October, 2014 Part 4, the Unfolding Disaster That is Obama Care: Lower Quality, Higer Costs, Broken Promises, Bad Operations, And More

Over the past few years, but especially over the past fourteen months, we have had to devote more and more posts each month to the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. This legislation, without a doubt, is the worst piece of legislation ever passed, likely passed by the most inept and useless set of Washington politicians that this country has ever had to endure. The disasters from this law include at least the following downsides:

• It has and will continue to increase the national debt.
• It will leave tens of millions of Americans still uninsured ten years from now.
• It has restricted overall economic growth.
• It raised taxes on all Americans in dozens of ways.
• It has reduced the job growth rate in this country.
• It has turned many full time workers into part time workers or into unemployed workers.
• It has generally increased the cost of health insurance, both premiums and deductibles, over what was available in the insurance market before it was passed.
• The Constitution was violated any number of times when the Obama administration unilaterally and illegally changed components of the law without the permission of Congress or the American people.
• The American people were lied to over and over, directly by the President and Democrats in Congress, on the negative ramifications of the law.
• It has caused millions of American to lose access to the current insurance policies they had.
• It has caused millions of Americans to lose access to their preferred doctors, preferred hospitals, and in many cases, current medicine treatments.
• It has likely increased the volume of people visiting hospital emergency rooms.
• It has caused thousands of doctors to retire early or change professions in order to not deal with the bureaucracy and idiocy of the law.
• It has exposed the inability of the Federal government and various state governments to develop, launch, and operate any kind of successful program.
• It has exposed millions of Americans’ personal financial information to identity thieves.
• It never addressed, and thus, never resolved, the root causes of our escalating health care costs in this country.

I am sure that I omitted some of the negative ramifications of the legislation but you get the idea. To review past discussions of past disasters from Obama Care, enter "the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care" in the search box above. To see what disasters have popped up over just the past month or so, read on:

1) Robert Moffit, writing for the Heritage Foundation’s Daily Signal, did a nice job recently summarizing the disasters that came out of the Obama Care legislation in the first year of its existence. These shortcomings. learnings, and failures included the following realities:

• Despite a three year lead time and probably about a billion dollars spent, the Federal government could still not deliver a workable website for Obama Care polices on time and on budget.
• The only worse performance was a number of states that NEVER got their Obama Care websites up and working despite millions and millions of dollars spent.
• While the average annual deductible for employer-based coverage was a little over $1,000 in 2014, the Obama Care health insurance policies sold through the Obama Care exchanges had average deductibles nationwide that usually topped $2,000.
• These higher deductibles occurred, along with higher premiums of Obama Care policies, despite the fact that the President promised promise the typical family insurance cost would go down by $2,500 annually.
• Statistics for the individual insurance policy market show that the average annual premiums for single and family coverage rose in a large majority of state and federal health-insurance exchanges all around the country. 
• In eleven states, premiums for twenty-seven-year-olds more than doubled in 2014 vs. 2013.
• In thirteen states, premiums for fifty-year-olds increased more than 50%. 
• The Office of the Actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) estimated in early 2014, that 65% of small companies would experience health insurance premium rate increases, while only 35% were expected to have reductions. 
• CMS estimated that 11 million Americans employed by these small companies would experience premium rate increases, while only 6 million would see reductions. 
• A national study by the Heritage Foundation found that between 2013 and 2014, the number of insurers offering coverage in the individual insurance markets in all fifty states declined nationwide by 29%. 
• The Obama Care systems were so poorly developed that we really do not know how many American actually got insurance via the legislation, a disgrace from an operations and taxpayer perspective. Or in the words of the Congressional Budget office: “The number of people who will have coverage through the exchanges in 2014 will not be known precisely until after the year has ended.” One year after introduction and we still have no idea what really happened. Disgraceful.
• In order for Obama Care financials to work, the number of younger Americans obtaining Obama care policies needed to be in the 40% range. However, using the best sketchy data available, it seems that the actual percentage of younger, healthier people getting policies via the legislation is closer to only 28%, as announced by the White House on April 17, 2014.

Higher prices and costs, bad operations and planning, bad mix of customers, bad, bad, bad.

2) The overall purpose of Obama Care should have been to reduce the ever escalating cost of health care in this country. One year into the program, it does not look like it is working, at least yet, according to an October 13, 2014 Associated Press article:

• The article found that one in four privately insured adults in this country say they doubt they could pay for a major unexpected illness or injury, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, 
• The survey found the biggest financial worries were among people with high-deductible plans that require patients to pay a big chunk of their medical bills each year before insurance kicks in, a primary driver of both employer provided insurance and Obama Care policies.
• Edward Frank of Reynoldsville, Pennsylvania, said he bought an insurance  plan with a $6,000 deductible last year through the Obama Care national exchange but still ended up paying $4,000 out of pocket for a shoulder condition: "Unless you get desperately ill and in the hospital for weeks, it's going to cost you more to have this plan and pay the premiums than to pay the bill just outright. The deductibles are so high, you don't get much of anything out of it [his Obama Care policy]." 
• The poll found that 19% of all privately insured adults did not go to the doctor when they were sick or injured, because of costs while those with high-deductible plans, the figure was 29%.
• Seventeen percent of privately insured adults skipped a recommended test or treatment but 23% among of those with high-deductible plans skipped them.
• Eighteen percent of all adults went without a physical exam or other preventive care while 24% among those with high-deductible plans.
• Many of those polled claimed they made financial trade-offs to pay medical bills with 33% of all adults saying they cut back on entertainment, 18% saying they used up all or most of their saving, and 19% said they dropped down their contributions for retirement savings.
• Those with high deductible plans made even deeper cuts to other expenses.

Regardless of whether or not you have an Obama Care policy or not, it appears that the law had not had the intended effect after one year of reducing household health care expenses as promised by the law’s supporters since according to this poll, health care expenses are still causing a lot of hardship for a lot of Americans with no end in sight.

3) The midterm elections are on November 4, 2014 but the Obama Care exchange websites will not have the new 2015 insurance premium costs loaded for consumer review until November 15, 2014. Could it be that the cost increases for Obama Care policies for 2015 are going to be so high as to negatively influence election decisions? Or is it just a coincidence that the open period for enrollment in 2014 is a month later than it was in 2013? 

Given the track record of this administration for honesty and integrity, I know where I fall relative to this answer but I will let you decide for yourself: political maneuvering or coincidence?

4) David Hogberg, writing for Amy Ridenour’s National blog, is one of the foremost experts on the inner workings of Obama Care. He recently published some additional fun, but not funny facts, on Obama Care:

- We have discussed the reality many times that even though you may now have health insurance via Obama Care, it does not mean you have quality health insurance via Obama Care. Mr. Hogberg cites a recent study the Avalere organization did for the American Heart Association:

• The study looked at the doctors available through three lower cost silver plans on the Obama Care exchanges in 10 metropolitan areas.  
• Avalere analyzed whether the silver plans covered the top 10 physicians in a metropolitan area in three specialties: cardiologists, neurologists, and diagnostic radiologists. 
• A physician was included in the list of 10 if he was one of the 10 highest in terms of Medicare payments, with the assumption that higher Medicare payments was a surrogate for being in demand in his specialty field. 
• The study found that in many metro areas, Obama Care customers had access to few, if any, of the top ten doctors in that specialty and that metro area.
• In Atlanta, Chicago, and Los Angeles, for example, there was zero access to the top ten cardiologists.

You have insurance but you do not have quality health care.

- Mr. Hogberg also cited a recent LA Times article that reported that: 

• The “state’s largest health insurers are sticking with their often-criticized narrow networks of doctors, and in some cases they are cutting the number of physicians even more, according to a Times analysis of company data.” 
• California insurer HealthNet is terminating one of its Obama Care Preferred Provider Network plans and “switching to a plan with 54% fewer doctors and no out-of-network coverage, state data show.”
• Despite the reduced network, "premiums for that new stripped-down policy are going up as much as 9% compared with pricing for the PPO….HealthNet said its cutbacks were necessary to avoid even steeper rate hikes.”

That will do it for today, more of the same: higher costs, lower quality, less choice, more stress, failed objectives, broken promises. And more of the same tomorrow.

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