Health & Fitness
Train Wreck News: Reality Bites
When the #Trainwreck hits reality, does it crush the truth?
The real problem with the #TrainWreck (aka PPACA or Obamacare) is not the detail of its provisions, or the features or promises. The very idea was absurd as presented, and its passage and the continuing support it gets from many in the public is powerful testimony of our capacity to believe what we want to believe, over hard, cold reality.
The hard, cold reality is that the #TrainWreck was sold with some simple premises:
- 30 million "uninsured" people will get "coverage".
- You will be able to "keep your plan" and "keep your doctor" if you wish. (nothing will change)
- Your insurance company will provide much better coverage. (everything will change)
- Your premiums will go down.
- Your health care quality will improve.
- This will not increase the federal deficit "by one dime".
There is an old saying about auto body shops: "Good, cheap, fast - choose two". The idea is that you can have something good, inexpensively, but it will take a while, or you can have something cheap and fast, but it will be low quality. You get the idea. It's iron law, not politics.
In health care, you can't tell insurance companies to decrease premiums, and increase payments, and also improve the quality of health care. Something has to give. Anyone with an ounce of horse sense knew that from day 1, but this is politics, not reality. As Thomas Sowell points out: "The first law of economics is scarcity..... The first law of politics is to (ignore) the first law of economics."
Now that the #Trainwreck has run full speed into reality, we have learned again that life is full of tradeoffs. Not only are the promises of the PPACA false, but there are lots of unintended consequences, like employers reducing employee hours to get under the 30 hour limit, and doctors retiring because they don't like the added burdens placed on them my the new law.
To me, though, the worst part is the corruption of our politics. The president has been accused of lying about the "you can keep your plan" promise.
That was yesterday's lie.
Today's lie is the entire story about the http://healthcare.gov site. Today, I read that 365,000 people have enrolled, and 1.9 million have "registered".
That sounds like a success, at least a partial one, but it's not. It's yet another lie. It's a misleading story to put a nice face on a botched rollout. To me, it's even a useless, unnecessary lie, because the truth is not all that horrible.
If you read between the lines in this article, you learn that no one has actually signed up for health insurance through the web site. Yes. No one.
The reason is that the "back end" is not yet working. The "back end" is what tells insurance companies who has enrolled. The "back end" is what accepts payments. There is no "back end" yet. It's not finished. It isn't even promised until Jan 1. Saying that 365,000 have enrolled is like Amazon claiming that they sold 365,000 items when all the customers did was put them in their "shopping carts". It's not true.
Why would the administration proffer a lie when the truth would do? Why not admit that the web site is not ready. Would a delay of a few months really be such a big deal to a law that supposedly has been 100 years in the making, and is vital to our future health and prosperity?
I do not pretend to see into the souls of our officials, but I can tell you this: the acceptance of blatant, obvious dishonesty, and repeatedly covering failure with obfuscation and falsehoods is a kind of corruption that will destroy any faith the people have in their government.
The #Trainwreck is optional. The truth is not.
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