I published a letter to President Trump in this blog on February 5 warning of the difficulties in dealing with the repeal and replacement of Obamacare prior to the Ryan healthcare debacle. The Ryan proposal to repeal and replace Obamacare does not resolve Obamacare’s most egregious problems, the continuous increases in healthcare premiums paid by the young middle class and employers and excessive deductibles. Such problems are caused mainly by the need for insurance companies to recover the billions of dollars of welfare benefits required to be given under Obamacare for people with pre-existing conditions, and the excessive fees charged by hospitals to paying customers to make up for patients who do not pay for mandated treatment at hospital ERs and resulting from Medicare and Medicaid underpayments. We must provide healthcare coverage for people with pre-existing as promised by President Trump, but we must subject people receiving underpriced coverage to annual and life-time benefit limits and make them responsible for helping to control the cost of their benefits. Excessive healthcare costs have negatively impacted jobs and wages, are a cause of off-shoring of manufacturing and have made it difficult, if not impossible, for young people who achieve and get a tax-paying job to re-pay their college loans, form families and purchase homes.

I urge everyone to read my February letter which discusses many of the issues affecting healthcare. I encourage treating the replacement for Obamacare as a work-in-progress beginning with a return to free-market competition and a realistic reduction in the Obamacare welfare benefits while we conduct a re-examination of all aspects of the healthcare industry and the health insurance business as it will change following the repeal of Obamacare.