach!
And since it’s highly unlikely that more government is the solution to problems created by government in the first place, I think we’ll have great fun being able to highlight all the bad consequences of Obamacare and make a principled case for pro-market reform (meaning not only Medicaid reform and Medicare reform, but also tax reform to help deal with the third-party payer crisis).
That being said, I don’t think Obamacare will collapse on its own. We’re going to have to give it a push. A big push.
This is because legislation will be required to undo all the taxes and subsidies in the law. And even though we have the bizarre situation of the Obama Administration deciding to deliberately ignore a legal requirement to impose an employer mandate beginning in 2014, we’ll also need legislation to undo both the individual and the employer mandate.
In other words, the fact that the law won’t achieve any of its goals (such as lower costs and universal insurance coverage) won’t cause the bad policy to disappear.
But it will make the law even more unpopular – particularly if we do our job.
That’s why we should relentlessly highlight examples of wasteful Obamacare spending. The Washington Post, for instance, is reporting on “the extreme measures states are taking to get young people signed up for Obamacare programs.”
And when even the Washington Post thinks politicians and bureaucrats are going above and beyond in their efforts to waste money, you know it’s something especially foolish. But when you’re trying to trick young people into signing up for insurance policies designed to subsidize richer seniors, you don’t really have much choice.
Oregon might do branded coffee cups, for example, whereas Seattle is looking at doing outreach at music festivals. It only makes sense, then, that Kentucky would be doing outreach at multiple bourbon festivals across the state.
From a big picture perspective, this type of waste in just a penny or two on the dollar, but it’s very symbolic of a law that is poorly designed and unworkable.
I also think political cartoonists are very helpful allies since they’re so effective at illustrating some of the worst parts of Obamacare. So let’s wrap up this post with a new batch of cartoons.
We’ll start with a couple that skirt the edge of appropriateness by playing off the recent airline crash in San Francisco. The first one is by Steve Breen.
And the second one is by Eric Allie.
The donkey pilot blaming the elephant passenger is a good touch, and you find that theme in this Gary Varvel gem.
Let’s close with a great Rick McKee cartoon that focuses on exploding costs, a message near and dear to my heart.
One final warning. We’re not guaranteed of victory simply because Obamacare is leading to bad results. The statists are going to try and seize control of the narrative by asserting that the higher costs and greater inefficiencies could be fixed by squandering more money in the short run and imposing a single-payer system in the long run.
That’s a very perverse example of Mitchell’s Law and it surely doesn’t make sense to normal people. But it’s an approach that plays to the worst instincts of politicians, many of who will grab any excuse to increase the size and scope of Washington.
I have been asking this question for about 6 months now - What will the GOP do when the Dems decide to cut it loose? It is a possibility it will happen before the Fall of 2014.
Obamacare could never stand up...it was designed to crush the economy, not help the People.
I understand everyone’s unhappiness with Obamacare, but frankly what we had before was also a mess.
I do not, see anyone moving to actually FIX things.
We just seem to waffle between one mess (pre-Obamacare) and another mess (Obamacare)
Either fix Obamacare, or leave it.
We cannot return to what we had.
Why don’t we let people buy their own insurance (allowing interstate purchases) and be done with it? Remember, insurance is suppose to protect people from catastrophic loses, not to pay for every little band-aide.
It already is collapsing because it was unworkable right from the start
Not sure what you mean.
Up till now most of Obama-care is the candy with the medicine delayed. The medicaid expansion alone will be impossible to get rid of, and now Obama is delaying a big part of the ‘medicine ‘ until after the last midterm elections of his presidency.
Then in 2016 a new Dem comes in to run, say Hillary who had nothing to do with it, and she says ‘mend it dont end it’. If the Republican opponent says 'repeal it' then she will cite medicaid expansion and how all those people will die.
This is not going away.
Don’t get me wrong.
I support your protest, but we are not advocating an actual fix.
That is my point. Sure we can demand that Obamacare be repealed. But the point is, Obamacare actually made some improvements.
That is the thing. It totally screwed up some other things also. Bigtime.
So the issue is, how can the parts of Obamacare which actually improve care, be kept and the parts which screw things up be dropped?
Nobody is talking about that.
Nobody is talking about fixing things.
American healthcare was far and away the most expensive on the planet.
Bar none. That is among the big issues. Why is American healthcare so darn expensive??
It doesn’t even cover everyone, for crying out loud.
/end rant
Only after democrats bankrupt the country trying to prop it up.
We paid too much?
Blame the insurance companies .. that were legislated into covering their own asses.
Health CARE is the BEST on the planet here.
Health care COSTS were unmanageable.
Doctors did their best by accepting cash payments for substantially less than what the insurance was charging/paying.
The outrage in America over obozocare has started a storm that will (I WANT to believe .. ) cure this 'problem'
The Rats and Rhinos need the crack delivered to addict the peeps and increase the politicians power. Wake up!
The dems are already complaining that the meany ole GOP will not fund it. I believe the Dems are looking for an exit.
Limbaugh theorem
“Well since the GOP won’t properly fund the program, we need to repeal it - as much as it hurts me to say this. Plus, the Senate Bill is not really the bill I wanted, I signed it because we needed something and I thought we could fix whatever fundamental problems we had at later time. I have listened to small business and the middle class and I have determined uh uh that we must repeal it. “
- Obama January 2014
It was designed to fail so they could give you the solution, Single Payer.
We cannot return to what we had.
I disagree. The basic "parts" of Obamacare cannot be fixed; it is an inherently flawed system with far too much bureaucracy and red tape. The few "reasonable" mandates and concepts (pre-existing conditions, buying healthcare across state lines) in Obamacare, do not justify the bloat.
That said, we could return to what we had, AND improve it with just a few small ideas: tort reform, buying insurance across state lines, pre-existing conditions.
The system before sucked because there was already too much government in the mix. It was not horrible.
There's another, equally true legacy statement that applies to Obamacare: Gall's Law. This law was based on a body of work by John Gall who has extensively studied the nature of systems. Gall concluded that "A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. The inverse proposition also appears to be true: A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be made to work. You have to start over, beginning with a working simple system."
We are seeing Gall's Law play out with Obamacare, which is the mother-of-all complex systems. And the worst is yet to come. The underlying supporting systems have not even been put in place yet but when they eventually are Obamacare will inevitably be a fiasco of historic proportions. A great political disaster, the signs of which are already evident even to many Democrats.
Just as socialism in general is unworkable,
so Obamacare is unworkable in concept.
and just wait until the lawyers get involved...lawsuits all over the place...that will double the cost too...
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.
