By Marc A. Thiessen
There is an Obamacare time bomb set to go off just before the 2014 midterm elections — and President Obama’s purported “fix” for the millions of Americans losing their health insurance doesn’t defuse it. If anything, it could make the blast worse.
In truth, Democrats are damned if Obama’s fix works and damned if it doesn’t.
For three years, at Obama’s direction, insurers and state regulators have been planning to cancel millions of individual market plans and move those people into the Obamacare exchanges at the end of this year. That process cannot be easily reversed six weeks before the transfer was to take place. Insurers did not negotiate prices with doctors and hospitals, or put plans through the state regulatory process. There is no magic wand the president can wave to suddenly reinstate canceled plans.
If Obama’s fix fails, a humanitarian disaster will ensue. Come Jan. 1, millions of Americans could find themselves without the health coverage Obama promised they could keep. Suddenly, the horror stories we are hearing today of people getting cancellation letters will be replaced by horror stories of cancer patients having their treatment disrupted and sick children being cut off from their doctors and hospitals. The outrage Americans are expressing today will pale by comparison to the outrage that will ensue when people who had insurance before Obamacare can’t get medical care they are accustomed to because they lost their plans.
But let’s say, by some miracle, Obama’s plan does work, and many in the individual market now losing their plans get to keep them for a year. That just means they will start getting cancellation letters 90 days before the end of the year. In October 2014. One month before the midterm elections.
That is a political disaster for the Democrats.
It gets worse.
Read the rest here.
What if, just prior to January 1, Obama announces that the government itself will insure those people who could not get insurance due to the problems with Obamacare? I don't even know if it would be logistically possible, but it'd be a foot in the door for the government to take over the whole sector.
ReplyDeleteBond interest rates would leap skyward. but they aren't going to take over healthcare, they want to free up treasury money for their croneys.
DeleteAm I the only one who salivates when reading articles like this?
ReplyDelete"That is a political disaster for the Democrats."
ReplyDeleteYep...but also an opportunity. Sounds like the perfect reason to let things spin out of control with shortages, riots, fighting, etc and then declare an 'Emergency' which will allow the Boy King to implement all those innocuous ExecOrds he has been happily signing with no intent to use.