Joe discusses some of the ins and outs of Obamacare.
By: Joe Makoto
-Staff Writer-
Republicans tend to see it as an expensive new entitlement program giving health care away to everyone, a gift to voters in the language of the post-election Mitt Romney.
Democrats understand it as legislation that brings our healthcare system closer to those of other industrialized nations, and a strong move towards universal health care coverage.
These views have merit, but seem to have missed a major component of ObamaCare.
My reading of ObamaCare is as an obligation to buy health insurance from the oligopolistic health care insurance industry, which is now guaranteed both a captive, subsidized audience and a specified rate of profit. A comfortable position to be in for any industry.
This growth of government, called the individual mandate, has made the health insurance companies winners. As evidence of just how much of a winner they were consider that in this post-Citizens United world, any losers would have spent a considerable amount of money on advertisements in this latest election cycle. This industry, which lobbied so heavily against HillaryCare with their highly effective Harry and Louise adverts in 1993, kept their mouths shut in the 2012 election.
Even more than the 47 percent, this industry knows well who is going to butter their bread for decades. And they kept their mouths shut.
This silence speaks volumes about who ObamaCare benefits. In the long run it may lead to some form of universal coverage, or it may become an expensive new entitlement program. But for now, it is a huge giveaway to an increasingly cartelized insurance industry.
