BY DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, WEDNESDAY OCT. 28, 2020) — After Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas swore in judge Amy Coney Barrett to become the ninth Supreme with President Donald Trump witnessing, lamenting Democrats warned of doom for the Affordable Care Act (ACA), a.k.a., Obamacare.

Good riddance. Dumping the ACA can’t come too soon.

While doing that won’t fix America’s health care scandal, where getting sick risks financial disaster, it will ease the most damaging aspects of Obamacare and at least make theoretically possible more intelligent reform. Yes, THE PLANET is ever the optimist.

The only good thing about Obamacare is that it tried to do something. Unfortunately, health care has become a political issue. It is no longe a medical matter.  The ACA was doomed to fail. It’s been nearly 10 years since Congress passed the ACA. The record is clear:

• The ACA did not improve the market for health insurance.
• In fact, it only made this country’s health-care issues more acute, especially for the bedraggled (and vanishing) middle class.
• Granted, the ACA did insure more Americans, but look closer.
  • The added numbers received insurance not from private companies but almost exclusively through Medicaid.
  • This required enormous (and forced) participation by taxpayers to subsidize state-funded plans.
  • Result: Escalating cost of premiums for average Americans. Within four years of the ACA’s passing, premiums more than doubled.
• The mandates of Obamacare hit taxpayers with hundreds of billions of dollars to subsidize those Medicaid deals for 8 million people.
• Obamacare sent the message that if you’re poor, lazy, a bum, a welfare cheat, or just don’t care, the government will take care of you. You will get your insurance almost for free, since Mary Jane and Joe Kapanski will subsidize the premiums, even as they go lacking.
• As such it created an incentive NOT to earn private coverage but let the government bail you out.

• Millions of middle-class families have lost insurance.
  • Premiums often exceed mortgage payments.
  • Why? These families make too much money to meet the ACA income thresholds. Subsidies denied. The Kapanskis have to sing for their supper.
• Because the ACA mandates coverage for expanded benefits, health insurance companies have responded by
  • Raising premiums
  • Raising co-pays (data taken from Jan. 17, 2020 analysis by Grace-Marie Turner in Forbes magazine).

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Judge Barrett enters the equation in this manner. About a week after Election Day (while the presidential outcome may still be in question), the Supreme Court will hear a case looking to get rid of the ACA. Although it’s never certain how the Supremes will vote, street wisdom says Barrett’s confirmation makes it more likely the court will vote to dismantle Obamacare.

It can’t happen soon enough.

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden blasted the Senate’s confirmation of Barrett.

“The rushed and unprecedented confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett as Associate Justice to the Supreme Court, in the middle of an ongoing election, should be a stark reminder to every American that your vote matters,” Biden said in a statement on her confirmation. “Just a few days after Election Day next week, the Supreme Court will hear the case on the Affordable Care Act. While panicked and erratic in mishandling the pandemic, Donald Trump has been crystal clear on one thing — for the past four years, and again just last night on 60 Minutes — he wants to tear down the Affordable Care Act in its entirety and take away your health care and protections for pre-existing conditions.”

Unfortunately, Biden has not offered a better alternative to the woefully flawed ACA. For that matter, neither has President Trump.

Isn’t that a given, though, in these fractured times? It’s been a generation that the Congress and the White House have fiddled with “solving” this country’s health-care crisis. All they’ve done is make empty promises and made a bad situation worse by getting in bed with the lobbyists for Big Pharma, Big Insurance, and Big Medicine.

THE PLANET applauds the appointment of Judge Barrett.

While there’s no plan in the offing, getting rid of the ACA is nonetheless a step in the right direction.

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“The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know” — Blaise Pascal.

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE TO ALL

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