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Like the giant Hindenburg exploding in the sky, the Affordable Care Act — called Obamacare by critics and President Obama alike — is headed for almost certain destruction, and just about every objective person can see it.

Including former President Bill Clinton whose wife Hillary could inherit this failing system next January.

“The people who are getting killed in this deal are small business people and individuals who make just a little bit too much to get any of these subsidies,” said Clinton while campaigning for his wife in Michigan. “Why? Because they’re not organized. They don’t have any bargaining power with insurance companies. And they’re getting whacked.”

Whacked is a good word for it. While Obamacare has expanded insurance coverage among the poor, it is a disaster for healthy Americans with higher incomes who receive less subsidies to buy private coverage.

“So you’ve got this crazy system where all of a sudden 25 million more people have health care, and then the people out there bustin’ it sometimes 60 hours a week end up with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half,” said Clinton. “It’s the craziest thing in the world.”

Higher costs and less coverage? Crazy indeed.

More worrisome is that major insurers, like Aetna, have backed out of state-based exchanges because of unsustainable financial losses. Obamacare had built in a three-year program to help cushion early insurance company losses. The thought was the risk pool, and the prices insurance companies charged, would stabilize.

But that hasn’t happened. The sickest continue to buy coverage while the healthiest, including many millennials, have not.

The Blue Cross Blue Shield Association reports that new enrollees under Obamacare had 22 percent higher medical costs than people who received coverage from employers.

McKinsey & Company also found that in the individual market, insurers lost money in 41 states in 2014, and were only profitable in 9 states.

As it stands right now, that statistic is likely to get even worse.

Next year, when a new president takes office, Obamacare will be in its fourth year, without subsidies, and almost certainly in a death spiral. A Congress that hates it is not going to rescue it. Bill Clinton knows it, and seemingly has begun to lay the groundwork for that reality.

President Obama should be doing everything possible to save a significant healthcare law that has his name on it. But “there is no fire here” seems to be the strategy, even while the nation can plainly see the Hindenburg is on fire.

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