ObamaCare BS Even Snares Warren

More than a decade of bulls******* us about ObamaCare’s real costs, Liz Warren is whining again, this time about how pharma industry consolidation & snookered price increases are CAUSED by the healthcare reform law.

Who’d of thunk it? As the WSJ editorial board recently opined: “It took 13 years, but Elizabeth Warren is at long last acknowledging that ObamaCare has increased healthcare prices & industry consolidation. Who would have believed it? Government price controls & profit caps have resulted in unintended consequences” aka spiraling drug costs. The details are complicated & frankly boring, but it comes down to this: “The nation’s largest health insurers [who, btw, were all for ObamaCare, natch] are dodging [the law’s mandated] medical loss ratio,” thereby triggering higher costs for patients. They’re getting away with it because ObamaCare’s “de facto cap on profits … has spurred insurers to merge with or acquire pharmacy benefit managers, retail & specialty pharmacies & healthcare providers.” That new & near monopoly, in turn, allows them to play accounting & paper shuffling tricks to meet ObamaCare’s arcane pricing requirements while passing higher costs onto the victims, er, patients. In fact, the insurers are using the law’s own lingo to “steer patients to their own pharmacies, while disadvantaging competing pharmacies with lower reimbursements & predatory fees.”

It's all in a letter Warren & GOP Sen. Mike Braun sent to HHS bitching about the nightmare that was predicted way before ObamaCare was enacted. Yet, buyer beware as these ObamaCare’s baked-in market distortions are inspiring many in Congress to “fix” the problem. WSJ: “It’s a familiar story: Big government intervention creates incentives & raises costs that help big business, and then politicians demand more government intervention to fix the distortions they caused.”

Davd Soul