Rollout Erosion

It's complicated.

And you thought insurance was complicated before!

   "Insurance exchange" is just another term for an open market and private enterprise, with the new twist that everyone must have a health plan as Obamacare rolls into the marketplace. (If you already have one -- private, Medicare, or Medicaid, for example -- you're OK. Otherwise, you must get one or pay a penalty.)
   So with such a huge, mandatory customer base, why are the bastionic speakers of corporate America opposing a market opportunity? Especially one that can wring big bucks from unwary consumers?
   It's been estimated that for a family of four with $50,000 annual income, the cost of a health insurance policy can be some $500 a month. That's $6,000 a year, or 12 percent of their income. There's also a $10,000 cap on benefit payments, according to one estimate. Anyone who has dealt with hospitals knows that such a cap can be reached in a matter of days.

   We can only guess that the battle is really over who gets credit for universal health care. For more than 50 years, politicians have tried to set up such a program on a national level, but each time it was blocked by the opposing political party. Until three years ago, when President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party succeeded.
   But the Republican Party, despite a similar plan being put in place in Massachusetts under the governorship of its most recent presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, is trying to sabotage Obamacare even as it rolls out and becomes available to millions. Is it expensive? It can be. But there are numerous ways to trim the premiums, so the new program will provide health insurance coverage to millions of middle class working families -- traditionally solid Republican voters. As a result, these voters may bolt to the Democratic side of the ballot. And this is what is really scary to the GOP. Their voting base is eroded.
   Not only do they not get credit for the program, but they also get blamed for trying to block it, in the process shutting down the government and causing an economic tsunami that may well disrupt the entire world.

   Meanwhile, the American economy stands to take a billion-dollar hit every week as more than 800,000 furloughed federal workers sit home and hope for their paychecks to resume.
   And as business in America sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold. Put another way, as the International Monetary Fund did this week, "The global economy is in better shape, but the road to a robust and comprehensive recovery remains bumpy."
   None of which has stopped the ballot-hungry GOP from erecting barriers, digging potholes and doing whatever it can to stop Obama, in the processing sabotaging an already tentative economic recovery in the U.S. and around the world.