The Continuing Disaster That Is Obama Care - Latest Poll Shows Doctors Also Think It Is Rdiculous, Ineffective, and Has No Chance Of Succeeding

Today's discussion will focus on the results of a recent opinion poll that was conducted by the highly respected consulting company Deloitte. The detailed results of the research can be viewed in the Forbes article from December 26, 2011 that summarized the findings. (http://www.forbes.com/sites/sallypipes/2011/12/26/doctors-say-obamacare-is-no-remedy-for-u-s-health-woes/ ). The poll surveyed a statistically valid sample of U.S. doctors, the set of health care professionals that are most likely to be significantly affected by the legislation so they have a direct, insightful, and first hand knowledge of what is about to happen to our health care system.

The findings were extremely pessimistic about how well Obama Care will solve the issue of ever escalating health care costs in this country. Since those doctors in the survey know more about our health care processes than any politician, one would hope that our political class would pay close attention to their evaluation of Obama Care and find a way to radically alter or totally repeal this disastrous law, based upon the poll findings.

Highlights of the poll include the following results:

1. Two thirds of the doctors surveyed expect health care costs to rise as a result of Obama Care, the exact opposite result the legislation was supposed to cause.
2. Only 27% expect health care costs to go down under Obama Care.
3. About 70% of those surveyed expect Obama Care to discourage the best and brightest of America's youth to go into medicine. This finding has serious ramifications for the quality of health care ten, twenty, or more years down the road. If the doctors are to be believed, we will have less intelligent and likely less competent doctors in the future delivering higher cost medicine.
4. Nine out of ten doctors surveyed believe that Obama Care will raise health care premiums for businesses and American citizens, the exact opposite of what is supposed to happen.
5. The article claims that Congressional Budget Office's latest analysis of Obama Care indicates that annual health care insurance premiums for the average American family will actually go up about $2,100, the exact opposite of what the law was supposed to do. This is not surprising since we already have discussed findings from the Kaiser Foundation which showed health care costs went up 9% in 2010 whereas they only went up 3% in 2008 and 2009, prior to the passage of Obama Care. This is the exact opposite of what is supposed to happen.
6. Almost 70% of those surveyed expect emergency wait times to increase as a result of Obama Care, the exact opposite of what is supposed to happen.
7. 83% expect the waiting time to see your primary doctor will also increase.
8. Half of the doctors surveyed expect access to health care will get worse on average due to hospital closures that come about as a result of the legislation.
9. Less than 25% of those surveyed expect their paperwork load to decrease as a result of Obama Care.
10. According to the article, an analysis published in April 2010 by the head actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), concluded that the nation will spend $311 billion more on health care needs by 2019 then it would have spent if Obama Care had not been passed.

Scary, scary stuff. But this information gets truly horrific when it is combined with other Obama Care information that we have previously reported on in this blog or which is newly available:

• Tens of millions of Americans are likely to lose their existing health care coverage since Obama Care idiotically makes it less expensive for companies to terminate their existing employee health care plans then to continue them under this law. This simple reality is because the fines for not offering health care insurance to employees are less than the expense of continuing to offer the existing plans.
• Major companies including AT&T, John Deer, Caterpillar, McDonalds, and others have already made public their potential for shutting down their current employee and retiree health care insurance plans in order to save money as a result of the meager fines in Obama Care.
• These newly uninsured millions of Americans will look to the health care exchanges set up by Obama Care for insurance and the government subsidies they provide, significantly adding to the national debt.
• However, people who lose their company health care insurance coverage, coverage  that covers their entire family, can only get individual insurance coverage and subsidies under Obama Care; this condition will require these families to pay for additional health care insurance without any subsidy support in order to now cover everyone in the family.
• Obama Care administrators have already had to approve well over 1,500 waivers to the law. Any piece of legislation that allows over 1,500 waivers to its tenets within two years or so of passage is a significantly flawed piece of legislation.
• The law was written so poorly that it will allow middle class and upper class families with sufficient economic resources to get heavily subsidized health care insurance from the government's insurance exchanges even though they can afford to do without the subsidies. This foul up will cost the American taxpayer unanticipated billions of dollars a year.
• The law may even affect the marriage rate, given how poorly it was written. If a single man qualifies for government health insurance  subsidy support because his income is a little below the income threshold marries a single woman in the same situation, their newly formed family income total will definitely push them over the threshold, forcing them to either pay out significantly more for their health care insurance or stay single in order to still qualify for government subsidy support.
• One likely reason that the nation's unemployment rate is staying so high is the business uncertainty generated by Obama Care. Companies are afraid to hire full time people since the potential for tax increases, increased health care bureaucracy, and increased health insurance expenses is so scary that companies would rather muddle through with the work force they currently have then take on additional risk and uncertainty.
• Business Week reported in its November 28, 2011 issue that any American can now purchase a $400, ten foot by five foot chart (50 square feet!) that contains all of the 1,968 new and expanded powers and responsibilities granted to the Federal government as a result of Obama Care. You cannot be living in a free country when a single piece of government legislation gives the political class almost 2,000 more ways to control your life.
• The legislation does not include significant medical industry tort reform, an effort that has successfully decreased health care costs when passed at the state government level.
• The legislation does not include significant provisions and incentives to expand private health care insurance competition across state lines, increased competition that would help drive down health care costs.
• The legislation will dramatically increase the medical spending costs paid out by the Federal government without first fixing the fraud, waste, and criminal activity in the current government medical payment programs, Medicare and Medicaid. Without first fixing the fraud problems that exist today which wastes $100 billion or so a year, by increasing the size of the government's role in health care insurance, the amount of fraud and waste is highly likely to rise as well.
• The CLASS portion of the legislation had a two fold purpose. First, it was supposed to provide long term health care insurance for those Americans who wanted it. Second, it was to contribute a positive $80 billion cash flow financial impact in the first ten years of Obama Care. The CLASS effort has failed miserably since it has already been terminated because of an anemic enrollment rate caused by its poor provisions. The termination ends the theoretical positive financial impact on the overall Obama Care program, dealing a serious blow to the financial credibility of the entire legislation.
• And finally, Americans' sentiment for Obama Care has never been lower. The latest Associated Press/Roper/GIK poll shows that the percentage of Americans that support the legislation is at its lowest point ever, only 29%. Within the 29%, only 13% strongly support the law's provisions. Additionally, the poll shows that an overwhelming 84% of those polled do not think that the Federal government should have the power to force every American to purchase health care insurance, as mandated in the legislation.

And most important of all, the legislation does not effectively or substantially impact the true root causes of our ever escalating health care costs:

1. Our population is getting older from an average age perspective, requiring significant research and creative approaches to deal with an aging population and its related aging diseases.
2. Americans smoke too much.
3. Americans eat too much.
4. Americans eat too much of the wrong types of food.
5. Americans do not exercise enough.

By virtually ignoring these root causes, the legislation will have virtually no chance of being successful at reining in our out of control health care costs. This problem has to be treated primarily as a public health crisis that is solved by changing bad behaviors and not as a public policy crisis that can be solved by more bureaucracy, more government, and more taxes.

The doctors know this Obama Care approach will not work. Businesses know it will not work. Any sane American that looks at the track record of failure of the program so far knows it cannot work. Smart Americans from various organizations and think tanks know it will not work.The only ones who are blind to reality are the Obamas, Reids, Pelosis, and others who see expanded government bureaucracy, taxation, and power as a fix for everything even though government has not resolved a major issue for decades.

Two steps are needed to get us out of this rut. First, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) needs to do a completely new analysis of the entire legislation to quantify how bad the financial and health care impact of this law now appear to be. Obama used the initial CBO analysis to show how the legislation would decrease the national debt. We now know that analysis is nothing more than a fantasy with no connection to the real world, a new CBO analysis is sorely needed.

Once we find out how damaging the Obama Care is, we need to execute the process outlined in Step 26 of "Love My Country, Loathe my Government," to terminate Obama Care and replace it with a cogent, effective, efficient, and financially viable alternative. This process includes the use of smart Americans from all walks of life and disciplines rather than the political class and their lobbyist friends in Washington.

Not implementing these two steps would change Obama Care from its current disaster status into a fatal fiasco status. A fiasco that bankrupts the country, increases the  expense of health care, decreases the quality of health care, and decreases the access to health care while never solving the original problem.


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