December, 2018, Part 2, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Costs Up, Quality Down, And Other Disasters

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, 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.

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 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.

1) In our last post we reviewed the recent court decision in Texas that ruled Obama Care as being un-Constitutional. Twenty states, led by Texas, wanted the legislation overturned using the following logic:

• Under the Trump tax cut legislation, Congress got rid of the Obama Care tenet that put forth a financial fine/penalty for any American that did not get health insurance for themselves.
• The Supreme Court had previously ruled that the penalty was not a fine but a tax that Chief Justice Roberts put forth under a tortured logic argument and thus, the Obama Care was legit since the Constitution grants Congress the right to impose a tax….but not a financial penalty for inaction.
• Also, Obama Care supporters had always made the argument, and the Supreme Court seemed to agree, that the financial penalty was crucial and indispensable to the entire legislation and not “severable” from the rest of the law, and without it the rest of the law would be invalid.
• This set the stage for Texas et al to win their case since the 20 states argued that once the penalty for not getting insurance under Obama Care went to zero, it was no longer a legitimate tax since a $0 tax is not, in effect, a tax and thus, the whole legislation should be invalidated.
• California and 16 other states countered the argument, somewhat illogically, that even a a tax burden of $0 is still a tax.

In any case, the ruling is sure to be appealed and probably appealed to the Supreme Court. But think of the insanity of the California et al logic: a tax is still a tax even if the tax rate and amount is zero. I would be more than willing to be taxed all day long as long as the tax load is always $0. But Obama Care never made any sense in any logical argument so saying a tax burden that is always zero is still a tax is par for the course.

2) The summary of the judge’s conclusion is as follows:

THE [TAX CUTS AND JOBS ACT] ELIMINATED THAT [INDIVIDUAL MANDATE] TAX. THE SUPREME COURT’S REASONING IN NFIB—BUTTRESSED BY OTHER BINDING PRECEDENT AND PLAIN TEXT—THUS COMPELS THE CONCLUSION THAT THE INDIVIDUAL MANDATE MAY NO LONGER BE UPHELD UNDER THE TAX POWER. AND BECAUSE THE INDIVIDUAL MANDATE CONTINUES TO MANDATE THE PURCHASE OF HEALTH INSURANCE, IT REMAINS UNSUSTAINABLE UNDER THE INTERSTATE COMMERCE CLAUSE—AS THE SUPREME COURT ALREADY HELD.

FINALLY, CONGRESS STATED MANY TIMES UNEQUIVOCALLY—THROUGH ENACTED TEXT SIGNED BY THE PRESIDENT—THAT THE INDIVIDUAL MANDATE IS “ESSENTIAL” TO THE ACA. AND THIS ESSENTIALITY, THE [AFFORDABLE CARE ACT’S] TEXT MAKES CLEAR, MEANS THE MANDATE MUST WORK ‘TOGETHER WITH THE OTHER PROVISIONS’ FOR THE ACT TO FUNCTION AS INTENDED. ALL NINE JUSTICES TO REVIEW THE [AFFORDABLE CARE ACT] ACKNOWLEDGED THIS TEXT AND CONGRESS’S MANIFEST INTENT TO ESTABLISH THE INDIVIDUAL MANDATE AS THE [AFFORDABLE CARE ACT’S] ‘ESSENTIAL’ PROVISION. THE CURRENT AND PREVIOUS ADMINISTRATIONS HAVE RECOGNIZED THAT, TOO. BECAUSE REWRITING THE ACA WITHOUT ITS ‘ESSENTIAL’ FEATURE IS BEYOND THE POWER OF AN ARTICLE III COURT, THE COURT THUS ADHERES TO CONGRESS’S TEXTUALLY EXPRESSED INTENT AND BINDING SUPREME COURT PRECEDENT TO FIND THE INDIVIDUAL MANDATE IS INSEVERABLE FROM THE [AFFORDABLE CARE ACT’S] REMAINING PROVISIONS.

I am not a lawyer but it seems like the judge laid it out pretty clearly why the law is now invalid. Should be an interesting ride through the courts.

3) In writing about the judge’s decision, the Self Reliance Central website reminded us of the many failures of Obama Care over the years:

• Premium and deductible costs went up and up for Obama Care health insurance policies even though Obama promised that Americans could see up to $2,500 in annual health insurance costs under Obama Care.
• Most Americans had fewer choices of insurance, doctor, and hospital options under Obama Care tenets.
• Many Americans were forced to change their choices of preferred doctors and preferred hospital networks as a result of Obama Care even though Obama promised that if you liked your current doctor/insurance policy/hospital you could keep your current doctor/insurance policy/hospital.
• Medical providers were overwhelmed in government and insurance paperwork, reducing doctors’ ability to spend time with their patients and causing many established doctors to retire or leave the industry to get out from under the bureaucracy created by Obama Care.
• Taxpayers were forced to pay far more in Obama Care subsidies, likely incurring almost $2 trillion in additional national debt in the first ten years, according to the Congressional Budget Office, despite Obama promising that not a single dime would be added to the national debt.

And yet, some Democrats still want to keep Obama Care in place. That such insanity still exists after so many years of so many Obama Care disasters defies logic and rational thinking. 

4) The Conservative Zone website recently quoted a Forbes article that shows again with real numbers how much of a failure Obama Care was:

• In the four years BEFORE Obama Care was passed, average HMO premiums went down 4.6% but increased 46.4% in the four years AFTER it was passed.
• In the four years BEFORE Obama Care was passed, average Point of Service (POS) premiums decreased 14.9% but increased 66.2% in the four years AFTER it was passed.

So much for the Obama promise that annual health insurance premiums could down down as much as $2,500 per family.

5) Democrats and liberals think that they can operate an efficient and effective health care system. But for years, they have allowed Medicare and Medicaid to leak out hundreds of billions of dollars in criminal fraud. A recent article in the AARP magazine is a perfect illustration of this incompetence:

• Mashiyat Rashid, the former CEO of a Michigan health care company (Tri-County Wellness Group) recently pleaded guilty to bilking Medicare.
• He conspired with doctors to defraud Medicare of a whopping $150 million.
• They did it by prescribing opioids to drug addicts who then underwent unnecessary medical treatments that were billed to Medicare.
• He used our Medicare funds to buy a Rolls Royce, Lamborghini, a mansion and court side seats to Detroit Pistons basketball games.

The good news is that this crook was eventually caught and is going to jail. The bad news is:

• Why did it take so long to find this criminal activity? I mean did not the $150 million in billings not show up anywhere in the government’s computers? 
• How many other people like Rashid are still bilking the American taxpayer and Medicare out of billions of dollars?
• How much worse will the fraud be if liberals and Democrats get their way and greatly expand Medicare without fixing the current criminal fraud problems?

The insanity never ends, politicians and government cannot operate an efficient and effective health care function, from the failed single payer plans around the world to the failed current Federal programs of Medicare, Medicaid, the Veterans Administration and Obama Care.

6) Let’s finish up this month’s review of the unfolding disasters of Obama Care with some good news. Part of Obama Care was to try and get kids to eat better in school, a noble idea totally screwed up by the Federal government. Fortunately, the Trump administration is getting rid of much of the stupid school lunch rules, as illustrated in the following video:

https://christianconservativedaily.com/trump-Administration-Rolls-Back-Obama-Era-School-Lunch-Rules/

Unfortunately, next month we will be back with more unfolding disasters from the worst piece of Federal legislation ever enacted.

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