Why We Should Repeal Obamacare and not Replace It with Another Insurance Plan: Thinking Out of the Box for a Health Care Solution

by Carol A Westbrook

Before you, progressive reader, quit in disgust after reading the title, or you, conservative reader, quit in disgust after reading a few more paragraphs, please hear me out. I'm proposing that we repeal Obamacare (The Affordable Care Act, ACA) but not replace it with another medical insurance program. Instead, I propose that we re-think the entire concept of how we provide health care in this country. 110126_obama_sign_health_bill_ap_605

The ACA's stated purpose is "to ensure that all Americans have access to high-quality, affordable health care." Regardless of whether or not you believe good health is a fundamental human right, it is inexcusable for an affluent, first world country like ours not to provide it for its citizens. The good health of our nation is vitally important to its success, guaranteeing as it does a capable workforce, a strong military, and a healthy upcoming generation. However, I have seen the results of Obamacare from many perspectives, including that of a physician provider in a rural community, as well as that of a personal user of both insurance and Medicare. I do not believe the ACA succeeded in meeting its objectives.

It is true that the ACA provided health care insurance for millions of Americans who didn't have it previously, expanded Medicaid for the uninsured, got rid of the pre-existing condition exclusions, allowed our grown adult children to remain on our policies longer, and started the ball rolling on electronic records. These are great results.

GTY-Obamacare2-MEM-161222_12x5_1600But the ACA also caused the cost of health insurance to skyrocket, caused many people to lose their coverage, and, for some, their jobs. It forced many small doctors' practices to close, especially in rural areas, resulting in an overall decline in the quality of care in many regions. It limited patients' choices of physicians and hospitals, separating patients from their longstanding doctors. There were no checks on health care costs, which even today continue to increase. But worst of all, it mandated that our health care would be taken out of the hands of doctors and put into the hand businessmen–the insurance companies.

Read more »

Adventure Capital: Condos, Groupon, and Big Pharma

By Nick Werle

The late economist Hyman Minsky wrote that after fortunes inflate on the back of a speculative bubble, and after investors’ irrational optimism and overvalued assets inevitably collapse, an economy enters a “period of revulsion,” when people remember that it’s risky to bet big on an uncertain future. Likewise, it’s always during the depths of a hangover that a drinker remembers how whiskey invites its own overconsumption and swears that the only way to avoid another descent into this purgatory is to never touch the stuff again. But after the fog leaves and with a clear head regained, he forgets the pain after the party and declares another Manhattan to be an eminently reasonable investment. Of course, the trick is to recall at just that moment how miserable you’ll be after another three. A pessimistic economist faces the same cyclical popularity as a tee-totaling friend; a consoling voice the morning after becomes a buzz killer as soon as night falls again.

For economists focused on capitalism’s tendency to foment crisis, it’s important to make the most of investors’ revulsion. Indeed, if there’s ever a time for Marxists to find an eager audience for their theories of capitalist overaccumulation, it’s in the wake of a financial crisis. The moment is particularly ripe for David Harvey, a Marxist trained as a geographer, who has made a career of explaining why surplus capital has such an affinity for real estate and describing how overproduction regularly reconfigures the spaces in which we live. Both Ben Bernanke and a slew of Neo-Keynesians led by Paul Krugman have pointed to a “global savings glut” – originating in the current-account surpluses of net exporters such as China, Japan, and Germany and flowing to the bloated real estate markets of the United States and Western Europe – as the fundamental imbalance responsible for the latest boom and bust. To Harvey and his fellow Marxists, the global savings glut is not a historical fluke but an instance of an intrinsic tendency for capitalist economies to overproduce, and the great North Atlantic real estate bubble is but another temporary answer to their perpetual problem: What can absorb the great mass of overaccumulated capital?

Read more »