It doesn’t matter that Obamacare — aka the Unaffordable Care and Patient Deflection Act — has been an expensive, immoral disaster. What counts, according to the Left, is that it has made “care” (actually, an overpriced form of coerced insurance “coverage”) more “available.” But as taxpayer-funded state “co-ops” continue to collapse across the country, what’s needed is… expansion!
Presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign has proposed an increase in federal funding for community health centers as part of the ongoing courtship of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ endorsement in the presidential campaign. Clinton wants to provide $40 billion to the health centers of the next 10 years and to classify that funding as mandatory spending that is insulated from the annual budget fights that take place in Congress.
“Clinton’s campaign says the proposal is part of her plan to provide universal healthcare coverage in the United States,” according to the Associated Press. “The presumptive Democratic presidential candidate also is reaffirming her support for a public-option insurance plan and for expanding Medicaid by letting people age 55 years and older opt in.”
The proposal won praise from Clinton’s persistent opponent. “Today’s proposal by @HillaryClinton is an important step toward expanding health insurance and health care access to millions of Americans,” Sanders tweeted. “Together these steps will get us closer to the day when everyone in America has access to quality, affordable health care.”
Yes, quality, affordable health care — just like they have in Venezuela! Investor’s Business Daily has a few things to say:
After providing $2.4 billion in loans to get them started, ObamaCare is now driving several nonprofit insurance co-ops out of business. That, in turn, will leave tens of thousands of people scrambling to find other insurance, while making it unlikely that those taxpayer-subsidized loans will ever be repaid.
Of the 23 co-ops that started operations in 2014, only 10 remain, after Oregon’s second co-op announced on Friday that it was going out of business at the end of the month. By year’s end, Connecticut’s will be out of business as well.
Most of these co-ops that failed last year simply weren’t financially stable. But the recent spate of co-op failures is being driven by ObamaCare itself. Because insurers operating in Obamacare exchanges are banned from pricing policies based on a person’s health status, the government had to create an elaborate “risk adjustment” program to protect insurers who get stuck with too many sick people, by taking money from insurers that signed up mostly healthy ones.
The problem is that many of the remaining — and already financially vulnerable — co-ops just found out that they owe millions to this program.
Yeah, well, what a shock. It isn’t “insurance” if the insurer is forced to sell you a policy after you become ill. But they knew that all along. Instead, the goal is to Cloward-Piven the damn thing to death and then establish the “single-payer” system so beloved of socialists everywhere. In the interests of “compassion,” of course.
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