Another example of "I told you so"...
Medical costs for enrollees in the health-care law’s high-risk insurance pools are expected to more than double initial predictions, the Obama administration said Thursday in a report on the new program.
Those who have enrolled in the program are projected to have significantly higher medical costs than the government initially expected. Each participant is expected to average $28,994 in medical costs in 2012, according to the report, more than double what government-contracted actuaries predicted in November 2010. Then, the analysts expected that the program would cost $13,026 per enrollee.
Remember this? One of the hallmarks of Obamacare was that it would bring "major reductions" in medical care cost. A huge part of that projection was the $13,000 "estimate" for these high-risk patients.
Well, guess what -- it's more than double the estimate.
Why?
Simple: The Government lied.
They lied to get the law passed. They did not put up their "actuarial estimates" where anyone could see them, the methodology was not published, the data was not published, and none of it was part of the debate.
And now we find out that it was so far off that it could not have been a mistake -- it was an intentional fraud upon the public, shoved down our throats by Obama and Pelosi.
Here's the truth folks -- if one percent of the population is "high risk", that's 3 million people. If the cost per person is $30,000 a year then we're talking about $90 billion a year.
And that's if it's just one percent of the population.
Remember, the original design was for people who (1) were employed, (2) therefore could pay, but (3) had been turned down. When you look at the total panoply of uninsured, about 16% of the population, the odds are that we have at least one percent of the people in this category.
Simply put this is one trillion dollars over ten years, basically.
Which we do not have.
Which we cannot raise.
Which, incidentally, is almost one quarter of all Medicaid spending in 2010.
That's right -- a 25% increase for 1% of the population.
Yeah.
Folks, we must have an adult conversation here. This nation cannot afford to transfer $30,000 to every high-risk man, woman and child irrespective of ability to pay each and every year. We don't have it. We can't raise it. And we can't spend it.
The cost-shifting and de-coupling of expense from cause and outcome must stop here and now. Juanita the illegal Mexican who comes into this nation 7 months pregnant and goes into labor, never having seen a doctor and emits a severely-premature infant that then requires an immediate $1 million of NICU expense cannot be transferred to the American people.
It doesn't stop with illegal immigrants either. It also extends to everything, because if we do it any other way we become the lifestyle police.
If you can transfer your medical costs to me then one of two things must happen:
- Our medical system will collapse.
or - I get to spy in your bedroom, your car, your office and your lifestyle and dictate how you live.
#2 is wrong. #1 destroys the nation. Therefore we have only one option left -- stop this. All of it.
I've written many articles on actual health reform, and it features prominently in Leverage, because if we don't fix this issue, right here and now, the rest literally doesn't matter. That's not hyperbole, it's the ugly, God's-honest truth.
That which people cannot pay for with their own money must revert not to government but to private charity. We must accept that people make choices and those choices have consequences. Sometimes events happen that aren't "fair"; people through no fault of their own get cancer, heart disease or simply fall down the stairs -- literally.
It doesn't matter. That which you choose to pay for in the form of coverage you should have the right to buy. But nobody should have the right to force you to pay for someone else's procedure. You should have the right to pay the same amount to have your appendix out as Joe, Jane or Juanita. You should be able to see the price before you buy, and if you can't (because you're unconscious or otherwise unable) then that should not give the provider free license to rob you. In no other line of work is that sort of thing tolerated, and we must stop it here.
Medicare, Medicaid and other government programs, along with EMTALA, simply force costs onto others. By forcing treatment of people who have no money they encourage people to come here and consume service without the ability to pay. They encourage all sorts of behaviors via an indirect path in that the "Nanny Government" will (at least attempt to) fix whatever breaks -- and send someone the bill.
In addition the laws against reimportation and similar mean that Americans pay for the development of every advanced technology. We pay $20 for a pill that's $2 in Canada. The $2 covers reproduction cost, but the $20 covers development, clinical trials, testing and the risk of failure. We eat it all and the rest of the world gets full benefit of that development expense for free. This must stop. Dropping these special legal protections will instantly end this game. Yes, there will be some therapies that won't be developed becasue other governments will refuse to bear their ratable share of the costs. That's how the market works -- if there's no market for the drug, device or procedure in a nation at its "all-in" cost then it doesn't happen, no matter how "wonderful" it might be.
We can technologically put men on the moon. There are too few people willing and able to write the check to do so in order to make moon flight a commercial success. That's the market at work -- there is insufficient demand to create the supply. Such is how it must be for medicine.
We don't have the money to do what we're doing folks, and if we don't cut this out -- here and now -- we're going to bankrupt the country.
It doesn't matter whether you think the outcome of putting the market back in charge is fair or not -- the money to do otherwise simply doesn't exist
