Facing Reality

As the Obama Administration pushed for national health care (the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act as it was officially known), one of their justifications for the government takeover of healthcare was the need to make sure people with pre-existing medical conditions could get health insurance and healthcare. Well, Obamacare was passed, but it may not actually work as planned–there may have been a reason insurance companies were reluctant to take on these clients.

The Associated Press is reporting today:

Citing financial concerns, the Obama administration has begun quietly winding down one of the earliest programs created by the president’s health care overhaul, a plan that helps people with medical problems who can’t get private insurance.

In an afternoon teleconference with state counterparts, administration officials said Friday the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan will stop taking new applications. People already in the plan will not lose coverage.

Why do you think these people can’t get private insurance? The insurance companies are in business to make a profit. There is nothing wrong with that–why stay in business if you are not going to make a profit? Now the government is discovering that the insurance companies actually knew what they were doing. Wow.

The article points out that enrollment in the program has been lower than expected because many people could not afford to pay the necessary premiums. Individual cases have turned out to be more expensive than originally thought.

The insurance companies would have told the Obama Administration all of this had they been asked or had the Obama Administration been willing to listen. We just spent a lot of taxpayer money reinventing the wheel when we could have simply improved the design while relying on the knowledge of those who had walked the road before. This is another example of why it is a bad idea to give the government money–they waste it.

I would have been open to the idea of the Obama Administration setting up health insurance pools similar to the high risk driver pools car insurance companies use. A program could be set up where people in that pool get help with their insurance premiums. That could have been done without ruining health insurance for those of us who were happy with the status quo.  Hopefully, if Obamacare is ever replaced, ideas similar to providing help for high risk people will be considered as one way to make sure everyone has access to health insurance. As it stands now, the part of Obamacare that actually solves an existing problem is being taken away.

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