Something interesting to read

1. OBAMACARE

2. October, the month when everybody is
supposed to get health insurance, is only
six weeks away.
Hundreds of millions of dollars are being
spent trying to spiff up and sell the
mythical Obamacare product, which is
like a fully loaded sports car with
chrome wheels. It looks great on the
showroom floor. The only problem is,
there is hardly any fuel that can power
its engine.

3. The economy runs on voluntary
transactions that are mutually
beneficial to buyer and seller.
Obamacare is designed to run on
coercion — "incentives" that are really
punishments. Buy this health plan —
or else. Provide the listed services and
the gigabytes of compliance data — or
face a penalty.

4.  A high-performance engine cannot be
powered by galley slaves.
 To make Obamacare run will require
huge numbers of people acting in ways
that are contrary to their own
interests. It depends on young healthy
people spending the rent money on
health plans that will mostly benefit
high-risk individuals. It depends on
businesses continuing to employ full-
time workers when it is much to their
advantage to avoid hiring and to cut
the workweek. It depends on doctors
continuing to care for the sick when

5. they only get paid for withholding
expensive care. Moreover, it depends
on doctors keeping their offices open
despite the likelihood that they won't
get paid at all during 60 of the 90
days of the insurance "grace period."

6.  The people who will get paid are
the overseers and the promoters.
The expert consultants can't figure
out how the exchanges are
supposed to work. Rules haven't
been written yet, or the law as
passed is simply unworkable. It
requires some things that don't
even exist, such as use of nonprofit
reinsurance companies.

7.  Still, somehow "navigators" from
agencies such as Planned
Parenthood, with 20 to 30 hours of
online training, will be able to
figure out how to enroll millions of
people, and in a culturally and
linguistically sensitive manner.
Whether the exchanges can process
the application or accept payment,
especially from people who don't
have a bank account, is
problematic and certainly
untested. Finding a doctor for the
sick is not in the navigators' job
description.

8.  It appears that most of the cash
infusion is going to come from
taxpayer subsidies. Since the
government can't figure out how to
verify the income information
needed to calculate the subsidies, it
will just trust people to tell the
truth for now (and possibly punish
them later). How much money will
be bled from other programs — or
charged to the government's
maxed-out credit card — is a great
unknown.

9.  Obamacare is a contraption that
cannot work as designed. At the
same time, as in the Cash for
Clunkers program, the government
is smashing the old models. There
will no longer be an individual
insurance market with risk-based
premiums for catastrophic
coverage. Tens of thousands of
policies have been canceled, and
there is no longer an incentive for

10.  individuals to buy insurance while
healthy, just a tax penalty for not
buying it. The Constitution and the
rule of law are being demolished —
the administration is simply
deciding what to enforce and what
to ignore. The destruction of
independent medical practices is
well underway.

11.  Funds being poured into
Obamacare implementation are
being wasted on trying to foist this
lemon off on buyers and on
destroying both the existing
private medical system and
taxpaying productive businesses
throughout the economy.

12.  Responsible members of Congress
from both parties need to defund
this monster. President Obama and
Senate Majority Leader Harry
Reid may threaten to shut down
the rest of the government to keep
their signature creation on life-
support, but this creation will
wreak much greater destruction
later.

13.  If Mr. Obama gives Congress a
choice — temporary shutdown now
or permanent destruction later —
let us hope there are enough leaders
with the vision and courage to
choose the lesser disaster.
 Dr. Jane M. Orient practices
internal medicine in Tucson, Ariz.,
and is executive director of the
Association of American
Physicians and Surgeons.

14.  Read more at:
 http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/20
13/aug/21/orient-trading-in-the-obamacare-
lemon/#ixzz2chAnDJXe