As partisan pundits, bloggers, politicians and snake oil salesmen of all stripes battle it out in the political arena defending, attacking, compromising and capitulating to "pragmatism" the reality of the new law is that it was designed to take the "burden" of providing healthcare off of the employers and onto the American working class. I read an article today from "progressive" economist Paul Krugman where he praises the ACA's "success" in lowering costs. He basically ignores the fact small businesses are hit hardest with higher costs and points to savings in Medicare. Well, yes Paul, the law was designed to cut hundreds of billions from "wasteful Medicare spending" in so lowering costs. Hooray for the ACA! It slashed hundreds of billions of dollars from publicly provided healthcare services! Now, onto an even starker Neoliberal reality.
One of the architects of the ACA, Rahm Emmanuel's dear brother Ezekiel, has written a book and done interviews 'predicting' employers will dump employer coverage almost completely by the year 2025. Emmanuel says:
"the proportion of private-sector workers who receive health care from employers will fall below 20 percent by 2025. It’ll be a matter of a few big employers, blue-chip companies,then it’s going to be the norm."
Yes, as recent study's have confirmed large firms that employ 50 or more people will eventually "save" (hoard) 3 trillion dollars if they begin dumping employer coverage. A recent GMI study, without knowing it, substantiated Emmanuel's claim stating that, by the year 2015, employers will have all but dumped employer provided coverage (if they have sound business practices). The overview of their study:
Overview
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By shifting insurance responsibility to the employee, the ACA presents an opportunity for
U.S. companies to radically redefine the role they play in the health care system.
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Using its proprietary model, S&P Capital IQ Global Market Intelligence estimates that the
Affordable Care Act could save S&P 500 companies nearly $700 billion through 2025.
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These potential savings represent about 4% of the S&P 500's current market capitalization.
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For U.S. companies with 50 or more employees, total savings to businesses could amount to
$3.25 trillion through 2025.
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According to model estimates, employers are set to benefit the most as the government takes
on a larger funding role.
http://images.politico.com/...
The actual study (above) estimates smaller companies will save almost one trillion dollars far exceeding any bumps in the road from fines or penalties for dropping coverage. The ACA, at its core, was a law meant to CEMENT the power of private insurance/drug companies, while taking true universal healthcare off the table-forever, while setting the stage for corporations to save TRILLIONS by dumping workers into the private insurance ACA exchange...where we will be forced by the mandate to comply.
That's the reality. The ACA is a part of a broader Neoliberal economic agenda which manifested in the mid/late 1970's from economic departments and think tanks linked to the free market ideology of Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. At the core of this ideology is privatization, attacks on publicly provided services and an agenda to shift wealth from the working class into the capitalist classes hands, or bank accounts, by any means necessary.
Seeing Paul Krugman praise this "achievement" speaks volume to how far down the rabbit hole American politics (and political economy) has gone. I believe it's time for Mr Krugman to retire, or at the least reexamine his world view, reconsider his entire life of peddling "free market" snake oil in the name of Keynesian economics. As with the rest of the "gatekeepers" on the left, they've been leading us into a dark deep cave of iniquity, a cave of gross inequality, a cave much like Plato's cave where all we're seeing is shadows on the wall projected by Kellogg Brown and Root, Pfizer, Goldman Sachs, Aetna, CitiGroup and the Democrat/Republican parties.