- Many, many Americans are reporting on how their health insurance rates and deductibles are going up dramatically as a result of Obama Care despite the promise from Obama that the average American family would see their annual health insurance costs go down by $2,500.
- Many, many Americans are losing access to their doctors and hospitals despite the fact that Obama promised that if you like your current doctor, you would be able to continue seeing that doctor under Obama Care.
- Many, many Americans are reporting that their current insurance policies are being terminated as a result of Obama Care.
- Many, many businesses and other organizations across America have curtailed hiring, stopped hiring, or have fired existing workers in order to stay profitable, a condition severely threatened by Obama Care.
- Many, many Americans are having their work hours curtailed as a result of Obama Care and are being turned in to part time workers.
- The data systems and websites that were deployed to support the sign up process for insurance through Obama Care health exchanges are deplorably designed and fraught with errors, down time, and other technical problems, resulting in extremely low successful attempts to actually sign up for insurance.
- The data systems and websites that were deployed to support the sign up process for insurance through Obama Care health exchanges are likely turning into identify thieves’ paradise because of faulty or non-existent security protocols.
- The expected long term cost of Obama Care has tripled in just three years.
- The legislation will add trillions of dollars to the already too high national debt over the next decade or so.
- Many components of the failing legislation have already been terminated ( e.g. CLASS) for a variety or reasons or have been postponed because of implementation obstacles.
- In order to make the Obama Care financials look good, the legislation steals over $700 billion in proposed funding for Medicare over the next decade, further endangering the financial health of that government process.
Dozens of times over the past three years, and six times in the past week, we have probably given hundreds of examples proving all of these points. We could probably do another dozen posts to further prove the disasters unfolding from the legislation, but as we stated above, doing so would just be more of the same, very depressing.
So today, we will tidy up some more mini-fiascoes from Obma Care and stop that line of reasoning and discussion for a while. In the next few days, we will be posting detailed analyses and commentary from several subject matter experts on the legislation and the bungled implementation that I can not do justice to in summary form. Thus, I will include the full text of their analysis and reasoning, all of which verify that this is the worst piece of legislation ever passed from a freedom, financial, and logistics perspective.
Finally, after the experts speak, we will lay out what needs to be done to fix the high health care costs in this country using a process for doing so proposed in “Love My Country, Loathe My Government.” It is a root cause based approach that would certainly be more effective than the laughable Rube Goldberg contraption that the political class put together and called Obama Care.
1) The Heritage Foundation recently released an extremely detailed, rigid, and comprehensive analysis of just what Obama Care will do to the insurance rates for Americans. The details of their methodology and detailed findings are available on a state by state basis at:
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/10/enrollment-in-obamacare-exchanges-how-will-your-health-insurance-fare
Some highlights, or lowlights, of their findings include the following:
- Residents in most states will see higher insurance rates as a result of Obama Care, and in many instances, much higher rates.
- Some states that will not see higher rates are the ones that already had extremely high rates to begin with so most of them will not be getting much relief from their existing high insurance rates.
- In Arkansas, a typical 27 year old adult should expect to pay 171% more for insurance under Obama Care, a 50 year old should expect to pay 79% more, and a family of four should expect to pay 25% more.
- In Arizona, those increases are 157% 42% and 12%.
- In Georgia those increases are 168%, 7y1%, and 21%.
- In Kansas those increases are 129%, 72%, and 22%.
- In Vermont those increases are 144%, 61%, and 18%.
- In my home state of Florida those increases are 75%, 75%, and 23%.
- In my former home state of New Jersey, the rates are basically the same pre and post Obama Care but those rates are still 20-30% higher than the Obama Care higher rates in the above states so that the promise $2,500 decrease Obama promised is not materializing anywhere.
- Most other states are all experiencing double digit, and some case triple digit percent increases in their insurance rates as a result of Obama Care.
- This analysis apparently did not analyze the increase in deductibles, another “cost” of Obama Care. We have already seen from previous reports that deductibles are increasing two, three, or more fold from what is available today as a result of Obama care.
Dreadful results. Now, supporters of Obama Care will claim that some of these rates will be less because of Obama Care subsidies. However, it is doubtful that subsidies will wipe out increases like the 171% increase for anyone age 27 in a state, never mind everyone age 27 in that state. Thus, the argument that subsidies will reduce costs is true but meager from a financial perspective.
And getting back to break even was not the promise, $2,500 less than current policies was the promise. No way with these increases and with subsidies is the average cost going to break even, never mind go down by thousands of dollars.
Another trend when you look at the data from this state level analysis is that almost without fail, the younger you are, the more you will be paying for insurance under Obama Care, in both absolute terms and relative to others in your state. Thus, this proves the hypothesis that we have always adhered to: Obama Care will result in the greatest intergenerational transfer of wealth from those typically less affluent in our society, younger Americans, to those that are typically the most affluent in our society, the Baby Boomer generation. Doesn’t seem fair.
2) Consider what some mainstream media sources are saying about Obama Care, sources that are usually not very hard or harsh on anything Obama does:
- New York Times: “For the past 12 days, a system costing more than $400 million and billed as a one-stop click-and-go hub for citizens seeking health insurance has thwarted the efforts of millions to simply log in, The growing national outcry has deeply embarrassed the White House, which has refused to say how many people have enrolled through the federal exchange. Even some supporters of the Affordable Care Act worry that the flaws in the system, if not quickly fixed, could threaten the fiscal health of the insurance initiative, which depends on throngs of customers to spread the risk and keep prices low."
- Ezra Klein, a prominent Washington Post journalist and supporter of Obama Care, said that the Obama Administration has badly fumbled the first real launch of the law, leading him to call it “a big failure.”
- Peter Roff of the U.S. News and World report explained that he lost his health insurance coverage because of the law, again contradicting President Obama’s claim that if “you like your health insurance, you can keep it.”: “The letter that came Thursday put the truth to the president’s lie. I would not be allowed to keep my current plan because it did not conform to the dictates of the new law and it was going away. And there was nothing I could do about it save enroll in a new plan because, as the letter also said, ‘you will be required to select a new ACA-compliant plan in order to continue your coverage.’”
- This is becoming a very real experience for many Americans. They’re being forced to choose a different health insurance plan, even if they were happy with the plan they already had, forcing them to pay for coverage that may not necessarily need or want.
- Regarding Obama Care rate shock, Washington Examiner journalist Paul Bedard took note of that reality: “For someone able to get the problem-plagued Obama Care website to work, the so-called ‘deals’ the system is coughing up around the country include $12,600 deductibles, co-pays of up to 40%, zero competition, and rate hikes of 260%.”
More of the same, just a plain old disaster.
3) Outside of the mainstream media’s reaction, consider what happened to a writer of the Daily KOS, one of the most leftist leaning, Obama loving blogs on the Net. It seems that he finally found out the reality of Obama Care despite loving the Obama administration when he posted the following experience:
My wife and I just got our updates from Kaiser telling us what our 2014 rates will be. Her monthly has been $168 this year, mine $150. We have a high deductible. We are generally healthy people who don’t go to the doctor often. I barely ever go. The insurance is in case of a major catastrophe.
Well, now, because of Obamacare, my wife’s rate is gong to $302 per month and mine is jumping to $284.
I am canceling insurance for us and I am not paying any fxxxing penalty [Note: he used the unabridged profanity in his post]. What the hell kind of reform is this?
Oh, ok, if we qualify, we can get some government assistance. Great. So now I have to jump through another hoop to just chisel some of this off. And we don’t qualify, anyway, so what’s the point? [my bold added]
I never felt too good about how this was passed and what it entailed, but I figured if it saved Americans money, I could go along with it.
Who knew? Well, most of us that understood the underlying failure of the approach knew this kind of rate shock increase would happen, about 80% for her and about 89% for him.
His reaction was similar to the lady we discussed a few days ago in California that supported Obama Care because it helped uninsured Americans get coverage but was shocked when she found out how much she personally would be paying for that coverage to occur. Duh…
4) Back to the mainstream media, CNN senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen has been trying for two weeks to sign up for Obama Care and sharing her experiences on CNN, a typically Obama loving news outlet.
Unfortunately, as she reported on CNN’s New Day program recently, despite trying for fourteen days including at hours that were claimed to be "off peak," she still hasn't been able to establish an account. Apparently she tried late at night, in the early morning hours. On the weekend, etc., all without success.
When outlets like CNN are down on an Obama effort, you know it is bad.
5) Last story of failure for today. The American Action Forum did their own analysis of what a young American will be faced with relative to monthly health insurance costs as a result of Obama Care. Their interactive map can be found at:
http://americanactionforum.org/research/premium-increases-for-young-invincibles-under-the-aca-and-the-impending
Interesting analysis, all consistent with the negative findings we have always reported about Obama Care.
However, their analysis goes a little further. They point out that the Obama Care business model needs about 2.7 younger Americans to enroll in Obama Care health insurance policies in order for the whole contraption to work. But they point that: “A cost-benefit analysis reveals that the cost of purchasing subsidized insurance is up to 10 times greater for this population than the cost of the mandate penalty. Premium spiral may be eminent, as many will find it financially advantageous to forego coverage, potentially limiting the actual number of “young invincibles” entering the exchange system to well below the administration’s goal of 2.7 million.”
If this likely foregoing happens, Obama Care likely crashes and burns under its own false assumptions.
Okay, as promised, this will end our monthly series reviews on the unfolding disaster of Obama Care, as we see it. Over the next few days we will be sharing thoughtful and insightful analyses and conclusions from people far smarter than me. Rather than try and summarize their findings, I think it will be better if you see their entire train of thought and how the reached the same conclusions of failure that we reached.
After reviewing their findings, we will go back to square one and lay out the plan that SHOULD have been used to finally tame the high cost of health care in this country.
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:
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http://www.robertringer.com/
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