The Unaffordable Health Care Act

A new commentary every Wednesday — October 28, 2015

THE UNAFFORDABLE HEALTH CARE ACT: 2016

No surprise: Obamacare costs will increase in 2016 and the fine for not having health insurance will skyrocket. If you hope to change plans, or if you are enrolling for the first time, the convoluted process of comparing plans has been a headache for many from the get-go. The expected changes and increases for 2016 portend a nightmare. Believe me, better seek out all the help you can get and do it as early as possible, or move to Canada. The variables in choices must appear to the unlearned as complicated as a shell game. I'm sure some must feel as if they were playing pin the tail on the donkey with a towel tied over their eyes.

In Minnesota for example, all five companies in the exchange from which one may choose a plan in that state, will impose double-digit increases: from 14 percent to 49 percent. And if you thought the tax code is a bucket of worms worthy of disposal and a re-do from word one, just wait until a few million people are confronted with an almost unendurable, mind-taxing and more expensive conglomeration of plans for the coming year. The program started out with a fumble on the one-yard line last year. The anticipated price changes are not going to make things less difficult in 2016.

Penalties for not having health insurance will more than double. This year, it was $325 or two percent of one's income, which ever is greater. Beginning in 2016, that will increase to $695 or 2.5 percent of taxable income.

Don't misunderstand my intent. Despite the fact that like Social Security, it is a socialistic program, I am in favor of universal health care. The mutation we have now could just have well been written by a herd of monkeys using typewriters. (Finally, a use for all of those old Underwoods and Royals)

It would help if all companies engaged could tell us ASAP what their best offers are, but some either have not yet figured out nor published what will be made available by their firms for the upcoming year. One can only gather from this that no one, including those in the Federal Government, knows how to untie the knot.

Task number one: Appoint a Czar and charge him/her with the task of writing a decidedly more simplified law, based on the applicants' incomes. Then, hope that our fractured legislature can agree on any part of it.

I would like to know why Canadians can purchase Gabapentin, a medicine for nerve pain, at a lower price that I and others in the United States pay? This is true of a wide spectrum of pharmaceuticals. We are being gouged; paying a higher price than Canadians and other foreigners for the same medicine, made by the same American company. There ought to be a law against this, but overcoming the power of Big Pharma is almost impossible without our elected federal representatives' assistance. I'm sure this is not the first time they've turned a deaf ear to the charge. Why? They are being bought-off by dark money used by PACs for advertising that advances the federal office seekers' candidacies and the contributors' fortunes. Shame on them. Shame on our Supreme Court, for permitting it to happen.

I believe that the marketplace should, in almost every instance, prevail. Pharmaceutical houses ought to be allowed to charge for development of new drugs. Still, there ought to be a limit. This practice of a company paying a price to purchase the patent on a medicine that is necessary to save the life of certain patients and then gouging them with exorbitant increases, as much as a 1,000 times increase in the price of each pill, seems to be no different to me than holding a gun to the patient's heads. Extortion is illegal isn't it?

And one other thing: I have often been asked the reason for my longevity. I once maintained that it could be attributed to having great genes—a process in which I had no choice. Now that the scientists have revealed the danger in eating processed meats: bacon, hot dogs and the like, I can personally attest that this is a lot of bologna.

-Phil Richardson, Observer of the human condition and storyteller. "He goes doddering on into his old age, making a public nuisance of himself." - Joseph L. Menchen

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