Bad news about Obamacare just keeps coming. Today the business news publication Barrons brings to our attention that lower income taxpayers are supposed to receive a tax credit to offset the cost of insurance premiums. The law says the credit will be issued if they buy insurance through an exchange set up by their STATE. Well, 36 states chose not to set up an exchange, thereby requiring citizens to use the FEDERAL exchange. So, here in Arkansas, if I qualify for the government subsidy, I will not receive it because I must shop from the FEDERAL website. The IRS cannot change a law by writing a rule that contradicts it. The only way to fix the problem is for Congress to amend the Affordable Care Act. Obviously, that is not going to happen with the Congress we have in place; with a Republican controlled House, and Democrat controlled Senate. The Affordable Care Act (all 2,409 pages) is so complex you can count on a lot of these kinds of technical problems in the future. What the nation really needs is to rise about all of this and take another look at the big picture: Our current health care system is a mess. We spend 17% of our GDP (about $8,200 per person, per year) on health care while other developed countries spend half as much. There are many things that can be done to fix this problem. Shame on the Republican party for saying they want to repeal Obamacare without presenting an alternative. If you are interested in finding out how other countries tackle the health care problem, I suggest you get a copy of the book entitled The Healing of America, by T. R. Reid. ------ It’s a shame that Washington thinks it needs to re-invent the wheel when so many other countries have done much better with simpler, affordable systems. ------ One caveat here is that no health care system is perfect. But ours is definitely one of the worst.
Posted on: Sat, 02 Nov 2013 19:13:54 +0000
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