Tag: subsidies

Remember the movie “Groundhog Day”? If not, it’s a great comedy worth a watch. The general idea is a TV weatherman repeats the same day over and over again until he figures out how to get things right.

Well, Bill Murray may have to take a back seat to…the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. In the midst of the government shutdown (which I am blissfully enjoying for the most part for the sheer comedy of Leftists trying to blame Republicans for not funding ACA subsidies for millions of Americans. Leftists tell us unless these subsidies are funded as part of the Continuing Resolution in the Senate, prices will skyrocket, making healthcare unaffordable.

We’ll get back to that in a bit.

Anyway, with the ACA/Obamacare coming back into the news, I figured we’d be good to reminisce about the days when men were men and women were men and everybody was really confused.

Affordable Care Act/Obamacare

What the Left thinks it means – a vital piece of legislation that made healthcare affordable for millions

What it really means – an unsustainable piece of legislation that Leftists sabotaged from the jump

The year was 2010 and President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law. Although it was greeted by fanfare and the efforts of Democrats (since zero Republicans voted for it). In fact, Leftists were quick to point out how former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney had a similar, if not exact duplicate, of the ACA in his state. Given what we know now about Romneycare and the mush of a man behind it, that’s not exactly something to brag about.

Regardless, Leftists were aglow with pride at getting it passed. Finally, the federal government, the purveyor of all that is good and right in the world, would be able to ensure people got health insurance by…let me read my notes…taking away options they didn’t like. That’s right, kids, Big Brother was watching you make health insurance decisions and removed your ability to choose what you wanted in favor of policies they demanded…I mean recommended through their new portal.

On a side note, why didn’t the Mafia sue the Obama Administration for copyright infringement over the Obamacare shakedown? Not that I would impugn the good name of the members of our waste management communities across this great land of ours, mind you.

Meanwhile as I attempt to avoid having my legs broken, the results of Obamacare weren’t exactly that great. In fact, it lead to spikes in costs, worse deductibles, and overall worse care. They couldn’t even get the Obamacare website to work right at launch! They made the demands to get people to use the website to sign up for their mandatory health insurance plans, but the website couldn’t meet the demand.

If that’s not the perfect metaphor for how fucked up Obamacare is, I don’t know what would be…except for the current situation where Leftists are demanding the Affordable Care Act’s subsidies be funded…so the policies through the Affordable Care Act could be…affordable?

The thing about the Affordable Care Act is that it was never meant to be affordable, per se, but rather it was an attempt to fuck things up to the point people would start demanding single-payer healthcare. And as we’ve seen with VA hospitals, it tends to wind up with worse care. Oh, and the misappropriation of funds! Oh, and the sexual harassment and sexual assault allegations! Oh, and the absurd wait times on their suicide hotline.

You know, I seem to remember a lot of Democrats getting their collectivist panties in a bunch over this…but I’m sure these little issues won’t dissuade anyone from jumping on the single-payer bandwagon!

And, really, that was the point of the Affordable Care Act. Well, that, and forcing the federal government into a business it knew less about than the Car Czar did with automobiles. Not that insurance companies minded, mind you. Thanks to the ACA, they made out like bandits. Or would have if they raised their ethical standards by a factor of, oh, five gazillion.

And as we’ve seen with military spending, whenever the federal government subsidize anything, costs are no object because the government can just print more money. Or pretend to for the purposes of tricking people into thinking we’re operating under a budget. But that’s a blog post for another time…

Meanwhile back at the main point, we’ve dumped money into Obamacare for the better part of 15 years, and I’ll be the first to admit it’s helped some people. The larger issue is it didn’t help enough people to make it worthwhile. The very fact they had to keep funding it through the American Rescue Plan and the Inflation Reduction Act should make even Stevie Wonder see it wasn’t economically feasible to keep the printing presses rolling.

Guess who controlled both houses of Congress after these two pieces of dog shit legislation got to the Auto Pen of President Brick Tamland? The Democrats.

And they were the ones who put the impending deadline into play.

Yeah, but it’s the Republicans who are the assholes.

Much more concerning to your humble correspondent than the ever-expanding fiscal sinkhole that is Obamacare is the fact it was coerced capitalism. As a free market and libertarian kinda guy, I don’t want to be forced to buy a product or service from anyone. Car and house insurance I get, but it’s not like the federal government is going to penalize me for not having either. That comes with the next bill after Logan or Kayleigh runs into the back of a school bus at 20 miles per hour because they just had to post something on TikTok, or after they cause hundreds of thousands of dollars in property damage because they wanted to see if they could turn their last Taco Bell meal into an ass flamethrower.

The Affordable Care Act, on the other hand, forced you to have health insurance. On the surface, it’s not that bad an idea, until you realize you would get penalized for not carrying any health insurance. And that’s even on top of the fact you may not even be able to afford the policies the federal government offered you. For many Americans, the choice came down to either paying the fine or paying for insurance.

Yeah, that’s not gonna work for me, brother.

The beauty of the free market system is you get to choose your path. If you decide to insure your car with Uncle Swifty’s Fly-By-Night Insurance Company and Used Tire Lot, it was your choice. A fucking stupid choice, but a choice nonetheless. Through the Affordable Care Act, your choices were limited by what they allowed you to have and what they believed you should pay for the coverage offered. Sure, you might have to go without luxuries like food and shelter, but at least you have health insurance, right?

Yeah, about that. As much shit as insurance companies get for denying claims, there’s one entity that is the absolute worst at it. I’m talking definite double digit denials here, kids. That entity, the lowest of the low, the scummiest of the scummy, the heartlessest of the heartless?

The federal government.

The same group of assholes who brought you Obamacare.

But don’t worry! The insurance companies who worked with the ACA had a plan! The Obama Administration had these things called Risk Corridors built into the Affordable Care Act to cover losses incurred due to the Affordable Care Act. Thank God they were spared, right?

Perhaps the most lasting legacy of the ACA is how the Left managed to conflate healthcare with health insurance, like they’re doing right now. The two aren’t the same and shouldn’t be considered to be so under any rational conditions.

Let me explain the difference this way. You cut your finger making dinner. Healthcare involves putting a bandage on the cut. Health insurance involves who is paying for the bandage and the care. You can get the former without involving the latter, as last time I checked, doctors like money. In fact, if you can pay for your treatment directly, many doctors appreciate that because it saves them the headache of dealing with insurance providers and determining what is covered and what isn’t.

That’s not to say Obamacare isn’t complete dog shit. Mostly, yes, but not completely. I’m referring to the concept of preexisting conditions. Prior to the ACA, insurance providers could deny coverage for any reason if they could link it back to something you already head. Obamacare put the kibosh on that practice, but it’s still being done. If I could make one suggestion to anyone trying to build the better health insurance mousetrap, it would be to keep a tighter lid on preexisting conditions, or at least make it eligible for appeal from a non-governmental and non-insurance company entity.

Failing that, go on social media and tell your stories about how your health insurance provider fucked you over over preexisting condition bullshit unrelated to the malady in question. Their CEOs will pay attention to that shit because it affects their bottom lines. And by bottom lines, I mean their salaries. Enough bad press and they might not be able to afford to spend the holidays in Aruba.

As far as the subsidies are concerned, the very fact they exist to make the Affordable Care Act affordable is a sign of its utter failure. If I had my druthers (and people knew what druthers were in the first place), I would reset the board to the way things were prior to the ACA being signed into law. It may be too late for some health insurance providers who were able to provide low cost policies to people, but at the very least we could try to revitalize that market and make health insurance affordable again.

Say, that could be a slogan of some kind…nahhhhh. No one would ever take up the Make Anything Great Again idea with any degree of success.