An ACA Reader

Fatal flaw #3: A government-imposed restructuring of the healthcare industry can’t possibly improve our healthcare system, and is extremely likely to make it worse. As Don Boudreaux has noted, “Trying to restructure an industry that constitutes one-sixth of the U.S. economy is … so complicated that it’s impossible to accomplish without risking catastrophic failure.” No collection of laws or government bureaucrats can achieve anything close to the efficiency that free markets can deliver; the demise of socialism being the most obvious proof of this. Government control of healthcare will inevitably result in higher prices and rationing, leaving everyone worse off.

Fatal flaw #4: The law is riddled with loopholes. It explicitly exempts many people from paying the tax: those with religious objections (including Muslims), those not lawfully present in the U.S., those who are incarcerated, those who can’t afford it, those who don’t earn enough to require filing a tax return, those who are members of an Indian tribe, and those for whom coverage would represent a hardship. In cases wherein companies find that complying with the law would result in large increases in healthcare premiums that would threaten employees’ access to a plan, the Dept. of Health and Human Services may grant a waiver to the company, and the list of waivers granted is already huge. As more and more people and companies escape the tax, those left abiding by it will bear a burden that at some point will become unbearable.

I will reiterate what I’ve said before: “the defects of this legislation are so massive and pervasive that it will never see the light of day.”

John Cochrane at The Grumpy Economist, My 2 Cents on the Supreme Court and Obamacare, 6/28/12

As I said before, the mandate was never the weakest part of this law as a matter of economics.  It’s the rest of the perfectly constitutional thousands of pages, and the perfectly constitutional thousands more arbitrary regulatory decisions that are the problem. Relying on the court to throw out the bathwater on the basis of the mandate was always a stretch.

We should not rely on the court to determine economic policy or write laws. That’s what Congress and Administration are for. If you don’t like the health care law, try to find someone of either party with the courage to say just how he or she will repeal and replace, and vote.

This will be healthy for both parties. Defenders can’t say how wonderful it would all have been except that the nasty polticized court threw it out. They will have to own Obamacare as it falls apart at the seams. Opponents will have to work to repeal, and explain what they will replace with.

Yes, it would be nice if the constitution forbade silly economic policy, and it would be nice if it forbade arbitrary discretionary regulation.  For that you need to overturn a century’s worth of precedents. Nobody even asked the court to do that in this case. (Time to start!)

HKO comment:

This other hidden cost has been the hideous amount of time and resources wasted on this law that still may “never see the light of day”.  The wet blanket that this is throwing on economic growth is a staggering cost. The fault is the extremely partisan and political way this bill was foisted on the public.