June’s column inexorably draws from me a miasma of righteous (and coincidentally right-leaning) indignation, paranoia (overwhelmingly justified?), impotent anger and a sense of impending doom. Coupled with my seemingly unquenchable cynicism toward our government’s ability to affect efficient, well supervised, fair and affordable solutions to any problem, particularly those emotionally charged and/or particularly beneficial to either political party’s constituency, I’m extremely challenged to provide even a “fair and balanced” dissertation on the glaring flaws and unforgivable encroachments on individual and states’ rights of the “Affordable” Care Act (ACA). It is apparent to me that the advisors of our elected officials have either been snickering at us for decades behind their hands or skipped school to smoke dope on the days that their English teachers discussed oxymorons.
In an effort to taint my diatribe with an inconvenient fact, the efforts of elected officials on both the state and federal level have, through their actions, negatively affected my company’s profitability—there are simply fewer health insurers, and coincidentally poignantly fewer who choose—or for whom it makes sense to choose—to advertise in Broker World. Diagnose that condition as the result of restrictions to profitability that cause either carriers’ exit from the market altogether, or receding from disadvantageous areas thus limiting their territory and our pricing’s appeal. I am certainly not an impartial observer.
And neither are you. The effect on the market and on producers and their ability to serve consumers has obviously been much more significant. The ripple effect on businesses trying to juggle benefits dollars is unavoidable and can affect all facets of insurance product distribution—from boardrooms, accountants’ offices and registered rep lunches to cafeterias, golf courses and family kitchen tables. There is, for almost all of us unelected, only so much money.
Although I can’t even fathom how profitable it would have been to be a vendor selected to publish the actual volume containing the Act—a volume so thick no responsible parent would even consider using it as a booster seat—I would rather beat myself in the head with a meat tenderizer than have to edit and proofread it. I vacillate between pity, deep admiration and an urge to institutionalize anyone who has actually read and studied it. I’m firmly convinced none of our elected officials fall into this category.
Fortunately some tortured souls have spent (I imagine) immense amounts of time studying the ACA and I stumbled across several well thought out online articles while searching for my muse. One in particular was from The Heritage Foundation (http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2016/04/year-six-of-the-affordable-care-act-obamacares-mounting-problems). In the article by Robert E. Moffit, Ph.D., senior fellow, Center for Health Policy Studies, the author outlines a great number of the problems with the ACA that have become apparent in year six. I found it an engaging read, though too in depth for me to do even passing justice to it here. But within the article Moffit relays the “Top 10 Reasons Why the ACA’s Future is Uncertain,” and I’ll list them here. The author expands on each of them extensively within his thought-provoking piece.
Moffit’s Top Ten:
Reason #1: Despite the President’s repeated promises, rising insurance costs continue to burden businesses and families.
Reason #2: The ACA generates big and surprising out-of-pocket costs.
Reason #3: The ACA has reduced insurance competition.
Reason #4: The ACA has a negative impact on job growth.
Reason #5: The overall health care cost curve is “bending” upward.
Reason #6: The ACA is imposing major tax increases on America’s middle class.
Reason #7: Medicare payment cuts will threaten seniors’ future access to care.
Reason #8: The ACA threatens increased deficits and debt.
Reason #9: The ACA forces Americans, in direct violation of their rights of conscience, to fund abortion through their tax dollars.
Reason #10: The ACA imposes arbitrary rules and costly mandates.
Each of these findings is in direct conflict with the assertions made to promote and support this panacea shoved down American’s throats by—to put it mildly—an act of legislative ignorance and subterfuge. Adding insult to injury, in 2013 the Obama Administration provided special taxpayer subsidies for Members of Congress and staff to offset their higher insurance costs in the ACA health insurance exchange.
I encourage you to read the lead editorial in this issue for a greatly insightful review of the flaws of the ACA from an industry perspective, written by Art Jetter, president of Art Jetter & Associates, Omaha, NE, a much brighter bulb than I and, I suspect, one of the tortured souls alluded to previously. God bless him! [SPH]
