Refreshing Honesty

Here, go read this.  No, really, go read it.  I'll wait.

...
...

Nope, I'm still here.  You finish it.

...
...

Okay, back?  Good.

Now, I could go on all day about "well of course insurers are finding ways to avoid the costly increases in Obamacare."  I could even point out that that was the point of Obamacare (as it was advertised)- to make insurers do things to keep costs down.  It's just that in this case what they're "doing to keep costs down" is engaging in a little creative problem solving and avoiding the very law that was supposed to make things so super-duper inexpensive (but which is really making insurance rates explode).

But I won't.

I wanted to point out these little nuggets:

That may offer a short-term benefit for certain consumers and shield some of those individual policyholders from potentially steep rate increases. But critics say this maneuver could undermine government efforts to remake the insurance market next year and keep premiums affordable overall.

Wait... what?  I thought we were told that "if you like your plan, you can keep your plan."  "Government efforts to remake the insurance market" sure doesn't sound like "if you like your plan, you can keep your plan," to me.  Well, maybe I'm missing something.  Let's keep looking.

Some policy experts are expressing concern about this practice for fear that insurers will focus on renewing younger and healthier policyholders and hold them out of the broader insurance pool next year. Their absence could leave a sicker and older population in new government insurance exchanges, driving up medical costs and premiums there.

Wait... what?  I thought the people who couldn't afford insurance coverage were the "younger" crowd.  Isn't that why my insurance now has to offer coverage to my "dependents" until they're 26?  Because somehow this "younger and healthier" set couldn't get insurance.  I was told that they wouldn't really be subsidizing the sick and elderly, because the sick would go on exchanges, and the elderly were going to get Medicare anyway.  You mean that isn't happening?

"This could undermine the Affordable Care Act, and it opens the door for exacerbating potential rate shock in the exchanges," said Christine Monahan, a senior analyst at Georgetown University's Health Policy Institute. "The health insurers can cherry-pick some healthy people and it raises prices for everyone else."

You mean those exchanges that don't exist?  Yeah, I can see this being terrible for them.  Moreover, "cherry-pick[ing] some healthy people" does not "[raise] prices for everyone else."  Healthy people do not cause insurance rates to rise.  Sick ones do.

Beyond that, why should we be concerned about "undermining" any Federal Law?  Isn't the Federal Government supposed to serve us?  Shouldn't they be more concerned about undermining our Liberty?  It seems not.

Now, I could go on, but the real "problem" that's being danced around here is this one:

"We want to get as many people as possible into the exchange," Savage said. "I think having renewals go deep into 2014 is counterproductive to the goals of the federal healthcare law."

That's some refreshing honesty right there.  They want to destroy private insurance.  They want Government to run insurance   And once Government decides what care you can receive- far more pervasively than any private insurer could- Government owns you.

I don't feel like being owned.