Obamacare. One Man’s Gripes.

[Gripe 1] Affordable Health Care, the bill was called. It’s important to note that the bill is called ‘Affordable’ Health Care, not Good or Improved, but Affordable. The fallacy of ‘Affordable’ aside, let’s consider the meaning of the word.

Week-old bagels are more affordable than fresh bagels, but at least fresh bagels are available if you want them and can afford them. The problem with the Affordable Health Care bill is that to achieve the stated goal, only the ‘week-old bagels’ will ultimately be available. Fresh bagels (i.e., the world’s best health care as we know it) will become a thing of the past once the bill is fully implemented.

[Gripe 2] Analogizing Health Care to Transportation: Transportation is important. You can’t work if you have no means of getting to the workplace, but government doesn’t furnish the populace with cars. Instead, the government sensibly makes public transportation available for a nominal fee. It doesn’t make all citizens abide by this same means of transport. If someone wants better transportation than a bus, they provide for it themself.

I would’ve preferred that government take the Transportation approach to Health Care instead of sticking us with this bill.

[Gripe 3] Medical costs will increase as a result of this bill, despite being told differently. The Federal Government said they had to get involved in health care because it is too expensive. Citizens were further advised that the bill would provide expanded coverage and include more people with no increase in supply (i.e., no increase in medical professionals to provide these increased services) and still bring costs down? Under what economic model does that work? That, plus the expense of a new bureaucracy to enforce this debacle.

[Gripe 4] Access to health care does NOT equate to accessible health care. Tales have been well publicized about the long waits for health care services in England and Canada, countries with socialized health care systems. Is that our future?

[Gripe 5] The forthcoming loss of employer-provided health care. Effective 2014, under this bill, employers will have an incentive to drop health care for their employers. If an employer does not provide health care for employees they will be fined, but that fine is far cheaper than the expense of actually providing health care. Employees would then be picked up by the government-provided plan instead. Affordable health care means it’s more affordable to drop the coverage for employees than actually providing it.

Additionally, even if an employer decided to continue providing health insurance for their employees, a fine will be imposed if the employer-provided health care does not meet a certain standard of coverage. The fine for inadequate health care coverage is larger than the fine for not offering it at all!

Under such a ridiculous and perilous plan, what employer would opt to provide their employees with health care? Employees will be lopped into the government plan by default like so much ash in the dust bin.

[Gripe 6] If Congress is so proud of themselves for passing this bill, why did they except themselves and their family from abiding by it? Because they know the bill stinks. They’ll let the citizens wallow haplessly in this frothy mess while they hold a handkerchief to their nose and tell us how swell it is.

-klem