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Why Insurance Companies Love Obamacare

When U.S. President, Barack Obama proposed the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare, many were glad because they felt it would offer more protection and benefits to consumers of health insurance and prioritize them over insurance companies. But more and more Americans are becoming aware that the opposite is true. With each passing day, it becomes clearer that Obamacare has only favored insurance companies.

The act does not regulate insurance companies and hold them accountable for ridiculously high rates. Rather, it helps them bully consumers and rob them blind. Recently, the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats have faced widespread outrage because the many promises about the benefits of Obamacare have completely fallen through.

And the whole scheme now looks like a hoax. In 2009, President Obama promised that, “If you like your healthcare plan, you can keep it.” This statement has been proven false and has prompted extensive upset by union members. Another broken promise—though lesser known—is that of Obamacare prioritizing Americans over insurance companies. However, cronyism between the Blue Cross Shield, Enroll America, and the Obama administration is enough proof that Obamacare really offers more benefits to insurance companies, not policy holders.

Following Obama’s election, Blue Cross Shield’s lobbying expenditure skyrocketed and continued to do so until soon after the Congress approved Obamacare. The involvement of Blue Cross Shield becomes villainous when realizing one of their executives—alongside executives from several other health insurance companies—is on the board of Enroll America.

Enroll America is a 501(c)(3) closely linked with the White House and the administration, and it aims to promote Obamacare and maximize enrollment in it. The big question is, “Why should a new scheme aimed at checking the activities of insurance companies be influenced by insurance companies themselves?”

Sometimes in 2013, former President Bill Clinton spoke in support of Obamacare. He explained that many are concerned that too few healthy young people will be compelled to sign up for health insurance. And he said this is an issue of concern, because if too few young and health people buy health insurance, the aged and the ill will have to pay more. Sick people need more coverage, while young people need less.

In other words, Clinton is advocating forcing people to buy the insurance coverage they don’t need—so as to subsidize healthcare costs for those who really need it. Almost everyone knows that this will give health insurance companies like Blue Cross Shield lots of extra money and a free pass to hike up insurance rates without any questioning whatsoever.

Clinton failed to explain alternatives to this dynamic, including actually checking insurance companies and holding them accountable for their ridiculously high fees, and ridding unnecessary and costly measures used to block doctors from lawsuits, called “defensive medicine.” With Clinton’s way of thinking, it seems many Democrats are more interested in enriching health insurance companies at the expense of consumers rather than promoting affordable healthcare.

Presently as it stands, those who were formerly enthusiasts of Obamacare are now outraged at its negative effects. Unions are fuming at the Obama administrations because they have come to realize that Obamacare only prompts employers to cut workers’ hours and reduces coverage. Even the Democratic lawmakers who approved the scheme are now lamenting its terrible effects and calling it a complete disaster.

Unknown to many, insurance companies supported Obamacare from the start—and even before the start. During the 2008 Presidential race, health insurance companies donated far more money to both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton than to any Republican Candidate, even though both of these Democratic candidates promised to institute reforms that will “clip the wings” of healthcare insurance companies.

Why would the insurance industry support the very candidates whose chief healthcare strategy was to demonize them? Quite simply, it was because the insurance industry had nowhere else to go. By the time Obama became president, the once proud, self-confident, and even arrogant American health insurance industry had been completely humbled. Its Business model was completely broken, and it desperately needed an exit strategy. And it was due to the need to find a serviceable exit strategy that the industry supported Obamacare.

In return for its support in the healthcare reform battle, President Obama offered the insurance industry the graceful exit strategy it so desperately needed. Under Obamacare, for at least a few years the insurers hope to get One Last Windfall—namely, profits from the influx of previously uninsured Americans whose premiums will be paid, or at least subsidized, by taxpayers.

Here, the insurance companies are relying on the likelihood that the inflow of new premiums will, for a few years at least, greatly outweigh the outflow of money they will have to spend caring for these new subscribers. Ending this way, to them, is better than where they would have ended without Obamacare.

So, in a nutshell, insurance companies love Obamacare because the scheme compels those who are not in need of health insurance to purchase health insurance—thereby helping them (insurance companies) make more profit. The scheme also gives them the freedom to hike rates as they wish.