Why Obamacare will self repeal. Two words summarize why.

Posted: Jan 11, 2017

The debate is over. We do not need to repeal Obamacare; it will repeal itself. Two words summarize why: risk pool. The ACA is founded upon a stunning misconception of the very definition of insurance. Its advocates have mistakenly conflated two unrelated concepts: insurance and welfare – or, more to the point, risk and charity. People buy insurance in order to mitigate risk. We buy fire insurance because there is a slight chance that our house will burn down. If we cannot afford insurance, and our house burns down, we do not go to the insurance company to demand coverage for a pre-existing fire. Instead, we rely on the charity of donors – say, the Salvation Army. We do not demand it, and indeed, we may not receive it, but life has risks, which is why we buy insurance. Obamacare has failed to make the critical distinction, which is why it is collapsing. The only people paying into the system are those who are wealthy enough not to need it and those who are so poor that they pay little or nothing. The rest of us pay the fine for not enrolling, or else we buy a policy that covers everything we will never use. For example, my wife and I are not at risk of getting pregnant, but we are expected to pay anyway. The people who benefit from the ACA do so because they get something for nothing. They do so at the expense of the rest of us. Obamacare will collapse by itself, but there are two simple ways to speed up its destruction. Pick one: either the new president can rescind the executive orders that exempt the privileged few from paying into it – notably, members of Congress and their staffs, along with labor unions. Alternatively, he can issue an executive order exempting everyone. If Congress finds itself burdened with the same law it has imposed on us, its members will quickly find a way to unburden the rest of us. Many substitutes for Obamacare are vastly superior to it. Once the "across state lines" issue has been resolved, and once the concept of medical savings accounts has been implemented, there can be added one more feature: health insurance mortgages. Briefly stated, people can buy "whole life" health insurance policies by taking out a loan to pay, up front, for a lifetime of medical care, based on their actuarial risk factors. The loan could be amortized over say, forty years. The details would be left up to the insurance companies and those who buy the insurance, with neither party being forced into the risk pool. Other creative possibilities exist. There is, however, a big problem: they all require a basic understanding not only of risk pools, but of something else that the social left will never comprehend: freedom.;