Editor’s Note – It is unfortunate that I have to gloat about such bad news, but this very writer was among the first in the country to observe and write that ObamaCare creates what is called an “Adverse Selection Spiral” (also known as an economic death spiral); meaning that the short term incentives, regulations and tax structure in the ObamaCare is designed to make the long term risk management economically unsustainable due to the long term increases in costs forced into the system.
This very writer said that ObamaCare is designed to break private insurance and make people “cry out for a public option”. Ironically some months later former Democrats Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said the exact same thing.
Speaker Pelosi used IUSB Vision Editor Chuck Norton’s exact words that ObamaCare will “make them cry out for a public option” on C-Span [Notice how all of the Democrats cackle maniacally when she says it]:
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told the House Ways and Means Committee on Tuesday that the days of private health insurance are coming to an end in the United States.
“The private market is in a death spiral,” Sebelius said, contending this would be the case whether or not President Barack Obama’s health care law had been enacted.
At the Ways and Means hearing, Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.) asked Sebelius about the administration’s assurances that people who liked their current health insurance plan would be able to keep it under the new law.
“How about when the president said you can keep your health care coverage, if you like it?” Roskam said. “And yet, the reality is, according to Bloomberg (News) at least, 9 percent fewer businesses are offering medical coverage than in 2010. There the rhetoric didn’t meet the reality, did it?”
Sebelius did not contest the numbers.
[Here comes the spin – Political Arena Editor] “Well again, congressman, what you’re seeing, it wouldn’t have mattered if we had passed the Affordable Care Act or not,” she said. “The private market is in a death spiral.”
It would have happened anyways is the new spin. Nice try.
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius says that private health insurance providers are in a “death spiral.” Of course they are. Isn’t that the way the authors of ObamaCare planned it?
Testifying last Wednesday in front of the House Ways and Means Committee, Sebelius was asked by Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill., if the administration was being honest when President Obama promised that those who liked their health plans could keep them.
Said Sebelius: “The private market is in a death spiral.”
Sebelius tried to temper her comment by claiming the private insurance market would collapse even if the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act had not been passed. But the truth is, the market cannot survive under the growing weight of government, and Obama-Care was to be the final heavy load that will crush it.
Don’t believe it? Look at the provisions of ObamaCare and consider them in context with the Democrats’ constant public demonization of insurers.
Start with the mandates. By now, most of the country knows that ObamaCare requires health insurers to pay for contraception and other birth-control measures. But that’s not the law’s only mandate. Among the many diktats of the Democrats’ health care overhaul is the requirement that insurers must spend at least 80 cents on medical claims for every $1 they take in from premiums in the individual and small group markets, and 85 cents from premiums in the large group market.
Insurers’ first response was to cut broker commissions. But what gets trimmed next? At what point will the industry no longer be able to pay competent people in companies because of the medical-loss ratio mandate, or to make the profits needed to stay in business?
Maybe the industry could simply increase premiums to avoid problems created by the medical-loss ratio. But the central planners thought of that, too. Under ObamaCare, the secretary of Health and Human Services has the power to decline premium increases of 10% or more in the individual and small group markets. Only those considered “reasonable” by bureaucrats’ standards will be accepted. This policy is an effective price control that’s sure to cause losses in the industry.
“If you are not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” – Malcolm X
Political Arena 