The Affordable Health Care Act

History

In March of 2010 the Affordable Health Care Act (ObamaCare) became law.  The bill passed the House by a vote of 206 – 212, and the Senate by 60 – 39.  Not one Republican congressman or senator voted for ObamaCare.  70% of Americans were opposed to the new law.  But hey, the Democrats are smarter than everybody else.  They know what’s best for us.

Features

• If you like your insurance plan, you can keep your insurance plan.
  • Well, maybe not.  But you will have many good plans to choose from.
    • Unless the exchanges collapse because the insurers are bleeding money from mandated cost items. Actually, you will probably get stuck with very few plan choices from very few (maybe only one) insurance company.
• If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.
  • But that’s only if your doctor chooses to accept your new insurance plan that pays him a lot less money and puts all kinds of requirements and restrictions on him.  It’s pretty unlikely.
• Insurance premiums will go down $2500 per year
  • And then they will go way, way up.  Because
    • kids stay on your policy until age 26
    • people with expensive pre-existing conditions are welcomed to the pool
    • plans are required to provide more benefits, many of them for “free”
    • competition is reduced because only a few very large companies can manage the complexity and cost of implementing the government plans
    • new people on the plans, especially those plugged into Medicaid, will have much higher claims experience
    • oh, by the way, deductibles and co-pays will go crazy.  You may have to pay the first $14,000 of medical bills.
• There will be no tax increases due to ObamaCare
  • The only way citizens can afford ObamaCare is if the government pays a huge portion of the sky-high premiums as a subsidy.  So the cost to the taxpayers is enormous.
    • But who cares?  The government doesn’t have to raise taxes.  They can just print more money and add to the national debt.
    • Oh, and if you don’t have insurance, you will have to pay a penalty.  But that’s not a tax.  Even though it is in the tax code, assessed and collected by the IRS.  The Supreme Court said so – it must be true.
• ObamaCare will not add to the national deficit or debt
  • Umm, well.  Sorry.  That’s a fib.  See above.
• There will be very few Americans who do not have health insurance
  • Unless healthy young people decide they can’t or don’t want to pay for ObamaCare and decide to just pay the fine.  Or not pay the fine.  Whatever.
  • And then there are the people who find enrollment in ObamaCare so complex they don’t even try.
• ObamaCare will not be given to illegal immigrants at taxpayer expense
  • The government will, however, provide free ObamaCare to undocumented Democrat voters.

Conversion to HillaryCare in November 2016

• The government tried, but ObamaCare didn’t work very well, so they are going to put you all on single-payer national health insurance like Canada.  They didn’t intend for this to happen. Really. It’s just one of those things.  But Hillary has a great new plan:
  • Long waiting lists for care.  This has been perfected by the VA Hospitals.  You may have to wait a year or so for that procedure.  This reduces cost because after a year many patients have assumed room temperature and no longer need care.
  • Your doctor will be a kid from Bangladesh who came here on an H1B visa.  He speaks English, but you still won’t understand a word he says.  This reduces cost because he will work for $20k per year, and you will give up trying to get well because you won’t know what’s wrong with you.
  • 80% of hospital wards will be converted to maternity units.  Our new undocumented Democrats do tend to have a lot of babies.

Quiz (True or False)

1. Adding eight years of children’s coverage to a health care plan will reduce plan costs.
2. Allowing people with pre-existing conditions to join a health care plan at the same premium level will reduce plan costs.
3. Anything the government does will cost less and work better than it does in the private sector.
4. Doctors don’t mind making less money or being told what to do.
5. It doesn’t matter if premiums go way up as long as the government is paying for most of the cost (after all, if the government is paying for it, it’s free).

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side

Calling Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine, Dr. Howard!