In April of 2012, Mr. Blunt and Cranky wrote this post:https://bluntandcranky.wordpress.com/2012/04/06/you-are-already-paying-for-the-uninsured-but-the-costs-are-hidden/, in which he pointed out that hospitals inflate the prices charged to the uninsured in order to cook their books. The uninsured get charged far more than the actual cost + profit; they get sued and their credit is destroyed when they can’t pay the bill; and the hospital writes off the artificially high loss as charity care, or as an unpaid debt. This shell game allows providers to scam patients, governments, insurers, and taxpayers. And for years, it’s been in the shadows.

Recently the New York Timed came out with a story that said pretty much the same thing as this blog said last year (nice of them to finally catch up). Short version: ObamaCare requires these medical con artists to clean up their acts and stop fleecing the rest of us, and shines a bright light into the shadows where the ripoffs have hitherto occurred. Specifically, ObamaCare requires health care providers to charge the uninsured the same as they charge the insured. That, people, is a big deal, because it makes their cost-shifting scams illegal.

You can learn a lot about what something is for by seeing who is against it: almost everybody is in favor of this part of the ACA; almost everyone, that is, except for health care providers. They hate this law, because they can’t rip us off as easily as they used to. So they have bought Congresscritters and Senators aplenty, and spent money on lying TV and radio ads to make us believe that ObamaCare is badbadbadohyessoverybadindeed. They didn’t do that because Obamacare is bad for US, they did it because Obamacare is bad for THEM, and their borderline-criminal activities.

And what does it say about the state of our news media that one cantankerous old blogger scooped the NYT by 13 months? After all, it’s not like the information wasn’t out there, or that this writer is some kind of frickin’ genius. No, the media sat on this story for years before they put it out. That is almost as contemptible as the actions of the health care industry.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky