Today, a unicorn died.
It has been reported that President Obama’s signature success, massive health care reform, is a giant pile of fail:
The Obama administration has not ruled out turning sick people away from an insurance program created by the new healthcare law to provide coverage for the uninsured.
Critics of the $5 billion high-risk pool program insist it will run out of money before Jan. 1, 2014. That’s when the program sunsets and health plans can no longer discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions.
Administration officials insist they can make changes to the program to ensure it lasts until 2014, and that it may not have to turn away sick people. Officials said the administration could also consider reducing benefits under the program, or redistributing funds between state pools. But they acknowledged turning some people away was also a possibility.
Reducing benefits? Turn people away?
That sounds like something those evil bastards at the insurance company would do!
There are millions of Americans with pre-existing conditions and the money earmarked for the pool will cover…wait for it…hundreds of thousands. They didn’t even put enough money in there to cover the minimum number. They just wanted that camel’s nose under the tent flap. Actually doing what they said they would do wasn’t important. They have a nation to change.
Each state has a certain budget allocation for its pool, and the first step to stay under budget would be to shift money around between states that don’t see a lot of applicants and those that do, said Richard Popper, deputy director of the Office of Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight at HHS.
Seriously?
You want me to believe that any state is 1) not going to be over-run with people looking for free healthcare and have left-over money to give to other states and 2) there is a state out there that is going to just give that money up. Why would they do that?
Emergency rooms are already getting crowded and the government thinks states are going to have money just lying around to fork over to another state. Show me the politician that is willing to tell his constituents they gave their health care loot away. Where is that guy?
Expect stories like this to keep pouring in. This plan was neither well thought out or even understood. We are looking at a federal fail of EPIC proportions.
