... a Gallup poll in late 2009 put them in better perspective, noting that 85 percent of American adults had health insurance, 87 percent of whom were satisfied with their coverage, and 61 percent satisfied with the costs. Even among the uninsured, half were satisfied with their situation, although only 27 percent expressed satisfaction about their costs for health care.
Instead of designing a solution that focused on the half of the 15 percent who needed better options and leaving everyone else alone,Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats on Capitol Hill insisted on imposing an overhaul of the entire health-insurance industry.
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Thanks to the exchange programming, consumers are getting enrolled in Medicaid whether they understand what that means or not, and in much greater numbers than before. (In the first month, nearly 90 percent of all the enrollees in the federal and state exchanges were Medicaid applicants.)
Unless they look at the fine print in the paperwork in Washington and other states with similar asset-forfeiture regulations, any assets they own will not pass to their heirs but to the state instead.
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The state exchange uses only income levels to means-test Washington applicants for the program, which means most of them will have no idea that their assets are at risk until it’s too late.
“People will think this is wonderful, this is free insurance,”Dr. Jane Orient, executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, said in an interview. “They don’t realize it’s really a loan, and is secured by any property they have.”
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That’s one of the problems of Obamacare itself – the perception that it’s a free lunch. Even those who do qualify for subsidies get that only through the collection of a myriad of taxes imposed by Obamacare. Those taxes apply to employers, insurers, and medical-device manufacturers, which drive up the costs for consumers and workers in indirect ways. It’s a shell game--not a reform that actually drives costs down. Instead Obamacare only masks price increases through dishonest opacity.
The problem here is the arrogance of the solution itself. Had the Obama administration focused on just those who could not get coverage because of income or pre-existing conditions, they could have expanded Medicaid in an intelligent manner while protecting existing assets, without disrupting the rest of the market.
That might still have been controversial and would not have been cost-free by any means, but it would not have fatally undermined a system that worked for 85 percent of Americans and misled many of the rest into risking their estates without any warning that government would strip their heirs of family homes.
finance.yahoo.com |
