Medicare is government-administered, and so would be Medicare for All. Obamacare is administered by “private” insurance companies. This is supposed to make it different from Medicare for All. This distinction between government and private really matters very little, because the government heavily influences the health plans and the insurance industry influences the government.
The whole insurance setup is lunatic socialism. In support of this claim, have a look at pre-existing conditions. A pre-existing condition is a medical condition that a person has prior to applying for health insurance. One might have asthma, a heart ailment, cancer, emphysema, high blood pressure, hernia, psoriasis, etc.
“ Prior to the Affordable Care Act, in the vast majority of States, insurance companies in the individual and small group markets could deny coverage, charge higher premiums, and/or limit benefits to individuals based on pre-existing conditions.”
This made economic sense. Insurance is primarily for future risks. (There are exceptions.) It’s not coverage of past or present conditions. One cannot insure an auto with a smashed in door for collision and expect to be issued a check to pay for the pre-existing damage, at least not at the same rate as if your car was undamaged.
It’s crazy to force a company to pool people with pre-existing conditions with people without such conditions and call the result “INSURANCE”. It’s crazy to accuse companies of “discrimination” who either refuse to insure such people or charge them higher rates.
Obamacare itself was crazy in this sense of being true to an insurance concept. “The last Congress passed and the President signed into law a new set of patient protections that prohibit insurance companies from denying coverage to Americans when they need it most. Starting in 2014, insurers can no longer carve out needed benefits, charge higher premiums, set lifetime limits on benefits, or deny coverage due to a person’s pre-existing condition.”
Congress was not crazy to pass it, even if it was wrong and ultimately very destructive. People in Congress got support from many Americans and got campaign donations. Some of them can become industry executives and lobbyists when they leave Congress. The big insurance companies that supported it and lobbied for it were not crazy either. They have raised rates and acquired many more customers. They have formed a cartel under the government’s law.
It’s crazy to speak about Americans needing insurance most when they have preexisting conditions. They’re already medically compromised. It’s crazy to refer to forced insurance as “patient protections”. It’s outright theft. When people need money to pay for treatment, stealing it from others should not be on the table. Socialized theft is crazy as a long-run social policy. The moral evil involved doesn’t impress Congress and neither does the fact that this can only end in utter ruination of the society and people’s welfare. Many people are badly squeezed by the costs of what was advertised as affordable health care premiums. This must be the case. Someone has to pay for the preexisting conditions.
Huge numbers of people have health conditions. “According to a new analysis by the Department of Health and Human Services, 50 to 129 million (19 to 50 percent of) non-elderly Americans have some type of pre-existing health condition.”
Insurance companies forced to pay for these must raise premiums or be subsidized by government in some way to stay in business. They’ve raised premiums. If everyone is forced into such plans, the premiums are like taxes. (This is apart from penalties to make people join insurance plans who otherwise would not.) The system then becomes like Medicare for All.
“From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” is the Marxist-Communist slogan. A system doesn’t get much more communist than the Affordable Care Act. Oh, but it can. It can always go to Single Payer or to government-run medical delivery.
The country already has a version of Medicare for All. Progressives won that with Obamacare.
To restore sanity to medical-related industries, every last market for medical services, hospitals, medicines, medical insurance, etc. has to be set free from government controls, laws and regulations that tamper with standards, funding, taxes, products, innovations, prices, and quality.
11:28 am on December 16, 2018
