You know what is proving to be a huge waste of time and money? The efforts to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act. Instead of filing lawsuits and passing bills that are just going to be vetoed anyway, everyone opposed to the ACA just needs to be patient and let it collapse under its own enormous weight.
Another step in that process came this week as Aetna announced it was dropping out of exchanges in 70% of the markets where it had offered health insurance plans this year. Add that to similar decisions by UnitedHealth, Humana, Blue Cross and Blue Shield and the bankruptcy of many co-ops who didn’t come close to breaking even and you have many people in the exchanges having one–and sometimes no–plans available to them anymore. Anyone “schocked” or “angry” by this development obviously knows nothing about insurance–or they would have seen this coming from day one.
But the ever-dwindling insurance options may lead to more legal action by those who support the ACA. The Supreme Court has already decided that the Federal Government can force you to buy a product you may not want to buy (under the guise that it is actually “a tax”)–so why couldn’t the Justices rule that the Federal Government can force a company to sell a product it may not want to sell?
And here is how they can do it: claim the insurance companies are engaging in racist and discriminatory practices. President Obama and Hillary Clinton in their speeches say many of those who were provided Government-subsidized health insurance through the exchanges are minorities. Therefore, the Department of Justice can “prove” that Aetna’s withdrawal from the exchanges is designed only to affect people of color and women. (Nevermind the $300-Million in losses this year alone).
Armed with their latest judicial victory, the Administration could force every insurance company in the country to return to the exchanges (and probably dictate premiums as well) no matter how much money they lose on the policies. All of which will lead to either the total collapse of the private health insurance industry–or result in such astronomical rate increases on those with standard plans–that public outcry will demand the Single-Payer, Government-Controlled Health Care that the “success of ObamaCare”–disguised as a “failure” was designed to usher in from the very start.
