Wednesday, February 11, 2015

February, 2015, Part 5, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: What Will Really Happen in 2017, The Identity Theft Threat, Personal stories, and More

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, efficiencies, 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 we have taken the past week or so reviewing the latest disaster, hopefully finishing up with them today: 

1) The Congressional Budget Office just did a new ten years view of the American economy and some of the numbers it came up with relative to Obama Care are devastating:
  • The Federal government will spend $1.993 TRILLION over the next ten years for Obama Care.
  • This over a TRILLION more than what Obama promised the cost would be to the Federal government and the American taxpayer.
  • Obama Care taxes will take $643 billion out of the economy to offset the almost $2 TRILLION in what the Federal government will spend on Obama Care expenses.
  • This $1.993 TRILLION will provide coverage to between 24 and 27 currently uninsured Americans but….leave between 29 and 31 million Americans still uninsured TEN years down the road.
  • Given that Obama Care was supposed to provide low cost insurance to get every uninsured American health care insurance and less than half of the objective will be accomplished in the next ten years, this certainly has to qualify as a Americans will have Obama Care insurance policy coverage in ten years and divide that into the Federal government's almost $2 TRILLION cost, we find that it will cost about $80,000 PER PERSON to execute the Obama Care legislation that fails to cover even half of the uninsured in this country.
  • Simple math shows that the American taxpayer will be an amazing $320,000 for a family of four to get health care insurance coverage under Obama Care.
This is certainly no way to reduce health care costs in this country, not when it costs over $300,000 over ten years to insure on four member family. As we have always said, you would have to work hard to come up with any process that is as broken, expensive, or as asinine as Obama Care.

2) The following story is not directly about Obama Care but there are some analogies I can make. Computer hackers recently broke into the computer systems at Anthem, a major health insurance company. that effort compromised the private customer information of almost 80 million Anthem customer.

This was a serious breach of security, as explained by a press release by the company: “Anthem was the target of a very sophisticated external cyber attack. These attackers gained unauthorized access to Anthem’s IT system and have obtained personal information from our current and former members such as their names, birthdays, medical IDs/social security numbers, street addresses, email addresses and employment information, including income data.”

Now, Anthem is a major private company that has been around for a while. I would assume that they had invested some major resources into the security of their customer information systems. And they still got hacked and hacked badly. Imagine how easy it is for hackers to hack the Federal government systems that contain your personal information via Obama Care’s data systems process. These processes are new, untested, were rushed into use, and were put together by a company that was already fired for incompetence. 

3) Doctor Ben Carson is a retired neurosurgeon, a potential 2016 Presidential candidate, and an outspoken critic of Obama Care. I do admire not only for how he has come in life starting with a very poor childhood also because he actually dared to criticize Obama Care with the President sitting a few feet away from him in a public forum. Afterwards, Obama staff people demanded an apology from him for speaking his mind but to his credit, Carson refused.

Dr. Carson was recently interviewed when he gave his strong opinion of what is wrong with Obama Care and why repealing it is not impossible:

“Healthcare is a gigantic issue and there’s no question that the system was broken and that we needed to do something about it. What we did not need to do is create another massive government program and we need to be looking at different ways of taking care of it, putting responsibility back into the hands of patients and to their healthcare providers. There are things that can be done. We keep listening to people saying ‘the horse is out of the barn, you can’t get it back in there, end of story,’ that’s a bunch of crap. We can do anything. This is America. Putting health care in the hands of government bureaucrats fundamentally shifts the power equation in this country. It takes it away from the people and puts government at the pinnacle. The people are supposed to be at the pinnacle. The government is supposed to conform to our will, not us to their will.”

Very well said. Trying to solve a problem with top down government dictates supported by a dysfunctional government bureaucracy is no way to fix a problem. The unfolding disasters of Obama Care that get spawned every month is proof of that fact.

For a related view of what Dr. Carson is talking about and who should be in charge of the country, go to:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2010/11/american-freedom-pyramid-where-it.html

4) Jonathan Gruber was the MIT economist most credited, and lately discredited, with constructing the infrastructure of Obama Care with its taxes, fees, mandatory enrollment, subsidies, etc. As we have seen and experienced, just about everything he included and all of his forecasts of what would happen in the Obama Care process has been a bust, a disasters, or a disappointment.

Given his failure to get anything right, let’s look at an alternative view of the future to see how really bad Obama Care is likely to be vs. the success that Gruber thought it would be, and which has turned out to be anything but.The following predictions were made by Stephen Parente in a relatively recent Wall Street Journal article. Using just the reality and dates that are pretty much already determined, take a look at this dismal future as a result of Obama Care:

  • Although average Obama Care health insurance costs are going up a moderate, single digit amount in 2015, that is likely a temporary respite according to Parente, and certainly not the $2,500 annual reduction Obama promised.
  • Two Federal government subsidy programs are keeping the cost increases somewhat moderate, risk corridors and reinsurance.
  • Risk corridors use taxpayer money via the Federal government to pay insurance companies the difference between what is spent on policyholders and what the insurance companies expected to pay.
  • For reinsurance, taxpayers via the Federal government are paying to cover the healthcare costs of the most expensive insurance company customers, those customers that incur over $45,000 a year in insurance claims, and thus, removing the risk of insurance companies covering the very sickest of us.
  • Given that the administration quietly expanded the risk corridors recently indicates that already the costs are higher than Gruber and the insurance companies anticipated.
  • These two programs are major reason why Obama Care policy costs did not rise too dramatically in 2015, the American taxpayer is keeping the insurance companies hole and their rates in check.
  • However, these subsidy programs end on January 1, 2017 and with their termination, insurance companies are likely to raise Obama Care insurance policy costs tremendously in order to keep their financials inoine with what they need to survive without free taxpayer money.
  • Given this situation and reality, Parente, along with an analysis partner, estimate the Obama Care Bronze plans will increase on average in cost by a whopping 45% for families and 96% for individuals beginning in January, 2017,once the two major insurance company subsidy programs go away.
  • Obama Care Silver, Gold, and Platinum plans will go up less but still go up substantially in 2017.
  • Although premium increases will go up less dramatically after 2017, they will still go up at a faster rate than prior to Obama Care’s implementation.
  • The Federal subsidy program will go up nowhere as fast, making Obama Care insurance policies more and more less attractive.
  • As costs get more and more onerous, people will get out of Obama Care policies, especially those people that are younger and/or healthier and feel they can weather a sickness or accident without paying high Obama Care policy costs.
  • Parente and his partner forecast this migration out of Obama Care insurance policies because of the large jump in costs will actually result in the number of uninusred Americans increasing, not decreasing as Obama promised, leaving more than 40 million Americans uninsured in ten years,m 10% more than who are uninsured today.

Amazing. If their analysis is correct, and their logic and data are not complex or unreasonable, than Obama Care, which was supposed to reduce health care costs and reduce the number of uninsured Americans, will actually increase health care costs faster than if it never existed and actually increase the number of uninsured Americans. 

Only in Washington can you set out to resolve a problem and leave it worse off than when you started at a cost of almost $2 TRILLION. Unbelievable.

5) As we have done every day over the past week in this series, let’s finish up with some heartbreaking stories about real Americans suffering through real trauma as a result of Obama Care. Their stories and many, many others like them can be found at:

www.ourhealthcarestories.com

ROBERT - SOUTH DAKOTA Since Obama has been the president, my health care costs have gone up five times what I used to pay without having any major illness.

LAURA - MICHIGAN I have been going to the same psychiatrist for 6 years. It is a service not covered by insurance therefore I pay out of pocket. At my last appointment the fee jumped from $120 to $180 simply because the new coding put in place by Obamacare changed. The service I received had not changed - just the codes.

I only have a certain amount of money budgeted for that service. I will either have to reduce the amount of visits or ask for a reduced fee from the doctor. I want this doctor to get paid everything he deserves - He is very skilled. But a 50% increase because of a change in codes.... NO.

KEVIN - CONNECTICUT I have been with Anthem Blue Cross for over 14 years. I liked my policy ... PERIOD!

The rate for my wife and I was $303 / month with a $5,000 deductible on each. We are generally healthy people and see no need to pay higher premiums to get a lower deductible.

Received a cancellation notice back in Oct 2013 and the information for our replacement policy ...

$928/month

$7,500 deductible each

The reason was ACA ... PERIOD!

We were lied to ... PERIOD!

Let me add to these three stories my own personal Obama Care experience via a good friend. This friend was uninsured and purchased an Obama Care policy in 2014, knowing that she needed to have major surgery soon. Given her situation and need for surgery, she purchased a Silver plan that had a monthly cost of under $0 a month after subsidies and a deductible of under $1,000. She chose a silver plan to get the low deductible in anticipation of surgery.


As 2015 dawned, she awaited for her mid-January surgery date since that was the earliest it could be scheduled. She had allowed her 2014 Obama Care policy to automatically roll over into 2015. Just days before the surgery the hospital called her asking for payment on her over $4,000 deductible. Puzzled, she argued with them, stating that her Obama Care silver policy was clearly less than $1,000.

To make a long story short, although she kept the exact same Obama Care policy from 2014 into 2015, unknown to her, the policy’s monthly premium costs after the subsidy is now over $140 a month and the deductible went from under a thousand dollars to over $4,000. 


She needed the operation, had to pay over $3,000 more than expected, and with the additional $1,200 in premiums a year is questioning whether or not it is still worth carrying the Obama Care policy, especially since the operation is over and a success. 

What a mess in so many ways. Personal suffering and distress, a program/law that does the exact opposite of what it is supposed to do,  personal information getting hacked, and costs that are just plain outrageous for no benefit. 

That will do it for this month’s unfolding disasters of Obama Care. I am sure at this time next month there will be a whole new set of disasters from the worst piece of legislation ever written by Washington by the most inept set of politicians ever to serve in Washington.


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