An E-Mail Message about Health Reform Exchanges and a Response Containing a Definition of ObamaCare

Dave Racer, CEO and founder of DRG Communications, Inc, in St. Paul, Minnesota, and publisher of our book, Direct Pay Independent Practice: Medicine and Surgery, a Kindle book now available on Amazon, sent me the following memo.

Dr. Reece

Why does anyone believe that government exchanges will still be around in years ahead? In Minnesota, 53,077 individuals purchased a commercial health plan thru MNsure. Half of those are tax-subsidized. The other half could have purchased coverage outside of the exchange - same plans, same dollars, but without the hassle.

As exchanges continue to diss professional insurance agents, more of them will take their clients off the exchange to purchase coverage. Frankly, no one is using or is likely to use the exchanges for small group or large group insurance - only individual, which is spiking ever higher.

I'm thinking the exchanges will end up being what the Connector has been in Massachusetts - a place for lower income individuals to sign up for a government health plan. But even that will be threatened within a few years, as states are forced to finance a larger share of Medicaid expansion.

Oh, one other thing - the Hilbig decision. If the Supreme Court rules, as it should, that the ACA does not authorized tax subsidies except thru state insurance exchanges, the federal exchanges will be locked out - and people will be terribly angry.

Maybe the GOP will finally find a way to do insurance vouchers, equalization of tax treatment, and such.


Dave Racer
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Dear Dave:

Your message prompts this ObamaCare Definition:

ObamaCare - A massive $2 trillion politically unilateral, perennially unpopular social experiment, or health law, designed to redistribute, reassign, and redefine health insurance benefits from the insured to the uninsured. The experiment is poorly planned, inaccurately written, technologically flawed, incompetently executed, inadequately messaged, incompatible with American culture of individual freedoms and choice, and characterized by cost overruns. It contains coercive, unnecessary elements of individual, employer, and religious mandates and health exchanges. Like most experiments, which, by definition, are tests, trials, or tentative procedures, it may end if it fails or is repealed.

I have been asked about the content and subject matter of the 3640 blogs I have written over the last eight years. The content covers these subjects: ACA, Affordable Care Act,Concierge Medicine, Consumer-Driven Care, Direct Pay Ambulatory Surgery Centers, Direct Pay Medicine,Disruptive Innovation, Doctor Shortages, Health Reform, Health Savings Accounts, Media and Health Reform, Medical Innovation, Medical Trends, Patient-Engagement, Politics of Health Reform, Self-funded Companies and Health Reform, Social Justice, Women Physicians, Worksite Clinics. To review or read these blogs, go to Medinnovation and in the search box type the subject you would like to read about.