Alternative Visions - The Unraveling of Obamacare: A Progressive Critique - 11/13/13




Alternative Visions show

Summary: Dr. Jack Rasmus and guest, Dr. Margaret Flowers, provide a progressive critique of Obamacare and its growing problems of implementation and coverage. Dr. Rasmus explains how, and why, Obamacare will continue to unravel in 2014-15 and potentially implode, in whole or part, by 2016. Rasmus explains in detail how Obamacare has delayed and exempted businesses from participation in the program; why business penalties for failure to participate are in sufficient; why subsidies for individuals to participate are inadequate and won’t work; why enrollment will continue to seriously lag projections by wide margins in 2014; why the Act is the death-knell for union negotiation health plans; how businesses and health insurance corporations area increasingly ‘gameing’ the system. Rasmus explains how the Act is really a scheme for ‘moving the money around’, from those who now have coverage to those who don’t—where the money is moved first through the health insurance companies that skim off excess profits in the process—and how Obamacare should be understood as the extension of prior attempts to privatize health care via George W. Bush’s Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) in the past decade and Bill Clinton’s ‘Managed Health Care’ before that.Rasmus and Margaret Flowers explain how ‘Medicare for All’ is the only real alternative that will work, showing how its initial enrollment process, benefit coverage, and costs have been, and continue to be, far superior to the Obamacare-Bushcare-Clintoncare market privatization approaches. Rasmus forewarns that as Obamacare continues to unravel the real fight will begin over ‘Medicare for All’ vs. total privatization of health care via ‘Vouchers for Some’ that conservatives are now preparing in the wings once again