SCOTUS upholds ‘Obamacare’! Roberts backstabs the GOP! Insurance companies rejoice!
Well, were I a bettin man (I do gamble, but with cards, not law) I woulda bet that the ACA would have been overturned. Still, with the 5-4 decision it is clear that it wasn’t the no-brainer originally thought by nearly all the pundits I read. However, what is interesting to me is that there are some very unhappy people that it was upheld, but not just the Tea Party wackos…
Supreme Court upholds Obamacare 5-4
http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2012/06/28/how-will-supreme-court-rule-on-health-care-law/?hpt=hp_t1
[Updated at 10:38 a.m. ET] Physicians for a National Health Program responded critically to the Supreme Court’s decision, saying that the ruling did not amount to universal coverage, 26 million people will remain uninsured, it keeps in place high co-pays and gaps in coverage and it will not control costs.
“Why is this so? Because the ACA perpetuates a dominant role for the private insurance industry. Each year, that industry siphons off hundreds of billions of health care dollars for overhead, profit and the paperwork it demands from doctors and hospitals; it denies care in order to increase insurers’ bottom line; and it obstructs any serious effort to control costs,” the group’s statement said.
It said a “single-payer, improved-Medicare-for-all system” would remedy these problems, including the issue of cost. Ideally, the group said, such a system would pay “all medical bills, streamlines administration, and reins in costs for medications and other supplies through its bargaining clout.”
I basically agree with their sentiments. Nothing in the ACA will help reduce medical costs. It may provide a lot more people with insurance, but as pointed out, lots of people will still be uninsured (and presumably uninsurable, due to poverty or whatever). The real winners are the insurance companies, they get guaranteed new revenue, yet their obligations are in many cases much weaker (and they were rather weak to begin with).
