{"id":55630,"date":"2016-09-12T15:15:50","date_gmt":"2016-09-12T15:15:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1\/site\/2017\/2\/1985\/a_chicago_tribune_editorial-why_obamacare_failed\/"},"modified":"2016-09-12T15:15:50","modified_gmt":"2016-09-12T15:15:50","slug":"a_chicago_tribune_editorial-why_obamacare_failed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=55630","title":{"rendered":"A Chicago Tribune Editorial&#8211;Why Obamacare failed"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Obamacare failed because it flunked Economics 101 and Human Nature 101. It straitjacketed insurers into providing overly expensive, soup-to-nuts policies. It wasn&#8217;t flexible enough so that people could buy as much coverage as they wanted and could afford \u201d\u201d not what the government dictated. Many healthy people primarily want catastrophic coverage. Obamacare couldn&#8217;t lure them in, couldn&#8217;t persuade them to buy on the chance they&#8217;d get sick.<\/p>\n<p>Obamacare failed because the penalties for going uncovered are too low when stacked against its skyrocketing premium costs. Next year, the penalty for staying uninsured is $695 per adult, or perhaps 2.5 percent of a family&#8217;s taxable household income. That&#8217;s far less than many Americans would pay for coverage. Financial incentive: Skip Obamacare&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>Obamacare failed because it hasn&#8217;t tamed U.S. medical costs. Health care is about supply and demand: People who get coverage use it, especially if the law mandates free preventive care. Iron law of economics: Nothing is free; someone pays. To pretend otherwise was folly. Those forces combined to spike the costs of care, and thus insurance costs.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.chicagotribune.com\/news\/opinion\/editorials\/ct-obamacare-fail-health-care-insurance-medicine-0911-jm-20160909-story.html\">Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Obamacare failed because it flunked Economics 101 and Human Nature 101. It straitjacketed insurers into providing overly expensive, soup-to-nuts policies. It wasn&#8217;t flexible enough so that people could buy as much coverage as they wanted and could afford \u201d\u201d not<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=55630\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,40,50,513,209,175,582,589,149,168,104,597,114,177,593,151,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-watch","category-economics-politics","category-international-news-commentary","category-the-2009-american-health-care-reform-debate","category-americau-s-a","category-anthropology","category-consumerconsumer-spending","category-corporationscorporate-life","category-economy","category-ethics-moral-theology","category-health-medicine","category-laborlabor-unionslabor-market","category-law-legal-issues","category-pastoral-theology","category-personal-finance","category-politics-in-general","category-theology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55630\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}