Healthcare reality

A federal judge ruled today that Congress lacks the authority to require Americans to purchase health care. This is a serious blow to the scheme that opened the door to universal coverage in the United States. Here’s why.

According to Obamacare, everyone has a right to coverage without regard to individual risk or lifestyle considerations, and insurance companies cannot align their premiums with risk. The result is easily predictable—a large number of Americans demanding policies at rates far below their projected medical expenditures. Mandatory coverage is necessary to make up this shortfall because it would grow the number of healthy Americans who must pay the freight. Put another way, a larger percentage of premiums from the healthy must be confiscated to cover the expanded losses generated by the unhealthy, and a mandatory coverage requirement prevents low risk Americans from avoiding the scam. Without their contributions, the levels of rationing and wealth transfer required to finance the system would balloon out of control.

Don’t misunderstand me. I am not bashing Americans with high medical bills and I am certainly not suggesting that health insurance is a bad concept. The problem here is that Obama’s notion of insurance violates the fundamental requirements for an insurance market to work properly. Buyers and sellers MUST be permitted to enter into agreements voluntarily. Companies should have the right to refuse coverage to individuals who are projected losses, and they must be permitted to charge premiums that reflect the risks they incur. Likewise, individuals must be able to refuse coverage if they don’t want it. Obamacare rejects these principles and instead seeks to redistribute wealth through the market. This is why Obamacare looks more like social security than health insurance. It’s all about wealth redistribution.

The entire notion of Obamacare assumes that Americans have a right to quality healthcare without paying the full price. Just eliminate or reform the bad guys—insurance companies, doctors, hospitals, and big pharma—and a small co-pay should be enough to keep the system running. Nothing could be further from the truth.

If this ruling survives an appeal, it could bring Obamacare to a halt. The timing couldn’t be better for the incoming Republican Congress, which should immediately move to dismantle the scheme and propose rational market-based reforms.

4 thoughts on “Healthcare reality

  1. WRONG PARNELL. Insurance companies and big pharma have been screwing us for years. Without government mandates for coverage from providers and consumers, we will continue to deny access to millions of Americans. Capitalism doesn’t work in matters of life and death.

  2. It is Medicare and the government that have been screwing us as you put it thinker. They have run massive deficits and unfunded liabilities. The bill is coming due. Big govt does not work in matters of life and death.

  3. Amen Jeff. You are an expense to big government so it has a financial interest in seeing you die. You are a revenue source to the private sector so they have an interest in seeing you live!

  4. Capitalism does work in matters of life and death. What an illogical conclusion. How much technology, new drugs, procedures, etc. have extended the expectancy of life. Without the PROFIT motive, many of these innovations would have never come around. Who would bankroll a multi-million dollar research project without a way to recoup the costs? Big govt may try this, but it always leads to inefficiencies, slow change, and doesn’t follow a path of sustainability. What nonthinker is advocating is enslaving the minds and resources of our brightest, innovative people.

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