Hurray for Health Reform By PAUL KRUGMAN

[TheKentuckian]

50. Important point about this, the law doesn't work except to increase the percentage insured.

Coverage isn't better. Systemic costs increase. Individual costs increase. Portability is not improved.

It is almost like some folks believe we have a unified pool or that this law creates one. The fragmentation is ongoing. We have maintained state regulation and enforcement (auto-fail), they still set the reimbursement rates, they still authorize and deny coverage, they maintain their anti-trust exemption (which clearly states no serious effort. Or even intent to regulate), you put an MLR on them but first set it at where they say they are to shareholders (making either pointless or a crime that needs to be prosecuted that isn't) then you allow the companies to collude, and make the only way to increase profits to be to increase the output on care while leaving them in control of setting allowable cost and collude.

Of all these and more serious problems in our system, why would increasing participation in a broken system (mostly those with no influence or money) be most critical? To save the insurance cartel from suicide as it would have dealt with serious threats to its model because of the boomers transitioning to Medicare with the current business model and the ability of the populace to drop coverage.
The cartel was on a collision course with pricing themselves out of existence without their "services" being mandated and frankly, without significant financial aid from the government.
It will still happen but the game can go on decades longer but eventually neither the people nor the government will be able to sustain the drain but in the meanwhile the profits will continue and keep increasing.