Some will read the Washington Post's revelation--that the
administration is not addressing its mistakes in processing the online health
insurance enrollments of tens of thousands of consumers--and conclude that the
Obama administration is singularly incompetent. Perhaps so, but even
with the best software system, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) cannot function in
the real world under any administration.
The Affordable Care Act fails to account for fundamental
human nature. Faced with paying expensive new mandated insurance for full-time
employees, employers simply will cut employees' hours. Presented with high new
premiums that essentially subsidize insurance for sicker older people, healthy
young people simply will refuse to enroll. Without adequate Medicare
reimbursements--a cost-cutting measure used to help sell and pass the
ACA--physicians simply will stop taking poor patients.
The Affordable Care Act defies efficiency and effectiveness
by shifting decision-making power away from patients and their personal
physicians to federal bureaucracies--the most inefficient and ineffective level
of decision-making possible.
The ACA replaces free choice and competition with senseless
and coercive mandates, such as forcing even conscientious objectors such as
elderly nuns to participate in the provision of controversial contraceptives
and sterilization surgeries.
Congress should heed the lessons of the ACA and enact
measured reforms that drive costs down by letting consumers choose policies
across state lines, provide safety nets for the poor through high-risk pools,
increase personal choice and cost-saving accountability with health savings
accounts and respect First Amendment principles protecting conscience.
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