November, 2016, Part 3, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Higher Costs, Less Choice, and Obama's Alternative Reality

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 its 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 healthcare 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 healthcare 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 healthcare 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: 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 healthcare 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 insurance premiums, 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.

This week we will be reviewing the latest unfolding disasters from the worst piece of legislation ever written by Washington:

1) A recent article by the Bloomberg news service reinforced how bad things are imploding for the entire Obama Care process:

• At least 1.4 million Americans will likely lose their Obama Care policies since so many insurance companies are leaving the Obama Care market.
• And that 1.4 million estimate covers only 32 states since data for the other 18 states was not available or not provided by state insurance agencies.
• This is about 14% of the entire population covered by Obama Care policies, an incredible churn rate.
• The loss of Obama Care competitors in insurance markets across the country will result in fewer insurance options being available and those that are still available will be more expensive and likely to not include the same doctor and hospital networks.
• S&P Global Ratings sees negative or very little positive growth in the number of people covered by Obama Care policies in 2017.
• In Minnesota, 20,000 people will be losing their Obama Care insurance coverage since the Blue Cross Blue Shield insurer in that state is getting out of the Minnesota market, forcing those 20,000 people to look at the remaining Obama Care policy plans that will be increasing in cost by at least 50% in 2017.
• Charles Gaba, who tracks the impact of the Obama Care legislation at ACASignups.net, estimates that it is not 1.4 million people who will lose access to their Obama Care insurance policies but that 2 to 2.5 million will lose access to their current policies in 2017.
• The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that more than 19% of people in the Obama Care insurance market will have only one insurer to chose from in 2017.
• In North Carolina, only one Obama Care insurer will be available in the state’s 95 out of 100 counties since Aetna and UnitedHealthcare have dropped out of the Obama Care market in that state.
• Those dropouts will cause 284,000 North Carolina residents to seek a new insurance plan but be left with only one Obama Care provider to choose from.
• 117,000 residents in Tennessee will lose access to their current Obama Care plans since UnitedHealthcare and Blue Cross Blue Shield have pulled out of the Obama Care market in that state.

As we have said many times before, we do not think that you could have tried to design a plan for failure any better than the failure that is Obama Care.

2) Randy Weiss, writing for the Minutemen News website on November 6, 2016, reviewed what is either a bald faced lie by the President or a delusional President that is completely out of touch with reality. At a recent Hillary Clinton rally, the President boldly proclaimed that relative to Obama Care, “Because premiums are going up, it’s true premiums are going up for a handful of people that don’t get tax credits.”

“Are going up for am handful of people?” Let’s try and figure out what his definition of “a handful of people” are:

• Earlier this week we cited numerous sources that agree that 23% of those Americans currently under Obama Care policies do not receive tax credits to help offset Obama Care insurance premium increases.
• If we use the standard estimate that about 10 million Americans are now covered by Obama Care insurance policies, than about 2.3 million Americans are what Obama calls a “handful of people.”
• A city of 2.3 Americans would make it the fourth largest city in the country, trailing only New York City, LA, and Chicago in population.
• It would be a city bigger than Houston, Phoenix, Philadelphia, San Antonio, and San Diego.
• It would have a population bigger than the population of Dallas and San Jose COMBINED.
• It would have a population bigger than the population of Seattle, Charlotte, and Fort Worth COMBINED.
• Its 2.3 million population would have more people than the population of fifteen states’ entire population.
• It would have more people than the population of Alaska, Wyoming, and Vermont COMBINED.

And as we said before, while 77% of Obama Care policy owners will not pay for the entire amount of their premium increases, they all will pay some part of that increase and the American taxpayer will pay the remainder; those premium cost increases do not magically go away, they are paid for by other taxpayers and increase in the overwhelming national debt load. In no way did Obama fulfill his promise of “bending the cost curve” of health care costs in this country, all he did was camouflage where those costs were being paid.

And of course, his smugness does not address the increase in deductible levels. Even if 77% of Obama Care policy holders are getting some relief from the large premium increases, many times those policies are not usable since the deductible levels have gone up so high, often above $10,000 a year for bronze plans or family plans.

Delusional or lying? You decide but your answer does not change the reality that Obama Care continues to fail in keeping costs down in the health care industry.

3) The Tampa Bay Times on October 30, 2016 did a Politifact check on the assertion by Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz that “It’s four or five states where the number of insurance options has narrowed.” Politifact rated this assertion as False as they should have since according to their analysis, and the numbers we have been talking about this week, the number of states seeing less insurance company policy options is at least 29 states.

So, technically Wasserman Schultz is correct when she says four or five states are seeing their “insurance options narrow.” It is just she neglected to point out that at least 24 other states were in the same boat. Another politician’s lie or deception, much like Obama’s alternative reality where just a handful of people will see their policy costs go up. Tell a lie enough times and it eventually becomes the truth. Definitely in an alternative reality.

More of the same today: higher costs, less choice and competition, and lying politicians. More of the same types of disasters tomorrow.

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