Socialized Medicine Would Be Better Than Obamacare. In the Meantime, Let’s Waste Some Time on Some Lame, Doomed Reforms.

Anyone who has tried to sign up for Obamacare, as I have, knows that the launch of the Affordable Care Act has been — is — an unmitigated disaster.

Can it be fixed? Maybe.

But first, it’s important to digest the sheer ginormousness of this bastard cross between privatized grift — a wholesale transfer of wealth from individual patients to giant insurers subject to no oversight but their own absent consciences — and a spectacularly inept government bureaucracy run by careless, corrupt, connected buffoons.

More than 2 million people are getting booted from their existing health insurance because their current plans fall short of ACA standards.

Obama’s defenders say the cancelled coverage was “junk quality.” Which may be true. Still, it might have been nice to tell people about this provision, which the White House was well aware of, three years ago. When the president signed the law. As opposed to, you know, assuring us of the exact opposite.

Back in 2010, it turns out, the feds estimated that 50% to 75% of all current individual policies would have to be cancelled due to the ACA. So the current crisis is likely to expand in scope.

There’s no evidence that anyone has successfully purchased a plan. None. No one. Zero.

Six people managed to “sign up” on October 1^st. Nationally.

As for the “signs-ups” — people who managed to register online or by phone, but couldn’t choose or sign up for an actual plan — it turns out that 90% of these people are so poor that they’ll get Medicaid. Only 10% might wind up buying the mandated private insurance plans. “When we first saw the numbers, everyone’s eyes kind of bugged out,” Matt Salo, head of the National Association of Medicaid Directors, told The Washington Post. “Of the people walking through the door, 90 percent are on Medicaid. We’re thinking, what planet is this happening on?”

Seriously?

The United States is not a rich country — well, it’s rich, but most United Statesers are poor. And anyway, who do you think is going to jam up the Intertubes to get healthcare first, 23-year-old “young invincibles” earning $10 an hour, or 53-year-old diabetics?

There may well be fewer Americans covered by insurance on New Year’s Day 2014 than on 2013 — due to Obamacare.

It’s been estimated that 45,000 Americans die each year because they’re uninsured. In other words, according to back-of-the-envelope arithmetic, 3,800 people will die because Obama and his underlings didn’t focus on the website launches until a couple of weeks before October 1^st. Those are Katrina numbers. With more victims by the day.

I’m not counting those who will lose their existing plans without being able to replace them.

OK, it’s easy to complain (than to sign up for Obamacare, bapadumbum). What would I do differently?

Socialized medicine. Like in England. It works.

But an intelligent, pro-human solution is not in the cards. Not in bankster-owned America. Not now, anyway. Both the Democrats and Republicans are owned by the big corporate insurers that stand to make billions from the Affordable Care Act. Before the country, and eventually its political class, get real and get serious, we’ll have to waste a few years on attempts at reform.

If I were advising President Obama, here’s what I’d tell him to do:

Simplify the pricing structure. The current system’s complexity didn’t develop organically. It’s a feature. Deductibles and partial co-pays are hidden extra fees, like baggage fees charged by airlines. A plan that charges $7000 a year, but has a $3000 deductible, should be sold as a $10000 plan. Sticker shock is good. It encourages competition.

Price controls. Letting insurers charge whatever they want is ridiculous. The Department of Health and Human Services should set prices of everything from tests to drugs to visits to operations. They should squeeze the insurers to a reasonable, rock-bottom profit margin.

Eliminate sleazy out-of-network structures. Every plan should cover every doctor, every hospital, every drug. Americans shouldn’t have to live in a world where they can get a procedure at their in-plan hospital only to be told later — via a surprise bill — that the anesthesiologist, who works at the hospital, isn’t affiliated with it.

Suspend the stick, leave the carrot. The tax on Americans who can’t afford to buy for-profit insurance is unfair and cruel to working-class Americans — those who can least afford either the coverage or the fines.

Make it a national system. Rates vary wildly, not just between states, but even by county. We’re one nation. Let’s pool our resources as well as our risks. Under Obamacare as it stands, people who live in rural areas pay the highest rates — even though average salaries are lower away from big cities.

Whether these reforms fail in Congressional debate due to insurance company lobbyists or get enacted but don’t do enough to fix the system, they’ll get us closer to what we really need: a single-payer system. You know, like the rest of the First World has.

(Ted Rall’s website is tedrall.com. Go there to join the Ted Rall Subscription Service and receive all of Ted’s cartoons and columns by email.)

COPYRIGHT 2013 TED RALL