Monday, October 28, 2013
Why Obamacare is complex
As with most questions about problems with government it all comes back to the Republicans being a bunch of dicks. As Paul Krugman points out, the influence of Big Insurance protecting their obscene profits is clearly part of it. That influence was focused by the ideology of the current
And Republicans still dream of dismantling Medicare as we know it, instead giving seniors vouchers to buy private insurance. In effect, although they never say this, they want to convert Medicare into Obamacare.And so we once again see the Republican Party doing it's damnedest to keep Americans from having anything good. Or in their case, from sharing the toys.
Why would we want to do any of these things? You might say, to reduce the burden on taxpayers β but Medicare is cheaper than private insurance, so anything taxpayers might gain by hacking away at the program would be more than lost in higher premiums. And itβs not even clear that government spending would fall: the Congressional Budget Office recently concluded that raising the Medicare age would produce almost no federal savings.
No, the assault on Medicare is really about an ideology that is fundamentally hostile to the notion of the government helping people, and tries to make whatever help is given as limited and indirect as possible, restricting its scope and running it through private corporations. And this ideology, at a fundamental level β more fundamental, even, than vested interests β is why Obamacare ended up being a big kludge.
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