The real problem with Obamacare is that the government is so heavily involved in mandates for making certain coverage available for everyone.  The 30 million people who the federal government is trying to attract to obtain insurance coverage face two hurdles: 1) they probably cannot afford the new health premiums and 2) what those premiums buy is not very enticing.  The simplest fix to the health care system would have been mandated catastrophic care coverage for all; some type of coverage that kicked after a $10,000 deductible (or higher).  The coverage would be aimed at the hole in the current system; emergency room services which are mandatory to all would suddenly be covered through insurance rather than through the taxpayer.  If that was all the government did we would have fixed a major whole and done it with a simple concept without adding complexity.

The Obama administration chose a much more grandiose approach.  It chose to overhaul the method by which health care is offered by inserting the federal government where state government used to decide.  The result is a simple catastrophic insurance policy is no longer a choice.  Rather a person aged 18 must buy insurance that covers pregnancies and a host of other ailments whether or not the person is female or could even possibly suffer from any of the myriad mandated diseases and conditions that insurance policies must cover. 

The result is a parody of an alternate, free-market model of reform. Rather than demand consumers buy comprehensive insurance, the alternate model would have emphasized catastrophic coverage with high deductibles, which before ObamaCare were low-cost options for healthier consumers who wanted to indemnify themselves against unexpected major costs. Removing insurers from routine maintenance care would have restored price signals and competition to the family-practice market, providing incentives for doctors to re-enter it. Consumers could then have used their HSAs, which are discouraged in the ACA system, to cover their own routine maintenance, and insurers could have returned to their proper role, indemnifying people against major loss, not acting as wellness managers. That role properly belongs to patients and their physicians, not insurers and certainly not the government.

Thanks to the ACA, we have the worst of both worlds. Some consumers now have to pay enormous premiums for coverage they can’t access until they pay significant out-of-pocket expenses first, while insurers have to cover even more risk, and providers have to deal with even more red tape. When voters start paying through the nose in this system, they will soon recognize that the administration’s ideas of reform are as workable in real life as their ObamaCare exchange website.

Sources:

http://news.yahoo.com/disastrous-obamacare-exchanges-just-tip-iceberg-060600225.html

http://theweek.com/article/index/251450/heads-should-roll-over-the-obamacare-fiasco