February, 2015, Part 2, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Less Competition, Less Privacy, More Personal Agony

For over a year we have had to dedicate multiple posts each month to cover the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. If you follow all of the disasters from this legislation that we have discussed, you cannot help but conclude that this is the worst piece of legislation ever passed by Washington. 

Millions and millions of Americans have been forced off of their current and preferred health insurance policies. Millions have lost access to their preferred doctors. Millions have lost access to their preferred hospitals. Millions are paying higher premiums and deductibles than before. Over a trillion dollars will be added to the national debt. Unemployment and underemployment has been made worse because of the law’s criteria. Economic growth has been stifled. Millions of Americans are now at a much higher threat of identity theft as a result of the poor data system processes of the law. Many Americans now have health insurance, at a higher cost, but are having trouble getting access to health care as doctors are retiring earlier as a result of the law and many doctors are not accepting the lower payments they will receive from Obama Care insurance customers. And after tens years, there will likely still be tens of millions of Americans who do not have health insurance coverage despite the purported objective of Obama Care.

And as we have pointed out dozens and dozens of times, the legislation will never be successful because it never addressed the underlying root causes of our high health care costs in this country. Obama put forth an insurance solution to a public health problem:

• Americans eat too much.
• Americans eat too much of the wrong kind of food.
• Americans smoke too much.
• Americans drink too much alcohol.
• Americans do not exercise enough.
• America’s food chain is infected and infested with high fructose corn syrup and sugar.
• America is aging making citizens much more likely to be victims of aging diseases such as dementia and Alzheimers.
• Medical practice tort reform is needed nationally and has been shown to work at the state level.
• Cross state border insurance company competition needs to be encouraged.
• The Federal government loses tens of billions of dollars every year via Medicare and Medicaid through waste, inefficiencies, and outright criminal fraud, money that could be used to make America healthier, not criminals wealthier.

In the face if these ten root causes, Obama chose to ignore all of them and put n place a Rube Goldberg like government bureaucracy that has no chance of succeeding. To prove this point, let’s take a couple of days and look at the latest unfolding disasters being spawned by Obama Care:

1) The implementation of the Obama Care program was one of the worst data systems rollout disasters in the history of the country. Systems locked up, systems failed, systems lost personal information, the data security processes were called an identity thief’s paradise, a total disaster and embarrassment. Even more of an embarrassment in that the Obama administration had over three years and spent at least hundreds of millions of dollars preparing for the rollout.

One of the main culprits in the mega failure was a company called CGI Federal. CGI Federal was fired in the midst of the implosion of the Obama Care rollout and replaced with other companies who were at least able to get something up and running even if it was pathetic. CGI Federal was paid millions of taxpayer dollars before being shown the door after really delivering nothing of value in return.

But as the Washington political class and Federal government often do, they add insult to injury relative to taxpayer wealth. Merely seven months after CGI was fired from the Obama Care effort in the Department of Health and Human Services, the IRS rehired the company to help manage the enforcement of the Obama Care tax program. Unbelievable, a company so flawed is rehired less than a year later. Even worse, the company is set to receive $4.5 million on its new IRS contract that runs only until August, 2015.

An attorney, Scott Amey, for the nonprofit government watchdog group, Project on Government Oversight, called the company the “poster child for government failure.” He want on to say: “I am shocked that the IRS has turned around and is using them for Obamacare IT work.”

But failure seems to be synonymous with this company. It failed to deliver on its promises relative to Obama Care in Vermont and Massachusetts on their exchange websites. According to the Daily Caller reporting, the Massachusetts site never ended being operational and yet cost taxpayers $170 million that was paid to CGI.

Back to the old Einstein saying: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” Unfortunately, the Federal government uses this as a rule rather than the exception.

2) One of the real and large fears of the Obama Care data systems failures was and is the reality the systems’ security measures were not good enough to prevent massive identity theft impossible. However, as it turns out, identity theft from criminals is not the only threat to personal information that Americans may have entered into the Obama Care data systems.

It turns out that the Federal government itself is secretly sending consumers’ personal data out to private companies that are involved in advertising and marketing, according to a recent Associated Press report. According to the AP, information being shared with private firms could include age, income, zipcode, whether or not the person is a smoker, and whether the person is pregnant. It can also include a person’s computer Internet address, which apparently sophisticated marketers can eventually translate into a person’s name and address.

Apparently, this type of personal information is being sent not just to a few companies but to dozens of third party marketing and data analysis firms. While the administration has guaranteed that the information is not being abused and is used only to make the Obama Care data systems operations more efficient, this the same organization that guaranteed that if you like your current insurance policy, you can keep it, if you like your current doctors, you can keep them, that the Obama Care exchange process would be simple and easy, that Obama Care would not add one dime to the national debt, all of which turned out to be bogus guarantees, if not outright lies.

3) Speaking of Obama Care and Presidential lies, deceptions, and false guarantees, let’s go back in time a few years to 2009 and review another Obama promise, namely that the Obama Care legislation would set up health care exchanges that had a robust set of competitors in each exchange to drive down the cost of health care insurance:

We’ll…[create] a new insurance exchange — a marketplace where individuals and small businesses will be able to shop for health insurance at competitive prices. Insurance companies will have an incentive to participate in this exchange because it lets them compete for millions of new customers. As one big group, these customers will have greater leverage to bargain with the insurance companies for better prices and quality coverage.

Sounds great, turns out to be bogus, also like most other Obama promises and ideals that have failed relative to the law. Alyene Senger, writing for the Heritage Foundation on January 16, 2015, pointed out how this promise has fallen flat relative to competition and driving down costs:

• Her analysis is based on data taken directly from Health and Human Services government reports and from state exchange data sources.
• She examined how many insurance companies were actively present in each U.S. county prior to the implementation of Obama Care and how many are present now and actively involved in offering healthcare insurance in each county.
• She found that there is over 20% LESS competition now than prior to the law being enacted, the direct opposite of what Obama promised.
• In one third of all the counties in the country, there are only one, or at most two, companies offering insurance plans in the Obama Care health care exchanges, hardly a robust competition situation.
• In some states such as Kansas and Wyoming, EVERY county has only two competitors in the exchanges from which to choose from.
• In some states such as Iowa, South Dakota, Arkansas and others, every county has no more than three competitors. So much for the Obama promise that insurance companies will have the incentive to take part in the exchanges.
• In a whopping 58% of all U.S. counties, there are no more than three competitors’ plans from which to choose.
• While there are 14 insurance companies competing in Texas, more than half of the counties have three or fewer companies competing within their borders.
• And while the Heritage Foundation article acknowledges there has been some improvement in 2015 vs. 2014 regarding competition, its analysis does show that competition was still more robust BEFORE Obama Care and took effect.
• Thus, fewer competitors and fewer choices within those competitors since Obama Care tenets strictly dictate a limited set of different insurance options makes for a much less attractive and affordable set of policies than prior to Obama Care.
• The article does not cover the reality that by 2017, Federal subsidies to insurance companies in the Obama Care exchanges will be terminated, a situation that will in all likelihood further reduce the number of competitors since the one incentive for remaining, Federal subsidies, will be gone.

The county by county analysis is illustrated below:

4) We will wrap up each Obama Care disaster post this week with real stories coming from real Americans who have seen their lives seriously disrupted by the legislation. Their stories and the stories of many like them can be accessed at the following website:

www.ourhealthcarestoires.com
PAM - MAINE As President Obama reached out Thursday to millions of Americans receiving cancellation notices from their health insurers, Pam Pultz waited to see what the latest twist in the health reform law will mean for her.Pultz, who owns an Agway store in Dover-Foxcroft, buys her own health insurance through Anthem. The plan suits her needs and she wants to keep it, but she said she has been told to expect a cancellation notice by the end of the month because her $14,000 deductible is too high to comply with the Affordable Care Act.

“My fear is I’m going to lose something that I bought and paid for and shopped for,” Pultz said. “I’m not doing anything wrong, and I’m being penalized.”DAN - OREGON I am a Durable Medical Equipment specialist and after 15 years of helping people with medical equipment, I am now unemployed and buying my own insurance which costs me 10 times what I paid previously. Obamacare has ended my career and my affordable health insurance. [Note: I am assuming that Dan worked in the medical device field, a field that has seen thousands of Americans laid off from their jobs as a result of the medical device taxes embedded within the Obama Care legislation.]

KENT - NEBRASKA We had our long time blue cross policy cancelled because it was not good enough for O'bama care. The policy we got offered cost us 25% more premium and increased our deductible from 5000.00 year put of pocket to 12,500.00 out of pocket. It had to include crap like birth control and maternity which 50 year old people do not need. To apply for a subsidy we had to give out all of our personal financial data to lord we do not even know who.So today’s disasters include the fact that the company that bungled the whole Obama Care exchange data systems rollout was actually rehired to track down Americans who owe Obama Care taxes, we learned that not only do identity theft hackers likely have access to your personal information, the government’s Obama Care data processes are actually giving out that information to dozens of third party, private companies for them to exploit at our expense, Obama’s promise of robust insurance company competition in the exchanges has fallen apart, and three more Americans shared their personal stories on how Obama Care has screwed up their lives. Sounds about right for this very bad piece of legislation. More disasters tomorrow.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.loathemygovernmobama,washington post,politifactent.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