February, 2015, Part 3, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Higher Costs, Lower Quality, More 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) We have already discussed the failure of the second largest Obama Care health co-op in the country, CoOportunity Health in Iowa. These co-ops were supposed to be an Obama Care shining star, providing inexpensive healthcare insurance alternatives to traditional insurance companies. CoOportunity took on many more customers than expected with a mix that was sicker than expected. This resulted in payouts for sick customers that overwhelmed premium payments.

David Hogberg, writing for Amy Ridenour’s national blog on January 30, 2015 provided some additional details of the failure:

• According to Mr. Hogberg, CoOportunity lost $146 million in taxpayer money before it went bankrupt.
• According to the Des Moines Register: “Federal officials wouldn’t let CoOportunity charge enough in premiums to cover those people’s costs and the carrier wound up losing piles money before dropping out in October.”
• Ironically, CoOportunity was a victim of Obama’s illegal move to allow some people keep their existing insurance programs despite Obama Care deadlines and schedules, which forced co-ops like CoOportunity to settle with customers that were uninsured and likely had a higher incidence of sickly, and more expensive, customers.
• Of the remaining 23 co-ops, Mr. Hogberg foresees a lot of problems.
• A recent report from rating company A.M. Best found that only one -co-op had NOT incurred financial losses by the 3rd quarter of 2014.
• The total financial losses across all of the 24 co-ops is about a quarter of a billion dollars.
• But this should not be a surprise since back in July, 2013, the Inspector General of the Health and Human Services released an analysis of 16 co-op applications. The analysis found that that there was “little evidence of private monetary support in any of the 16 applications we reviewed. Additionally, 11 of the 16 co-ops reported estimated startup expenditures in their applications that exceeded the total startup funding ultimately provided by CMS.” 
• So far taxpayers have been hit with over $2 billion in funding for these co-ops even though two years ago it was already known that they were financial time bombs. Fortunately, the funding for these failed experiments has been shutdown to avoid further wasting of money.

Just another unfolding, and expensive, Obama Care disaster.

2) The following covers ground that we have already touched on but it is good to review on a regular basis some of the many reasons why Obama Care has been a dismal failure with no chance of success. The following synopsis comes from an article written for the Heritage Foundation by Alyene Senger that reviewed five major reasons why Obama Care needs to be repealed:

• Obama Care increases the nation’s health spending by a disgusting $1.8 TRILLION over the next ten years despite the fact that it was supposed to “bend the cost curve," and reduce the high costs of health care in this country. Part of the payment of the $1.8 TRILLION comes from unprecedented cuts in Medicare to the tune of $700 billion. These cuts will likely result in senior citizens seeing a drop in the quality and amount of access they have to health care in the very years they need it most.
• Rather than increase the chances of people getting health care coverage, Obama Care has socked those that already had insurance coverage by forcing upwards of seven million Americans, who purchase individual insurance plans, to lose access to their current health care insurance, insurance that they were perfectly happy continuing with. But that is not the end of the damage. The Heritage Foundation estimates another four million Americans lost access to their employer provided health insurance coverage just in the first half of 2014. Finally, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that over 7 million Americans will access to their current employer provided health insurance by 2016.
• Millions of Americans have lost access to their preferred doctors and hospitals as a result of Obama Care. A study by McKinsey and Co. found that 48% of all exchange plan networks were deemed to be “narrow,” i.e. had fewer doctors and health care options than average, and of these 48% narrow networks, 40% were classified as “ultra-narrow.”
• Despite the President’s vocal deception that Obama Care would reduce the cost of health insurance coverage, in 2014, the first full year of Obama Care, health insurance policies obtained in Obama Care exchanges were more expensive than comparable plans from 2013 in the individual insurance market in 42 states.
• Obama Care contains 18 separate tax increases, fees, and penalties, intended to remove $770 billion from the economy over a ten year period. This removal will not resolve the issue of every climbing healht care costs and will stifle job creation, innovation, new business start-ups, and existing business expansion.

High costs, higher debt, fewer choices, more taxes, Medicare cuts, more stress for Americans and their families, no chance of being successful. Seems like you could not have designed a more perfect failure if you were trying.

3) We are concluding every Obama Care update this week with examples of real life people going through real life trauma as a result of this legislation. You can see and experience other tales of woe at:

www.ourhealhtcarestories.com

MARGIE - NORTH DAKOTA As if they have not stolen enough of our SS with obamacare my insurance has really hit me hard. I was paying $70.00 for my Diabetic Insulin every 90 days, now it costs me $800.00 every 90 days for the same product.

STEPHEN - NEW JERSEY Business premiums went from $1600 to $2900 for two families while our deductible nearly doubled to $5000. The pressure on our business to produce is ridiculous. I work constantly. We are dropping it if it goes up again.

JANETTE - CALIFORNIA The chiropractor who expects her premiums to rise, the 60s-something company manager who has to pay for maternity coverage, the Simi Valley contractor and many others who make at least $46,000 a year -- they all pound away at the same rhythm.

They say the middle class is once again getting tattooed, this time by President Barack Obama's health care reform.

"However you look at it, the son of a gun lied to us," said Janette Ramsey, a Bakersfield business owner with a weekend home in Ventura. She's losing her current coverage and expects to pay $50 more a month for a policy with nearly double the deductible.

"I think it's an abomination," she said. "... I'm going to pay more and get 100 percent less."

EMILIE LAMB - I’ve had to take a second job in order to pay for my ObamaCare plan. Given my health problems, the physical and emotional drain that this puts on me is difficult to bear. It’s also made it much more difficult for me to care for my ailing mother, who depends on me for help.

To read more about Emilie's situation, go here: 

http://nypost.com/2014/02/03/betrayed-by-the-president-and-obamacare/

Also, see Emilie speak about her hardship in this video from AFP: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2ibO2D9vt0 

Sad, sad stories of suffering Americans as a consequence of this ill defined failure of a law. Higher costs, lower quality, more pain and agony that was really unnecessary for a law that has no chance of working since it never addressed the root causes of the problem. But again, not unexpected since problem solving has never been a skill that the American political class possesses to any degree. More unfolding 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.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