The development of a forward time machine is difficult enough. But a backward time machine is currently beyond *speculation. However, President Obama has done the impossible with his signature transformative legislation called Obamacare. Obama claims that Obamacare has reduced the rate of medical care inflation from day one of Obamacare to the present. But as David Catron kindly points out, Obamacare didn't go into effect until 2014. OK, maybe Mr. Catron wasn't so kindly. See Obamacare’s Amazing Wayback Clause. Excerpt:
The most celebrated effect of this amazing provision is its retroactive reduction of medical inflation during the years preceding the law’s implementation. Obamacare was passed in 2010. However, except for a few minor provisions, it didn’t go into effect until 2014. Yet the law’s wayback clause is such a powerful cost control tool that it has been able to traverse the time-space continuum and slow the rate of health care inflation, as the President himself has phrased it, “every single year since the law passed.” ...
Nonpartisan studies attribute the decline in health care inflation to economic factors, insisting that the recession was the most important factor in reducing growth in medical spending: “This suggests that the recent decline is not primarily the result of structural changes in the health sector or of components of the Affordable Care Act.”
Some have even suggested that considerable credit for the slowdown in health care inflation — you Obamacare advocates should sit down before reading further — must go to the policies of George W. Bush. Much of the decline has been driven, these researchers point out, by a “remarkable” slowdown in Medicare spending, particularly in the Part D prescription drug program. Specifically, they write, “Our analysis shows that Part D has accounted for over 60 percent of the slowdown in Medicare benefits since 2011.”
Unfortunately, Mr. Catron speculates that the party is already over and that health care inflation is on the rise again. Oh well, we'll probably be trying to survive in a post apocalyptic United States after Iran explodes a few EMP bombs overhead anyway. So this may someday be remembered by survivors as the good old days.
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*A backwards time machine isn't possible under currently accepted premises because Einstein's theory suggests that time slows as one's speed accelerates, so the theoretical time machine has no reverse gear. For the best treatment of time travel possibilities, see Professor Farnsworth's forward time machine.
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