- Just two years after the legislation was passed, the Federal government has issued over 1,500 waivers to organizations and companies to exempt them temporarily from the law's requirements. You cannot claim any law is well written and attaining its objectives when the government that passed that law is granting about three waivers to that law EVERY DAY.
- When Obama Care was passed, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that the gross cost of the law's implementation would be about $940 billion over the first ten years. However, in its recent annual review and updating of their estimates, the CBO revised the gross cost of the law's implementation from $940 billion to just over $1.7 TRILLION, almost twice as much just two years after implementation.
Their expectation is that even this cost will go up when they update their revisions next year. That annual revision will be the first ten year view that includes ten years of tax revenue AND ten years of costs and expenses.
- At the time of enactment, Obama touted a CBO estimate that showed that the law would reduce the national debt by about $125 billion over the first ten years. However, the head actuary of Medicare and Medicaid, a Federal government employee and someone with the technical and statistical knowledge to understand these types of issues, recently published his analysis that shows Obama Care will actually add over $300 billion to the national debt in the next ten years relative to if the legislation had not been enacted.
- The tax sections of Obama Care were written so poorly that many large corporations will easily find it a better financial deal to terminate their employee health care plans and pay a much smaller Obama Care fine than continuing their corporate health care plans. Thus, rather than reducing the number of uninsured Americans, this law is likely to result in millions and millions of Americans losing their current company-provided health care coverage.
- The personal income sections of Obama Care were written so poorly that it will substantially influence life decisions of Americans will make including when, if, and who to marry, when to retire, where to work, etc.
- The entire Obama Care legislation was written so poorly and so complicated that employers are holding back in their hiring and expanding their business because of the known and unknown tax, penalty, and administrative impacts of the law.
- The legislation never addressed the underlying root causes of our high and escalating health care costs:
- Americans eat too much.
- Americans eat too much of the wrong kind of foods.
- Americans smoke too much.
- Americans do not exercise enough.
- Americans are living longer, resulting in the need and laser focus on reducing the cost impact of age-related diseases, e.g. dementia, certain types of cancer, etc.
- Medical tort reform, an effort that has significantly reduced health care costs at the state level, was given short attention in Obama Care, probably due to excellent lobbying work by the American Bar Association.
- Cross state line competition among private health care insurers, competition that would drive down the cost of insurance, was also not a focus of Obama Care.
Unfortunately, the CLASS piece of the legislation was written and structured so poorly that the Obama administration has already terminated the program, less than two years after it was included in Obama Care. This wipes out most of the original positive financial contribution that the legislation boasted.
- Government and non government sources estimate that the Federal government loses, via waste and criminal activity, about $70-90 billion a year in the Medicare program and $40-60 billion a year via the Medicaid program. Obama Care does not make this recovery of existing taxpayer wealth a priority, wealth that could be used to provide health care insurance to those that do not have it today.
We know it is not a priority since they have not touted a plan on how and how much they would reduce this disgraceful loss of taxpayer dollars over time. The legislation just wants to add more taxation on us, taxation that will continue to be drained away by fraud and waste like the current Medicare and Medicaid programs.
Bad news all around. This administration and Congress took what was a combination public health, tort reform, aging, and market competition crisis and tried to solve it with tax and government bureaucracy measures. They never understood the underlying root causes of our high health care costs. They never "followed the money" to understand where and with whom those high health care dollars end up with. If they followed the money, they would have understood how to reduce that money flow.
One would have thought that it could not get any worse. But it does. Consider some of the latest tidbits about the legislation:
- A recent news article from Reuters reports that Obama Care could sharply exceed its cost-savings targets and add another incremental $530 billion to the Federal budget deficit. A study by Charles Blahous, a George Mason University research fellow and the Republican trustee for the Medicare and Social Security entitlement programs for the elderly, concluded that: "Relative to previous law, the (healthcare law) both exacerbates projected Federal deficits and increases an already unsustainable Federal commitment to health care spending."
Now, I am sure my Democratic friends and family will immediately accuse Mr. Blahous of politics since he is an evil Republican. Fair enough, to prove that he is biased, let's have a Democrat dispute his analysis and findings. Obama Care is too large, too important, and too dangerous not to look at everyone's views and methodologies to find the real truth, not someone's political truth.
Until that is done, given the other credible sources that show this law will substantially increase health care spending and our national debt and Mr. Blahous's position and experience, I believe his conclusion.
- One of the cost savings tenets of Obama Care is that the Federal government will decrease its Medicare payments to health care providers under this law. Sounds simple enough, just don't pay doctors and hospitals as much and magical savings appear.
However, who really believes that this political class has the backbone to make such cuts, cuts that have been mandated under previous laws but have always been overridden by Washington politicians anxious not to tick off any voters or campaign donors?
The latest example of such cowardice was summarized in the April, 2012 issue of AARP's monthly magazine, "Congress Acts To Avoid Medicare Payment Cuts." According to the article, Congress has passed another temporary fix to scheduled Medicare payment reductions, a fix that delayed a scheduled 27% decrease in payments to doctors who treat Medicare patients.
This action delays a cut in payments until January 1, 2013 unless Congress steps in again to delay the cost savings. The CBO estimates that unless these cuts are taken, as hoped for in Obama Care, the national debt would increase by over $300 billion over the next decade.
Who really thinks that our politicians will have enough guts to actually make these cuts as specified under Obama Care going forward? No way they tick off the senior citizen voting bloc and the doctor and hospital lobbies. Any legislation, like Obama Care, that relies on the courage of politicians, is doomed to failure. Keep an eye out for the validity of this position if in the fourth quarter of 2012 another "temporary" delay is made to Medicare payment reductions.
- "The Hill" reported this week that the Obama administration is funneling about $500 million to the IRS to help set up the enforcement aspect of Obama Care. This includes the mandate that all Americans purchase health care insurance or become criminals in the eyes of the law.
Given that criminals currently bilk the Federal government and Americans taxpayers out of over $100 billion a year through organized crime and other criminal/fraud activities, wouldn't this half billion dollars be better spent and be more lucrative going after current Medicare and Medicaid criminals rather than current, law abiding citizens?
- In contrast to the negative recent news on health care, consider some recent good news. According to a USA Today blurb that appeared in the January 20, 2012 issue of The Week magazine, cancer fatality rates for men have dropped by 23% over the past two decades and by 15% for women. Imagine how much higher our nation's health care costs would have been today without these advancements in medicine.
Imagine how much lower these health care costs would be if we could drop the cancer fatality rates another 20% or so in the next two decades. This is the public health issue we talked about above: remove the cause of high health care costs, don't try to tax it and government manage it.
The article points out that 577,000 Americans will die from cancer every year. How much money could we save as a nation if we focused on reducing that number by 20% a year within two decades, annually saving 115,000 lives in the process? A hundred billion dollars a year in cancer treatment avoidance? Two hundred billion dollars a year?
Better eating habits, better exercise habits, reduced smoking, those are the public health issues that we already know work and produce happier citizens. Consider an article from the March 19, 2012 issue of Business Week magazine. The PepsiCo company rolled out an employee wellness program four years ago that charges its employees a monthly fee of $50 a month if they smoke or have obesity related medical problems.
To support their employees, though, the company also provided classes to help employees break the nicotine addiction and to lose weight. The hope is that this wellness approach will reduce the incidents of cancer, diabetes and high blood pressure.
We have reviewed these types of programs in the past (http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2010/12/healthy-solution-to-our-unhealthy.html). They have proven very effective in improving community health. They encourage healthy behavior instead of criminalizing behavior. They put personal responsibility for one's own health care in the control of the individual, not a government bureaucracy.
Now, supporters of Obama Care point out some of the benefits that have already taken place as a result of its passage. Kids get to stay on their parents' health care plan until they are 26 years old. Some Americans are getting medical tests that they may have not been able to afford previously. Insurance companies cannot terminate someone's coverage for being ill. All good aspects of a very bad law.
These types of features are worthwhile considering going forward but it cannot be in the context of Obama Care. This law does not reduce the root causes of our problem, it just moves around resources via an unwieldy bureaucracy and more taxation. It is not sustainable long term financially so whatever short term benefits some Americans are currently experiencing, those benefits will eventually disappear as the financial burden of the law collapses the whole law, both the good parts and the bad parts.
More bad news about a very bad law. But not unexpected since this law never understood nor addressed the underlying root causes. It was purely a political class and government guess on how to fix a problem. Our politicians should have read Step 28 from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government," a step that lays out a logical, problem solving-focused approach to fixing this national problem. If they had, we would not have already wasted three years coping with Obama Care and would have been three years closer to becoming a healthier nation with a more efficient and less costly health care system.
"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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