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, sugar, 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.
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 copays 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.
At the end of each month’s review of the unfolding disasters of Obama Care, we take a few minutes to step away from the top line failures to examine and review the real life hardships that Obama Care has caused real life Americans. From higher premium costs to higher deductibles costs to lost access to favored policies, doctors, and hospitals, to all kinds of hassles and health emergencies, Obama Care at the personal level has been a disaster for so many families and individuals.
Some of these stories of Obama Care failures are listed below. The source of these experiences is, as always, the website:
RICHARD - MONTANA: I'm currently paying $229 per month on a plan from Humana that does exactly what I want. It'll keep me from going broke if something bad happens.
That Humana plan does not comply with ObamaCare. So it will be cancelled at some point. Originally it was scheduled to be cancelled at the end of 2014, now I'm not sure if it will be extended to 2016 or what.
The least expensive policy I could find that complied with Ocare was about $500/mo. and that was for this year. My understanding is that compliant policies for 2015 will be about 20% higher. I hope I can keep the current policy for next year, but I don't know. I am displeased.
DAVID, NEVADA - I was really looking forward to my $2,500 savings I was promised. My total yearly cost instead went up by $2,620 with a higher deductible. President Obama could not have been this far off in his prediction which means he knew he was lying and said it anyway.
JOHN - NORTH CAROLINA: My story has more to do with how many individuals and companies have decided that since they don't like the ACA, they'll use it as an opportunity to justify scalping. My family paid a reasonably affordable plan with BCBS through my wife's employer. When the ACA was enacted, our insurance rate when up almost $130 PER MONTH. This is insane! Also, due to my wife and I just getting married right before all of this happened, somehow the company 'forgot' to add me to the plan even though we'd filed the paperwork two times. When I went to healthcare.gov, I was shocked at some of the prices, and thought I wouldn't be able to afford any insurance and have to pay a fine (to add insult to injury).
EMILY - FLORIDA: I'm a retiree that worked for a Fortune 500 Company and had Wonderful Insurance Coverage which included Medical, Hospital, Dental, Rx, Vision and Mental Health. Due to Obamacare I lost my Insurance because of the Employee Mandate. I have Epilepsy, as a result I find myself in the emergency room often and admitted to the hospital all to often. Also, my prescription drugs cost are very high. The ACA did not meet my needs and what came close was not affordable and deductibles were very high. I took a policy on my own which was 3 times what I contributed through my employer but I had to cancel it because I could no longer afford it. So I have no insurance except Medicare. I had to go to the Hospital last week for 5 days, I don't know how I'm going to pay the bill.
BETTY - LOUISIANA: From KSLA 12: Thousands of people in the bayou state are among those discovering what Obamacare will cost them and many don't like what they see. Betty Foster is one of them. "I don't put the cost on these prescription drugs, but I have to have them."
Rates are rising for a lot of people, like Foster, in large part to help offset the higher costs of covering sicker, poorer people who have been shut out of the system for years. "With this new system coming in, I'm not even going to have money to pay my utility bills. Affordable care, what is affordable having to go from average $26 a month co-pays, they're going to be $400," Foster asks.
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."
VALENTINA - CALIFORNIA: By most people's standards, Valentina Holroyd is in excellent health. She works out six to seven days a week and competes in triathlons with a group of equally high-energy friends. She participates in 10 to 12 races a year and has made it to the podium on several occasions. She struggles with the usual joint problems associated with an active lifestyle, but otherwise she is healthy.
Holroyd supported the Affordable Care Act when it was passed in 2009. The moderate Democrat hoped it would help people with pre-existing conditions -- such as her husband -- get access to insurance, and would allow people who could not afford insurance before to find plans within their reach.
She found an affordable insurance plan through Kaiser Permanente in 2012 that met her budget and provided appropriate coverage for her family's needs
Everything changed in October, when Holroyd was notified by her insurer that her plan could not be renewed in 2014. The comparable plans offered to Holroyd featured a 29% increase in premiums and higher co-pays, as well as significantly higher prescription costs.
Holroyd expected to pay more under the new law, but the new estimates exceeded her expectations.
"We're savvy," she told CNN, "but we had no idea that the premiums were going to be what they are."
After the president's announcement, Holroyd was hopeful she'd be able to keep her policy after all. But the information that she was able to get over the next few days was cryptic at best.
Kaiser Permanente said only that it would review the announcement and that "If federal and state governments intend to change the health care coverage rules and the composition of federal and state marketplaces in 2014, we hope those changes will be done thoughtfully and with all stakeholders involved, to obtain the best outcome."
Holroyd anxiously waited for more definitive news, but the answer wasn't what she wanted to hear.
At the end of November, Covered California's board of directors -- the group that runs California's health insurance exchange -- unanimously rejected the administration's proposal.
"So, in a nutshell," Holroyd said in an e-mail, "we are now, once again, being forced into a lower coverage plan, for more money."
[. . . ]
She vehemently rejects the idea that her policy is inadequate because it doesn't meet the Affordable Care Act's minimum criteria. She insists that it provides better coverage for many of the things she counts on, such as chiropractic and eye care.
"My current plan is not junk," she said.
MARK - IDAHO: Mark A. York, a 60-year-old freelance writer in Hailey, Idaho, said he began shopping after he received a letter saying that his current insurance policy would be canceled because it did not meet the requirements of the health care law. In the exchange, he said, he found policies with premiums similar to what he is now paying, $440 a month, but “the deductibles were so high — $4,000 to $6,000 a year — that it defeats the purpose of having insurance."
DEBRA - KANSAS: This is my friend in Oklahoma City, OK
Sage Miodov Streck
April 23, 2014
This week has been one of the most challenging I've faced so far this year. I'm on 24/7 O2 right now with severe shortness of breath. I'm one week into a round of IV vancomycin, but we're still fiddling with the dosage until we hit the right therapeutic level. On top of that, my IV port was leaking and causing problems, which, knock on wood, we seem to have fixed for the moment. And my new insurance (thanks so much, Obama and every moron in Congress who voted for the ACA) is denying coverage of a vital medication I need every two weeks to keep my asthma from flaring out of control. I've already missed two doses, and they are still arguing about whether or not it's covered under my plan. It's hard enough living with a fatal genetic disease without having to deal with stupid insurance companies. There was nothing wrong with my old health plan, but I wasn't allowed to keep it under the new ACA. I've had nothing but problems since my new plan started January 1st. I would love for every single person who voted for that trash to spend even 30 minutes in my shoes. See what it's like when you aren't able to take a single deep breath. I guarantee you would change your vote, and try to pass legislation that might make life a little easier for the chronically ill, rather than more difficult. Rant over
Higher premiums, higher deductibles, less coverage, dropped policies, same failures every month.
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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:
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
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