In honor (or surrender) to all of the questions left in the wake of Sunday's Lost finale, I thought that maybe there are a few still swirling around about health care.
I know the media's moved on to Lindsay Lohan's disastrous court hearing, but does anyone outside of our industry even care anymore about the mess we've been left with?
Why does the Obamacare individual mandate lack a subsidy for individual insurance? (If you're going to make me buy insurance, and my employer doesn't offer it, why do I get punished?)
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Why do those picking up insurance in the exchange get such generous reimbursements? (They seem to get more subsidies than oil companies.)
And why would we pass an individual mandate, yet leave out any meaningful penalties or enforcement? (It'd be like leaving my son alone with Sunday morning's box of donuts.)
Why is the implementation of the so-called Cadillac plan taxes delayed until 2018? (Answer: Because I can almost guarantee you that little bit of the law will be quietly set aside sometime over the next 24 months.)
And why is so much of this reform so short-sighted? We're handing out fistfuls of (somebody else's) cash so providers can update their practices, but there's no concern about those chickens coming home to roost. Those bills will come due – just like those ARMs did a couple of years back – and what do you think will happen to health care costs then?
I don't know. Maybe it's just me. I don't expect the feds to get everything right, but do they have to consistently get it so wrong? If this last batch of primaries taught us anything, it's that taxpayers are fed up with paying today's bills with tomorrow's paychecks. And that frustration clearly crosses party lines.
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