Affordable Care Act

Obamacare. The technical term? The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

The goal of this Act was to provide "all Americans" with health care insurance. And the intent was noble. Lots of people weren't carrying health insurance at the time, because either they had practically no money...or nobody would insure them because they were oh so sick…or because they were just daredevil, arrogant thrillseekers who never thought that gravity would bite them.

So how did Obama expect to be able to get this done? Enormous financial expense with extremely high degrees of difficulty to pull off on a national scale, for government workers. Well, essentially the plan was to meaningfully expand Medicaid, which is the insurance for the poor and disabled. Instead of covering most people for a relatively modest tax to the poor, it would offer Medicaid, more or less, for free…to everyone....paid for by the healthy, the wealthy, the big dollar tax paying.

Obamacare essentially changed the rules for what is expected from health care insurance plans, in that it made it illegal to be turned down for anything. Like, any previous illness you had or whatever expensive-to-treat form of diabetes or cancer or ebola you walked in with…all fine. The doctors would have to treat you.

Barbaric! Right? Well, let's think about this concept, because a lot of people were really angry about Obamacare...and they weren't all idiots. On the one hand, it makes sense that you should get care if you're sick, right? This isn't India. This isn't a poor African country where the warlords drive Ferraris as their population suffers. This isn't even Antarctica, where the rulers barely give a fish to the ruled. So the idea of covering everyone and anyone who is ill is not a terrible thought.

The truth is that the added cost of covering everyone, with essentially no financial obligation from the indigent, the poor, the welfare-collecting to pay literally nothing into the system and then get coverage for free on the backs of those who were paying...created what's called a free rider problem.

That is, Obamacare created incentives for people to just not pay. And/or to not really care for themselves or worry about their own health management because mama government would take care of em, right? But the truth is that our budgets are finite. We are a hugely indebted country with most of our states in analogously bad financial shape. So money isn't free, and when we pay for things, they come out of other things.

And this whole program was structured as mandatory. Meaning that Obamacare required that every single person in the country have health insurance. Not a terrible idea, but it required employers to pay for it, if individuals refused.

So Obamacare forced you to carry insurance...and you paid a fine or penalty if you didn't.

Trump's tax reform package promptly removed that penalty, putting the burden back on the individual. Or, said another way, if that person wants to risk life and limb, they should be able to. Just not on the taxpayers' nickel.