Sirota and co-author Andrew Perez wrote a lengthy, damning analysis. Hence, readers are urged to follow the link to read the entire item. Yet, some excerpting:
In fortifying for-profit health care companies, the Affordable Care Act became a cautionary tale about the political supremacy of an insurance industry that many Americans hate. But it has now become something even more profound: The ACA's modest popularity, forged in desperation, proves that an initiative can now be considered a political “win” even as it preserves a problem, steamrolls alternatives and makes a crisis more difficult to fix.
[...] This past weekend, winning and hope were the big messages from the White House, where President Joe Biden and former President Barack Obama released a video celebrating the news that a record 31 million Americans are now getting their health insurance coverage through Affordable Care Act exchanges and an expanded Medicaid.
There’s a lot of laughing and yukking it up in the video — it has the corny vibe of a ‘90s buddy-reunion comedy flick, and in this case, the intent is to gaslight. You’re supposed to walk away from the Instagram-optimized clip feeling like everything is going in the right direction — and most importantly, feeling like “the ACA works,” as Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., triumphantly declared.
Now sure, the ACA has been working to boost insurance industry profits and executive pay — indeed, as millions of Americans lost their health insurance last year, six health insurance CEOs were paid a combined $120 million. Those winnings are also working for politicians — some of those riches have been recycled into more than $150 million of insurance industry campaign donations funneled to Democrats since Obamacare was first enacted.
[...] Amid all the triumphalist rhetoric about the ACA, consider a few data points:
• The uninsured rate in America has steadily increased over the last several years. Nearly 30 million Americans were uninsured in 2019, according to Census data.
• 80 percent of Americans told Gallup that they have not seen their health insurance premiums decline since the passage of the ACA — and 50 percent say they fear being medically bankrupted.
• Medical claim denial rates have been skyrocketing. Insurers reject more than one out of every six health insurance claims made by patients on ACA exchange plans.
• Reuters recently reported that while the uninsured rate is lower than it was two decades ago, “the proportion of adults unable to afford doctor visits climbed from 11.4 percent to 15.7 percent.”
• “Annual family premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance rose 4 percent to average $21,342” in 2020, according to data from the Kaiser Family Foundation.
• Among those with employer-based health care coverage, “About one in five say that someone in their household has been contacted by a collection agency in the past 12 months because of medical bills, and 9 percent say they have at some point declared personal bankruptcy because of medical bills,” according to a 2019 Los Angeles Times/KFF study.
[...] Put it all together, this data shows the ACA works in the same way a train robbery works — it works really well for the thieves, but not so well for the passengers.
[...] Of course, the ACA has helped make sure more people are able to get ripped off on medical care rather than get completely cut off from the entire medical system. In that sense, the ACA is better than nothing at all, just like a train robbery is better than being thrown off the back of the caboose.[...] For a decade, the Democratic Party and its allied liberal groups in Washington have been able to to beat back discussion of universal health care by pretending they support a public option to compete with private insurers — and then they have inevitably cast aside the proposal when they regain power. This is what happened in 2010, and what is now happening again after Biden abandoned his public option promise in favor of a health care policy quite literally written by insurance industry lobbyists.
[...] The same dynamic is at play with proposed Medicare expansion and full-fledged Medicare for All. Like a public option, those policies may be conceptually supported by a majority of Americans, but it’s been a half century since the creation of Medicare.[...] Regardless of slick White House videos or football-spiking tweets from senators, we don’t have to believe it is some enormous victory that millions of people were thrown off their employer-based health care but at least some of them were able to get crappy coverage on for-profit insurance exchanges that involve high out-of-pocket costs and high claim denial rates.
The lie ripens in the summer sun. Regardless of how those two, Obama and Biden, have pitched their all too willing capitulation to big money as a success the very sad truth is what we've got involves a gulf between words and actuality, while the rest of the world's prospering nations have better. Possibly that is because other populations have been less docile and deluded than ours, or possibly because their politicians have been less the tools of greedy insurance gougers.
GOUGERS WHO BUY WHAT THEY WANT.
SO, WHO ARE THE SELLERS?
TOOLS.
NOT FOOLS for pretending. Always remember that, if nothing else.