When David Balat talks about health care, he speaks from a wealth of experience.
The director of Right on Healthcare, Texas Public Policy Foundation’s national health care initiative, has health care industry leadership and executive management experience in spades. Balat says the Affordable Care Act (ACA), aka Obamacare, is a mistake that the nation cannot afford to repeat and should soon discard.
“The failed experiment of the ACA has impacted all Americans,” he said. “The law has resulted in increased prices, expensive coverage, limited networks, more expensive drugs and supplies, and more and more consolidation that has also contributed to higher prices.”
Balat says that health care rules have been designed to benefit companies and individuals who are reaping large profits while Americans struggle with a confusing system that does not provide them the care they need.
“The ACA, and laws put in place before the ACA, have benefited certain players in the industry,” Balat said. “They’ve become very profitable due to these congressional protections and . . . make it very difficult for lawmakers to sponsor and pass bills that would help their constituents. A great example of this is the data that shows that 90% of Americans want real transparency of pricing in health care, but lawmakers are reticent to support this effort because of the powerful lobbies that seek to protect their secretive pricing.”
Balat also says that Obamacare's biggest failures make up a long list, starting with former President Barack Obama's vow that people could retain their plan if they liked it, when 9.3 million Americans lost their coverage during the initial open-enrollment period. Balat says that is broken promise number one, which Politifact called “The Lie of the Year” back in 2014.
Broken promise number two was saying that people could keep their doctors. When 214,000 doctors opted out of the ACA, people could not retain their services. CNN said that claim was false, and the ACA revised and then withdrew that pledge from its website.
Broken promise number three was saying premiums would decline by an average of $2,500. Instead, they rose by 60% in the first four years, with increases ranging from $2,524 for a person between the ages of 31-40 to $12,040 for a family headed by someone older than 60, Balat noted.
Saying people will have access to more care was broken promise number four, according to Balat. When all those doctors opted out, he noted, some people were left without access to proper care. Instead, emergency rooms have remained busy with patients coming in to seek basic care.
More than half of people uninsured in 2018 were eligible for financial assistance through Medicaid or Marketplace subsidies — but instead chose to remain without coverage. Access to insurance does not equate to access to care, Balat notes.
Promising people with pre-existing conditions they will receive needed care is broken promise number five, he said. Bankruptcies linked to medical bills has not declined since the ACA took effect, according to a report from Physicians for a National Health Program, which has a liberal perspective, according to Balat.
The Bottom Line
Most important, Balat says, is that Obamacare has had no impact on the death rate. A study by SSRN, formerly known as Social Science Research Network, said that people who enrolled in the ACA saw no greater life span than those who were not in the program.
Balat says this issue should be at the forefront of the national discussion.
“Health care isn’t a luxury item, especially for those that live with chronic conditions,” he said. “And the current system put in by the previous administration makes it harder and more expensive for people to get care. Now former Vice President Joe Biden wants to double down on that policy of broken promises, and his newly chosen running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, wants to go even farther with a total government takeover of people’s health care decisions. We need a sense of urgency in this country for some rational changes that put patients in charge of their health care, instead of a system that is rigged against them.”
Balat wrote an op-ed for The Hill, published Feb. 29, about the Trump administration’s lawsuit to overturn the ACA, playing down arguments that 20 million Americans would lose access to health insurance if the ACA was discarded. Balat also noted that all Democratic presidential candidates said Obamacare was flawed and needed to be repaired.
He says that was not the correct answer.
“Unfortunately, their plans to fix the ACA only propose more of the same thing that caused the failure in the first place: a narrow focus on increasing insurance coverage instead of improving care [even for those with pre-existing conditions],” he wrote. “The system is so broken, millions of people are even refusing no-cost health insurance.
“Just like in the exchange, the states that have expanded Medicaid are facing a similar problem,” the op-ed continues. “Putting millions more people on government-provided insurance has blown holes in state budgets. New York, for example, faces a $6.1 billion budget deficit next year with two-thirds of it linked to Medicaid. The state’s response to this budgetary crisis was clear; payments would be slashed for several provider types.”
Balat went on to say that these payment reductions, added to administrative hassles, would drive health care providers out of the Medicaid program, thereby hurting patients.
“In seeking to simply expand coverage, the ACA made health care extraordinarily expensive,” he wrote. “The law became a boon to special-interest insurance corporations and created powerful middlemen that contribute to the high prices. Many Americans remain uninsured because out-of-pocket costs are too high and the value too low even when they are qualified or eligible to participate in programs that subsidize their premiums.
"The law must be scrapped, and the Supreme Court has the opportunity to do that and force Congress to act where it has previously failed.”
Health care should empower individuals and families, doctors and patients — not the insurers or the government, Balat argues. Doctors should have the final say on care — not bureaucrats or companies.
“Regardless of the outcome from the Supreme Court, Congress must act to unleash one of the most regulated industries in our nation,” Balat wrote. “Americans don’t care about the intricacies of a health insurance policy; they just want health care for themselves and their families. We have the chance to do better and we just may — if we focus on patients rather than politics.”
Balat, who ran for a seat in Congress representing Texas’ 2nd Congressional District in 2018, has testified before the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform and before a variety of House committees in the Texas legislature. He has written op-ed pieces published in The Hill, Real Clear Politics and other news outlets, speaks at national conferences and advises state and federal lawmakers on health care issues.
Balat also volunteers to assist families with their finances and understand their benefits.
A first-generation American and the first in his family to graduate from college, he earned a bachelor’s of science degree from the University of Houston and joint master’s degrees in business administration and hospital administration from the University of Houston-Clear Lake.