January, 2018, Part 3, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Real Life Horror Stories From Real Life Americans

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.

We will finish up this month’s review of the unfolding disasters from Obama Care with real life horror stories that the legislation has inflicted on millions of Americans across the country. It is one thing to review data and statistics that summarize the failures of the law but to hear real Americans tell their real stories of how Obama Care has negatively affected their lives, it makes it so human. As always, the source of these horrors is:

www.ourhealthcarestories.com

SHIRLEY, UTAH - I think it is horrible what has happened to Medicare since Obama took office. Coverage has gone down, out of pocket expenses have gone up, they've stolen money out of our Social Security and Medicare fund that I paid into for 46 years, to subsidize the Affordable Care Act, (which isn't affordable for most people ). Doctors and medical facilities don't want to take care of people on Medicare anymore because they've cut what they will pay them now.

MARGIE, NORTH DAKOTA - As if they have not stolen enough of our SS with obamacare my insurance has really hit me hard. I was paying $70.00 for my Diabetic Insulin every 90 days, now it costs me $800.00 every 90 days for the same product.

MICHAEL, NEW YORK - Michael Kennedy, who runs two family-owned dog-grooming salons near Albany, said changes to his cut-rate insurance coverage mandated by ObamaCare had more than doubled the cost, from $132.99 to $325.92 a month per person.

And when he checked the cost of buying an ObamaCare policy instead, it was “basically the same price, or even more,” he said.

Kennedy, 46, said that he and his wife clear only about $60,000 a year from their Pink Dog Parlor and Resort business, and that paying the new, higher premiums will be “a huge challenge.”

“It’s like another 100 dogs we need to groom,” he said.

MICHAEL, VIRGINIA - About 5 years ago, I changed my health plan to an HSA through Anthem, to reduce my costs. We had just had our daughter, and the reduced plan seemed perfect in my favor. Gradually, that planned increased to 535/month by August 2010 - No thanks.

I switched to Golden Rule in 2011, and we enjoyed a 249/month plan, keeping my HSA. We have a 5k deductible. It increased yearly to 281, 317, and then 392 after adding my newborn son. Then the "Letter" came in August, something like "...due to rising healthcare costs...518/month."

The increases on my plan previously were in the 13% range, and suddenly it goes up 32% and we're in perfect health.

I scream when I hear the President say, that costs have not gone up as much as previous years...and I wonder who he's talking about. Any other plans I have investigated, just 1 in my current price range, are 10-20% higher for the same coverage, deductible, etc.

JUDY, ARIZONA - My primary care physician and 2 specialists I saw quit practicing because of Obamacare. The insurance company we had for many years increased their premiums by 60% in the last 2 years, costing $1200+ per mo. We had to change insurance companies to one with lower costs but fewer benefits...because of Obamacare.

DIANE, ILLINOIS - We got a letter from our insurance company stating that our premium for both my husband and me was going to be $1120 a month with a $12,700 deductible. This through a private company. Our policy was being cancelled. I went on Medicare in January. Prior our premium on cancelled policy was $679 for both of us. After policy was cancelled 12/31/2013 then reinstated for just my husband his premium for just him was $475.13. The reinstated policy term was to be from January til December. The old policy ran from May of last year and was to go to May of this year. So my husband's premium got increased in January and then we got a letter from insurance company stating his premium was going up again this May to $538.56. So they used the January date and the original May date to levy premiums twice. So what's going to happen next year. Are we going to get two premium increases in one year again? We are all at the mercy of this disgusting messed up law and Obama keeps changing it at will to push his political agenda. 

DEAN, GEORGIA - From WTOC-GA:

Reporter: New details on the Chatham county commission's move to cut hours for over 100 part-time seasonal employees. The Affordable Care Act would require the county to pay for insurance for those seasonal employees if they work more than 30 hours a week. The county says they can't afford it

The change mostly affects summer lifeguards at the county's aquatic center. . . 

Dean: We have to guard the taxpayer's money, and there's no way to fund full-time positions when only part-time work is actually needed.

MICHAEL, MICHIGAN - Insurance broker Michael Harp said small businesses, part of what's known in the industry as the "small group market," are used to seeing health insurance premiums climb about 10 percent a year, but it's never before been this dramatic. For Extreme Dodge to have kept deductibles and out-of-pocket costs at last year's levels, he said, would have cost the dealership almost 50 percent more than last year.

Harp says what is happening at this dealership is representative of the other small businesses he deals with. Businesses with 50 or fewer employees currently provide health insurance to about 17 million U.S. workers, according to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.

He said the biggest surprise to him in how the law impacts small business clients is "how many people are losers versus winners. … There are some people who do come out ahead, but I would say the overwhelming majority, they're paying much higher rates and they have lower benefits."

Higher costs, lost of work hours, lost access to preferred doctors, the disasters just keep on coming.

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.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

February, 2017, Part 2, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Never Understanding Root Causes and Personal Tales Of Obama Care Woes

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.

Today we will focus on some of these root causes to show how they are the main drivers of our high healthcare costs, causes that Obama Care never addressed and which still stay unresolved:

1) A recent Center For Disease Control study found that booze is the second leading cause of death, and the attendant healthcare costs, in this country behind tobacco. In fact, according to the summarized results that appeared in the December 23-30, 2016 issue of The Week magazine:

• Since 2004, alcohol related deaths in this country are up 37%.
• Drinking now accounts for more overdoses and deaths than prescription painkillers and heroin combined.
• Other cited research shows that alcohol is a direct cause of at least seven different cancers and that the odds of getting those cancers is directly related to the volume of alcohol consumed.

So, excessive drinking can increase the chances of getting cancer and incurring the high medical costs to treat it, it can ruin livers and incurring the high medical costs to treat it, and can cause obesity and incurring the high medical costs to treat it. This is a public health issue that is driving up health care costs, by up to 37% in the past 13 years, it is not an insurance issue as Obama Care treated it.

2) It is no secret that this country has an obesity problem. More than two thirds of Americans are overweight and over one third are considered obese. Obesity causes all kinds of problems including heart disease and joint and bone issues, often requiring the high medical costs of knee, hip, and other joint replacements. 

However, a recent study in the same issue of The Week cited above showed that if Americans reduced their daily calorie intake by just 12%, health improvements could be dramatic. The study tracked a group of people over two years that had done just that: reduced their daily calorie consumption by 12%. On average, they lost 17 pounds, slept better, had better moods, and enhanced sex drives. In other words, their quality of life improved as did their health. Obama Care has had none of these intended effects, it is an insurance solution trying to resolve a public health issue.

3) That same issue of The Week cited a 900 person study that showed that if you exercise, your chances of keeping your brain young and reducing your chances of cancer, and reducing the associated costs of treatment, go up dramatically. Those people among the 900 test subjects that did little regular exercise “experienced cognitive decline equivalent to 10 more years of agin compared with their more active peers.” Additionally, the earlier that regular exercise began the better the chances of not experiencing the cognitive decline and the associated medical costs.

The article also cited another study that found that people that do the equivalent of walking two and a half hours per week have a lower chance of getting 13 different types of cancer and incurring the associated medical costs. Our ever escalating healthcare costs in this country are mostly a public health crisis, not an insurance crisis as Obama Care assumed.

4) According to another study from the Centers For Disease Control:

• Drug overdose deaths in this country have gone up by 33% in just the past five years with some states seeing overdose deaths jumping by over 100%. 
• The overdose increases are being driven by heroin and opioid overdoses.
• Florida saw a 22.7% increase in just one year from 2014 to 2015.
• New Hampshire, North Dakota, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Maine saw their overdose rates jump over 100%.
• Over 52,000 Americans died in 2016 from drug overdoses.

And all of these overdoses, whether fatal or not, usually incur medical costs that would be unnecessary if we somehow found a way to reduce the addiction and agony associated with drug abuse, something that Obama Care never addressed. Another public health issue left unattended.

5) The above five root causes of our high health care costs, drinking, smoking, lack of exercise, drug abuse, and obesity are major causes of our high healthcare costs and none of them were adequately addressed by Obama Care. Even if Obama Care had a good insurance approach, which it did not, without turning off the public health spigot of bad health behavior, you will never drive down the costs of healthcare in this country.

However, there are also drivers of our high healthcare costs in this country that are not public health related. One of the most important root causes that is listed above and Obama Care never addressed is where does the money flow in our healthcare system, i.e. Obama Care never followed the money. If you do not know where the money is going, you have no idea on how to control the amount of money that is flowing. 

Consider the financials of our current healthcare situation in this country relative to the rest of the world as laid out in a recent Wall Street Journal article:

- The average per capita healthcare expenditure in this country in 2014 was $9,451, highest in the world.

- However despite spending so much money the U.S. average life span in this country for men is 76.9 years, which ranks only 25th in the world, and for U.S. women the average lifespan is 81.6 years, which ranks 27th in the world, i.e. we are spending a lot of money, more than any other country in the world, and not getting the top results one would expect by spending so much.

- When it comes to drug costs, U.S. citizens pay so much more for the same drug than the rest of the world:

• For a 28 day supply of the arthritis drug Humira, the average cost in the U.S. is $2,669 while the next most expensive country, Britain, pays an average of $1,362, half the cost.
• A 30 day supply of pain medicine OxyContin costs an average of $265 in the U.S. while the next most expensive country, Switzerland, pays only 95$.

- When it comes to diagnostic costs, U.S.citizens pay so much more for the same test than the rest of the world:

• The average cost of an MRI in the U.S. is $1,119 while the average cost in the next most expensive country, New Zealand, is $811.
• The average costs of a colonoscopy in the U.S. is $3,059, while the average costs in the next most expensive country, New Zealand, is $1,421.

- When it comes to procedures, U.S. citizens pay so much more for the same procedure than the rest of the world:

• Heart bypass surgery averages $76,318 in the U.S. while the cost in the next most expensive country, Switzerland, is a mere $34,224.
• A normal baby delivery in the U.S. costs an average of $10,808 while the average cost in the next most expensive country, Switzerland, is $7,751.

You get the idea, the Journal article had other examples but the conclusion is always the same: we pay so much more for the exact same drugs, tests, and surgeries vs. other countries so where does all that extra money go? Drug companies? Doctors and surgeons? Malpractice insurance? Government regulation compliance? All of the above? Until you can “follow the money,” you have no idea how to make the entire healthcare process more cost efficient and fair. Obama Care never did any of that.

6) Let’s finish up today’s and this month’s Obama Care disaster review with some real life, personal disasters that Obama Care has caused many American families. As always, our source for this heartbreak is the website:

www.ourhealthcaresories.com

By not understanding and addressing the root causes of our high healthcare costs, this is the agony and stress that Obama Care is causing across the country:

YVETTE - MAINE: "The least expensive of the new federal healthcare options will cost her $14,400 a year."

ROBERT - FLORIDA: Not only is there less choice, higher costs and lost coverage, but it also means less pay. A lot of companies have been cutting their employees hours to 28 so then those people are only considered part-time workers and the company doesn't have to provide any coverage. Happened to my wife, Holly. she went from working 40+ hrs. a week and dropped down to 28 hrs. a week. So not only did she lose the company health plan but is making less money than she was. It's just a really bad Catch 22. So even if she wanted to she can't afford any decent coverage due to her cut in income. And, you gotta love this one, but if she doesn't get health insurance than she gets penalized by the Gov't for not having health insurance. Makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

CAMILLE: “We are the Obama people,” said Camille Sweeney, a New York writer and member of the Authors Guild. Her insurance is being canceled, and she is dismayed that neither her pediatrician nor her general practitioner appears to be on the exchange plans. What to do has become a hot topic on Facebook and at dinner parties frequented by her fellow writers and artists.

M. - FLORIDA: Small biz owner w/no health ins. Started looking in Oct, 2013 at AHC, was very expensive. Tried creating an acct. over 2 months, no luck. March 2014 got rates from the AHC site, they looked REAL GOOD! Took 4 hours to create an acct. Finally got into choosing a plan, prices were triple from what the previous screen showed. Still cannot afford health insurance :( Best plan I found was $300 a month with $12,500.00 co pay, co insurance & deductible. In the websites OWN terminology that meant I pay $12,500 each year before ANY insurance pays (trust me, I checked & double checked on the AHC website for explanation.) Bottom line; still uninsured. Cannot afford AHC. Will self pay, much more affordable. So i'll pay the fine/fee/tax at the end of the year. And i'll keep paying my taxes so our Fed. gov. can GIVE FREE healthcare to someone else. Makes a lot of sense, NOT!

Higher premium costs, higher deductible costs, fewer working hours, more narrow networks, horrible computer systems, oh yeah, Obama Care is working out fine. More disasters next month.

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

April, 2016, Part 6, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Personal Horror Stories Of Obama Care

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.

We have just spent more than a week of discussing and analyzing the failures of Obama Care at the global level of details. Today, we will focus only on the real life, personal hardships that Obama Care caused Americans. The source of these heartbreaking stories comes from the website:

www.ourhealthcarestories.com

So, if you ever come across someone who thinks that Obama Care is great and effective, ask them if these people would agree with that assessment:

CHIP - OREGON: My family and I have had great health insurance for years. We got a 3 month extension this year of our old policy. In February I have to have emergency open heart surgery. In the middle of this process we had to get new coverage since our policy was being canceled due to Obamacare. I will need other procedures and medication and more unexpected costs. Our new policy is $306 a month more and our deductible went from $5,000 to $12,500, because of Obamacare after March 31 I will have a new deductible to make of 12,500.00. I have already met the deductible on the old policy but since it was canceled I will have the new deductible to meet. We are looking at over a $20,000 to $26,000 cost in 2014 due to Obamacare! Where are all the politicians out there helping me and my family? Why do they not care the cost I have to pay? This has got to end!

DEB: NEW YORK - We were happy with our insurance company. Obama care mandatory coverage raised the premium beyond what we or our employer could afford, so we went to check out the NYS insurance exchange, Healthy New York. There were an overwhelming number of plans to choose from and not much ability to easily compare plans. Plans from insurance companies whose names we recognized were too expensive. All had high deductibles - - we had no deductible on our old plan. We finally signed up for a start up company that was recommended to us.

Aside from the high deductible, the plan seemed to be good. We were paying $400 less per month and they paid some claims promptly. But finding providers has been a real problem. The website has numerous errors in contact information. And then we needed to find a pediatric orthopedist for our son when he broke his ankle. We quickly discovered how limited their coverage was where we live on Long Island. Then I got curious and checked for hospitals and doctors out of the NYC area and I discovered something that concerns me very much. Our insurance pays NO out of network benefits and it only offers coverage in a few counties in NY state, nowhere else! So if we travel more than 80 miles from home we have no insurance!

Now, wouldn't you expect that a national health insurance would cover you anywhere in the country? Now we are stuck with a plan that holds us prisoners in the NYC area. We can't afford to leave and possibly need health care.

CYNTHIA: VERMONT - I not only have to pay a higher premium, but I can not afford the deductible!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

LINDA: FLORIDA - We have a group Blue Cross Blue Shield HMO plan. When I broke my ankle I found out that all the good orthopedic groups had dropped my plan, not an Obama plan! My x-ray was $50 with my insurance or $35 cash. I paid cash. The orthopedic I ended up going to only cost me $99 cash, since they did not take my insurance. My insurance costs me over $500/month and this was the first I had used it in years, but I didn't even use it! Since I work out and am not overweight I only used preventive health care I seldom access healthcare at 60. The only medication I take, hormone replacement, is $300 with insurance. What I really need is just a catastrophic plan for cancer or accidents with these costs. I am sure this plan will change and/or increase when we renew this year. We are a small company with 4 employees and we pay for everyone's healthcare even though we aren't required by law. I anticipate we may have to discontinue that policy this year or make our employees pay for their coverage.

SUSAN: WASHINGTON - I was happily going along with my jcpenney insurance when I retired from jcpenney, which was only $40 a month. I got a letter from my insurance stating it didn't follow the Obamacare guidelines (Health Care Authority) and they cancelled my policy. Now, I have to pay 4x that amount to get the catastrophic insurance (deductible of $5,000) before anything is covered, through the Health Care Authority.

JOHN: NEW HAMPSHIRE - I was probably one of the very first victims of the Affordable Care Act. I was a self employed entrepreneur who was purchasing in the state of New Hampshire a major medical insurance policy, "that I liked". And that worked for me in my budget, I paid for my own medical, eye and dental exams. Because I believe that regular doctor visits precluded serious medical injuries and am insuring myself only in the event of something serious happening with the major medical policy.



I was notified in the early stages of the ACA when all the states were being told what the insurance regulations required had to be at a specific level. Mine was not an acceptable level and was not being offered again by my insurance carrier. The new regulations required a plan that was not cost effective, though I'm sure it would have covered many things, prenatal exams, pregnancy tests, Viagra, birth control pills and even the doctor visits that I was already paying for out of my pocket because it's cheaper. Yes! Thanks to the wonders of Obamacare.

I have been without any catastrophic medical coverage for the past few years, in which I have had to pay out an $8,000.00 medical expense because of an emergency room visit while on vacation for kidney stones, which would have been covered under my original major medical coverage. Yes I'm in favor of repealing the ACA! I want to be in charge of my body, not be forced to do things that will encumber my life. "It's my body, I want the government out of it!"

SCOTT: CALIFORNIA - I'm a small business owner that covers myself and another employee. My Blue Cross Blue Shield plan went up $400 to $850 a month for 2 people. Its outrageous. I looked for a cheaper plan but the cheapest plan was only $100 cheaper and I would lose my doctor. My female employee had to pay for children’s dental insurance. She doesn't have children and she medically cannot have children.

Higher costs to customers, lost access to favorite doctors, narrow doctor networks, loss of personal freedom, the disasters continue. More disasters next month as the Obama Care death spiral  accelerates.

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:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

July, 2015, Part 1, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Ever Higher Costs and Ever Higher Stress on American Families

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 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 but with a big exception: Obama Care legislation never addressed these listed root causes and thus, has no chance of ever being successful.

Today and probably for the next few days, we will look at the latest disasters from Obama Care, including the gathering evidence that Obama Care policy holders are in for a big and ugly financial surprise in their 2016 costs along with some personal stories on how Obama Care is causing havoc with American families.

1) Let’s start with some Obama Care insurance rate activity as gathered by the wonder website, “Bankrupting America:”

• The New York Times reported on July 3, 2015 that many Obama Care health insurance carriers are looking for large premium rate increases in 2016: “Health insurance companies around the country are seeking rate increases of 20 percent to 40 percent or more, saying their new customers under the Affordable Care Act turned out to be sicker than expected. Federal officials say they are determined to see that the requests are scaled back.”
• For example, according to the New York Times, Blue Cross And Blue Shield Plans In Illinois, North Carolina, Oklahoma Tennessee And Minnesota Are All Seeking Double Digit Rate Increases For 2016: “Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans — market leaders in many states — are seeking rate increases that average 23 percent in Illinois, 25 percent in North Carolina, 31 percent in Oklahoma, 36 percent in Tennessee and 54 percent in Minnesota, according to documents posted online by the federal government and state insurance commissioners and interviews with insurance executives.”
• New Mexico’s largest insurer, Health Care Service Corporation, is looking for an average increase of a whopping 51.6%, Maryland’s leading insurer, CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, is looking for "only" a 30.4% increase, as reported by the Wall Street Journal: “In New Mexico, market leader Health Care Service Corp. is asking for an average jump of 51.6% in premiums for 2016. The biggest insurer in Tennessee, BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee, has requested an average 36.3% increase. In Maryland, market leader CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield wants to raise rates 30.4% across its products.”
• The largest health insurer in Oregon has already received an increase of 25% for over 200,000 Oregon Obama Care policyholders, again as reported by the New York Times: “The Oregon insurance commissioner, Laura N. Cali, has just approved 2016 rate increases for companies that cover more than 220,000 people. Moda Health Plan, which has the largest enrollment in the state, received a 25 percent increase, and the second-largest plan, LifeWise, received a 33 percent increase. Jesse Ellis O’Brien, a health advocate at the Oregon State Public Interest Research Group, said: ‘Rate increases will be bigger in 2016 than they have been for years and years and will have a profound effect on consumers here. Some may start wondering if insurance is affordable or if it’s worth the money.’”
• And while Obama Care policies are becoming increasingly expensive to have, so are the penalties for NOT having Obama Care insurance coverage, as reported by the Washington Times:. “Larger enrollment will be key to keeping premiums down, as healthier persons balance out the risk that insurers absorb from sicker patients who cannot be denied coverage, and Obamacare’s rising individual mandate tax may or may not spur more people into the marketplace. People who could afford insurance but didn’t acquire it and didn’t qualify for an exemption were taxed $95 or 1 percent of income over the filing threshold in 2014, a penalty that rose to $325 or 2 percent of income in 2015, and ups to $695 or 2.5 percent of income in 2016.”
• And Obama Care insurance policyholders cannot expect to be rescued by the Obama administration since under current law, state regulators can try and reduce rate requests if they can prove them excessive but the Federal government has no authority to do so, according to the Wall Street Journal: “Insurance regulators in many states can force carriers to scale back requests they can’t justify. The Obama administration can ask insurers seeking increases of 10% or more to explain themselves, but cannot force them to cut rates. Rates will become final by the fall.”

As always when it comes to the American political class, the program does not work and Americans get screwed by the financials of the politicians’ failures. The law forces Americans to buy health insurance, does nothing to reduce the cost of health insurance, and then penalizes Americans who cannot afford the more expensive insurance by forcing them to pay the higher fines for not being able to afford the higher insurance. Convoluted logic, insane logic.

2) I get a kick out of the New York Times finally reporting the truth about Obama Care with its July 3, 2015 article, that is referenced above, “Health Insurance Companies Seeking Big Rate Increases For 1016.” Which is pretty funny, and sad, when compared to a New York Times article from eight days earlier that said Obama Care “Is Working Better Than Expected.” What changed in eight days? 

Plus, if Obama Care is working better than expected, how much higher were the rate increases expected to be if 50% plus increases are “better than expected.” Keep in mind that Obama publicly promised that Americans families would see up to a $2,500 DECREASE in their annual health care costs. No one, not even the New York Times, is talking about anything decreasing relative to Obama Care.

3) And what is the cause of the higher insurance rates, at least in the short term? Again, according to the New York Times: “Health insurance companies around the country are seeking rate increases of 20 percent to 40 percent or more, saying their new customers under the Affordable Care Act turned out to be sicker than expected. Federal officials say they are determined to see that the requests are scaled back.”

So, as we have said all along, Obama Care did not reduce costs or reduce illnesses, it just tried to tax everyone more to pay for the ever higher costs. Those that sought out Obama Care policies tended to be sicker individuals who could not get insurance anywhere. Thus, this “sicker than expected” situation which is causing increasing Obama Care policy premiums should have been fully expected. But it was not since the President expected decreases in health insurance. Never has a piece of legislation ever been so wrong about its consequences.

4) Let’s close today’s post, as we often do when discussing the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care, with actual, true life crises the legislation is causing for real American families. The source of these heartbreaking stories is:

www.ourhealthcarestories.com

MARTI - MISSOURI: Because of the "Affordable" Healthcare requirements my deductible is going from $1,000 up to $6,000 & at 64 I have to pay for maternity & pediatric coverage. Seriously?

JOSH - TEXAS: All I have to say is that it's way too expensive I make 1600 hundred a month they want me to pay 650 bucks a month that's BS I live check to check already I'll be homeless if I get health care. I'm 28 with 1600 a month barely enough to put food on the table pay bills and gas in my vehicle I have to borrow money every month as it is so this would just be ridiculous it's cheaper for me to pay the penalty at the end of the year oh well what do you do

PAM - MAINE: As President Obama reached out Thursday to millions of Americans receiving cancellation notices from their health insurers, Pam Pultz waited to see what the latest twist in the health reform law will mean for her.

Pultz, who owns an Agway store in Dover-Foxcroft, buys her own health insurance through Anthem. The plan suits her needs and she wants to keep it, but she said she has been told to expect a cancellation notice by the end of the month because her $14,000 deductible is too high to comply with the Affordable Care Act.

“My fear is I’m going to lose something that I bought and paid for and shopped for,” Pultz said. “I’m not doing anything wrong, and I’m being penalized.”

More typical stories from real Americans. Losing access to their preferred insurance plans, not seeing any reduction in health insurance costs that makes it affordable which forces them to pay for not being rich enough to afford unaffordable insurance, and forcing them to pay for coverage they do not need or want.

That will do it for today. Higher costs and higher pain, lousy piece of legislation. More unfolding disasters tomorrow.

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:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

June, 2015, Part 3, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Congress Ducks Its Obama Care Edict, Costs Conintue To Go Up, Health Care Access Continues ToGo Down

Every month for the past three years or so we have had to take time out and review the latest insanity and disasters from the Obama Care legislation. Long ago it only took a day or so to cover it all. But then the law starting taking effect and the “unfolding disaster that is Obama Care” made it impossible to contain the bad news, the heartache, the rising costs, and the stress put on American families to just a day or two.

To review the past discussions on this horrid piece of legislation, enter the term "unfolding disaster" in the search box above or just page through previous month's posts on the right side of this page and click on the various references to Obama Care. Very quickly, as your read the past posts, you will see that this is easily the worst piece of legislation ever passed by Washington.

Not only has it disrupted lives, stymied the economy, and increased healthcare costs in this country, it never addressed the various root causes of high healthcare costs. Thus, by never addressing some of the root causes listed below, the legislation has virtually no chance of actually reducing healthcare costs in this country:

• Americans eat too much of the wrong kind of food.
• Americans smoke too much.
• Americans do not exercise enough.
• The healthcare industry in this country needs serious tort reform.
• Federal government crop subsidies lead to our food chain being infested with unhealthy sugar and high fructose corn syrup.
• Current government healthcare programs, Medicare and Medicaid, lose upwards of $100 billion a year to waste and criminal fraud, billions of dollars that could be used to reduce other healthcare costs in this country.
• Cross state line insurance competition needs to be made easier to do.
• The Obama effort never “followed the money” to actually map out where the high costs paid by Americans for healthcare actually end up.

Since Obama Care never addressed these root causes, we are still going to have those root causes resulting in higher and higher healthcare costs regardless of how well Obama Care is implemented. And since the prime objective of Obama Care was to reduce costs, the legislation will end up being a failure.

So with that gloomy set up, let’s see what Obama Care disasters unfolded in the past month or so.

1) One of the selling points of Obama Care, if there is such a thing, is that the politicians who voted to enact Obama Care, all Democrats, insisted that themselves and their staffs would have to abide by its tenets, what they were subjecting Americans to they would subject themselves to also. Bold talk, fairness and all that.

But of course, as is the case most of the time politicians open their mouths, this too was an empty promise. Congressional people lobbied the Obama administration to exempt themselves from the very law they enacted with the promise they would be forced to abide by.

As a result, a number of efforts are underway to force these Washington politicians to abide by their promise. One of those efforts is the Let Freedom Ring organization that is collecting signatures to do just that. The text of that petition is below and a link to sign that petition is below the text of their following letter:

On Wednesday June 17th, Let Freedom Ring is joining with Tea Party Patriots and other coalition partners to protest bureaucratic arrogance outside congressional district offices next week.

Dear [FIRSTNAME, Ringer],

Congress should not be exempt from Obamacare . When Congress enacted Obamacare with only Democrats voting for it, they did require themselves and the members of their staff to be subject to Obamacare instead of the gold-plated health plans they previously enjoyed at our expense.

But, in the same way that the IRS illegally directed that subsidies and mandates apply to people in states that did not set up State health care exchanges, the White House Office of Personnel Management (OPM) advised the leaders in Congress to submit deceptive and deceitful applications in order to illegally obtain for Members and their staff, health insurance subsidies that the law allows only for small businesses of less than 50 employees. Depending on how you count, Congress has from 13,000 to 20,000 employees.

Now, members of Congress and their office staff are receiving subsidies illegally, because an unidentified congressional staffer submitted a false application to the Washington, DC Small Business Exchange claiming that the United States Congress is a small business of less than 50 employees.

Unlike other aspects of Obamacare that need the action of Congress and the President or the courts to end unconstitutional and illegal action, this outrage needs only the congressional leadership to withdraw the false application and put Congress into compliance with the text of the Obamacare law.

But they have not done that yet. In fact, the Senate leadership, acting through Sen. Rand Paul, worked to defeat Sen. David Vitter’s motion in the Small Business Committee to subpoena the original false application to reveal the name of the staffer who signed it.

Let Freedom Ring is joining with Tea Party Patriots and other coalition partners to protest this act of bureaucratic arrogance outside congressional district offices next week, on Wednesday June 17.

I urge you to join this protest! 

Sincerely,

Peter Knickerbocker
Executive Director

Colin A. Hanna
President

You can sign the petition at the followng link:

http://webmail.earthlink.net/wam/msg.jsp?msgid=875&folder=0121419fccc7fc590d11eced1bec45969&isSeen=false&x=1809199564

2) A recent article on the Affluent Investor website by Michael Pento lamented the fact that American households should have had a lot more money in their pocket over the past six months or so. Why? Well, the cost of oil fell from almost $100 a barrel in June, 2014 to almost $45 by the end of January, 2015. 

According to his calculations, this dramatic drop in oil prices likely increased the average American’s household disposable income by about $750. This would have added between $100 and $125 billion into the economy, resulting in a substantial growth in the national GDP, an amount that should have increased GDP by half a percentage point. Sounds great, more money in our pockets resulting in greater economic growth.

But that reality never happened. Instead, there was actually economic contraction, not growth in the first quarter of 2015, a quarter that saw oil prices bottom out at half of its $100 run rate. What happened to that gas and oil windfall? According to Mr. Pento: “An increase in what the average American pays in health care costs as a result of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has swallowed all the savings from the fall in gas prices.” Specifically:

• The increase in health care costs passed on by employers with 50 to 99 employees caused likely caused their workers to annually lose $935 in take home pay annually.
• Companies with 20 to 49 workers were out an average of $827 annually.
• Employees with individual insurance coverage now pay an average of $1,081 in annual premiums, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation/Health Research & Educational Trust report which is up a whopping 8.1% from a year ago.
• Although the Obama Care tax on robust company insurance policies, the so-called “Cadillac Plans,” does not take effect until 2018, companies have already started adjusting their employee health insurance plans, switching their current plans to high deductible plans, plans that will and already have also increase employee health insurance costs.
• Additionally, many Obama Care policy holders were hit with high tax bills this past spring when it was determined that their Obama Care subsidies were too high, resulting in additional tax payments and offsetting any financial gains from lower gas prices. 

Thus, just when the economy got a gift in the form of lower oil and gas prices, a gift that should have kick started economic growth, Obama Care unfolds another way to screw up Americans’ lives, ripping the financial gain of lower oil prices from their grasp by replacing it with higher health insurance costs.

3) As most people know, Obama Care was passed without a single Republican vote. Which makes it pretty funny now, according to a recent Associated Press (AP) article that Democrats are now very concerned that high out of pocket costs for Obama Care policies are suppressing the nation’s ability to attain health care.

Which gets us back to a truism of Obama Care that we have talked about for years: the good news is you now have healthcare insurance. The bad news is that you cannot afford healthcare coverage. 

This is being called “underinsurance” which is caused by the rise in the cost of insurance deductibles, the amount of actual medical costs that patients pay each year before coverage kicks in. Congressman Jim McDermott, a Congressional leader on health care, summed up this new Obama Care problem nicely: "We've got some 17 million more people covered ... but they can't access the care they seem to be entitled to. It costs too much to use the care. That's the deceptive part about it."

Several different organizations have recently focused on the issue and came to the same conclusions about Obama Care:

• A Commonwealth Fund study found that 31 million adults were underinsured last year. Half of them had problems with medical bills or medical debt. Seven million were underinsured due to high deductibles alone. "The steady growth in the proliferation and size of deductibles threatens to increase underinsurance in the years ahead," the study concluded.
• A study by Families USA concluded that one-quarter of the people with individual health insurance policies went without health care in 2014 because they could not afford the out-of-pocket costs, especially as it related to high deductibles.
• The Center for American Progress found that employers have begun shifting the increasing burden of health care costs onto workers. 

Just another unfolding Obama Care disaster. You have health insurance but you cannot get health care. Ony in Washington can you create massive new problems while not resolving the initial problem.

Another day, another set of fiascos from the worst piece of legislation ever written:

• Congress continues to do a “do as I say not as I do” as they continue to illegally side step their Obama Care legislation requirements.
• Health care costs continue to go up.
• Health insurance access continues to go down.

More disasters tomorrow.

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:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w