Back in 2009-10, ObamaCare was sold along the lines that it complemented our private health insurance system. Remember “you can keep your policy?”
Biden and Obama going around Congress? Yes yes yes!
It was supposed to help those with preexisting conditions, some people without employer coverage and lower-income people who needed coverage but couldn't pay,
To be honest, I was always very skeptical that it would line up that neatly, but we lost the vote and the case in the Supreme Court. So we were stuck with the Affordable Care Act and hoped for the best.
Fifteen years later, and it's time to revisit this mess because it's not going to get any better. Everything went wrong as it usually does with any government program focused on creating dependency rather than solving a problem. See this summary from Michael F. Cannon:
Obamacare offers junk insurance at outrageous premiums. In 2021, Democrats created temporary COVID-19 emergency premium subsidies for families earning $130,000 to $600,000 annually because even wealthy people struggle to afford Obamacare. These supposed “tax credits” are just checks the government sends to private health insurance companies. Thankfully, those temporary subsidies expire at the end of this year.
Democrats want to make those subsidies permanent because if they disappear, it would reveal that Obamacare’s excessive premiums and junk coverage are unpopular, as they have been from the beginning.
Public opinion turned against the first draft the moment Democrats introduced it in June 2009. After Democrats passed the “Affordable Care Act” by a single vote, voters gave them a “shellacking” in the 2010 midterms.
Congress has since repealed dozens of unpopular ACA provisions. The long-term care program? Gone. The death panel? Gone. “Every single one of the funding mechanisms to help offset the cost of the bill has been repealed,” says health reporter Julie Rovner. “The individual mandate is gone. Most of the industry-specific taxes are gone. The Cadillac tax… is gone.”
Dozens of other provisions were so unpopular that bureaucrats and judges rewrote them, in many cases subverting the Constitution by legislating without Congress.
Ignoring the ACA’s spending limits, the Obama and Biden administrations issued billions of dollars in illegal subsidies to millions of ineligible people, including members of Congress, and diverted funds from public health and elsewhere to insurance companies.
Illegal subsidies to ineligible people? I thought they weren’t doing that!
By the way, let me add this personal observation. Years ago, when customers started going to the website to get a plan, I remember talking to a lady at the church who was complaining about the coverage. She said that the ACA forced her to buy a maternity provision at age 60. As the lady explained, she had an individual policy before with a high deductible and sufficient coverage. Now, she was paying for maternity and couldn't have a baby anymore. In a nutshell, that's the insanity of this unaffordable care act. It was written by Democrats, not actuaries.
As usual, Democrats want more subsidies to keep a bad plan going. It's time for something new and admit that this thing called ObamaCare was the fraud we thought it would be.
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Image: U.S. Gov