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<H1 class=title>Obamacare is Doomed by Its Internal Logic</H1><BR><BR><A
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<DIV class=submitted>Wed, 11/20/2013 - 00:24 — Glen Ford</DIV></DIV><BR><SPAN
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<DIV class="field-item odd"><IMG
class="imagecache imagecache-feature400 imagecache-default imagecache-feature400_default"
title="" alt=""
src="http://blackagendareport.com/sites/www.blackagendareport.com/files/imagecache/feature400/MedicareForAll_0.jpg"
width=400 height=300> </DIV></DIV></DIV><STRONG>A Black Agenda Radio commentary
by executive editor Glen Ford</STRONG><BR>Republicans had nothing to do with
passing Obamacare, and they will not bring the program down. The falsely named
Affordable Health Care Act is coming undone on the strength of its own
contradictions. It’s not a national health program, at all – “just Obama working
a scam for the insurance companies.”<BR><STRONG>Obamacare is Doomed by Its
Internal Logic</STRONG><BR><STRONG>A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive
editor Glen Ford</STRONG><BR>“<EM>Private insurers make money by betting against
the health interests of their customers.”</EM><BR>Obamacare is unraveling, not
because the administration is particularly incompetent or unlucky, and certainly
not as a result of the Republicans’ unrelenting hostility to the Obama health
insurance plan. Indeed, ever since the bill’s passage in early 2010, the GOP’s
holy war against Obamacare has served to solidify reflexive Democratic support
for what has always been a Republican-inspired bill.<BR>The truth is, the
Affordable Health Care Act is coming undone because of its own, tortured
internal logic. At root, it is a fraud on the public: a scheme to subsidize and
more deeply embed a private insurance system that can only make profits by
denying sick and vulnerable people health care, and playing different
demographics of Americans against each other. As every other industrialized
country in the world has already learned, it is impossible to build a genuine,
universal healthcare system on a cut-throat capitalist foundation. Private
insurers make money by betting against the health interests of their customers.
Obama served his corporate masters by conspiring to make tens of millions more
Americans into customers of private insurers. He tried to dress up one of the
greatest corporate subsidies in history as if it were a solemn national mission,
a rebirth of the social compact between the American people. But of course,
Obamacare is no such thing; it is a racket to prop up private insurers with
public money, while allowing the profiteers to continue to run the
show.<BR>“<EM>It is a fraud on the public.”</EM><BR>You can’t hide a truth that
big. The Obamacare website has suffered from terminal complexity because white
collar crime is usually quite complex. The web site attempts to reconcile the
profit margins and various products of a universe of private insurance
corporations, while at the same time pretending to serve the health needs of the
people at an affordable cost. Obamacare claims to be in the business of serving
both the public and corporate stockholders. But that’s mission impossible. If
Obamacare is based on making profits for private corporations – if that is what
keeps the system going – then the public’s health care needs will always be an
afterthought. And, that will be obvious in the way that the website is organized
as a sales platform that matches federal subsidies with corporate products,
rather than matching people with the medical resources they need to survive and
thrive.<BR>Website complexity and failures aside, Obamacare can never become
part of a national social compact, something of which all Americans can be
proud. That’s because, by definition, corporate insurance schemes divide people
into <U><A
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/11/13/obamacare-is-in-much-more-trouble-than-it-was-one-week-ago/">“winners”
and “losers</A></U>” – although, of course, the big winner is always the
corporation. Young, healthy people know they are the fatted calves of the
insurance business, and they are avoiding Obamacare like the plague. If this
were really a national health care program, like Medicare for All, then most
young people would join in the national health care mission. But this is just
Obama working a scam for the insurance companies, and young folks know it.
Anybody who manages to get access to the web site knows it.<BR>The fatal flaw in
Obamacare can’t be fixed. The best thing that could happen would be a quick and
total collapse. Large majorities of Americans still support Medicare for All,
but Obamacare stands in the way of a real national health plan – just as the
Republican right-wingers that invented Obamacare back in 1989
<U><A>intended</A></U>.<BR>For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford. On the web, go
to BlackAgendaReport.com.<BR><EM>BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted
at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.</EM><BR>
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