http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/08/part-1-august-2013-obama-care-update.html
A lot things have developed and come to light since that series that need to be reviewed since we are just three weeks away form the rollout of Obama Care’s health care exchanges. Unfortunately, all of the news since that August series has been bad news with more Americans losing their jobs, more Americans seeing their hours cut, more Americans losing their existing health care coverage (which was predicted years ago by the Congressional Budget Office), and other disasters of reason, implementation, and sanity.
Over the next day or so we will do a bunch of quick hits on news stories that have arisen over the past month. The detailed reasoning and discussions of why Obama Care is and will continue to be a failure was embedded in that August series. Our update this month is just the ruins it has wrought on America and its citizens.
1) We have already reported many times on how schools, universities, companies, small businesses, unions, and government entities are reducing or completely eliminating their healthcare coverage for their employees and students because of Obama Care. Taylor University of Indiana recently joined that list.
A letter sent to parents of students at Indiana’s Taylor University this summer explains the school had to choose between dropping student insurance coverage completely or raising premiums by about 110 percent (from $430 to $946 annually for U.S. students). Taylor chose the first option, explaining that the school’s insurance premium costs would rise even higher after the 2013-14 school year.
Thus, another one bites the dust as a result of Obama Care and students will now lose what apparently was a good deal for health care coverage.
2) Obama Care insults come in all shapes and sizes. This legislation will add trillions of dollars to our national debt and cost trillions of dollars to implement, all paid for by the American taxpayer. And given the recent announcement from the state of Illinois, a big chunk of that taxpayer money will be sent overseas to develop Obama Care IT systems in India.
This past June, Illinois Governor Patrick Quinn's administration awarded a ten year $71.4 million staffing contract to Cognizant Technology Solutions. News report indicate that the company is staffing operational headquarters in Chennai and Bangalore, India for the Illinois work. Thus, we have a costly piece of legislation that is unlikely to work and in the process we are sending millions and millions of dollars to overseas workers to do the work necessary to fail.
3) According to a recent Wall Street Journal report, IBM has announced plans to move about 110,000 retirees off of its company-sponsored health plan and instead give them a payment to buy coverage on a health-insurance exchange, in a sign that even large employers are not likely to keep providing the once-common benefits as medical costs continue to rise.
The move, which will affect all IBM retirees once they become eligible for Medicare, will relieve the company of the responsibility of managing retirement health-care benefits. IBM said the growing cost of care makes its current plan unsustainable without big premium increases.
The bigger story here is not that IBM is trying to shed health care costs. The bigger story is that IBM obviously does not see Obama Care resulting in curtailing or at least controlling the rise in health care costs and is dumping what used to be a valuable benefit for IBM retirees.
4) According to a Forbes article from August 28, 2013, the Federal government just issued it’s final set of regulations regarding Obama Care’s individual mandate that theoretically requires ALL Americans to carry health care insurance or be fined by the IRS. A few interesting, ridiculous, and insane aspects of the final ruling:
- The final set of regulations, not the whole set, is 75 pages long. Thus, just weeks before the whole individual mandate is set to take place, the country is supposed to understand 75 pages of Federal government regulation language. Not going to happen.
- The Obama Care fine for not having health care insurance will become less and less onerous over time. Right out of the gate, the fine for not having insurance is in the hundreds of dollars vs. the cost for getting health care insurance which is in the thousands or tens of thousands of dollars. This probably means that most uninsured Americans will not go out and get health care insurance, not incurring a big cost in doing so, and hope that the IRS does not track them down. In the future, the fine levels will rise according to inflation but the cost of health care insurance is likely to rise much faster, making the fine less and less punitive over time. Brilliant! (sarcasm)
- The IRS cannot subject taxpayers to “any criminal prosecution or penalty” for refusing to pay the mandate fine. Additionally, in contrast to normal tax levies, the IRS cannot “file notice of lien with respect to any property of a taxpayer by reason of any failure to pay the penalty imposed by this section.” The only way the IRS can collect an Obama Care fine is to take it out of an income tax refund. If you make sure that the IRS does not owe you a refund every year, not having health care insurance will not subject you to any Obama Care fine, penalty, or criminal record. Even more brilliant! (Sarcasm)
- If a person needs to buy health care insurance on their own, they are exempt from the individual mandate if the cost of that coverage is more than 8% of their household income. Thus, many older Americans, who generally pay higher premiums than younger people, will be exempt from the mandate altogether. Thus, we see that first set of Americans that Obama Care will exempt from the universal health insurance mandate, a mandate that was supposed to force ALL Americans to carry health care insurance (hint: more exemptions to come).
- If you don’t file a tax return or if your income is below the poverty line you are exempt from the Obama Care mandate.
- If you’re a member of a Federally-recognized Indian tribe, if you are Amish, or you are a member of another religious sect that meets certain criteria, you are also exempt from Obama Care’s individual mandate to carry health care insurance.
- In light of these exemptions, MIT economist and Obama Care developer Jonathan Gruber estimates that 40% of Americans who are currently uninsured are exempt from the individual mandate.
A whopping 40% of the uninsured are exempt. Wasn’t the whole purpose of Obama Care to get health care coverage for every American? And the legislation itself exempts the people it was designed to help? Insanity.
Add in those Americans that have the ability to do some simple math to see that Obama Care fines are miniscule and getting smaller over time vs. the need to put out thousands of dollars every year to purchase health care insurance, in combination with the fact that penalties are likely to be small and punishment non-existent, and it becomes pretty obvious that this is the worse piece of legislation, from a reality and logic perspective, that was ever enacted.
5) Obama Care is ravaging many segments of our population. It strips $700 billions out of future Medicare and Medicaid budgets which is likely to have negative impact on seniors’ medical needs. It is forcing doctors to retire early rather than put up with another massive and ineffective government bureaucracy. Current day workers are losing their jobs, their work hours, and current health care insurance as a result of Obama Care. Younger Americans are being forced to legally buy a product, health care insurance, that they may not need, want or be able to afford.
But here are actually a few small segments of America that are profiting and doing well as a result of Obama Care, as pointed out in a recent article by the Heritage Foundation, The Hill reports on how dozens of former staffers who wrote and implemented the law are now “cashing in,” trading their expertise in developing Obama Care’s legislation for big bucks: “Obama Care has become big business for an elite network of Washington lobbyists and consultants who helped shape the law from the inside. More than 30 former administration officials, lawmakers and congressional staffers who worked on the healthcare law have set up shop on K Street since 2010….
“When [Vice President] Biden leaned over [during healthcare signing] and said to [President] Obama, ‘This is a big f’n deal,’” said Ivan Adler, a headhunter at the McCormick Group, “he was right.””
Lobbyists win, Americans lose. Just another day in Washington.
That completes the first set of quick hitters on the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. More to follow tomorrow…and the next week, next month, and next years as long as this horrid, illogical, and poorly written piece of legislation stays on the books.
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