Yet ANOTHER problem with the so-called "Affordable Care Act"

THEY JUST DON’T GET IT

By F Eric Saunders

January 2014

Surprise, surprise!!  Socialists don’t understand human nature!  Of course, they don’t, or they wouldn’t be socialists.  We have numerous articles on Freedomsite.US talking about this problem.  If there is no incentive (or not sufficient incentive) to work, then people won’t work.  If you take money from those who earn it and give it to those who don’t, then those who don’t work will have less incentive to work (since they will reap the benefits anyway), and those who do work will have less incentive to work (since there is no point in working so hard if it is just going to be taken away from you).  Aside from the illogic of socialism, it is based on assumptions about human nature that are simply not correct.

But now we have yet another example.  (Almost every day we see another example, but this is a particularly good one.)  Among the many other empty promises, mistakes (inevitable mistakes, given the inherent incompetency of big government), and outright lies, do you remember the “promise” that a great deal of money would be “saved” because those previously uninsured people who would formerly go to the emergency room for routine health care would now instead see their regular physician and greatly lessen the load on emergency services?  That was one of the main premises on which the “Affordable Care Act” was based.

Now, I don’t mean to imply that if that “promise” had been correct, then the “Affordable Care Act” would have worked.  No, it has so many, many flaws that it never stood a chance of working.  But then, it was never intended to work.  It was and is simply another stepping stone on the Fabian path - one more incremental step toward total government takeover.  Dirty Harry Reid even admitted that.  Just after the “Affordable Care Act” was passed, he pronounced that this is just a step along the way toward implementing a “single payer” plan.  And, just like all such Fabian schemes, it will be so, so hard to reverse.  After millions of people are signed up, and then after the “Affordable Care Act” collapses under its own weight, how will we ever go back to a workable system?  Once again, instead of fixing what needed to be fixed, the socialists have thrown the baby out with the bathwater.

But I digress, the topic here is the effect of the new law on the use of emergency rooms.  Well, the early results are already in.  Back in 2008 the Government sponsored a study that showed that Medicare recipients use the emergency rooms more than 40% more often that non-Medicare patients.  But, once again, the Government ignored its own study.  Now, we are already seeing (3 days into the new year) a flood of new Medicare patients clogging the emergency room.  Of course.  While there are many Medicare recipients who are in hard times due to no fault of their own, many others are part of the chronically unemployed and unemployable who have no real desire or incentive to improve.  Such people don’t have the mindset, experience, or faculties to make an appointment with a doctor, and then show up on time to keep such appointment.  That comes as no surprise to those of us who have a basic understanding of human behavior.  But it is a total shock to those socialists who were SURE (despite the fact that their own study had already told them the opposite) that giving people insurance would make them more responsible and more careful and conscientious about how they made use of the health care system. 

Once again the so-called “Affordable Care Act” has proven to be just the opposite.  It is making health care more, and more, and more expensive.