https://tsukesthoughts.wordpress.com/2017/05/05/the-myth-of-obamacare/
The Myth of ObamaCare
With the repeal of Obamacare by the Congress yesterday the Democrats are now pushing a new message. 24 million Americans have lost their health insurance due to Republicans. I have no idea where they got that number from but it ignores the main issues surrounding Obamacare. The number of insured is not the only metric to judge insurance by. For most people the quality of the insurance matters more.
Obamacare
Any discussion on insurance has to begin with Obamacare. Obamacare essentially made a very small set of the population very happy and a larger set angry because it did two things. First off it made the people who had pre existing conditions very happy as it allowed them to purchase health insurance for the first time. Second it made the rest of the people angry as it screwed up their health insurance. This is not surprising as the sicker costumer base made the risk pool worse.
If there is one thing that Obamacare consistently did is that it constantly increased the Premiums and deductibles of the plans under it. Year after year these went up which is why Democrats lost so much ground in the government. This then begs the question. If the insurance you is so bad can you really be said to have insurance? Does quality matter? The purpose of insurance is to provide quality healthcare. If you have "insurance" with deductibles so high that they never help in making your payments for health services do you really have insurance? Or do you have a piece of paper with the word insurance on it costing you more and more money in premiums every month?
What Democrats do not want to tell you is that insurance had gotten so bad under Obamacare that people who were paying for insurance could not use it. I am not even going to go into the fact that doctor choice was more severely limited under Obamacare as well. There was no indication that this was going to get any better. The Democrats say 24 million people would lose their health insurance. You cannot lose something that was already taken away from you.
TrumpCare
I am not a fan of Trumpcare. I have already stated in the past that my primary requirement for a healthcare bill is price controls on drugs. Every other first world country follows their national interest and puts price controls on their drugs. The US citizen is left behind as he is fleeced to pay for the research costs of new drugs.
That said Trumpcare is better than Obamacare. At the very least it represents a chance to fix the healthcare system that the Democrats broke. There is one fact that Sanders, Clinton, or Obama will never mention. Under Obamacare the insurance companies have increased their profits by more than 200%. Let this sink in. They are required to cover a sicker pool of people. They increase premiums and deductibles by saying they are unprofitable. Yet they have increased their profits by 200%.
It is not difficult to imagine why. If the government holds a gun to the head of the citizens and says they must buy your product or suffer the consequences, and then compounds this by saying that you are the only one they can buy insurance from, then it becomes very easy to make money. You can offer whatever crap you want and call it service and people will be forced to buy it. Removing the individual mandate and forcing the companies to compete may actually improve services for everyone. The insurance companies may even be forced to lower profits.
At the end of the day Obamacare is failing already. We may as well find an alternative solution while we still have time.
