Democrats’ Obamacare Quagmire
One has to admire Democrats’ chutzpah. In a recent letter, Ron Wyden, ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, and 11 of his Democratic colleagues outlined a series of healthcare principles, so the Senate is ready “to take action on these issues the next time” Democrats are governing. The letter amounts to a simultaneous admission of ObamaCare’s failures and promise to go even further the next time Democrats have power.
To “make health care simpler for families,” the lawmakers would “make sure people can get the insurance they are eligible for through a one-stop shop,” and “simplify and standardize plans and benefits.” ObamaCare already created government-run exchanges to shop for coverage—years after private companies had created comparison-shopping tools online. The law also standardized benefits, imposing new coverage requirements that more than doubled individual insurance premiums in ObamaCare’s first four years. Why are Democrats suggesting policies they enacted in 2010?
The letter’s vow to “get rid of junk insurance plans” hints at the senators’ true motivation. Democratic lawmakers appear to want to regulate ObamaCare off-ramps like short-term limited-duration plans and catastrophic insurance out of existence. Much as the East German government created the Berlin Wall—officially known as the Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart—to “protect” people by preventing them from leaving, Democrats want to enact stronger so-called consumer protections that eliminate any exit from the ObamaCare morass.
To “take on corporate greed,” the lawmakers want to “eliminate Big Insurance gaming of the medical loss ratio that hides their profits, and ensure that those dollars are spent on providing care and lowering costs.” Democrats are pledging to fix a problem they created as part of ObamaCare. As Sen. Elizabeth Warren outlined in November 2023, insurers have bought up pharmaceutical benefit managers and other healthcare entities to shift revenue from insurance products—where ObamaCare’s medical loss ratio caps their profits—to business areas where profits remain uncapped.
In 2008, Barack Obama pledged that his healthcare plan would lower premiums by $2,500 a year for the typical family. But Sen. Peter Welch, who signed the Wyden letter, conceded last fall that “we did fail to bring down the cost of healthcare.” The “solutions” the letter outlines would also fail to bring down costs. The senators propose reinstating costly enhanced subsidies that, before their expiration in January, encouraged fraudulent enrollment in exchange coverage. They also propose exploring the benefits of “giving all Americans access to Medicare-type choices for health care”—even though 94% of Medicare beneficiaries have some form of supplemental insurance to protect them from that program’s high costs.
After 16 years of seeing the failure of government-supervised healthcare in action, Democrats still want to convince voters that more spending, regulation, and government control will somehow solve the problems created by just those things.
This post was originally published at The Wall Street Journal.