Single-payer healthcare is the Democrats’ holy grail, because it put the government completely in charge of one-fifth of the economy and every single person’s healthcare.
It’s total control, but at least as of 2008, it wasn’t a platform on which Obama could run. But as this early video shows, single-payer was always the goal.
Similarly, failed 2014 NY-23 Democratic challenger Martha Robertson was a big single-payer supporter. But in NY-23, a Republican +4 district that has a hardcore liberal Ithaca-area contingent from which Robertson hailed, single payer won’t fly. So Robertson didn’t run on single payer, she ran on Obamacare.
But in moments of candor uncovered by Legal Insurrection, Robertson admitted that Obamacare was just the stepping stone to single payer.
Obamacare now is the “law of the land” and unlikely to be overturned in the courts. Been there, tried that. Additionally, as Obamacare embeds itself into every aspect of the economy, it will be harder to extricate.
Obamacare is succeeding if you understand the goal, which was not Obamacare. The goal was single-payer. Failure is success because the alternative becomes not a return to a more private, patient-controlled system, but to complete government control.
The failure is in premiums that are becoming unaffordable for individuals. I’m insulated from that, because I’m on a large university group plan.
But just in the past couple of weeks as we’ve been getting our Rhode Island waterfront cottage cleaned up, I’ve heard horror stories from multiple contractors. Unsolicited, both an electrician and plumber we’ve known for a long time mentioned about what long hours they have to work just to pay health care premiums approaching $2000 per month. A woman hired to clean out the house (it had been unoccupied for almost a year) apologized for how much she had to charge, but she had large health care premiums to pay.
These may be anecdotes, but enormous premium increases are happening in many states. The Chicago Tribune reports, Illinois Obamacare rates could soar as state submits insurance premium increases to feds
Illinois consumers are one step closer to facing sky-high increases for individual health insurance plans purchased through the Affordable Care Act’s marketplace.The Illinois Department of Insurance said Wednesday it has submitted rate increases to the federal government that for some types of plans average 43 percent to 55 percent.The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services will decide rates. But the numbers released Wednesday confirm the fears of consumers, who’ve already watched a number of insurance companies withdraw from the Obamacare exchange because of financial losses, limiting choices as people prepare to enroll for 2017.Rates could increase by an average of 44 percent for the lowest-priced bronze plans, 45 percent for the lowest-priced silver plans and 55 percent for the lowest-priced gold plans, according to a preliminary analysis released by the state Wednesday.
This is not an isolated phenomenon, as Politico reports:
As insurers push large premium increases for 2017 Obamacare plans, some of the steepest hikes have been requested by insurers in crucial swing states that could determine control of the Senate.In nine of 11 states with competitive Senate races, at least one insurer seeks to hike rates for Obamacare customers by at least 30 percent next year: Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield in Pennsylvania wants to jack up average premiums by more than 40 percent. In Wisconsin, three insurers have asked for rate hikes of more than 30 percent. In New Hampshire, two of the five carriers want to sell plans with rate increase above 30 percent.
In at least 19 states double-digit increases are sought, and even with that, insurers are dropping out of exchanges:
Consumers in 19 states will see increases to their health insurance rates, most in the double digits, for 2017, according to publicly available data filed with state insurance regulators.Since June, insurance companies have been submitting proposed rate requests to state departments of insurance for the 2017 plan year. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services also has to approve rates for insurers selling on Obamacare’s exchanges.
What is the answer? The government says to keep Obamacare premiums lower, states should shift more people to Medicaid, Expand Medicaid and Obamacare will cost less, federal government says:
Want to cut Obamacare prices in your state? Expand Medicaid.States that allow nearly all poor adults to enroll in their Medicaid health coverage programs saw prices on Obamacare private insurance marketplaces about 7 percent lower than states that haven’t expanded Medicaid eligibility, the federal government said Thursday.The findings reflect the fact that poorer people tend to be less healthy than people with higher incomes, who make up the lion’s share of Obamacare enrollees in expansion states.
It’s working, if working means transferring more people to existing single-payer (Medicaid) and creating such a burden on the working class that government help will be demanded from people who otherwise are self-sufficient.
[Featured Image: Obama reacting to passage of Obamacare]
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