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The end of Barack Obama's presidency is near, and his most important domestic policy accomplishment is teetering and threatening to fall and smash to pieces. Obamacare, or at least the most-touted part of it, is failing. It will fall to the next president to ignore President Obama's calls to throw more money at a program that doesn't work. Comments please.
Posted in these groups: 
Office of the President (POTUS)
Obamacare
Office of the President (POTUS) Obamacare
Posted >1 y ago
Responses: 22
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One thing is for sure; without the AMA working properly to save Americans money on their health insurance, Obama's administration was a TOTAL dud.
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My short answer is no SP5 Mark Kuzinski
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act [PPACA] was hurried to passage before anybody really had a chance to read through and analyze it. The Department of Health and Human Service [HHS] was charged with oversight and mushroomed in terms of staff-size and budget in part to get Federal government-worker buy-in. A world-class development-team was brought in to design a system of Federal-oversight with state modules/applications that were focused on each state and territory in accordance with Federal and State laws. The states were given a carrot or stick option in the hopes that all states would buy in. A number of states such as Texas did not buy in.
Health Insurance companies were brought to the table with an expectation of influence. power and lots of money flowing in.
Like many top-down highest-priority projects the Obamacare software did not meet expectations.
The number of uninsured didn't change much because while many were picked up - others were dropped by employers after cost-benefit analysis. My wife and I were in that group along with a number of our friends who were terminated in teh summer of 2013.
The Insurers who thought they would make lots of money ended up realizing in the short run they were experiencing up to $1B annual losses. A number of insurers backed out.
While there were some good aspects of Obamacare including insuring healthy children up to age 26, the larger issues such as enabling people to purchase insurance in other states were never realized. States balked against this and the government is not in favor of competition since they were moving to a single payer system.
I expect the PPACA will collapse by early next year. Hopefully the few good aspects will be saved and the significant regulatory increases will be scaled back dramatically.
I concur with Sgt Aaron Kennedy, MS's response.
I thought you might be interested in this discussion: COL Mikel J. Burroughs LTC Stephen C. Maj William W. 'Bill' Price Capt Christopher Mueller Capt Seid Waddell CW5 (Join to see) SMSgt Minister Gerald A. Thomas SGM David W. Carr LOM, DMSM MP SGT SFC Joe S. Davis Jr., MSM, DSL SSG James J. Palmer IV aka "JP4" SSgt (Join to see) SGT (Join to see) SGT Forrest Stewart SGT John " Mac " McConnell SGT Robert Hawks SPC (Join to see) SrA Christopher Wright Kim Bolen RN CCM ACM
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act [PPACA] was hurried to passage before anybody really had a chance to read through and analyze it. The Department of Health and Human Service [HHS] was charged with oversight and mushroomed in terms of staff-size and budget in part to get Federal government-worker buy-in. A world-class development-team was brought in to design a system of Federal-oversight with state modules/applications that were focused on each state and territory in accordance with Federal and State laws. The states were given a carrot or stick option in the hopes that all states would buy in. A number of states such as Texas did not buy in.
Health Insurance companies were brought to the table with an expectation of influence. power and lots of money flowing in.
Like many top-down highest-priority projects the Obamacare software did not meet expectations.
The number of uninsured didn't change much because while many were picked up - others were dropped by employers after cost-benefit analysis. My wife and I were in that group along with a number of our friends who were terminated in teh summer of 2013.
The Insurers who thought they would make lots of money ended up realizing in the short run they were experiencing up to $1B annual losses. A number of insurers backed out.
While there were some good aspects of Obamacare including insuring healthy children up to age 26, the larger issues such as enabling people to purchase insurance in other states were never realized. States balked against this and the government is not in favor of competition since they were moving to a single payer system.
I expect the PPACA will collapse by early next year. Hopefully the few good aspects will be saved and the significant regulatory increases will be scaled back dramatically.
I concur with Sgt Aaron Kennedy, MS's response.
I thought you might be interested in this discussion: COL Mikel J. Burroughs LTC Stephen C. Maj William W. 'Bill' Price Capt Christopher Mueller Capt Seid Waddell CW5 (Join to see) SMSgt Minister Gerald A. Thomas SGM David W. Carr LOM, DMSM MP SGT SFC Joe S. Davis Jr., MSM, DSL SSG James J. Palmer IV aka "JP4" SSgt (Join to see) SGT (Join to see) SGT Forrest Stewart SGT John " Mac " McConnell SGT Robert Hawks SPC (Join to see) SrA Christopher Wright Kim Bolen RN CCM ACM
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The issue with the PPACA is that it is "bad law" as in badly crafted law. Poorly designed law. Ignore all philosophical arguments for just a moment and look at construction of the program.
The law itself "shifts risk" from groups to balance cost (like all insurance does). Men on average have less health risk than women. The young have less health risk than the old. However, the law mandates that those conditions cannot be a deciding factor for payment (affordable care act). Therefore men are supplementing women's health care cost, and the young are supplementing the old's health care cost.
There are problems with this however. The young do not generally need "health care." They need Catastrophic or Emergency Services (get hit by a bus) level Insurance, which we already have mechanisms in place for.
Additionally, a key component of the PPACA was the ability to place people under 26 on their parents Insurance.... this means they weren't paying for Insurance anyways. This removed the first thread.
Second was that the law was unenforceable. Sure you could fine someone for not having Insurance. But the people who would choose not to have it don't make squat anyway. They're the young and the poor. The same people who we need supplementing the rest for the system to work.
Third, the system mandates increased "cost" on the women's side of things. This is not really a bad thing from a Preventive Medicine standpoint, however, it runs counter to two things. It INCREASES COST and it REDUCES LIBERTY.
Fourth, any law that has more than 25% (honestly I think 15%) of the population balking at it, shouldn't be a law. That's not democracy, that tyranny of the majority.
The law itself "shifts risk" from groups to balance cost (like all insurance does). Men on average have less health risk than women. The young have less health risk than the old. However, the law mandates that those conditions cannot be a deciding factor for payment (affordable care act). Therefore men are supplementing women's health care cost, and the young are supplementing the old's health care cost.
There are problems with this however. The young do not generally need "health care." They need Catastrophic or Emergency Services (get hit by a bus) level Insurance, which we already have mechanisms in place for.
Additionally, a key component of the PPACA was the ability to place people under 26 on their parents Insurance.... this means they weren't paying for Insurance anyways. This removed the first thread.
Second was that the law was unenforceable. Sure you could fine someone for not having Insurance. But the people who would choose not to have it don't make squat anyway. They're the young and the poor. The same people who we need supplementing the rest for the system to work.
Third, the system mandates increased "cost" on the women's side of things. This is not really a bad thing from a Preventive Medicine standpoint, however, it runs counter to two things. It INCREASES COST and it REDUCES LIBERTY.
Fourth, any law that has more than 25% (honestly I think 15%) of the population balking at it, shouldn't be a law. That's not democracy, that tyranny of the majority.
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CDR Michael Goldschmidt
Democracy IS tyranny of the majority. That's why the federal Constitution was one of limited, enumerated powers, with certain (supposedly) guaranteed rights. Oops.
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