So, yesterday, I talked about how corporations are using PPACA (Obamacare) as a wedge with which they can obtain information to which they really are not entitled. And, as a means to lower their health care costs, via an avenue that is impermissible. One that the regulators have begun to address.
But, these have been plenty of other threats to Obamacare. Of course, you know about the series of law suits. So far, the Supreme Court has upheld the PPACA concept, although some of the rulings made the road a little bumpy.
The original goal of PPACA was to insure all Americans. To make the overall cost for healthcare manageable, to slow the rate of increase in our healthcare costs. Because long term, that’s the only way our economy can grow and thrive. Before the passage of PPACA, health care costs were some 17% of our GDP. Yes, that’s 1 dollar in every 6 for our entire economy. And, our spending on healthcare was the highest in the world, but since the adoption of PPACA, the rate of increase has been greatly slowed.
It was thought that the best way to address our health care costs were to develop a single-payer solution (like Medicare). Politically, that would have been a disaster. (Yes, a considerably larger maelstrom than the adoption of PPACA, as hard as that may seem to consider.) So, the concept was changed to afford the development of non-profit health plans, one (at least) for each state, to provide competition to the existing behemoth insurance entities.
These Consumer Operated and Oriented Plans (coops) were to appease the liberals who weren’t getting what they wanted (the single payer plan). These plans were going to offer insurance at lower rates, covering those folks who couldn’t get insurance at work. and were without healthcare until the inception of PPACA.
But, given the significant minority opposition to PPACA, things didn’t quite turn out that way. For starters, Congress changed the rules as time wore on. Instead of getting grants with which one could start the coops, the initial funding was going to be via loans only. (This leads to much weaker balance sheets; tough sledding for any startup.) And, instead of the $ 10 billion that was needed to set the system up with stable coops, the funding was immediately cut to $ 6 billion. Until the budget negotiations that set up recissions. By then, the allocation was cut to $ 2.4 billion. Which meant only 23 states were going to get coops. All with significantly less startup funds. (I refuse to use the term startup capital, when loans are involved.)
And, then, to make things really interesting, the rules were changed yet again. These initial loan funds precluded any use of funds for advertising. So, the brand new coops, the plans about which no one had known a thing, were having their hands tied- no advertising to let potential insured know of their existence. Folks would have to find them by meandering through the Healthcare.gov marketplace. (And, we all know how well that was designed in the first place. Let’s hear it for CGI.)
So, now I’ve set the stage. Tomorrow, I’ll present the really bad news.
