About Obamacare... has anyone here ever seen the movie "Amazing Grace?"
It's a 2006 film, not very well known, about William Wilburforce and his lifelong campaign to end the slave trade in the British Empire. Over and over again, he tries: demonstrations, petitions, spectacles, public pressure, education... and every time comes up short, because the slave trade is so profitable that every member of parliament in every port city in Britain depends on it. For their own wealth, for favors, and for producing trade. So over and over he loses the votes in Parliament, no matter what he does.
In the end, someone comes up with an idea: creating a legal loophole that allows privateers to prey on British slave ships, knowing that this would make the slave trade unprofitable. Once the money is gone, the slave traders will no longer have their pull in parliament, and within a few years abolition will pass easily.
This is what I think many people here don't appreciate about Obamacare. It's not simply a matter of "bill passes, healthcare is now cheap." It's a matter of squeezing the influence out of the system.
Take the Medical Loss Ratio, which under Obamacare dictates that between 80 and 85% of all insurance revenues go to paying for actual healthcare, leaving 15 to 20 percent for other things, depending on the company. Mind you, that's not 15-20% profit--that's 15-20% of all revenue which can be spent on things like paying the employees, maintaining facilities, advertising, etcetera. At most, 20% goes to the folder marked "everything that's not paying your doctor's bill." And that includes lobbying.
For a point of comparison, Microsoft spends 68% of all its revenue on expenses. General Motors spends a whopping 95% of its revenue on expenses. Netflix spends 93%. A 20% maximum limit on expenses represents an unprecedented emphasis on shrinking overhead, an emphasis which is going to make insurance industry lobbying effectively a thing of the past.
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