President Barack Obama has no more ardent and loyal fans than the faculty and staff of Ivy League universities. According to Fox News, 98% of their donations in the 2012 presidential election went to Obama. (Thank goodness for diversity initiatives!)
So it is not surprising that Ivy League heavy-weights have rushed to the defense of Obamacare. In the Financial Times Larry Summers chastised Republicans for hoping that Obamacare would fail; he practically blamed them for the disastrous rollout. Despite the $600+ million cost of healthcare.gov, Summers implies that vindictive Republicans have left Obamacare “under-resourced.” Princeton economist Alan Blinder wrote a WSJ opinion piece titled, “Despite a Botched Rollout, the Health-Care Law Is Worth It.” Blinder’s colleague Paul Krugman, displaying his usual even-handed judiciousness, considers Republican opposition to Obamacare to be part of a broad-based “war on the poor” motivated by—what else—racism. (Sorry, Paul, but Obama is winning that war all by himself; the poverty rate has been 15% for three consecutive years vs. an average of 12.5% when G.W. Bush was President.)
Charity Begins at Home
Ivy Leaguers may love Obamacare, but there are limits. They think the law is wonderful—for everyone but themselves. Summers, Blinder, and Krugman may be earnest and big-hearted democrats, committed to the health and wellbeing of the common man, but no way are they going to actually go to healthcare.gov and sign up. Charity begins at home, you see, and they must do what is best for their families—which means avoiding Obamacare like the plague.
In contrast to Obamacare’s one-size-fits-all approach, university health plans provide lots of flexibility. For example, Princeton’s health plan
“provides benefits-eligible employees with comprehensive health insurance plans that offer the flexibility to select coverage that best meets your and your family’s medical needs. You can choose from several medical and dental plans and a vision care plan. You can cover yourself only, or you and your spouse, your same-sex domestic or same-sex civil union partner and your eligible dependent children.” (emphasis mine)
When Princeton Profs Blinder and Krugman enrolled in the Princeton Health plan for 2014 and selected precisely the coverage that met their family’s needs, they were no doubt relieved to see an advisory saying, in effect, “Don’t worry. Obamacare does not affect you.” Specifically:
“Princeton University believes your plan is a “grandfathered health plan” under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (the Affordable Care Act). As permitted by the Affordable Care Act, a grandfathered health plan can preserve certain basic health coverage that was already in effect when that law was enacted. Being a grandfathered health plan means that your plan may not include certain consumer protections of the Affordable Care Act that apply to other plans, for example, the requirement for the provision of preventive health services without any cost sharing. However, grandfathered health plans must comply with certain other consumer protections in the Affordable Care Act, for example, the elimination of lifetime limits on benefits.”
Yale, Brown, Cornell, Johns Hopkins, the University of Chicago, Columbia Teachers’ College and no doubt hundreds of other universities all provide similar assurances to plan participants that their health plans are “grandfathered.” So they won’t be forced into the dysfunctional bureaucratic labyrinth of Obamacare, as those millions of poor slobs in the “individual market” just were. (Obama’s unconstitutional re-writing of legislation to delay it a year will merely prolong the pain.)
Will Ivy Academics Rescue Obamacare?
To paraphrase Patrick Henry, now is the time for all good professors to come to the aid of their President. Poor Obama is in a box, hanging by a thread, twisting in the wind, painted into a corner, hoisted on his own petard, trapped by his own lies, wallowing in his own bullshit. He needs help, fast.
Think how great it would be if he could appear on stage with the Presidents of ten top-drawer universities whose faculties and staff have decided to chuck their “grandfathered” health plans, with all their many options and extensive networks of top quality doctors and hospitals, and sign on to Obamacare. Not only would an Ivy League endorsement boost the credibility of this legislative abortion. It would provide tens of thousands of healthy enrollees needed for the actuarial arithmetic to work. I know just the right illustrious academics to lead this rescue operation: Larry Summers, Alan Blinder, and Paul Krugman.
Copyright Thomas Doerflinger 2013. All Rights Reserved.
