- The original, ten year gross cost of the legislation, as estimated by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), was pegged at around $940 billion. The two year update review estimate of the cost has been revised upwards almost 100%, with the latest ten year view of costs coming in at just over $1.76 TRILLION.
- The CBO has stated that this cost will likely go higher when it reviews its estimates again since that annual estimate will contain ten years of costs/expenses and ten years of government revenue/taxes. The original estimate was intentionally deceptive since it included only six years of costs/expenses and ten years worth of government revenue/taxes.
- Rather than reduce the Federal deficit by $130 billion or so in the first ten years like President Obama promised, Obama Care, according to a credible and detailed analysis done by the head actuary of Medicare and Medicaid, estimates that the national debt will increase by over $300 billion in the first ten years as a result of the passage of Obama Care.
- President Obama also promised that those Americans who liked their current health care insurance coverage from their employers could keep it. The latest CBO report now estimates that this promise is also starting to collapse. It estimates that possibly 4 million Americans will lose their existing coverage, even if they like it. Other credible sources estimate that tens of millions of Americans could lose their employer provided health care coverage, given how poorly this legislation was written.
- Obama Care is suppressing economic growth since it is well documented that many businesses are holding off hiring new workers until they figure out what the financial implications of expanding their employee base is under the law. Others are intentionally keeping the number of employees under 50 or are turning some permanent employees into temporary employees in order to stay under 50 permanent employees to avoid the steep penalties laid out by Obama Care. All of these actions suppress hiring, reduce economic growth, and help keep unemployment high.
- We have documented the many ways in which Obama Care will significantly impact and control personal life decisions of Americans when it comes to marriage, retirement, health care coverage, and job selection. These impacts and controls on our life decisions are not consistent with living in a democracy.
- Obama Care has or will intrude in two major facets of many lives when it forces all Americans to purchase health care insurance (turning ordinary Americans into criminals if they do not purchase) and when it imposes secular requirements on religious tenets and beliefs, truly not the characteristic of an enlightened government and political class within a democracy.
- We also know that Obama Care was written so poorly that some Americans that could easily afford to pay for their own health care insurance will get free, taxpayer-subsidized financial support since the law screwed up how it classifies certain types of income.
- The CLASS component of the law was 1) supposed to provide reasonable and quality long term care support for older Americans and 2) offset the cost of Obama Care by upwards of $85 billion in the first ten years. The legislation was written so poorly that the CLASS market offerings were deemed to be more expensive and less beneficial than existing private market long term care plans. As a result, within two years of touting its profitability potential, the Obama administration has shut down the program, theoretically wiping out a lot of its supposed positive financial impacts.
- The legislation was written so poorly that in less than the first two years of its existence, the Federal government had to grant over 1,500 waivers to companies, unions, and other organizations, exempting them from the early impacts of the law. Thus, on average, three waivers were granted every business day since the law was enacted. You cannot claim you enacted effective legislation when you exempt three American organizations EVERY DAY from complying with the legislation.
- It is also obvious that this legislation will not work because it did not understand the root causes of our escalating health care costs. Americans eat too much (leading to obesity and heart related diseases), Americans eat too much of the wrong kind of food, Americans do not exercise enough, Americans smoke too much, and Americans on average are getting older (leading to more age-related diseases). These are public health related root causes that Obama Care barely addresses while trying to solve the overall problem, and its root causes, with ineffective taxation/government bureaucracy/criminal actions.
I use the past tense to describe the program since by the end of 2011, a mere 18 months or so after it began and at least 24 months before it was supposed to end, the program ran out of money. By mid-December, 2011, 95% of the money had been paid out to unions, companies, non-profits, and other government entities, and the Federal government had to stop taking claims as of December 31, 2011.
Some observations:
- The United Workers Union received the largest payout from the $5 billion fund, $387 million, according to a Bloomberg article. Could this be a further bailout of the auto industry, another political favor from the Obama administration to union voters?
- Two of America's largest and more profitable companies, AT&T and Verizon, both received over a quarter of a billion dollars from the fund. Is this the best use of tax payer money or just another corporate welfare benefit at the expense of the American taxpayer?
- If you read a recent government document that describes why the program is being shut down, it shows that almost half of the $5 billion went to state and local governments. Shouldn't those government entities tax their own constituents to cover their misspending and not get bailed out by all taxpayers?
- What happens to the smaller companies and unions that were counting on this program as promised by the political class and probably did not have the resources and lobbyists to get their share of the $5 billion? I would bet many of them made personnel decisions based on the promises of Obama Care and this support program. Now, given the incompetence of the writers of the Obama Care, companies, and more importantly, their early retirees, are out of luck and maybe out of health insurance coverage.
This is just another example of how poorly Obama Care was conceived and written, how pathetic its time and cost estimates are, and how out of touch with reality those in Washington are. This is a support program that falls flat on its face less than half way through its expected life. A support program that will leave plenty of Americans without health care insurance that was promised. A support program that may have been a union vote generator for the political class. A support program that was just another form of corporate welfare. A support program that subsidizes poor fiscal management by certain government organizations.
Just another Obama Care program that does nothing to address the real causes of our health care problems. It just swooshes around, via taxes and bureaucracy, the current health care expenditures in this country without fundamentally reducing those expenditures. Pathetic problem solving skills and remedies.
Time to start over with a real problem solving approach as laid out in Step 28 of "Love My Country, Loathe My Government." Root causes will continue to be out of control, now and if and when Obama Care is implemented. You cannot solve lung cancer by taking more aspirin, you have to address the underlying root causes. You cannot solve our health care problems without addressing the underlying public health and aging issues facing the country.
Thud.
We invite all readers of this blog to visit our new website, "The United States Of Purple," at:
http://www.unitedstatesofpurple.com/
The United States of Purple is a new grass roots approach to filling the office of President of The United States by focusing on the restoration of freedom in the United States, focusing on problem solving skills and results vs. personal political enrichment, and imposing term limits on all future Federal politicians. No more red states, no more blue states, just one United States Of America under the banner of Purple.
The United States Of Purple's website also provides you the formal opportunity to sign a petition to begin the process of implementing a Constitutional amendment to impose fixed term limits on all Federally elected politicians. Only by turning out the existing political class can we have a chance of addressing and finally resolving the major issues of or times.
Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.
Please visit the following sites for freedom:
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment/
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