The Affordable Care Act, affectionately or not so affectionately called Obamacare has been misnamed. It should have been called the Affordable Health Insurance Act because it addresses the issues of healthcare, only indirectly.
What Obamacare does is allow people to purchase health insurance coverage for themselves and their families. “Allow” is not the right word, however, as the law is set up with penalties for families who do not enroll in a health insurance plan within a designated time frame.
The types of health insurance coverage that will be available to people will vary as each individual or family will be shopping for coverage that seems to best fit their unique requirements.
The ACA also asks health insurance providers to incur more risk by eliminating provisions like pre-existing conditions. Apparently, it is a trade off for being assured of getting more business.
We admire the sentiment of the act, which was intended to reduce the number of Americans who are uninsured and, therefor, not able to get the medical or hospital care that they need.The logic is somewhat confounding, however.
Rather than make health care available to all Americans as a right of citizenship, as so many other nations have done, it was decided to require everyone to have health insurance. How they arrived at the next logical conclusion, which was to penalize people who are unwilling or who think themselves unable to pay for the now more readily available coverage, is somewhat of a mystery.
The problem with Obamacare is that it will commit our nation to a future in which we are tied to the health insurance industry. Almost certainly, the people of other developed nations must be shaking their heads in bewilderment at those crazy Americans. I’m sure they must be asking themselves why we think it a good idea to do business with a middle man who only adds cost and complexity to the process of delivering needed healthcare to people.
It is hard to come up with a comparison that illustrates the absurdity of the concept but here’s an example that at least comes close.
Earlier I used the example of fire protection for citizens and asked the reader to imagine a scenario where the fire department pulls up to your burning home and asks to see your fire insurance card before they will turn on their hoses.
In most communities in the U.S., people have determined that everyone deserves fire protection and that the community will pay for that protection with tax dollars.
I have heard of a few communities where citizens are asked to pay a direct fee for fire protection. Now imagine that, in these latter communities, a problem has developed because not everyone is willing to or can afford to pay the fee for their fire protection. This theoretical community could decide to solve the problem the way most American communities have, by paying for fire protection with local tax dollars even if this initially requires an increase in property tax rates, the adoption of some type of local option income tax, or even some type of earmarked sales tax. Whatever the method of taxation, these communities have made fire protection a right of citizenship.
Now, lets consider that there is another community that still requires individual property owners to pay a separate fee for fire protection and that this community is also concerned that not everyone seems willing to pay for fire protection. The leaders of this community are not willing, however, to make fire protection a right of citizenship in their community.
Instead, someone comes up with the idea that requires insurance companies to provide at least a minimal level of fire protection coverage, no matter what the condition of individual properties, and also requires all citizens to purchase fire protection insurance coverage or pay a penalty.
Now, it is difficult to imagine that any community would choose such an approach because common sense would dictate that it will almost certainly cost more to pay a middle man for fire protection insurance than it would be to pay for it directly, through tax revenue. After all, the middle man has to cover their operating costs and, because we live in a free market society, make a profit.
Why is it that so many Americans seem so wrapped up in their daily activities and challenges that they are unable to step back and think about what they are doing and why?