Every time I see something in the media regarding the Affordable Care Act (ACA) all it does is make me sick to my stomach. I have maintained that this legislation was going to be a disaster and everything I see proves I am correct. I know my friends on the “progressive” side of the aisle think the ACA is the best thing since frozen yogurt and sliced bread, but they seem to forget the first rule of medicine is to do no harm, and that is all we will get from the ACA, harm.
First, let’s do a quick recap of what we know. Employers (despite the one-year delay) have to provide health insurance to what used to be considered part-time employees since the law now says a full-time employee is someone who works 30 hours a week instead of something a lot closer to 40.
You have the federal government, for the first time in history, using its taxing authority to compel state and local governments to comply with the ACA, putting an even bigger strain on their budgets. Premiums are going to rise as the healthy now have to pay for the sick and infirmed, who get a better rate. And even those folks who have tried to comply and register through the exchange, can’t even log on most of the time since the administration never fully had the data infrastructure ready to go, even though more than $400 million was spent to get it up and running.
Now here’s a preview for what’s on the horizon. If what you’ve seen so far has made you feel ill, this will pretty much put you in the grave. In my hometown newspaper, the Chicago Tribune, there was a very thorough front-page story this past week on how the deductibles under Obamacare are tantamount to sticker shock once you get into the weeds and crabgrass of this thing. Someone who buys insurance through their employer, the story found, was likely to pay about $1,100 in deductibles.
If you go down the road to Kentucky, which my progressive friends have touted as a model, one of those plans is only good if you get sick or injured in Kentucky. So if you live in Louisville and are driving across the bridge or are on the Ohio River, make sure you get sick on the Kentucky side because if it happens in Indiana you are out of luck. This all comes in the first couple of weeks of the ACA going online. Just imagine what life will be like in 2014. And don’t even get me started on the medical device tax that is already hitting Indiana’s medical device industry like a cement truck.
We could have easily tackled our health care problem by creating a national version of the Healthy Indiana Plan which would have offered the working poor a chance to not only purchase health insurance, but also have skin in the game to encourage them to take responsibility for their own health and well-being. Instead we have to deal with a monster that is going to spiral out of control and take this nation somewhere that no one will want to go when it is all said and done.
Abdul-Hakim Shabazz is an attorney, political commentator and publisher of IndyPolitics.org. You can email comments to him at abdul@indypolitics.org.
