ObamaCare Q&A for DummiesBy TOM PURCELLOctober 31, 2016
Dear Tom: The Affordable Care Act of 2010 was supposed to extend health insurance coverage and reduce costs. Why do my premiums keep going up? - Hurting in Houston
Health Care Coffin
Dear Tom: Before ObamaCare become law, President Obama said that my family's policy would drop by $2,500 a year, and he promised we'd get to keep my doctor. But our policy increased by $5,000 a year, our deductibles quadrupled and we lost our favorite doctors. How could Obama's promises go so horribly wrong? - Misled in Mississippi Dear Misled: It must have been Bush's fault. Dear Tom: How could the government bureaucrats who masterminded ObamaCare get their estimates so terribly wrong? In the private sector, heads would roll. - Peeved in Peoria Dear Peeved: Government ObamaCare enrollee estimates were off by about half. That is, millions of young, healthy people who were expected to purchase health insurance policies are - shocking, I know - spending their money on beer instead. Since young, healthy people don't need as much care, their premiums cover the costs of people who do need care. Without them, ObamaCare is imploding. Private-sector employees would be fired for getting their estimates so wrong. Government bureaucrats get bonuses. Dear Tom: I don't have a question. I just want to share my frustration. I'm shopping around for an individual policy, but ObamaCare is making me buy coverage for things I don't need. - Agitated in Arizona
Scary sick people
Dear Tom: I'm glad individuals with pre-existing conditions can now get coverage, but couldn't we have helped such people without disrupting one-sixth of the U.S. economy? - Perplexed in Pittsburgh Dear Perplexed: Sure, there are much simpler and better ways to help the uninsured and Americans who were unable to get insurance due to pre-existing conditions - we could have addressed each challenge in a targeted manner with risk pools, for instance. However, politicians and government bureaucrats are more interested in outright control than they are in solutions that actually produce the desired health-care outcomes. Dear Tom: I don't think ObamaCare is failing. I think its planners designed it to pave the way for the single-payer government health care that policy progressives have wanted to impose on the country for years. - Suspicious in Syracuse Dear Suspicious: I'm not sure ObamaCare's architects were clever enough to pull off such a strategy. That said, ObamaCare is dishing out so much pain to so many middle-class people, it does open up an opportunity for another silver-tongued politician to promise that higher taxes on the rich will fund "Medicare for all!" We are at a fork in the road: Either we apply sensible market reforms to correct the root cause of our health-care woes - costs are out of control - or we give up as a people and let the government complete its desired health-care takeover. We better hope and pray for sensible reform.
Tom Purcell, author of "Misadventures of a 1970's Childhood" and "Wicked Is the Whiskey," a Sean McClanahan mystery novel, both available at Amazon.com, is a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review humor columnist and is nationally syndicated exclusively by Cagle Cartoons Inc. E-mail Tom at Tom@TomPurcell.com
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