The biggest failure of all is that the writers and supporters of this legislation never understood the true root causes of our ever escalating health care costs. By never understanding the root causes, their legislative efforts had little chance of actually eliminating the root causes. Instead, we are stuck with a Rube Goldberg like health insurance contraption that has little chance of fulfilling the President’s solemn vow that the average American household would see an annual $2,500 reduction in their health insurance costs.
The dozens of disasters we have previously reviewed can be seen by looking at past month’s posts or searching for the phrase, “the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care” in the search box above. Of particular timeliness is the multiple monthly posts we have had to do since last August. We have proposed our simple, root cause based solution to our nation’s health care problem in previous posts and will not be reviewing them again in this series, that solution can be viewed in past posts. This week we will be blitzing through what is another sad list of failures from this legislation.
1) The Obama administration took a victory lap back in early April when they claimed that about 8 million Americans had signed up for Obama Care, claiming this proved that the law was a success. However, we have also covered the fact that reputable sources have shown that five to six million Americans LOST their current health care coverage as a result of Obama Care. Thus, the net gain due to Obama Care is not eight million but just around two to three million when you take out those Americans who lost insurance coverage.
But that is old news. The new news is the world renowned consulting group McKinsey did an analysis of Obama Care enrollees and found that only 25% of the enrollees had previously been uncovered for health care insurance. Thus, there were not eight million newly insured Americans under the program, only two million newly insured, 25% of eight million.
Thus, billions and billions of dollars were spent only to get two million uninsured Americans insured, leaving about another 48 million uninsured. At this rate, it will take far more than two decades to get the primary objective of Obama Care fulfilled, hardly a success by any stretch of the imagination.
2) The LA Times recently ran an article that points out how the Obama administration is trying to manipulate the law to keep everything together as just about everything is coming apart. The Times article pointed out that an impending illegal Obama Care bailout is in the works for heath insurance companies across the country.
The Times found and reported on how a little noticed HHS regulation issued May 16 opened the door for the Department of Health and Human Services, and the American taxpayer, to spend billions of taxpayer dollars bailing out health insurance companies through Obama Care's "risk corridor" program. According to the text and intent of the law, the risk corridor programs were supposed to be revenue neutral for the Federal government and the American taxpayer. It was supposed to be funded by the insurance industry itself and the funds would be used to make up profit shortfalls of member companies relative to Obama Care.
But as the results of the Obama Care enrollees profile analyses became clearer, insurance industry lobbyists started doing their thing in Washington relative to the self imposed caps on the risk corridors' funds. Their lobbyist group in Washington, America's Health Insurance Plans, sent a letter to the Obama Care people in the government which demanded that, "risk corridors should be operated without the constraint of budget neutrality."
In other words, the insurance lobby wanted a guarantee that if Obama Care's losers needed more money out of the risk corridor program than Obama Care's winners were paying in, that U.S. taxpayers would be forced to pay the difference.
And that is what the HHS people did last week, according to the LA Times, putting the American taxpayer on the hook for another big industry bailout, not unlike the bailouts of General Motors, AIG, mortgage brokers, banks, etc. You cannot say this program was a success if billions of dollars are illegally paid out to some of the biggest companies in the country to cover their loses in a program they freely signed up for themselves.
3) The law was written so that if you are an Obama Care policy holder and your income falls below a certain level, the Federal government, via the American taxpayer, will pay you a subsidy to help pay for your Obama Care premiums. However, according to a recent Washington Post article, the Obama administration never built the necessary software that tie IRS records to the Obama Care subsidies data systems.
This foul up exists even though the Obama administration had promised Republicans in Congress that it would be up and running in time so that the American taxpayer would not get screwed in paying too much out in subsidies. Thus, according to the Post, there is likely to be a lot of financial shock next year when Obama Care policy holders file their income tax.
They will find out that as a result of the Obama Care income software having never been built and used, they received too large of a subsidy, requiring them to pay more in taxes next April. The Heritage Foundation recently discussed a study which estimated that up to 38% of Obama Care enrollees will see an incremental tax hit when they file their income tax returns.
How many Obama Care policy holders do we think will cancel their program next year when the find out that they are not entitled to as much financial help as the Obama Care effort promised them? That eight million claimed enrollees might take a mighty big step backwards next April.
4) We have previously reported on how hundreds and hundreds, possibly thousands by now, of companies and other types of organizations have had to cut back hiring, cut employee hours, and cut down the size of their staffs as a result of Obama Care, all of which is killing the chance for decent economic growth in this country.
And the downsizing pain is not over. A Des Moines, Iowa NBC affiliate recently reported that Mercy Medical Center, a hospital in Des Moines, will have to lay off 29 staff people, a cut that is being partly attributed Obama Care, according to Bob Ritz, president of Mercy Medical Center: “As the federal government and state payment systems continue to ratchet down on what they pay us and our costs go up, we have to look for opportunities to create cost efficiencies. And one way you do that is you reduce your management costs. So if we have a department that has a director and a manager and two supervisors for let’s say 75 staff, we may remove one of those positions to what we say are the layers of management.”
Just a another few dozen people who likely lost their careers and futures as a result of this dysfunctional law.
5) We will finish up today with a quote from my favorite politician, Nancy Pelosi. She is not my favorite because of what she does for America but what she does for blog writers everywhere, speaking up on topics where it becomes obvious she lives in different reality vs. most Americans. She is constantly spouting off numbers and results that are not real and not true with little understanding of what she is saying, at least in our world and reality.
Her latest out of this world observation goes as follows: “So what this legislation has done is it will save a trillion dollars over the lifetime of the bill, and it will — it will reduce costs for people. And even if they pay a little more in some cases, they’re getting much better care.”
Couple of problems, Ms. Pelosi:
- The Congressional Budget Office now puts the cost of Obama Care over the next ten years at comfortably above $2 TILLION in costs, not a TRILLION dollars in savings.
- It will not reduce costs for the majority of Americans. The professional group representing insurance actuaries have already shown that health care premium and deductible costs as a result of Obama Care will go up, and up substantially, in 45 states and decrease or stay the same in only five states
- They are not paying a “little more” in some states, they are paying a lot more.
- And finally, they are not getting better care. The Obama Care policies they are stuck with has a highly restricted set of doctors and hospitals allowed under the terms of Obama Care policies, so that they are not getting better care, especially when you recall that many of the best hospitals and clinics in the country, e.g. Sloan Kettering in New York, are NOT included in Obama Care policies’ coverage.
It just amazes me that one person so intimately involved in the nation’s political business can be so out of touch with the reality of Americans’ lives and the unintended consequences of her legislative efforts. I still wonder what the color of the sky is in her world.
That will do it for today but rest assured plenty more disasters will be put forth in the course of the next week or so.
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