The Washington Times takes on Obamacare’s 3rd birthday.
Quite the takedown, the whole editorial is a highlight reel so you’ll have to read it. The conclusion:
“Nothing succeeds like failure,” Tommy Lasorda, the wise old baseball manager, once said. Only by the Lasorda rule can Obamacare be measured a success. Everything about the health care law has disappointed, and it’s likely to get only worse. Republicans must be creative if they are to shut down this boondoggle before we lament many more birthdays.
And it really does need to be “shut down” unless of course you’re for Government controlled health care. And many Boulderites are.
The worry in my mind is that the unintended consequences of a government run system would be great but slow developing. The argument I hear most frequently from the single payer supporters is how well Medicare works. I seriously ask, does it? Here are my concerns:
- I feel confident in stating that there is already significant cost shifting taking place where Medicare expenses are spread out among other users of the medical system
- Obamacare is raiding Medicare for $700 billion
- Medicare negotiated prices are covered by by “cost shifting”
- The tip of the iceburg in cost shifting if plainly visible via the yearly “Doc Fix“
On the surface, Medicare appears to work fine. If the entire system were changed to the Medicare model there would be a significant upheaval in how medical care is provided and the quality of that care. Why, because excess Medicare costs are built into the cost of services charged to other users of the healthcare system. If you switched to a Medicare based single payer system, there would be no one to share the cost with anymore and the cracks in the system will become visible to all.
