ObamaCare: Screwing Rural Americans

Washington is picking winners and losers again, and once again the losers don’t look much like Washington:

Analysis suggests that the ambitions of the Affordable Care Act to increase competition have unfolded unevenly, at least in the early going, and have not addressed many of the factors that contribute to high prices. Insurance companies are reluctant to enter challenging new markets, experts say, because medical costs are high, dominant insurers are difficult to unseat, and powerful hospital systems resist efforts to lower rates.

“There’s nothing in the structure of the Affordable Care Act which really deals with that problem,” said John Holahan, a fellow at the Urban Institute, who noted that many factors determine costs in a given market. “I think that all else being equal, premiums will clearly be higher when there’s not that competition.”

Hey, it’s not like they vote Democrat.

More seriously, what ObamaCare’s exchanges offer is not competition. Everybody must sell the same, boutique goods to the same captive buyers. Real competition is more than just price; it’s offering new services and disruptive products. ObamaCare outlaws changes. Instead it offers the stasis of a top-down, one-size-fits-all, democratic feudalism.