“I can’t imagine this is how President Obama wanted it to happen.”
California cancer patients are being systemically turned away at the offices of their regular oncologists. The Los Angeles Times reports that sanctioned insurance providers are failing to cover the oncologists and other doctors to whom they refer patients.
“I’m a complete fan of the Affordable Care Act, but now I can’t sleep at night,” one patient told the Times. “I can’t imagine this is how President Obama wanted it to happen.”
A fascinating New York Times op-ed, Daring to Complain About ObamaCare, offers some sardonic insight into why this occurs. Writer Lori Gottlieb says her Blue Cross representative told her “that there was a silver lining in the cancellation of my individual P.P.O. policy… now if I have Stage 4 cancer or need a sex-change operation, I’d be covered regardless of pre-existing conditions. Never mind that the new provider network would eliminate coverage for my and my son’s long-term doctors and hospitals.”
In other words, ObamaCare requires insurance companies to cover a lot of stuff. In order to keep their prices low while obeying the law, these companies have to cut doctors out of their plans, putting many sick people in grave danger.
Many conservatives call tragedies of this sort an unintended consequence of ObamaCare, believing that the law’s supporters merely did not understand the difficulties involved in manipulating a market by force. That interpretation is too generous.
Consider the reaction of Gottlieb’s liberal friends when she complained to them about her cancellation. They asserted “that it was beyond uncool to be whining about myself when the less fortunate would finally have insurance.”
Short of computer problems and bureaucratic oversight, ObamaCare is actually doing in California precisely what it was designed to do. The law is ultimately not about helping people: it was only ever intended to increase material equality, even at the cost of a net decrease in well-being.
This theme is recurring. A report released earlier this week by the Congressional Budget Office admitted that ObamaCare amounts to a tax on work for the middle class. It predicts that the law will reduce employment by millions of jobs over the next 10 years.
The office says that, because ObamaCare offers more subsidies to those who work less, many people will actually lose income by working more. It therefore creates a “disincentive for people to work.” Again, ObamaCare has not truly failed: it has achieved its goal of providing some sort of healthcare to more people while reducing economic success.
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