It appears that the new killer of senior citizens will not be some new disease but Obamacare.  Every week we receive more information about how our healthcare is being changed by Obamacare.  The affordable healthcare plan, Obamacare, as a concept, was sold as panacea for what was ailing the American people.  It was to be our modern day patent medicine, snake oil for today’s ailments.

The details of the program were purposely hidden from the public as the bill was written and passed.  Pelosi famously stated that they would have to pass the bill, then they could read it.  I don’t know anyone that fully understands it because much of the bill authorizes new government regulatory authority over the healthcare industry.   The regulatory authority had to be established before the regulations could be written.  Those regulations are being written with as much secrecy as the writing of the original law.

There were strong rumors that Obamacare would feature “Death Panels” that would review the treatments being prescribed for certain illnesses such as cancer.  One of the strategies to reduce the cost to consumers is to reduce the actual dollars being spent on healthcare.  Cost reductions are being achieved by constraining the reimbursements to the healthcare providers.  The reduction in payments will be complemented by a reduction in healthcare services.   The concept of a death panel is that individual cases would be reviewed.  That would be very costly.  Instead they will reduce services by the substitution of alternate services, comfort care instead of healing.   

Obamacare adds significantly to the actual cost of delivering healthcare by adding a huge governmental bureaucracy.  The people in the government that are setting up and managing Obamacare represent added costs, costs the government will pay.  It is becoming more apparent that these costs will be offset by forcing current healthcare insurance companies to reduce the number of plans they provide.  Part of the current industry is being removed by narrowing the healthcare insurance offerings.  You will now be “Insured for all possible or impossible conditions.”   Seniors will pay for prenatal care, birth control etc.   We will all pay for services we don’t need.  This is being done to cover the healthcare costs of other groups.  They are robbing seniors to pay for the uninsured.  Little matter that seniors paid into to Medicare and Medicaid for years.  Even the supplemental programs designed to pay what Medicare won’t are being dismantled.

With the implementation of Obamacare, there will be redundancy in the administration of healthcare insurance.  This duplication must be removed if the costs are to be contained.  People in the private healthcare industry represent administrative cost that must be removed.  Those people will have to go.  An industry without employees is not an industry.  Your insurance provider must go if this program is to survive.  Obamacare must substantially replace the private healthcare industry.  Obamacare is nationalizing the healthcare industry.

Understand, if the American healthcare industry is dismantled it cannot be replaced over night.  The American public does not understand the financing of industry.  Any industry that succeeds is a combination of people, infrastructure, financial agreements, talented leadership, cash flow, and earned market position.  If any single one of these resources is substantially disrupted the industry fails.

The American Healthcare industry has been attacked at multiple levels, and it is my opinion that if our Healthcare insurance companies survive, our insurance, as we know it, will not.  We are witnessing the destruction of a private industry that will soon be recognized as the having been the best in the world. Flawed, yes, but it was still the best in the world until it was killed by Obamacare.

Even if Obamacare is killed at some point in the future, we will not be able to return to the Healthcare programs we have expected to pay our healthcare cost.