Health Law Costs, Benefits Can Add Up To A Win For Young And Old

We had high--priced junk insurance before.  We got more of it.  

ACA is not universal.  It has no chance of expanding to cover everyone, and it leads to the end of all public healthcare programs (Medicaid, Medicare, SCHIP, CHAMPUS, veterans care, etc.). That's a fact.  That's the point of it.  To end all public programs, privatize them.  

The controlling meme that has been operational for the past 40 years, the sales pitch for privatizing government services and resources, is that "private industry can do it cheaper".  While Republicans (Nixon) began it, Democrats joined in (Jimmy Carter).  But it's just not true that private industry does it cheaper.  Or even better.  What gets privatized, gets 'Bained'.  The jobs go offshore, or the same government workers who did the job are hired by the Bain-like corporation, to do the same job, for less money and fewer benefits.  

The taxpayer's still picking up the tab, but the money's now going to the private corporation which has to make a profit for its shareholders (as well as bloated CEO bonuses, some bling for his wife, etc.).  Profit comes by denying medical care to subscribers.   

What Obama did was entrench, institutionalize, the insurance industry as the 'for-profit'-gatekeepers to Americans getting medical care.  For all time.  And an expensive gatekeeper at that; much more expensive than the government (and less efficient, too).

Administrative costs, the amount of money taken out of every dollar the subscriber pays into the plan?  Medicare takes about 5%.  Private insurance companies take anywhere between 23% to 30% (and it's can be as high as 39%).  Either the private insurance companies are grossly inefficient or they're extremely profitable for the people who run them.  Net profit, after all, is what's left after all the bloated salaries of the upper management team is taken out.  

What's wrong with that is that CEOs are making 400-500 times as much as the line workers and they're not doing it because they're incredibly savvy, efficient, inspiring leaders; they're doing it because they run in a rarified circle of like-minde­d people that mutually justify their obscene compensati­on packages. 

Meet The New 1%: - Healthcare CEOs replace bankers as America's best paid:

Pity Wall Street's bankers. Once the highest-paid bosses in the land, they are now also-rans. The real money is in healthcare and drugs, according to the latest survey of executive pay.  One example is Joel Gemunder, CEO Omnicare, who had a total pay package in 2010 worth $98 million.

'Line workers', by the way, are the actual providers of healthcare services, and in most cases their rates haven't been raised in close to 20 years.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost