An Obamacare dissent - '...no man who knows what the law is today can guess what it will be tomorrow…'

Dear Sen. Baucus:

I was pleased to receive your response to my communication regarding health-care reform.

I would like to preface my response with a quote made by James Madison in Federalist Paper 62. Remember him? He was an officer in the Continental Army, a hero of the American Revolution, author of the Bill of Rights and the fourth President of the United States.

He said, “It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what it will be tomorrow…”

I mention this because I think President Madison’s statement is apropos when considering any discussion about the 425,116-word, 961-page Affordable Care Act. After all, when you combine the ACA with the 2.8 million word regulations, these two documents together become almost four times the length of the Bible.

 Even without considering the regulations, the law alone became so extremely long and confusing it couldn’t be read before passing. Even you, in a town meeting, admitted to not having read every page of the final bill. The reason you gave, at the time, was because of “its statutory language.” My take on this admission is that the ACA became so voluminous and so incoherent, using Madison’s descriptive words that not only you, but also Speaker Pelosi and the majority of Congress, couldn’t read and understand it either.  

Now, let’s look at what James Madison said about needing revision or needing to undergo incessant changes and apply that to your law. The need for postponements and changes in your law seem to be occurring with ever increasing rapidity. And, as President Madison would say, we can only guess what the law will become tomorrow. Half of the required compliance mandates in the ACA have not been met on time. Remarkably, some of these mandates remain unmet today.

First came the president’s postponement of cuts in Medicare until after the election. Following this, the President took it upon himself to circumvent the law by delaying the employer mandate until 2015. Interestingly, 2015 is a year after the mid-term elections. So, we’ll take these out of the election debate.  

Another change President Obama is unilaterally making in your law is the caps on out-of-pocket expenses. This part of the law was designed to limit consumer costs for individuals and families to $6,350 and $12,700 respectively. A fourth mandate scaled back by a presidential directive is that people applying for federal subsidies provide proof of eligibility for government aid.

You say in your letter that your common-sense changes in health care are “vital to our country’s fiscal health…” Senator, tell that to the 15,000 spouses at UPS who were recently told they would lose their health-care coverage, due to Obamacare. Kaiser Health News reports many of these spouses could conceivably end up with worse coverage. So much for being able to keep your health plan if you like it.

Also, tell that to the thousands of workers who have already had or will have their work hours cut to save money because of Obamacare. In a survey conducted by the Chamber of Commerce, businesses overwhelmingly reported that Obamacare will make it harder to grow their businesses because of imposed compliance costs running in the billions of dollars. This they said will come out of workers’ pockets. It is evident to me that all of this will negatively impact the “fiscal health” of individual taxpayers as well as our country as a whole.

I felt you were a little dismissive and even cavalier in your response to my concern regarding health-care reform as it pertains to Congress. You are correct when you say the Affordable Care Act will require members of Congress and congressional employees to be covered through the Insurance Exchanges. However, that is where similarities cease to exist.

Let’s examine that a little more closely and do some comparison. Using the Kaiser Foundation’s subsidy calculator, we find that a family of four (two adults and two children) earning $100.000 and purchasing insurance through the exchanges would pay about $9,869 in premiums. Furthermore, this family would not be eligible for any subsidies under the ACA. A senator or representative earning $174,000 will, as you point out, now be required to purchase their health-care coverage through the exchanges where they live. However, they will continue to receive government subsidies of up to 75 percent of their premiums. This subsidy, of course, will be paid by taxpayers, some of whom will not be eligible for any subsidy as in the example shown above. Is this the way members of Congress, as you put it, show their “confidence in the health-care system reforms?”

It’s interesting to me that, until recently, the mainstream press have been mostly silent in reporting any negative impact of Obamacare on people, the economy, and exposing the many imperfections in your sacrosanct piece of legislation. However, I believe their protection of this law is beginning to wane, as more information is made available. I think the unions entering the discussion, especially when they suddenly realized it could negatively impact their health benefits and their take-home pay, has contributed to a wakeup call to all workers and perhaps even the press.

By the way, many of the new jobs being reported by the government each month are only part-time jobs. The fact that so many new jobs are only part-time is almost certainly the result of Obamacare, which will negatively impact individual’s as well as the country’s fiscal health that you mentioned in your letter.

I could go on and talk about rising insurance premiums, how $716 billion cuts in Medicare to fund the ACA may negatively impact patients, doctors and hospitals, or why large insurance companies are dropping out of the exchanges, and how the increase in new taxes on medical device companies will be passed on to the insurance companies and the consumer.

The important thing is to have an awareness of how the ACA will affect the bottom line of the individual consumer, the insurance companies, employers, and businesses. And, is there a better way? A new Rasmussen survey seems to suggest the majority of the American people believe there is.

Lester D. Still is a resident of Kalispell.