The Wahkiakum County Eagle - Established as The Skamokawa Eagle in 1891

To The Eagle:

Thought I'd take time off from my day job here at PIPI (Puget Island Prevarications Inc.) to respond to the Bouchard expository epistle in last week's Eagle. As Ronaldus Magnus said to Jimmy Carter in their 1980 debate, "There you go again!"

The seeds of self destruction were sewn at the inception of Obamacare but initially hidden by legislative legerdemain and technical incompetence. The internet registry was so shoddily constructed it bollixed enrollment for a year. Most of the actual poor went on the expanded Medicaid program which, despite the Fed picking up half the tab, was only adopted in 31 states. The Fed's share is scheduled (by law) to start a disappearing act soon -- a little ACA time bomb for new governors.

The chronically ill did get a good deal, since the ACA required insurers to cover all things for all people at the same price which works fine in Utopia, but you can't run a real world insurance company that way and survive. ACA solved that by heavily subsidizing insurance companies, but the law only subsidizes insurers in the state exchanges, and only 23 states managed to cobble together working exchanges, which is why Obama spent his last years in office trying to circumvent the strictures of his own law, with varying degrees of success. Mostly, subsidy funds are drying up, legally questionable Obama solutions are wending their way through the court system, and insurers are jumping ship -- the latest (two weeks ago) being Anthem, leaving most of Nevada high and dry (no pun intended).

From the outset, pundits on both sides predicted the failure of the ACA, observing it was just a tool to ease us into what Progressives euphemistically call a "single payer" system, which is precisely what the PNHP quote in J.B.'s letter proposes. Don't know how they'll do that since they are not a legislative body, but it would serve to get us on fully socialized medicine -- same stellar standards of medical service as the Veteran's Administration.

Most conservatives would like to see a deregulated competitive insurance market, backed by tax free HSA's, state programs to subsidize needy individuals, not insurance companies, and the Fed out of the health care business. If the congressional Republicans have proved anything, it's that you probably can't get there from here. But they have to do something before it implodes which is why Senators Alexander and McCain are working on a bailout, and Dastardly Donald is waiting patiently (for him) pen in hand to sign whatever congress manages to churn out.

A word from the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, one of the last rational Democrats: Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.

Howard Brawn

Puget Island