Obamacare Trainwreck Rolls Down Tracks

by John M. Curtis
(310) 204-8700

Copyright November 21, 2013
All Rights Reserved.                                      

            Seeing only the tip of the iceberg in the Obamacare train wreck, the healthcare.gov website, continues to sputter along, too complicated for high-priced programmers or government techies to figure out.  While President Barack Obama hopes to allay the tsunami of bad publicity arising from the botched Oct. 1 rollout of healthcare.gov, there are real concerns the mess is unfixable.  Giving insurance companies a one-year reprieve in hopes of reinstating junk insurance plans doesn’t begin to fix Obamacare’s fatal flaw:  That it depends on the private insurance industry.  Obsessed with profit margins and answering to shareholders, private insurance companies think only of the bottom line and continue to hike rates to compensate what they think are added Obamacare costs.  Instead of making health insurance more affordable, Obamacare has backfired.

             White House officials must face the music that Obamacare was flawed from the get-go.  When former Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) blocked the Medicare-for-all option in Dec. 14, 2009, it forced former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to go to Plan B:  A private sector insurance plan, similar to what former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney signed April 13, 2006.  Regardless of how the White House tweaks the website, the problem becomes containing costs in the private insurance market.  Without any GOP support, it’s doubtful Obama can legislate restraint against price-gouging into the private insurance market.  Not only can Obama not guarantee reinstatement of cancelled insurance plans, he can’t control Obamacare’s costs.  All he can do at this point is provide bigger government subsidies to compensate for insurance industry price-hikes.

             Dragged into the private health care insurance market, Obamacare has already wreaked havoc on individual and group plans.  Fearing more costs to comply with Obamacare Jan. 1, 2014, private insurance markets have raised rates across-the-board, defeating the purpose of Obamacare:  To lower costs.  White House officials must stop pie-in-the-sky speculation about a murky future and realize the damage they’ve already done to millions of health care consumers.  If the intent of Obamacare was to prevent the insurance industry from discriminating against folks with preexisting medical conditions, Obama should have worked with Congress to stop the industry-wide practice.  Obamacare imposes on the insurance industry a minimum benefit structure, costing insurance companies more cash.  State insurance regulators have done back-flips trying to get private insurers to comply with Obamacare.

             State insurance commissioners have little control over the private insurance industry.  “We share the president’s goal of affordable coverage for consumers, and we will work with the insurance companies in our states to implement changes that make sense while following our mandate of consumer protection,” said Jim Donelon, president of the National Assn. of Insurance Commissioners.  Containing costs is easier said than done unless state legislators establish price controls.  Establishing price controls on a national level are all but impossible in Washington’s divided government.  What state insurance commissioners can’t offer Obama is any assurance of containing industry-wide price-gouging.  When Obama promised before he signed the ACA into law March 21, 2010 that individuals could keep their old plans and doctors, he didn’t know what he was talking about.

             Now forced to engage in the most feeble form of damage control to prevent his approval ratings from dipping under 30%, Obama finds himself in the same boat as former President George W. Bush when the Iraq War finally did in his administration.  Once with approval ratings at 90%, Bush watched his Iraq War tank his presidency and GOP hopes in 2008.  Now Obama finds himself in the same quicksand, dragged down by a well-intentioned attempt at national health care that didn’t fly in private insurance markets.  Once Obamacare went into the private insurance market, he was at their mercy to contain costs.  Faced with rising costs and antagonizing millions on consumers that stand to lose their current insurance or pay more in the future, Obama has made it difficult for any Democrat in 2016.  Even Hillary Rodham Clinton finds herself at the mercy of Obama’s negative coattails.

             Without some emergency rehab, Obamacare is destined to hit the Democratic Party with a wrecking ball.  Forced on the Senate in 2009, Obama now pays the price for imposing national health care on the American public.  Today’s private insurance markets aren’t concerned about the long-term goals of Obamacare:  They only look at the bottom line.  Faced with rising costs because of expanded benefits, the private insurance industry has gouged consumers to compensate for increased expenses.  “He [Obama] made it clear to us that he really understands the value of state-based regulation,” said Thomas Leonardi, Connecticut’s insurance commissioner.  What Obama needs from state insurance commissioners is emergency legislation to stop insurance industry price-gouging.  Without some statewide or national price-controls, Obamacare continues to wreak havoc on American consumers.

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news.  He's editor of OnlineColumnist.com.and author of Dodging the Bullet and Operation Charisma.