The Bent Cost Curve

by JASmius

And ObamaCare did bend it - just in the direction opposite the one that its namesake promised:

As the midterm election approaches, vulnerable Democrats have a new worry that may be difficult to spin: Where did the promised $2,500 savings in health insurance premiums go?

As a candidate in 2008, Barack Obama repeatedly said his healthcare plan would reduce the typical family's annual premiums by up to $2,500 per year. Often, he did not include the caveat "up to," simply saying the "typical" family would save about $2,500 a year on premiums.

But now, a month past the signup deadline for coverage, comparisons for the typical family's then and now premium costs are difficult to come by. The Obama administration isn't issuing such numbers. At best, it has said the costs are "lower than projected," reported most recently by the Los Angeles Times.

But those lower-than-projected numbers refer to expectations when the [Una]ffordable Care[-Less] Act was passed in 2010, not when Obama made the promises of reduced premiums in 2008.

Which nobody was ever given any reason not to expect.  Supply and demand: Increase the demand for a vital good or service without increasing the supply of it - or, worse, diminishing it - and its price is going to skyrocket because the "suppliers" cannot expand "production" in order to have a broader base over which to spread the cost.  If the price is artificially lowered by government diktat, the result is shortages....rationing...."death panels".  It is inevitable.  Because nothing is "free".

Supply....demand.  A dynamic that cannot be switched off by waving a magic wand, or giving a tiresome speech of epic fecality.

Which is, in turn, why ObamaCare is not salvageable as a public relations matter.  To borrow a Tony Stark-ism, there is no throne, no version of this where Barack Obama and his party come out on top.  The public hates ObamaCare.  The public has always hated ObamaCare.  The public always will hate ObamaCare.  And there is no way to sell it to the public, no way of duping the public into believing this nonsensical "Success!" narrative, because there is always one more dysfunctional aspect or feature of ObamaCare to go the opposite way of how Barack Obama tried to sell it in the first place.  Cover all the uninsured?  ObamaCare took coverage away from millions of Americans who already had it.  Provide "better" coverage?  People liked the plans they had because their plans were tailored to their needs; now they get stuck with one-size-fits-all "comprehensive" ObamaCare plans that contain coverages they don't need.  Or they would if they could ever get through the damned cartel web portals.  If they did, they would have to pay vastly more than they did before, and would even if they could get equivalent plans to the ones they had - a dynamic that is spiraling ever and logarithmically upwards with no end in sight.

The Bent Cost Curve.  Except it got bent up instead of down.  Because nobody, not even a demigod, can bend a government fiscal cost curve downward.  And if they could, they wouldn't try, because that's not the purpose of the entire ObamaCare endeavor.

To borrow a Loki-ism, that's the plan.  Barack Obama's plan.  A plan he likes.  It is - perhaps - up to the voters if he's allowed to keep it.