The Promise Of "Universal Health Care"

     While Obama administration officials have been crowing about what they say are the 3.3 million people who have signed up for health insurance using the government website, industry insiders say it is going to be extremely difficult for the government to meet its downwardly revised number of 6 million enrollees by March 31. But that is both the bureaucrats' advantage and the peoples detriment of big government programs like health care, i.e., its lack of competence and success can be buried by its ability to confiscate taxpayer dollars with which to paper over utter failure.
     The administration's figure of 3.3 million enrollees so far ignores the fact that their billion dollar website dos not have a mechanism for visitors to cancel their transaction. Without a cancel button, the website is counting as enrollees everyone who makes inquiries into health plans. To further obfuscate the real number of enrollees, is the twenty percent of people selecting plans who are not actually paying their premiums for those plans. Additionally, according to Robert Laszewski, president of Health Policy and Strategy Associates, two-thirds of those who are enrolling in ObamaCare plans were previously insured until the Affordable Care Act outlawed their plans and forced them to seek insurance on the government exchange.
     Many of those signing up for health insurance through the government website are finding that their plans come with very high deductibles, and they are electing not to pay their premiums. Some private insurers are reporting non-payment rates as high as thirty percent, and those who do not pay are not covered. This means that of the 3.3 million people the administration is claiming are "signed up" for insurance, only 2.6 million are actually legitimately covered.
     Some of those not paying their premiums are unwilling, while others simply think the payments will be automatically deducted from their paychecks or tax refunds. Still others are confused by the myriad ad hoc changes made to the law by the president and are under a false assumption that they have another year or more before they will have to actually pay for the coverage they believe has already begun. The confusion has left many persons without coverage, even after having signed up on healthcare.gov.
     ObamaCare has already failed miserably in its promised outcome of insuring the uninsured while allowing those previously insured to remain so. There are no current statistics that show how many people are actually uninsured, but even before the disastrous roll out of government-run health care last fall, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the Affordable Care Act would leave 30 million Americans uninsured. I expect that number to increase significantly now that we have seen the malaise and malice of  the promise of "universal health care."