Saturday, April 23, 2016

Ben Sasse, free market champion


This is what principled leadership looks like:

Sen. Ben Sasse (R., Neb.) is taking aim at an Obamacare program that is diverting billions of dollars in payments away from the U.S. Treasury and steering the money to major insurance companies involved with the health care law.
Sasse recently introduced legislationtackling the Transitional Reinsurance Program, one of three programs in Obamacare put into place to protect insurance companies from risks that could arise from entering the marketplace.
Under the reinsurance program, if an individual were to have an Obamacare-compliant plan and accrued medical costs between $45,000 and $250,000, HHS was slated to pay 80 percent of the large claims total back to the insurance companies.
However, HHS later announced that they were going to raise the payment rates for the insurance companies to 100 percent.
The secretary of HHS, under the law, is required to deposit a total of $5 billion between 2014 and 2016 to the Treasury. This amount was supposed to consist of a $2 billion payment in 2014, a $2 billion payment for 2015, and a $1 billion payment for 2016.
Treasury did not receive a single payment out of the $2 billion that they were supposed to receive in 2014, while the insurance companies were given the full $8 billion that they requested. Additionally, HHS carried over $1.7 billion to have on hand to give to insurance companies at a later time.

One of the more dastardly aspects of Freedom-Hater-care is that it reinforces the general notion that large corporations need to get in bed with government to remain viable in an increasingly regulated economic environment. Insurance companies had a vested interest in becoming dependent on Leviathan, just like the cattle-masses themselves.

I repeat something I propose nearly every time I write about the "A"CA: How about if we once and for all try the free-market model, where the value of a good or service is worth what buyer and seller agree that it's worth - period - and government is not in the business of "protecting" anybody from risks?

Why can't we have a Senate full of Ben Sasses?


3 comments:

  1. Republican plans have always maintained the general notion that large corporations need to get in bed with government to remain viable in an increasingly regulated economic environment. That is why we have it in Obamacare instead of single-payer universal care. Not sayin' that will work either, just that corporate cronyism and welfare is a given in a system that rewards the money thrown at it much much more than those who rail against it.

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  2. Ah, but conservative plans haven't

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  3. Ahh but conservative plans are not going to win. Thus you call us, the majority, cattle, continually railing over how late in the day it is for you.

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