The current uproar about the CLASS longterm care portion of ObamaCare is instructive of both how we got into this mess and how difficult it will be to get out of it. For those who watch TVs Falling Skies, where spinal implant harnesses attached to humans by aliens even when removed leave irremovable control over humans, that could also be our fate under ObamaCare. The blogosphere needs to step up its game to avoid or reduce this implantation.
Major blogs are now writing about the meltdown of the ObamaCare CLASS longterm care program, now that some internal memos have been revealed. But, with facts and figures, readily available reporting (including pre-admissions of failure before Congress reported in the New York Times), and my decades experience and certifications in employee benefits, I wrote about the unsustainability of CLASS long before, to be ignored. ( See here, ObamaCare’s CLASS Failure, and here, The Fraud Admitted.) I saw this before regarding my columns over many years on healthcare issues. Why?
Healthcare and insurance are not sexy issues, and require some deeper understanding to speak about intelligently. Most bloggers are involved in quick-takes on the hot issues of the day. Then, the blogosphere is politicized. Unless that issue can be highlighted quickly to undermine the opposition, and doesn’t require much research, it is passed on. This is even so when the issue is reported in the major media. Bloggers also know that very few of their readers are willing to spend much time on the fine details of most issues.
It wasn’t until ObamaCare that most bloggers began to write about healthcare. Suddenly everyone wrote as an instant expert. And, as often as not, superficially or confusing important facts.
Focus was on ObamaCare’s costs, on government controls over individual choices, and on the mandate, all important. However, the details of ObamaCare make readers' eyes gloss over. The Obama administration counted on that to pass the bill and since to keep the details muted. Of course, some specialized blogs went deeper, but are rarely read.
The CLASS portion of ObamaCare was known to be unsustainable from the get-go, which is why the bill itself required it to be examined after passage before implementation. But, the estimated $75-billion revenues from its early years’ was key to falsely claiming that ObamaCare would not increase federal deficits, before CLASS itself went into huge deficits.
Meanwhile, ObamaCare has step-by-step been entrenching itself within healthcare and its organizations. Early victims are health insurance agents and those many who rely upon them. I’ve yet to find a major blog that has written about this. Their comp is being cut by up to 50%, with more cuts to come, and many are leaving the business and those who need them with lessened defense against ObamaCare or giant insurance companies most interested in profiting from ObamaCare. I wrote about this here, In Defense Of Health Insurance Agents, And You, and here, CBO: ObamaCare Within 5% Of Nationalizing Insurance Companies, and here, Are Health Insurance Agents Worth It: The Canaries In ObamaCare Mine.
There are many more examples I could easily point out. Assuming that after the 2012 elections there’ll be a Republican president and Congress, despite pledges to repeal ObamaCare, we’ll find much of it welded into our spines. The mandate issue is focused upon because it raises libertarian hackles and because it seems the only promising course in the courts. However, even judicially excising mandates may not uproot Obamacare, if found severable despite the ObamaCare bill not including a severability clause. Also, by then, if there is a then at the Supreme Court, many portions of ObamaCare will be so far along, and many aspects of current healthcare so changed, as to be irremovable. Welcome to Falling Skies, the ObamaCare version. Falling Skies next season is next Summer, just in time for the 2012 election season. Will we survive the aliens? Will we survive ObamaCare? Can we reverse the alien harnesses? Will the blogosphere get ahead of instead of behind the ObamaCare issues? Stay tuned.
For good updates on CLASS, see Powerline and Hot Air. Politics analyst Charlie Cook discusses 2012 and ObamaCare.
