The Impact Of External Pressure

 

Richard Stengel, the former Editor of Time Magazine and Under Secretary of State during the Obama administration, said something on TV the other day that stopped the other guests in their tracks.  “The same fire that melts the butter, hardens the egg”.  Mr. Stengel didn’t create this idiom, nor did he claim authorship.  A quick Google search will reveal that lots of Americans found the comment insightful, and more importantly, got them to think. 

I, of course, thought about the health care legislation of the last dozen years.  From 2011 through 2016 our Republican members of the US House of Representatives and Senate voted over 50 times to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act even though there wasn’t a viable replacement.  Why?  Perhaps a few didn’t really have any idea the damage repeal would have done.  Most didn’t really care.  Their votes were inconsequential.  The law wasn’t going to be repealed, but their base remained riled up and the fundraising dollars flowed in.  My local Congressman, Dave Joyce, was just one of the guys.  We live in Ohio, a state where all districts are safe.  Mr. Joyce rode the wave, the fire melted the butter. 

Everything changed in November 2016.  With the election of Donald Trump as President and the Republicans controlling both the US House and Senate, the PPACA could finally be repealed.  The alternative was the abominable American Health Care Act (House of Representatives) and the Senate bill, the Better Care Reconciliation Act of 2017 which was analyzed in this blog at the time.  We all remember that the House passed its bill and the beer celebration held by the White House.  And we remember that Senators Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), John McCain (R-AZ), and Susan Collins (R-ME) saved the day and voted with the Democrats to defend our system.  Few recall that twenty Republicans in the House also voted against the bill.  One of them was Dave Joyce.  The same fire that had melted the butter hardened the egg. 

We are now back to the Democrats holding the keys to power.  And though President Biden may want to make Obamacare better and improve access to health care, he can’t do it by himself.  It will take Congressmen and Senators from both sides of the aisle to work together.  The previous paragraph isn’t an endorsement of Mr. Joyce, simply an acknowledgement of the Congressman rising to the moment.  And we will need a lot of those moments as our elected representatives feel the heat from their respective bases.  The denizens of the extremes are never quiet.  Our elected officials will have to overcome the pressure to move our country forward.  The fire must harden the egg. 

DAVE 

www.cunixinsurance.com

 Picture – Ready for Action – David L Cunix  

Getting To Work

 

Here is a problem.  You live in Mayfield Heights and your job is in Strongsville, about 30 miles away.  Worse, you hate your old car, it is unreliable, gets terrible gas mileage, and needs expensive repairs.  Do you

1.   Get a job closer to home?
2.   Move?
3.  Get a better car?
4.   Put your car up on blocks, give away the tires, and hope that a new way to get to work will magically appear? 

I have a lot of faith in my readers.  I’m absolutely positive that almost all of you will choose some combination of options 1, 2, or 3.  

Our health insurance system, an organized way for most of us to access and pay for health care, had a lot of problems twelve years ago.  Some people thought that it was OK.  Some thought that it wasn’t great, but major action wasn’t needed.  But, a lot of Americans demanded significant improvements.  A year’s worth of haggling, negotiations, and foot-dragging resulted in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.  President Barack Obama’s new book, A Promised Land, details the negotiations with Republicans such as Senators Chuck Grassley and Olympia Snowe.  There were concessions made and amendments accepted, but in the end the legislation passed along party lines.  The law was hardly perfect.   

It has been eleven years since the law’s passage.  The law was fully implemented January 1, 2014.  Some of my clients were adversely impacted by the law, principally with higher pricing.  Many more benefited from the elimination of medical underwriting, comprehensive benefits, and the Tax Credit Subsidies.  Again, the law is hardly perfect and I certainly would have structured it differently, but the transition to life under Obamacare was infinitely smoother than the naysayers had predicted.  There was, and still is, plenty of room for improvement. 

How do you improve the PPACA?  What would you do to make it better? For eleven years some people have had only one answer.  Like the guy who disables his car to improve the way he gets to work, their answer was to repeal Obamacare without any viable replacement.   Chest pounding, meaningless votes, and even a beer celebration with President Trump didn’t pay for a single doctor’s visit or hospital stay.  The last four years featured the defunding of the Cost Share Reduction and untold stress for the millions of Americans with preexisting conditions. 

The new administration has taken a much different approach.  President Biden is trying to make the system work.  We are in the middle of a Special Enrollment that has opened the process to purchase individual (non-group) coverage until August 15^th.  Over one million Americans have signed up since March 15^th. The Tax Credit Subsidy has been updated to cover more people.  And all of this is once again being publicized so that Americans will have a chance to improve their coverage.  Perfect?  Not yet.  But this is a step in the right direction. 

Your representatives in Washington may be Republicans or Democrats.  Here is a quick experiment.  If you ever see them in person again, ask them what, specifically they would do to improve Obamacare (Both sides call it that.  It is not a pejorative.)  Ask to see their plan.  It has been eleven years.  If they can’t answer the question by now, then your Congressman or Senator is no better than the guy at the beginning of this post who put his car up on blocks.  

Dave 

www.cunixinsurance.com

 Picture – The Hard Way – David L Cunix