What Republicans Must Do Now
Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP,MACE
The following is a weekly tracking of 2015 enrollees for Obamacare. I will try to report it weekly. Open enrollment ends February 28, 2015.
The only information the Obama administration has provided to the traditional mainstream media is the statement that open enrollment is going well.
ACASignup.net is providing weekly tracking against the estimates CMS has provided on the government’s web site. The data is there but the traditional mainstream media does not look at it or report it.
Tracking Enrollments for the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare)
Confirmed 2015 QHPs: 534,000 as of 11/27/14
Estimated 2015 QHPs (
Cumulative): 1st Week: 610K (462K HC.gov) • 2ndweek: 1.04M (780K HC.gov) 1,160,000 as of 11/30/14
The actual enrollment versus estimate enrollment is minus 626,000 for the first 2 weeks of open enrollment. To look at state by state enrollment go to http://acasignups.net/projection
What must Republicans do about Obamacare now that they have control of the Senate and the House of Representatives?
The Republican majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate must develop positive alternatives to Obamacare that all the stakeholders can accept.
Republicans must address the concerns that led to Obamacare’s enactment in the first place. The dysfunctional parts of the healthcare system pre-Obamacare were unsustainable healthcare costs, too many uninsured and a lack of protection for patients with pre-existing conditions.
The healthcare system’s business model was dysfunctional before President Obama forced Obamacare through congress. All Obamacare has done is add more rules, regulations and bureaucracy to the healthcare system while imposing increasing government control.
The result has been greater impingement on Americans’ freedoms as well as increased costs to taxpayers. Taxpayers are experiencing less personal care, less choice of care, less access to care, higher taxes and higher out of pocket expenses.
The healthcare costs to society are becoming more, rather than less, unsustainable as a result of Obamacare. These increased costs have had a negative impact on the entire economy.
“We need to get rid of Obamacare instead of attempting to fix it because it is fundamentally flawed, cleverly designed to lead us over time to a single-payer system.”
This notion is widely accepted. Is a single party payer system a dirty phrase? No.
The problem is that a single party payer system has not worked efficiently anywhere in the developed world except Switzerland despite progressives’ spin to the contrary.
Obamacare’s road to a single party payer will become clearer when the employer mandate provisions kick in. The employer mandate was to begin in January 2015. It has already been delayed to 2016 or 2017. The Obama administration changed the law in order to make the ultimate goal of a single party payer system less obvious to consumers.
Meanwhile, new taxes to pay for Obamacare have been in effect since 2010.
Companies have already dumped workers from their employer plans into government-run exchanges by decreasing full time jobs to part time jobs.
The exchanges should have theoretically swelled. They haven’t because the premiums and deductibles are too high. If the exchanges swell they will become more costly to taxpayers. Americans will be told we must switch to a single payer system because a government monopoly will be more cost-efficient.
At that point it will be Medicare for all. Medicare is a single party payer system that has become unsustainable. Where is the logic?
Republican majorities must articulate Obamacare’s destructive mayhem to the American public. The public is experiencing this mayhem right now. Republican must describe it and its cause.
President Obama is going to come back and blame Republicans for being obstructionist. Republicans must be right there and explain that President Obama and his administration owns the mayhem.
The public is not stupid.
Republicans should start proposing constructive alternatives. I have outlined these constructive alternatives in the past.
Republicans must present a plan which addresses the unsustainable healthcare costs, the uninsured and the lack of protection for patients with pre-existing conditions.
These alternatives should be developed through congressional committee debate, media debate and a public relations campaign.
Stakeholders other than consumers have invested lots of money in adjusting and profiting from Obamacare’s new rules and regulations. They think they have a competitive advantage. They are wrong.
Medical care must between patients and physicians. Patients have tremendous power in the healthcare system. They just do not realize it yet.
Large financial companies with their lobbying power are investing in healthcare in order to profit from the Obamacare chaos. They view consumers and physicians as commodities.
Soon their companies will be too big to fail. However, the government is the only entity that can bail them out. The problem is the government will have failed too. These companies will have no one to bail them out.
Republicans must be responsible and responsive right now.
Republicans must promote and harness Patient Power so that consumers, not government, are in control of their health, healthcare dollars and their medical care.
The opinions expressed in the blog “Repairing The Healthcare System” are, mine and mine alone
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