Obamacare Schadenfreude 6/6/14

Another nice morning here, mid 60s, sunny, as yet mild humidity.  Even if we don't deserve it, we'll take it.

Prospective VA leader expects Obamacare to lead to single payer

The first name to emerge as the favored choice to head the Department of Veterans Affairs previously predicted that Obamacare will eradicate employer-based insurance and push the U.S. towards a single-payer system “like they have in England”. The Wall Street Journal reported that Dr. Delos “Toby” Cosgrove, who heads the Cleveland Clinic, is being heavily sought by the Obama administration to replace Gen. Eric Shinseki, who was forced out last week amid the VA wait list scandal. Cosgrove, who is a Vietnam veteran, has served as head of the clinic since 2004. Touted as a world-class facility, both Obama and GOP nominee Mitt Romney praised the 42,000 employee clinic during the 2012 presidential debates for its high-quality, low-cost health care.

In a 2012 interview, also with the Wall Street Journal, Cosgrove predicted that Obamacare would dismantle the employer-based insurance system and would eventually lead to a single-payer system.

In the interview, Cosgrove was asked if he thought employers would stop providing health insurance despite being penalized under Obamacare.

“The first ones will be the small companies,” he told the Wall Street Journal. “Every CEO I’ve talked to knows how much he’d save between insuring his people and paying the federal penalty. . . .The first time some big player does that, it’s going to fall like dominoes,” he continued. “What that does is drive everybody to the exchanges.”

Asked what that meant in the long-term, he said, “it’s going to be a faster move towards one payer. Increasingly, people think that in 10 years you’re going to have 75% of the health-care costs paid by the federal government,” he said.

At a health conference earlier this year, Cosgrove put a more precise timeline on the transition to single-payer. “I think we are taking steps in that direction,” he said at the 32nd J.P Morgan Healthcare Conference, according to a Medical Device Daily report from January. “I think ultimately in maybe twenty years from now we will have a basic healthcare provision across the country and then there will be [optional supplementary] insurance on top of that like they have in England.”

Because everyone really wants a single payer system like England and the VA.  To be sure, it's not clear from the article that he is in favor of the trend, but given that he's Obama's first choice to head America's one true example of the a single payer system, and one that has become massively corrupt and inefficient, one would reasonably suspect that he believes in them.

From Reason Magazine, a story on how Democrats are avoiding fixing Obamacare for fear that to admit its failures would be to help Republicans in the mid-terms:

. . .In her reporting, the DC publication's Rebecca Adams revealed how twisted and potentially dangerous the Obamacare-related political motivations are on the left, where pretending that everything is fine is clearly more important than acknowledging and quickly fixing serious – perhaps even deadly serious — problems (bolds are mine):

At least 2.9 million Americans who signed up for Medicaid coverage as part of the health care overhaul have not had their applications processed, with some paperwork sitting in queues since last fall, according to a 50-state survey by CQ Roll Call.

Those delays — due to technological snags with enrollment websites, bureaucratic tangles at state Medicaid programs and a surge of applicants — betray Barack Obama’s promise to expand access to health care for some of the nation’s most vulnerable citizens.

As a result, some low-income people are being prevented from accessing benefits they are legally entitled to receive. Those who face delays may instead put off doctors appointments and lose access to their medicines, complicating their medical conditions and increasing the eventual cost to U.S. taxpayers.

Democratic lawmakers who have promoted the law’s historic coverage expansion are wary of acknowledging problems that hand opponents of the Affordable Care Act another rhetorical weapon, said Robert Blendon, a professor at Harvard University School of Public Health and Kennedy School of Government.

Well, there you have it. Millions of poor people are not able to access promised benefits. Many of them are putting off or avoiding needed trips to the doctor. They're not able to get necessary medications. Hey, I thought Obamacare and Medicaid expansion were going to solve these problems?

But if you're on the left, don't you dare utter a word about any of this, because it's far more important that the public not know and that Republicans and conservatives not be given another "rhetorical weapon" than it is to put pressure on the people who have allowed these dangerous messes to continue to fester to fix them. . .

Besides, Obamacare isn't really the object; Obamacare's failure, and the subsequent replacement with single-payer is the object.

Leftists upset that Dr. Ben Carson compared Obamacare to the 9/11 attacks

Dr. Ben Carson, the Republican right’s favorite African-American neurosurgeon, often says that President Obama’s health care law is the worst thing since slavery.

But in my recent interview with the good doctor—who is riding high in the presidential preliminaries, having come in a close second to Sen. Ted Cruz this past weekend in the Republican Leadership Conference’s much-ballyhooed straw poll—he upped the ante.

He claimed that Obamacare has been even more damaging to the United States than the terrorist attacks of 9/11.

“You said Obamacare was the worst thing that has happened to this coutry since slavery. Why do you think it was worse than 9/11?” I asked him.“Because 9/11 is an isolated incident,” he answered.

To make a weather analogy, the 9/11 attacks were like a tornado, doing horrific damage in a limited area in a short time, while a hurricane will cause much more total damage over a greater area for a longer period, although the no one area may be as intensely damaged. Can we imagine the death toll of Obamacare exceeding 3,000, and costing the economy $3 trillion? Easily, but not one one day.