- First of all it will never work in reining in the high cost of health care in this country since it never addressed the underlying root causes of our high costs, mistakenly implementing a Rube Goldberg like health insurance solution for what is mostly a public health problem.
- It will add over a trillion dollars to the national debt even though Obama promised it would not add “a single dime” to the debt.
- It has stifled economic growth and job creation.
- It has increased taxes on every American, either directly or indirectly, despite Obama’s promise that it would not.
- It has forced upwards of seven million Americans to lose access to their preferred health insurance policies.
- It has caused millions of Americans to lose access to their preferred Doctors, hospitals, and current medical treatments.
- Nationally, it has increased the cost of health care premiums and deductibles as compared to before the legislation was passed.
- It has opened up millions of Americans to the real threat of identity theft since Obama Care’s data systems security protocols are woefully inadequate.
- Even those that have obtained health care insurance under Obama Care policies are finding that their choice of doctors and hospitals are extremely narrow and more narrow than before the legislation was passed, resulting in many policy holders not getting access to the premier doctors and hospitals in this country.’The legislation has made a shortage of primary care physicians even worse since it is forcing primary care physicians to either retire earlier of move on to over options.
- Ten years from now the Congressional Budget Office predicts that tens of millions of Americans will still be without health care insurance coverage, the primary reason for the legislation in the first place.
- It has burdened the failing Medicaid system with millions of more applicants without fixing the massive problems with the system, causing more and more doctors to discontinue taking Medicaid and in some cases, Obama Care patients, resulting in the cruel irony that “you finally have health insurance but you do not have health care.”
- It failed to deliver on the Obama promise that the average American family would see a $2,500 annual reduction in their health insurance costs.
- While the legislation was supposed to reduce the number of emergency room visits, it has actually increased the number of emergency room visits.
- While it was supposed to make people healthier, the legislation’s resultant high co-pay levels and high deductible levels has forced many Obama Care patients to defer medical treatment because of the higher costs.
This is our third post for this month that looks at the latest Obama Care disasters and fiascoes:
1) People with foresight predicted this would happen this tax season and they were right, many Americans are finding out that maybe Obama Care subsidies were not as generous as they thought. The whole point of Obama Care was to get people health care insurance and for those that could not afford it, Obama promised that the American taxpayer would pay for their insurance premiums, based on a sliding scale of income.
According to a recent CNN/Money article, Janice Riddle is one of likely millions of Americans who are getting a bad surprise as they file their taxes this year:
- Ms. Riddle applied and obtained an Obama Care insurance policy in 2014 when she was unemployed.
- She was also granted a hefty Federal monthly subsidy of $470 a month to help pay for the policy, leaving her with a monthly premium of $1 a month for the least expensive policy available.
- She was then fortunate enough to land a full time job with an insurance agency but kept her Obama Care policy in force since the employer did not provide health insurance coverage.
- She never notified the Obama Care health insurance exchange of her change in job status and as a result her subsidy stayed in effect for the entire year. Now she has found out that she now has to return the ENTIRE subsidy as a result of getting a job, needing to find almost $6,000 immediately to file with her tax return.
- This large, one time IRS cost has forced her to dip into her savings to pay back her Obama Care bill.
- The ironic part is that she never made use of the coverage during the year but still has to pay back the money.
Jackson Hewitt, a company that provides tax filing services, estimates that 53% of their clients who received Obama Care subsidies will have to pay back all or some of those subsidies in April. One Hewitt customer will have to pay back $12,000.
Again, those were the rules. But one would have thought there would have been a better way of doing this process as opposed to having billions of dollars flowing out from the American taxpayer to Obama Care policy holders and then a few months later forcing those policy holders to send billions of dollars back. Insanity.
2) But Federal subsidy paybacks are not the only area of Obama Care confusion. According to the Associated Press, three Democratic Congressmen are worried that many Americans do not know that they will be forced to pay a tax penalty this April if they did not sign up for any kind of health insurance by February 15 this year. That is part of the legislation, fail to get insurance, pay a penalty.
The three Congressmen were avid supporters of the law as it was debated and approved in 2009 and 2010. Now five years later, they are in a panic that some Americans may not be aware of the penalties they helped get approved into law and want the Obama administration to extend the sign up deadline beyond February 15.
If approved, this would be another possibly illegal and un-Constitutional violation, something that is a trend with this administration and this legislation: don’t like a deadline that is written into the law, then just unilaterally change it.
Two pieces of advice/opinion for these three Congressmen:
- You’ve had five years to get the word of the penalties out to your constituents, failure to do so is on your heads since your were big supporters of this lousy legislation to begin with.
- Do you really think that granting a few more weeks to sign up to avoid the penalties is going to make any difference? If you could not educate Americans about the legislation that you supported in five years, what chance of making any kind of difference do you think there is to do the job in five weeks or so?
3) You know that a piece of Obama legislation is bad when the New York Times turns on it as it did in a February 7, 2015 article by Elisabeth Rosenthal. Her article covers two general areas relative to Obama Care, what the overall view is and what some of the individual horror stories have been.
Let’s start with the overall views:
- A study by the Commonwealth Fund in February found that the rise in health insurance premiums in employer based plans has slowed in 31 states since the passage of Obama Care. But this conclusion and results could have been caused by any number of factors, especially since Obama Care so far has had minimal impact on medium and large sized companies and their employer based plans.
Additionally, even if the rise has slowed, that comes no where close to the Obama promise that American families would see an average DECREASE in their annual health care premiums. According to Commonwealth, the rate of INCREASE has slowed in just over half the states, not decreased. Which also means that nineteen states have seen health care costs rise quicker since the passage of Obama Care, possibly wiping out a lot of the slowing in the 31 states.
And really, does this statistic have any relevance to an article on Obama Care since the legislation has not really started to directly affect employer based plans for most Americans?
- Of more relevance from the Commonwealth study was the finding that patients are paying more in health care expenses than ever before, which is especially bad since overall, wage growth in this country has been stagnant under the Obama administration. Still rising healthcare costs, even if at a slower rate combined with no or little wage growth, makes health care ever more expensive, the exact opposite of what Obama Care was supposed to do.
- The study also found that almost 10% of median household income now has to be used to pay insurance policy premiums and deductibles. And this 10% does not include payments for other health expenses such as co-pays and uncovered drugs and other medical services.
- The Times article also noted that a recent New York Times/CBS poll found that 46% of Americans feel they are having trouble affording health care, up a whopping 10% in just one year, a year in which Obama Care was rolled out. Something is wrong when a piece of legislation that is supposed to reduce costs leaves people thinking and/or knowing that healthcare costs are going up and according to this poll, going up fast.
Okay, that is the bad news at 10,000 feet. What are some of the bad news stories, the horror stories at ground level in American families, as reported by the New York Times:
- New Yorker Karen Pineman bought an Obama Care policy even though she knew going into the policy that it had a more narrow network of health care providers than her previous policy, no out of network coverage, she would be paying more out of pocket to see her primary care doctor, and higher co-pays. Those co-pays came out to be a whopping $1,800 when she broke her ankle playing tennis.
However, when she tried to set up a follow up doctor visit with an orthopedist in her Obama Care network for her broken ankle, her insurance carrier said she had to go out of state to Connecticut to see a network approved doctor: “It was ridiculous — didn’t they notice it was in another state?” said Ms. Pineman, 46, who was on crutches.
Rather than travel out of state to see the doctor, she settled with buying a medical boot on Amazon and has also paid out hundreds of more dollars ($350) for physical therapy that her Obama Care insurance would not cover even though the physical therapist was in her network.
- Alison Chavez, who is self-employed, signed up for an Obama Care policy, hoping it would be an improvement on the plan she currently had. Plus, she recently found out that she had breast cancer so she did a lot of research to ensure her current doctors treating her cancer would be available in her Obama Care network.
However, smack in the middle of her breast cancer treatments, she was told that several of her doctors and her hospital were no longer in her plan's network. She was forced to cancel needed surgery while she scrambled to find yet another insurance policy that had her doctors in the network. Not the kind of stress you want when in the middle of cancer treatments.
- Dr. Alexis Gersten, a New York dentist, switched out her family and 11 employees to a new insurance plan after her current policy was terminated. At the time she did not know that it was an Obama Care policy. That’s when the problems started with the Obama Care policy:
- When her son needed an ear, nose and throat specialist, her new network was so narrow that the nearest in network specialist was a five hour drive away.
- Although her current cardiologist was on the network list of her policy, he said that he did not take her new plan. She now has to drive an hour to see a new in network cardiologist.
- A dispute with the new insurer about how to count deductibles left her stuck with a $457 pediatrician’s bill.
- As a result of the stress and hassles, she has dumped the Obama Care policy for a different one.
- When Andrea Greenberg called the help line of an Obama Care insurance carrier to clarify the difference between two policies, she ended up talking to someone in the Philippines who was reading directly off of a script: “I was really outraged. This is an important decision with potentially dire consequences. It’s not like you’re choosing a sweater.”
- Amy Moses went online to an Obama Care exchange and ended up buying a pricey insurance policy that cost $650 a month just to ensure that she would have access to her long time doctor. Shortly thereafter, her doctor’s practice was purchased by a hospital, which then dropped her pricey plan out of their and the doctor’s network. One year later, he was still listed as being in her network.
But no one bothered to tell her of the changes so when an immediate medical procedure was required she had three days to find new doctors that were in network to handle her medical emergency: “I literally had three days to find a new in-network internist and score an appointment to get a referral, or cancel my procedure. I was stuck in insurance purgatory.”
Stuck in insurance purgatory, sounds like the theme song for the entire Obama Care network. People stressed out in critical times of their lives because of how Obama Care turned their medical options upside down and inside out. Networks that are so narrow that it requires a field trip just to see an in network doctors. High costs for fewer choices. Large one time paybacks of subsidies. Unknown fines and penalties for not having insurance coverage. Politicians scrambling to cover their you know what and careers. And the New York Times actually pointing out something bad about the Obama administration. What a mess.
Another more post tomorrow on the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care.
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
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
No comments:
Post a Comment