December, 2015, Part 1, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Broken Pormises,Broken Economics, and More

Every month for years now we have had to discuss how bad Obama Care is turning out to be under the continuing theme, “the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care.” This month is no different. As the legislation continues to march through America, driving up health care and health insurance prices as it serves as dead weight on economic growth, it cements it rightful place as the worst piece of legislation Washington has ever produced.

It never had a chance to be successful since it really never addressed the underlying root causes of our ever increasing health costs in the country:

• Americans eat too much of the wrong kind of food, resulting in obscenely high obesity rates for the country.
• Our food chain is infested with overdoses of high fructose corn syrup, salt, and other unhealthy additives.
• Americans smoke too much.
• Americans do not exercise enough.
• The country is in serious need of health care tort reform.
• Barriers to insurance company competition across state lines need to come down.
• Obama Care never “followed the money” to find out who is actually profiting from the ever escalating health care costs in this country and how to get those factors under control.
• Obama Care never got the immense amount of fraud and abuse in current government health care programs, Medicare and Medicaid, under control in order to save money to efficiently fund other government health care initiatives.
• Obama Care never put serious research money towards curing the major diseases that drive high health care costs such as high frequency cancers and dementia type diseases.

You cannot resolve any problem unless you understand and address the underlying root causes. No difference here but with a big exception: Obama Care legislation never addressed these listed root causes and thus, has no chance of ever being successful.

But it is not just missing the root causes of our health care costs that makes Obama Care so horrible. It resulted in millions of Americans losing access to their favored doctors, hospitals, and insurance policies. It has caused deductibles and co-pays to escalate substantially. It will likely add trillions of dollars to the national debt. It has exposed millions of Americans to higher than necessary identity theft chances. It has created government bureaucracies that are wastefully spending taxpayer wealth and being exploited by criminal elements. It has stifled economic growth and job creation.

These are just a sample of the types of idiocy that we have been reviewing for the past several years in this blog relative to Obama Care., To read those past posts, just enter the phrase, “the unfolding disaster,” in the search box above. Below we start with this month’s update of Obama Care, the worst piece of Washington legislation ever passed.

1) We have often pointed out that Obama Care is a disaster when it comes to employment and economic growth. A recent analysis from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) confirmed that reality: “Some people would choose to work fewer hours; others would leave the labor force entirely or remain unemployed for longer than they otherwise would.” In total, the CBO estimates that the legislation will now shrink the total U.S. workforce by just under 1% because of the law or about 2 million full time jobs. 

Thus, the taxes, fines, and aspects of the legislation will cause Americans to make difficult financial decisions that will affect not only their own personal careers and identity but will also reduce the economic vitality and tax base of the country. Compare this dismal reality vs. what Obama Care supporters once promised:

• Nancy Pelosi stated confidently, and incorrectly in 2011, that: “Four million jobs will be created by the legislation when it is fully in effect.” Thus, she was only off by six million, the four million jobs that did not materialize and the two million jobs that will be destroyed by the law.
• In 2010, Pelosi said that Obama Care would create 400,000 jobs “almost immediately.”
• When those two idiotic forecasts turned out to be idiocy, Obama Care supporters tried to get out of forecasting business and weakly argued that Obama Care would give Americans more time to spend with their family since they would not be working as much. Pathetic.

Not only did the Obama Care cheerleaders get the whole unemployment/employment picture wrong, they also screwed up the following predictions:

• This law did not create jobs as Democrats promised.
• This law did not reduce emergency room visits as Democrats promised.
• This law did not “bend the cost curve” as Democrats promised.
• This law did not allow millions of Americans to keep their preferred doctors, hospitals,and health care plans as Democrats promised.
• This law did not deliver low cost health insurance plans to over 20 million uninsured Americans by 2016 as Democrats promised.
• This law did not result in enough younger and healthier Americans signing up for Obama Care policies as Democrats promised.
• This law did not set up two dozen vibrant health insurance co-ops across the country offering low cost/high quality health insurance coverage as Democrats promised. In fact, over half of the two dozen have already folded.

Despite these obvious and real failures, Hillary Clinton, the front runner to become the Democratic Party’s Presidential nominee next year proclaimed that the law is "working." Not in this reality is it working, makes you wonder what color the sky is in Hillary’s world if she thinks that the myriad of Obama Care failures somehow constitutes “working.”

2) Over the past couple of months we have extensively reviewed how over half of the insurance co-ops that were set up across the country under Obama Care have already gone out of business because they were financial failures. These failures have probably resulted in over a $1 billion of taxpayer wealth that will never be recovered.

Recent news reports provide a quick review on how the New York co-op, the Health Republic Insurance of New York, was such a disaster:

• The Greater New York Hospital Association claims that the now defunct co-op still owes it at least $165 million.
• The Medical Society of New York says that 64% of its doctors in a 900 doctor survey say they are still owed money from the co-op.
• These problems are in addition to various criminal investigations of corruption and fraud that are ongoing in the state regarding this co-op’s operations.

Disaster is too mild an adjective to describe what went on with taxpayer money in New York.

3) Not to be mistaken with the co-ops, over a dozen states set up online state exchange websites where customers could go online and choose an insurance policy for themselves and their families from insurance companies that sold insurance through the Obama Care exchanges. Many of these state exchanges have already collapsed, with at least one collapsing before it signed up a single Obama Care customers.

Recently, Congressional hearings were convened which looked into the how the American taxpayer, via the Obama administration, spent hundreds of millions of dollars on state level exchanges that have already collapsed and have been abandoned. The hearings discussed a recent Government Accountability Office audit that found that none of the remaining state exchanges are “fully operational” despite five years of effort and $1.45 billion in information technology spending of taxpayer wealth.

Five years, $1.45 billion and NOT fully operational yet. Complete incompetence at every possible level.

More disasters every month including the findings today that the law is hurting economic growth, killing careers and job choices, has wasted billions of taxpayer dollars, and is still a mess after five years of pathetically trying to get it right. More disasters in the coming days.