Why "Doing Something" Isn't Enough To Justify ObamaCare

By now it should be obvious that ObamaCare won't make health insurance more affordable or provide better quality coverage. The most common defense I hear over and over from hard-core Obamatrons and supporters of this train wreck is: "At least he's doing something about the health insurance (or cost) problem."

Sorry - that weak intellectual sauce doesn't fly with me. When you see a home or car on fire, there are several things you can do. Two good options are dousing it with water, or using a fire extinguisher. A not-so-good option? Pour a gallon of gasoline on the blaze. If you're overweight or in poor health, it's a good idea to eat fewer and better quality foods and exercise more.

If you just wanted to "do something," you could eat all your meals at fast-food joints, drink a 12-pack of beer every day, and not exercise at all. Obviously the latter option wouldn't be a good one.

You have to accurately diagnose and define the problem in order to come up with the right solution.

I had first-hand experience this year with the American "health care" system, having surgery and spending a week in the hospital. I know good and well the prices you get billed for almost everything is absolutely outrageous. But what's the true cause of these sky-high prices?

Our government has allowed doctors, hospitals and the pharmaceutical industries to violate anti-trust laws such as the Clayton and Sherman Acts, and legally gouge patients for as much money as they can get from them and/or their insurance companies.

What are our solutions and options going forward? Karl Denninger at www.Market-Ticker.org says it pretty well:

We have two options as a nation, and only two:

• Stop it.  Now.  Repeal all the special protections granted health-related companies, "for-profit" or not, and allow competition to work.  Stop protecting cross-border pricing disparities with felony laws prohibiting re-importation and enforce the first-sale doctrine.  Repeal EMTALA.  Prosecute balance sheet games and claims repricing as a felony attempt to restrain trade.  Demand and enforce level pricing irrespective of the means of payment under threat of felony prosecution under the Sherman, Clayton and Robinson-Patman acts.  Make forced subsidies from those who can pay to those who cannot a criminal offense prosecuted as is any other form of grand theft.  Prosecute those who attempt to prevent others from opening hospitals, practices or diagnostic centers through CON laws and similar games as Racketeering, because it is.  Ban the "in-network/out-of-network" tying between alleged insurance companies and providers as a rank violation of the Sherman Act and bring felony Racketeering prosecutions against those who attempt it in the future.  Ban the sale of alleged "insurance" that is not actually insurance, forcing the separation between insurance (a product bought against a highly-unlikely but catastrophic event) and "prepaid medical services", putting an end to cross-subsidizations in this area as well.
  
• Collapse the existing system and go to single-payer with hard rationing.  This is where we're headed, because the system will collapse if we don't act on it.  Our choice here is simply to evade the economic damage that comes from a government funding crisis in the middle of where we are now and this endpoint.  This will mean that if you need a coronary bypass your name will go on a list and when you get to the top of the list you get your procedure.  If you die first that's just tough crap.  This is the Canadian model, basically.  And if we get it here, it's going to suck.

Unfortuately, I think the plan of ObamaCare from the start was to make the health insurance system in America so bad that enough people would be begging for a single-payer system.

The logic behind this plan makes no sense. It forces every American to buy more expensive health insurance... you have fewer choices of plans... no one can be turned down because of pre-existing conditions... and assumes that enough younger, healthier people will pay into the plan to subsidize the older and less healthy.

This plan violates the laws of mathematics, finance and good old fashioned common sense. Sorry Obamatrons, I won't give the Pretender-in-Chief credit for just "doing something." Especially when it comes to 1/6 of the US economy.