Obama Care Update: Still Silly, Still Expensive, Still Having No Chance Of Being Successful

Given how much time we have recently had to devote to government waste and excessive spending, we have not checked in with another looming disaster in this country known as Obama Care. Within a week or so we expect to hear what the Supreme court justices think about his monstrosity. The hope is that they will strike most or all of the legislation for various reasons that we have pointed out over time including the numerous infractions it incurs relative to the Constitution:

 http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/04/lawyers-opinion-of-why-obama-care-needs.html

However, although we have not discussed Obama Care for a while, that does not mean that the scandals, waste, insanity, and other negative aspects of the law have not been uncovered by people far more expert in the field than me:

- According to a May 31, 2012 article in Politico, the White House and Congressional Democrats cut backroom deals with members of the pharmaceutical industry in order to get Obama Care passed. The industry agreed to pay for certain aspects of the bill but agreed only after the Democrats and the Obama administration agreed not to allow drugs to be reimported back into this country for resale.

Apparently, the drug companies sell drugs in this country at such high prices and mark-ups, relative to the rest of the world, that it is possible to buy drugs and medicines from U.S. drug companies, ship them overseas, ship them back into this country for sale, and still make worthwhile profits. The last thing the drug companies wanted was to have their margins slashed and undercut in the U.S. so they cooperated with the Obama administration to help pay for part of the health care reform components to protect their margins. Thus, they conspired to keep drug prices in this country artificially high, with the help, blessing, and force of the Federal government.

Thus, rather than helping bring down the cost of medicine and health care in this country, the Obama administration and the Democratically controlled Congress helped keep the drug company cartel's predatory pricing in place. And to add insult to injury, this information came out only because the House of Representatives went after emails and documents via the drug companies. The Obama administration refused to turn over the damning emails and documents showing how they conspired to keep drug prices high.

- In a June 7, 2012 New York Times article, a NY Times./CBS survey showed that:

• More than two-thirds of Americans hope the Supreme Court will overturn some or all of the 2010 health care law.
• Only 24% said they wanted the Supreme Court “would keep the entire health care law in place.”
• 41% said the court should kill down the entire law and another 27% said the court should overturn just the individual mandate, which requires most Americans to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty.
• Only 24% said the entire law should be kept as is.
• Only 43% of Democrats in the survey said the entire law should be kept as it currently is.
• Over 79% of independent voters wanted all or part of the law stuck down.

Thus, this survey and others like it show that America understands how bad the legislation is. The only ones still holding out seem to be the Democrats in Washington.

- A June 4, 2012 by the Wall Street Journal talked about a Federal government grant process that was created under Obama Care. The article was written by a doctor named Steven Greer who had actually sat on the grant process review panel for a short time. The panel was called the Center For Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) and was supposed to sponsor projects that would lead to the reduction of health care costs in this country.

Despite its lofty goals, Mr. Greer concluded "it is one more pork program and venue for political cronyism." The process is supposed to distribute a whopping $10 billion in grants over the next ten years in its quest to test better ways to deliver and pay for health care.

Given his work history and experience in this area, Mr. Greer served as a chairman on a panel to review grant applications for an effort called the Health Care Innovation Challenge. His panel's expert review and recommendations would theoretically help the CMMI process spend its taxpayer money wisely.

Unfortunately, the review process was anything but organized, fair, and efficient. His panel had only two weeks to assemble a team to review and grade over 3,000 applications, on numerous criteria, some of which were over 100 pages long. In the article Mr. Greer points out that "applications to the government's National Institutes of Health or the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, by contrast, undergo months of thoughtful review by scientists who are well-regarded in their fields. I began to wonder how much CMMI was interested in high-quality input from the grant reviewers."

The panel also ran into serious IT problems with computers losing reviews and notes. The process was so fraught with incompetence that the article reports that most of the panel;s members, including Mr. Greer eventually resigned over frustration.

Given the backdrop of incompetence, it should come as no surprise that the initial projects approved for taxpayer money were less than stellar uses of that money:

• George Washington University earned $1,939,127 event though its proposal claimed it could eventually reduce health costs only by $1.7 million.
• The Center for Health Care Services in San Antonio received $4,557,969 in order to try and save $5 million according to its grant application.
• A $5,862,027 grant was made to the University of Chicago Medical Center to "train and create new jobs for an estimated 90 individuals from this high-poverty, diverse community." A noble goal but the whole intent of the CMMI was to find a way to systematically reduce national health care costs, not increase those costs via the hiring of more medical personnel in the President's hometown.
• From a classic conflict of interest perspective, consider the case of a Dr. Donald Berwick. He was the  Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services from July 2010 to December 2011.  During his time at the center, CMMI was established. Under the CMMI umbrella is another program called the Partnership for Patients. In December 2011, the Partnership for Patients awarded a contract to the Health Research and Education Trust, which in turn awarded a subcontract to the Boston-based Institute for Healthcare Improvement—which Dr. Berwick ran for 19 years before he moved to Medicare. A source involved with Partnership for Patients told Mr. Greer about the relationship.

Conflicts of interest, programs that cost more than the amount they are supposed to save, and using the money for purposes that it is not supposed to be used for. What a mess and waste.

- An Associated Press report from May 30, 2012 reported on how a once popular small business tax credit created by Obama Care has been less than successful. Only 170,300 U.S. businesses out of a pool of as many as 4 million potentially eligible claimed it in 2010, about 4 percent.

A recent government report found the tax credit time-consuming to apply for and not rewarding enough to be financially attractive. According to a recent audit by the General Accountability Office (GAO):

• The tax credit is structured so its biggest benefits go to very small companies paying low wages. About 4 out of 5 these small businesses don't offer coverage, and the tax credit is not sufficient to encourage them to start doing so. The average credit claimed in 2010 was only about $2,700, relatively small vs. the cost of introducing a new health care insurance program for a very small business.
• Many small companies did not qualify for the credit because  they paid fairly decent wages. The GAO report quoted an unidentified tax preparer who explained that "people get excited that they're eligible and then they do the calculations and it's like the bottom just falls out of it and it's not really there. It's almost a bait and switch."
• The complicated application and tax form process is also likely reducing participation. IRS Form 8941, which employers must complete to claim the credit, has 25 lines and seven worksheets, according to GAO said. Some tax preparers told the GAO it took clients anywhere from two to eight hours to pull together required information and tax professionals another three to five hours to calculate the credit.

-  A Moneynews article from June 18, 2012 reviewed the opinion of noted economist and author Robert Samuelson based on a piece he wrote for the Washington Post. Mr. Samuelson viewed President Barack Obama’s focus on reforming health care as a centerpiece of his first term amounted to a "colossal error of judgment" that weakens the economic recovery and angers millions of Americans."

Mr. Samuelson also opined on his other Obama Care viewpoints, many of which we have already covered:

• Obamacare increases business owner uncertainty and decreases businesses' confidence just when an economic recovery from the Great Recession requires more confidence and less uncertainty.
• Due to the complexity of the law, people don’t know where they will get insurance or how much it will cost, another major uncertainty in the economy and people's minds.
• 30% of employers in a recent survey say they might drop insurance coverage and pay fines. People losing coverage as a result of Obama Care is the exact opposite of what the law was supposed to do.
• Obama Care increases the cost of hiring new employees and thus discourages job creation by requiring employers to buy health insurance for some workers.
• Because the law's mandate exempts firms with fewer than 50 workers, that’s an incentive for firms not to grow and not hire more people.
• Instead of reining in health care costs, the exact opposite will happen, with Obamacare increasing health care costs.
• Obamacare will likely worsen the Federal national debt, the exact opposite of what it was supposed to do. Obama’s plan will raise Federal spending by $1.76 trillion by 2022, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
• The plan also favors older Americans and discriminates against younger Americans by forcing some young Americans to buy insurance at artificially high premiums to support the increased health care costs established by Obama care and likely placate the insurance companies by providing them more customers (the last phrase and accusation is my opinion, not Mr. Samuelson's).

Another expert checks in and does not like what he sees.


Another badly written and poorly executed process, courtesy of Obama Care. Just like Obama Care's short lived, poorly thought out CLASS program for long term care, did no one involved in the writing of this legislation have any concept of the reality outside of Washington? Apparently not, given how many components of this law are poorly written and out of touch with reality.


There you have it, the continuing stream of bad news from Obama care. Wasteful, idiotic spending where the proposed savings, even if realized, are less than the cost of attaining those savings.


A citizenry that understands how bad this legislation is but the people who wrote it still do not get it.

Conflicts of interest and funding misdirected to purposes it was never intended for.

Back room deals that the administration attempted to suppress and hide despite its promise to be transparent.

Hopefully, the Supreme Court can deliver us from this evil and we can start over on attacking the high health care costs in this country the right way, the sensible way, the non-political way, and with real transparency, not Obama transparency.

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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.

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