Unaffordable Healthcare Act

Today I have to write about health care cost. The reason is simple. I received the renewal package for my families healthcare plan and although no member of the family had any significant claims and none are on any medicine, we still are required to absorb a nearly 10% increase in premiums. 

 

We hear all of the rhetoric coming out of Washington on both sides of the debate as to whether the “Affordable Healthcare Act” (AHA) will cause insurance rates to rise or fall. I now know the answer. Rates have risen significantly each year since the passage of AHA and adding forty-four million more people to the program will continue to add more cost for which there is no guarantee for offsetting income into the program. Unfortunately, subsidies imbedded in the system are designed to force tax payers to pick up any slack.

 

If you think your insurance premiums are the only cost you will incur for nationalized healthcare, think again.  What they are unable to collect from the system, they will either include in your tax bill or reduce the services you would otherwise be able to acquire.

 

Let’s think about this whole concept for a minute. We were told that forty-four million people are without insurance and that is who the AHA was designed to capture. Now that equates to approximately 14% of the US population.  So a system that was working for the other 86% who followed the rules and placed themselves in a position to provide healthcare coverage to their families must now be punished so as to accommodate those who for various reasons, including choice, have no insurance.  We all want Americans to have access to healthcare. The trouble is, we seem to have lost sight of the fact that healthcare is like any other service, if you want it, you need to be willing pay for it and not feel entitled to it.

 

While I do not think the cataclysmic results of AHA will be fully realized until full implementation of the Act, it is clear that insurance rates are on the rise and much of the reason is AHA. A concept that was devised in the back rooms of our government and signed into law without anyone reading it. I ask, how on earth could anyone think this procedure would yield positive results? The answer will become abundantly clear in the not too distant future, but all preliminary results indicate that this will be a catastrophic failure of the first order.

 

So what do we do? The only think I can think of that might change the course we are on is to un-elect anyone who supported this legislation and hope that those who replace them have the courage to substitute it with something that is not orchestrated in the back rooms, is fully vetted and is based on the merits of the concept and not politics.

 

Americans will have the opportunity to vote for change next year. Let’s hope that is not too late.