It is our contention, backed up with dozens of blog posts and hundreds of examples, that Obama Care is easily the worst piece of legislation ever produced and enacted by the Washington political class. To review previous posts, enter the search term, “the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care” in the search box above or just browse through the previous monthly posts over the past years to find out why this law is so bad.
Below are just a few of the many failings of the law:
- While the law did get health insurance coverage for millions of uninsured Americans, it also caused millions of Americans to actually lose their current insurance coverage.
- Rather than decrease the annual cost of health insurance for Americans households by $2,500, as promised by President Obama, on average, it actually increased the cost of household health insurance.
- Rather than being able to retain access to their preferred doctors, hospitals and drug treatments, millions of Americans lost access to their preferences despite Obama’s promises that they would not lose that access.
- Despite the promise that the number of emergency room visits would go down, the volume of visits has gone up.
- The law made a doctor shortage crisis even worse.
- The law’s weak data systems operations placed millions of Americans at a high risk of identity theft.
- The law has resulted in the American taxpayer subsidizing abortion expenses despite the promise that Obama Care insurance policy subsidizes would not allow taxpayer money to subsidize abortions.
- The law never addressed the underlying root causes of high health care costs in this country (e.g. a fat, sugar, and salt infested food chain, smoking
addictions, lack of exercise, aging diseases, etc.) and thus has no chance of
actually doing what it was supposed to do, reduce health care costs in this
country.
- The law has stunted economic growth and employment growth throughout the economy.
- The law will add over a trillion dollars to the national debt despite the Obama promise that it would actually reduce the national debt.
1) The fabulous website, Bankrupting America, recently highlighted some of the latest shortcomings of Obama Care. While we have already covered a few of them, they will all be reviewed again today with other breaking and depressing news in order to give a big picture view of the fiascoes, courtesy of the website’s “Top 5 Things To know“:
- According to the Associated Press: “Any people covered under President Barack Obama’s health care law will face higher premiums next year, the administration acknowledged Thursday. …Premiums for the most popular type of plan are going up an average of 5 percent in 35 states where Washington is running the health insurance exchanges this year and will do so again in 2015, said a report from the Department of Health and Human Services. …The modest average increases reported for 2015 mask bigger swings from state to state, and even within regions of a state. According to data released by the administration, some communities will still see double-digit hikes while others are seeing decreases. Most are somewhere in the middle.” Thus, the President’s promise that households would on average see a $2,500 DECREASE in their annual insurance premiums will likely see just the opposite: rising insurance premium costs.
- According to a recent survey that was done by the Physicians Foundation, “81% of doctors describe themselves as either over-extended or at full capacity, and 44% said they planned to cut back on the number of patients they see, retire, work part-time or close their practice to new patients. At the same time, insurance companies have routinely limited the number of doctors and providers on their plans as a way to cut costs. The result has further restricted some patients’ ability to get appointments quickly.” Again, as we have always pointed out, the good news is that you have health insurance. The bad news is that you cannot get in to see a doctor to use that insurance.
- Since a lot of those getting health insurance under Obama Care are getting it through Medicaid, it sure would be a better program if those getting Obama Care Medicaid insurance coverage could see a doctor. However, according to a recent report from the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), half of Medicaid providers do not offer appointments to Medicaid enrollees. Additionally, the inspector general report also found that more than one-third of health care providers could not be found at the location listed by a Medicaid managed-care plan.
- But it is just not the people getting health insurance on their own that are seeing health care insurance costs rise. The Commonwealth Fund recently published an analysis that analyzed cost trends for employer based health coverage from 2003-2013: “Looking at trends in private employer-based health insurance from 2003 to 2013, this issue brief finds that premiums for family coverage increased 73% over the past decade—faster than median family income. Employees’ contributions to their premiums climbed by 93% over that time frame. At the same time, deductibles more than doubled in both large and small firms. Workers are thus paying more but getting less protective benefits.” Paying more, getting less, not a good formula for success.
- According to the website article, recent surveys are indicating that Americans have to dig deeper into their own pockets to pay for healthcare and that this was the cause of the recent slowdown in the growth of healthcare spending, not Obama Care. According to The Wall Street Journal, “The trend is being accelerated by the Affordable Care Act because many private plans sold by the law’s health exchanges come with hefty out-of-pocket costs, which prompt some people to delay or put off seeking care.”
3) First, Jonathan Gruber, a highly paid consultant who helped shape and then deceptively hide the downsides of the law, called Americans stupid and that is why the law passed. Now we hear from the former Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on her take of how stupid we are.
As you probably know, she was in charge of implementing the entire Obama Care legislation which literally fell on its face at rollout time so it is a little nervy of her calling us stupid, given the failure of the law’s mechanics and operations so far. In a recent interview about Obama Care with a USA Today reporter, Sebelius blamed not her inability to deploy the legislation for the failure but blamed many of the law's problems on the fact that Americans lack her sophisticated understanding of insurance: “A lot of Americans have no idea what insurance is about. I think the financial literacy of a lot of people, particularly people who did not have insurance coverage or whose employers chose their coverage and kind of present it to them, is very low — and that has been a sort of stunning revelation. It’s not because people hid it from folks. It’s because this is a complicated product.”
So you see, it is OUR fault that Obama Care is the disaster it is. We are too stupid (Gruber) and have no idea (Sebelius). It is not the fact that the whole piece of legislation is nothing more than a huge Rube Goldberg contraption that is imploding on itself from government ineptness and complexity. And it is a contraption that never addressed the underlying root causes of our high health care costs, dooming it to failure before it started.
But we are too blame, not the likes of Sebelius and Gruber. Amazing examples of denial and living in alternative worlds.
4) The website, Personal Liberty, recently wrote about an Obama Care issue we briefly discussed above, namely that many Americans are postponing going to see doctor for a health issue despite Obama Care. The website cited the latest results in this area from a recent Gallup poll survey:
- The primary reason Americans are postponing seeing a doctor for a medical problem is high costs.
- Gallup found that even as a greater percentage of people gained health care insurance over the past year, more overall said they have delayed necessary medical care within the past 12 months.
- Amazingly, Gallup found that: “The percentage of Americans with private health insurance who report putting off medical treatment because of cost has increased from 25% in 2013 to 34% in 2014.”
- Middle-income households delayed going to the doctor 38% of the time in the past year, compared with 33% a year ago, an increase of more than 15% in just one year.
- Among households earning more than $75,000, the difference is even greater: 28% postponed medical care in the past 12 months, whereas only 17% reported delaying treatment when the same question was asked a year ago, an increase of almost an amazing 65%.
- Thus, it’s not just lower income Americans that are having trouble paying for their medical needs, middle income and higher income Americans are also postponing getting medical care.
- The Gallup report summary of the poll speculates that higher deductibles and copays, generally a downside of getting an Obama Care policy, may be causing Americans to delay seeking treatment since a lot of the early visits to the doctors are expensive prior to the deductible being covered and insurance policies kicking in.
So what did we learn today:
- Americans are delaying getting medical care despite Obama Care.
- Those that created Obama Care and failed to implement the bad creation are blaming us rather than themselves for the failure of the legislation.
- Health care insurance costs are still going up despite Obama Care.
- The doctor shortage is getting worse as a result of Obama Care.
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:
Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
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