Lots of Virtual... Nothing.

PositionPatient Protection and Affordable Care Act - Editorial

We are living in strange times. Virtual money, virtual friends, virtual reality--and regrettably, we are burdened with virtual leaders and virtual health insurance coverage.

A Gallup poll revealed that, by a huge margin, the "most important problem facing the country today" is dissatisfaction with the government. Our representatives in Washington spend more time meeting with moneyed "stakeholders" than fashioning constitutional legislation based on what their constituents voted for.

When they occasionally take a break from sniping at the White House or one another, they offer platitudes and intangibles to distract us from their ineffectiveness: sustainability; the rich; social (in)justice; the common good; a living wage; and a better health care system are glittering generalities, known in some circles as propaganda.

Operating under the cloak of munificence and on the premise (or pretense) that the financial and physical best interests of everyday people were at heart, the proponents of the unipartisan Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act produced an unrecognizable version of insurance.

Health insurance in the U.S. grew out of concerns for the high cost of serious injuries due to the wide use of machinery in the early 1900s. PPACA--to quote former Pres. Barack Obama, its mastermind and moniker bearer (ObamaCare)--"fundamentally changed" the U.S. health insurance market to forcibly insure individuals for every medical issue, no matter how minor. Of course, the promised benefits were illusory since most patients never would meet the high deductible. ObamaCare robbed us of choice--no more inexpensive major medical insurance policies for those over the ripe old age of 30.

Predictably, nearly half of PPACA marketplace enrollees polled in a Kaiser Family Foundation health reform survey report that their premiums, deductibles, and copays have been going up and will create a "financial burden." Sixty percent of those with any kind of private insurance expect their premiums to go up "a lot" Their perception is based in...

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