Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP,MACE
The government has been attempting to take over the healthcare system since 1935 at the time of the Roosevelt administration.
The government took over the healthcare system 30 years later during the Lyndon Johnson administration. LBJ passed Medicare and Medicaid. It turned out that financial projections were faulty and the business model was defective.
Medicare and Medicaid provided medical care for the elderly and the poor at an affordable price at that time. Everyone loved it. At the time it was also affordable for the government.
I do not think anyone contemplated the healthcare inflation that occurred as a result of the government’s business model.
Inflationary pressure increased rapidly.
Finally, President Reagan said the government could not afford the increasing prices any more. He said enough is enough. He decreased provider (hospital, doctors, pharmaceutical company, and insurance company) reimbursement for Medicare and Medicaid services.
The reduction in reimbursement for services resulted in price shifting increases in reimbursement in the private sector.
Both the private sector and the public sector experienced increased inflationary pressure as a result of this maneuver.
It was clear by 1984 that Medicare and Medicaid were unsustainable long term.
America did not have a free market healthcare system before Obamacare. It was a hybrid system.
The country already had 90 million Americans in a single-payer system. Ninety million Americans get coverage from Medicare, Medicaid, and the Veterans Health Administration systems.
The problem is these government controlled single-payer systems did not work efficiently. They were financially unsustainable.
Obamacare expands the single party payer system to eventually cover all Americans. Obamacare simply adds on to an existing unsustainable healthcare. Raising taxes is not going to make it more sustainable.
The expanded bureaucracy will only make the system more inefficient and more prone to fraud and abuse.
President Obama is already modifying the law without congressional approval. He is trying to hide elements of this unsustainability from the American public.
The federal government’s Obamacare enrollment system www.Healthcare.gov alone has already cost taxpayers about $2.1 billion dollars according to a Bloomberg government analysis of contracts related to the project.”
The website is still not working perfectly at the backend after spending $2.1 billion dollars.
Americans will experience more of the www.healthcare.gov dysfunction after the mid term elections.
Navigator companies hired to help people enroll cost $48 a session. These companies are increasing their prices for the 2015 enrollees.
These same companies have had their fraud and abuse exposed. Nevertheless they have been rehired at the increased price by the Obama administration.
President Obama announced to Democrats last spring that Obamacare would not be an issue at the time of the midterms.
This week the administration also announced that the cost of healthcare insurance through the health insurance exchanges is decreasing next year.
It was also announced that there is an increase in the choice of insurance carriers in most states resulting in competitive premium pricing and lower premiums.
President Obama announced that Obamacare is working. He said Obamacare is a non issue in the 2014 mid term elections.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
If our elected officials cannot see President Obama’s trick play how can the public expect to understand the deception?
This is another of the manipulations of Obamacare designed to hide its impending failure from the public.
The Obama administration set up a reinsurance company funded by taxpayers that eliminates any insurance risk the healthcare insurance companies might incur in insuring enrollees.
Healthcare insurance companies are signing up and competing for market share to gain profit from this no risk insurance. They can easily afford to lower the premiums because the government will cover their supposed loses.
None of this has anything to do with patient care or the quality of patient care.
It has little to do with providing low cost insurance. The cost of insurance keeps increasing. The government pays the difference between the cost of insurance and what patients who receive subsidies pay for their premiums.
Obamacare misses the main problems in the healthcare system. Obamacare creates more dysfunction in the healthcare system.
Obamacare will result in greater unfunded future liabilities.
“White House spin pretends otherwise, but the unfunded liabilities may exceed $100 trillion.”
The Congressional Budget Office said,
Based on more plausible assumptions, such as those reflected in the "alternative" scenario for Medicare produced by the Congressional Budget Office in June 2012, the long-term shortfall is more than $100 trillion.
It is the responsibility of our elected officials control America’s expenditures.
Unfortunately, for American’s, this is not how a government controlled system works.
Voters must decide how long they are going to tolerate this abuse of power.
The opinions expressed in the blog “Repairing The Healthcare System” are, mine and mine alone.
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