- Jun 6, 2007
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Two days ago the Wall Street Journal on its editorial page had as its lead article a condemnation of Obamacare and a call for the American voters come this election to hold the Democrat Party accountable for this law which does not work by returning Republican majorities to the House and Senate so Republicans can negotiate with a President Clinton to create a functional law. I have no criticism of the Journal's editorial staff for publishing an editorial highlighting that the Affordable Care Act is a failed law and calling for the American voters to let the Democrat Party know this campaign season that the American people are done being saddled with this dysfunctional, really bad and really unwise law because the facts surrounding this law compellingly justify this action namely in part that the law's average insurance premium price increase for 2017 is twenty-five percent, the ACA system is clearly out of control. What I do have a criticism with the Journal's editors over is the shoddy and inaccurate journalism involved in this article, the Wall Street Journal is supposed to be one of the premier newspapers in the country their readers read the Journal to be educated as citizens and when they write inaccurate articles like this piece they make it so their readers don't know whether to trust them they betray their obligation as a newspaper!
This article was inaccurate in essentially saying that at the time of passage of the ACA in 2010 the Democrats had a sixty seat filibuster proof majority in the Senate which was wrong and that was a key point because at the time of the passage around fifty percent of the American public were against the law and the Democrats knew this but did not have the ability to go back and scale back the law because they did not have sixty senators to override a filibuster and the Republican Party was not helping them pass any type of a major good bill which was needed Republicans were truly just acting like the party of "no" on this issue so Democrats enacted the law through reconciliation treating it like a budget bill which provided little maneuvering to fix the law. The other major and really really rotten inaccuracy in the article is to claim that history in America had proven that an insurance system with mandates, community pricing and open to people with a pre-existing medical condition would always fail; this is not the case at all the Massachusetts system in 2009 had these three elements and was a success with high public satisfaction and level of coverage in the state like in the ninety plus percentile. This was a really a rotten argument because it undermines the whole framework of the Affordable Care Act which is wrong because the ACA model is the optimally good and wise model for a health insurance system it is market based model as compared to government provided model which will be dramatically more onerous on America's taxpayers if enacted. The major problem with the ACA is simple it's that the benefit mandates in the law is a steroids body of mandates meaning that Congress went overboard with the mandates which results in too costly of insurance which causes a myriad of problems. Identifying excessiveness with the mandates as the major problem with the ACA should not rankle Democrats because if one goes back to right before the ACA was enacted and Republican Scott Brown made the huge upset win to fill Senator Ted Kennedy's seat which was in part do to public opposition to the ACA bill President Obama, himself, essentially publicly mused about the bill maybe we should scale back the mandates in the bill!
America should not repeal the ACA it should conduct a major overhaul of the law dramatically driving down the cost of insurance required by the law so it can be made satisfactory insurance for the American consumer. Pursuing a repeal of the ACA would be a catastrophic mistake because the law has an abundance of detailed provisions which are extraordinarily good which would not make it into a replacement law because the legislative process to enact a replacement law is guaranteed to be a highly contentious ordeal where limited agreement will result. Listing a sampling of the details includes the following: insurance providers cannot put claim restrictions on treatment for health problems a person had prior to enrolling with the carrier, further the ACA provides dramatic help in aiding seniors in buying medicine reducing an insurance coverage gap "the donut hole" and the ACA requires health insurance providers to spend a minimum threshold of the premiums they collect from enrollees on paying for treatment claims stopping Americans premiums unduly going to Insurance Executive bonuses and shareholder dividends.
The Democrats have it right on allowing Americans close to the Medicare eligibility age to buy into Medicare these Americans are obviously older and health issues tend to increase with age so getting them out of the ACA exchanges will push down premium costs. The Democrats are wrong on advocating for a government sponsored health care provider for the exchanges because that will be expensive and over time Congress won't be able to resist reducing this expense by allowing the government health insurer to pay health care provider Medicare rates which will either drive private health care providers out of the exchanges or if Congress also gives this right to the private providers it will cause debilitating financial pain to health care providers which will cause quality reduction in care because everyone needs to remember that in many instances Medicare rates don't cover health care providers costs, this is a fact.
The Republicans have a good idea in allowing Private health insurance providers to sell across state lines using this concept on the exchanges would allow health care providers to create significantly larger pools of enrollees where costs could be spread out to these larger number of enrollees and premium prices lowered, The Republicans don't have a good solution for the six hundred pound gorilla in the room how to handle Americans with a pre-existing condition and for their tax credit proposals for Americans that don't get insurance with their employer there is no guarantee the credits will be sufficient to make insurance affordable for these Americans nor that the amount of credits would sufficiently increase over time. Frankly, Republicans behavior on the overall health insurance system issue is so bad it can be fairly characterized as an act of evil considering the harm it will cause to the American people.
What America needs is the parties to stop talking past each other on this issue and waving their ideology banners and focus on fixing the system, solving the systems problems in a good manner! Otherwise, come 2018 and 2020 America's going to still have this same huge fight on how to provide health care to Americans and all Americans will be the loser for it!
This article was inaccurate in essentially saying that at the time of passage of the ACA in 2010 the Democrats had a sixty seat filibuster proof majority in the Senate which was wrong and that was a key point because at the time of the passage around fifty percent of the American public were against the law and the Democrats knew this but did not have the ability to go back and scale back the law because they did not have sixty senators to override a filibuster and the Republican Party was not helping them pass any type of a major good bill which was needed Republicans were truly just acting like the party of "no" on this issue so Democrats enacted the law through reconciliation treating it like a budget bill which provided little maneuvering to fix the law. The other major and really really rotten inaccuracy in the article is to claim that history in America had proven that an insurance system with mandates, community pricing and open to people with a pre-existing medical condition would always fail; this is not the case at all the Massachusetts system in 2009 had these three elements and was a success with high public satisfaction and level of coverage in the state like in the ninety plus percentile. This was a really a rotten argument because it undermines the whole framework of the Affordable Care Act which is wrong because the ACA model is the optimally good and wise model for a health insurance system it is market based model as compared to government provided model which will be dramatically more onerous on America's taxpayers if enacted. The major problem with the ACA is simple it's that the benefit mandates in the law is a steroids body of mandates meaning that Congress went overboard with the mandates which results in too costly of insurance which causes a myriad of problems. Identifying excessiveness with the mandates as the major problem with the ACA should not rankle Democrats because if one goes back to right before the ACA was enacted and Republican Scott Brown made the huge upset win to fill Senator Ted Kennedy's seat which was in part do to public opposition to the ACA bill President Obama, himself, essentially publicly mused about the bill maybe we should scale back the mandates in the bill!
America should not repeal the ACA it should conduct a major overhaul of the law dramatically driving down the cost of insurance required by the law so it can be made satisfactory insurance for the American consumer. Pursuing a repeal of the ACA would be a catastrophic mistake because the law has an abundance of detailed provisions which are extraordinarily good which would not make it into a replacement law because the legislative process to enact a replacement law is guaranteed to be a highly contentious ordeal where limited agreement will result. Listing a sampling of the details includes the following: insurance providers cannot put claim restrictions on treatment for health problems a person had prior to enrolling with the carrier, further the ACA provides dramatic help in aiding seniors in buying medicine reducing an insurance coverage gap "the donut hole" and the ACA requires health insurance providers to spend a minimum threshold of the premiums they collect from enrollees on paying for treatment claims stopping Americans premiums unduly going to Insurance Executive bonuses and shareholder dividends.
The Democrats have it right on allowing Americans close to the Medicare eligibility age to buy into Medicare these Americans are obviously older and health issues tend to increase with age so getting them out of the ACA exchanges will push down premium costs. The Democrats are wrong on advocating for a government sponsored health care provider for the exchanges because that will be expensive and over time Congress won't be able to resist reducing this expense by allowing the government health insurer to pay health care provider Medicare rates which will either drive private health care providers out of the exchanges or if Congress also gives this right to the private providers it will cause debilitating financial pain to health care providers which will cause quality reduction in care because everyone needs to remember that in many instances Medicare rates don't cover health care providers costs, this is a fact.
The Republicans have a good idea in allowing Private health insurance providers to sell across state lines using this concept on the exchanges would allow health care providers to create significantly larger pools of enrollees where costs could be spread out to these larger number of enrollees and premium prices lowered, The Republicans don't have a good solution for the six hundred pound gorilla in the room how to handle Americans with a pre-existing condition and for their tax credit proposals for Americans that don't get insurance with their employer there is no guarantee the credits will be sufficient to make insurance affordable for these Americans nor that the amount of credits would sufficiently increase over time. Frankly, Republicans behavior on the overall health insurance system issue is so bad it can be fairly characterized as an act of evil considering the harm it will cause to the American people.
What America needs is the parties to stop talking past each other on this issue and waving their ideology banners and focus on fixing the system, solving the systems problems in a good manner! Otherwise, come 2018 and 2020 America's going to still have this same huge fight on how to provide health care to Americans and all Americans will be the loser for it!
