Even AP now admits ObamaCare enrollees are losing their doctors

People who understood how markets work said it all along: There is simply no way to to take a service, mandate by law that it be made more "comprehensive," expand access to everyone, and somehow reduce the cost of it. It can't be done. It's like trying to add 7 and 2 to come up with 6. It's impossible.

But you couldn't tell that to the Democratic Party in 2010. They were going to pass ObamaCare, dammit, because they had the numbers and it ws a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do "health care reform," so they would come up with any justification they needed. It mattered not if the justification was logically implausible. They had the numbers. Besides, the mainstream media - especially the Associated Press - was willing to report just about everything the Democrats said about ObamaCare as if it was the unassailable truth about how the legislation would actually work in practice. So if Democrats said you'd be able to keep your doctor, the reporters and "fact checkers" would label any claim to the contrary by critics with "pinnochios" and so forth because, hey, the law didn't say that! But as even the AP is now forced to admit, the law did that:

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Stories like Pool's are emerging as more consumers realize they bought plans with limited doctor and hospital networks, some after websites that mistakenly said their doctors were included. Before the law took effect, experts warned that narrow networks could impact patient's access to care, especially in cheaper plans. But with insurance cards now in hand, consumers are finding their access limited across all price ranges. The dilemma undercuts President Obama's 2009 pledge that: "If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period." Consumer frustration over losing doctors comes as the Obama administration is still celebrating a victory with more than 8 million enrollees in its first year. Narrow networks are part of the economic trade-off for keeping premiums under control and preventing insurers from turning away those with pre-existing conditions. Even before the Affordable Care Act, doctors and hospitals would choose to leave a network - or be pushed out - over reimbursement issues as insurers tried to contain costs.

Uh huh. I told you at the beginning that the economic proposition presented on behalf of ObamaCare was impossible. You would need trade-offs to even attempt to pull it off, and the trade-offs would mean - among other things - that severely narrowed networks would force many people to part ways with the doctors they had seen for years. And oh by the way, they're not controlling premiums at all. So not only are you having to accept these "trade-offs" (which might otherwise be described as broken promises), but the trade-offs aren't bringing the promised result. You lose your doctor and your premium still goes up. In a broad sense, this entirely predictable result demonstrates that one of the biggest flaws in ObamaCare was that it doubled down on what was wrong with health care finance in the first place. People didn't need to be made more reliant on third parties to pay for their health care. They were already too reliant on third parties to begin with. Effective reform would have lessened the influence of health insurers and changed tax incentives to put more money in the hands of people to pay for their own basic care - limiting the use of insurance coverage to truly catastrophic needs. Under such a reform, people would not have to constantly stress about whether this or that need is "covered" because they would have the money to pay for it themselves. Instead, the Democrats tried to herd everyone into a big "system" that is completely dysfunctional because it promises what it cannot logically deliver. And now the AP, which dutifully reported White House talking points for years as though they were facts, is astonished to find out people are worse off than they were before ObamaCare.