Love My Country, Loathe My Government: health care

Showing posts with label health care. Show all posts

Friday, August 16, 2019

August, 2019, Part 7, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: The Failure of Single Pay Health Care Systems Around the World, Continued

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.

Six posts ago we reviewed the many, many failures and disasters of Obama Care, probably the worst piece of legislation ever passed when it comes to comparing it to its objectives and its promises. This was the Federal government’s most recent and deepest attempt to try and control the healthcare of Americans and it has ended badly.

In subsequent posts, we showed the numbers and realities around the world of how single payer healthcare systems always fail to provide effective and efficient health care to its citizens. Despite these realities, many Democratic candidates for President want to implement a failed system like this in this country. Today we will continue that discussion of failed single payer healthcare systems from other countries, further proof that this approach to healthcare is a bad, bad idea.

We continue that discussion today, the failures of the single payer healthcare model:

1) Dr. Kevin Pham and Robert Moffit, Phd, writing for the Heritage Foundation on August 13, 2018, laid out a perfect illustration why socialized medicine/single payer healthcare systems are almost always expensive. But first, a look at some of the real numbers the authors talk about and how government run healthcare makes a bad situation worse:

Depending on the assumption set used, this country will be looking at a doctor shortage of anywhere from between 43,000 to 121,000 doctors within 12 years.
A root cause of this shortage is the reality that doctors today spend more and more time on non medical, regulatory, and administrative activities, leading to frustration, burnout, and premature retirements.
Socialized medicine increases these frustrations while reducing the freedom to treat patients the way doctors are trained to treat them while capping their compensation.

So single payer health care plans, government control over health care decisions, make it difficult to get enough supply of high quality doctors to enter the field, making health care quality even worse, as we recently saw in England during the recent flu season:

Back in October, 1975, a British politician, Labor Minister David Cohen, had a rare insight into why his government’s actions, in this case the creation of socialized medicine and a single payer government run healthcare system would fail miserably: “The health service was launched on a fallacy. First, we were going to finance everything, cure the nation and then spending would drop. That fallacy has been exposed. Then there was a period when everybody thought the public could have whatever they needed on the health service- it was just a question of governmental will. Now we recognize that no country, even if they are prepared to pay the taxes, can supply everything.”
Fast forward to the winter of 2018 where a very bad strain of influenza hit the country.
British hospitals were overcrowded and overwhelmed which is not surprising since a survey conducted by the British Medical Association found that 82% of its members felt their workplaces were understaffed, which is not surprising given the point we made above about doctors not wanting to stay in the field due to overt government interference in the medical process.
Listen to one doctor describe his personal flu experience: “I came on to shift yesterday afternoon and there were patients literally everywhere. The corridor into the hospital was so busy we couldn’t have got a cardiac arrest patient through it into the resuscitation room. To say staff were at the end of their tethers would be a complete understatement.”
This pre-existing doctor shortage situation in a single payer system combined with the flu outbreak resulted in 50,000 surgeries being cancelled because limited resources were diverted to flu patients.
This in turn further endangered those that needed the surgery, likely making their medical conditions more expensive and dangerous to treat later.
By March, 2018, British emergency rooms had 15.4% of their patients waiting over four hours before seeing anyone for treatment.
This was the worst performance ever recorded.
Back in the real world, the number of ailing British citizens waiting 18 weeks or more for treatment increased by 35%, from 128,575 in 2016 to about 362,000 in 2017 to 490,000 patients in 2018.
Thus, half a million people in this single payer government run system had to wait four and a half months to get treatment.
Even worse, 2,755 sick folks had to wait OVER A YEAR to get treatment.

Long delays, poor quality, high costs, yeah, that is working out great. And yet despite this British reality and the unfolding disasters of Obama Care, some American politicians still want to bring single payer healthcare to America despite the failure of such a system across the world.

2) What if we are wrong? What if there is a set of numbers that track reality actually show that single payer systems, like the one in Canada, are actually pretty good? So let’s examine some healthcare numbers:

In the U.S., 56% of the citizens have private health insurance, 35% are covered with government financed health insurance (i.e. Medicare and Medicaid), and 9% are uninsured.
In Canada, the government provides “free” health insurance to 100% of the citizens but 67% of its citizens pay for additional, needed health insurance coverage.
The Canadian single payer system, while promoted as "universal,” does not cover prescription drug costs. dental care costs, and other medical costs which leads to a majority of them shelling out additional money to supplement their "free" government insurance.
Thus, according to the Canadian Institute for Health and Information, many Canadians go without drug insurance or dental care.
According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the United States spent 17.2% of its gross domestic product (GDP) on health care in 2016 while Canada, on the other hand, spent less on health care, clocking in at just 10.3% of its GDP in 2016.
In 2016, for instance, the average American spent around $10,345 on health care, including insurance premiums, deductibles, co-pays, and other out-of-pocket costs while the average Canadian spent nearly half that, paying about $6,299 that same year.
According to a Fraser Institute study, Canadians on average wait 21.2 weeks to see a specialist after a referral from a GP doctor while in the U.S. the average wait time is 24.1 days in metro U.S. areas, according to a Merritt Hawkins study, i.e. it takes about seven times longer to see a medical specialist in Canada than in the U.S.
The Fraser study also found that in Canada, patients wait 4.1 weeks on average to get a CT scan, 10.8 weeks for an MRI scan, and 3.9 weeks for an ultrasound scan.
These Canadian wait times for basic diagnostics health tools is very, very much longer than in the U.S., long waiting times that could result in far more serious health and pain levels while waiting.
The long wait times has led 63,000 Canadians to travel outside of Canada for these basic tests in 2016, travel costs and diagnostic costs that were not covered by their government insurance.
According to University of Pennsylvania Wharton School professor, Mark Pauly, a professor of healthcare management, “the wait time for scans [in the U.S.] is minimal":“If you are in the ER and need a scan, you will get it right away. There may be some delay in scheduling at a particular facility if you want an elective scan. Though in any large city, I am sure you could find someone who would take you within a few days.”
Pauly also pointed out in the article that Canadians patients are more likely to suffer from acute diseases, have less access to specialists, and experience worse health outcomes than in the U.S,. since the Canadian system emphasizes primary care vs. acute care medicine and health care: “If you are a basically healthy person and your needs can be satisfied with primary care, you're probably going to be better off under the Canadian system. On the other hand, if you are sick, and especially if you have a chronic condition, you're going to wait longer in Canada and have to hobble around in pain for a longer period of time than you would in the U.S.”
Canadians have the 13th longest life expectancy rate, age 82, while Americans' expected life length at 79 ranks it 45th in the world.
Infant mortality rates are also lower in Canada, 4.5 deaths per 1,000 live births vs. 5.9 deaths in the U.S.
While about 1.7 million people in the U.S. are diagnosed with cancer every year with about 610,000 dying from the disease, according to the Canadian Cancer Society, last year only 206,000 Canadians were diagnosed with cancer with about 80,800 dying from the disease.
However, since the U.S. has nine times as many people than Canada, the cancer diagnosis and cancer death rates are a little higher in Canada.
Pauly stated in the article that “ordinary people in Canada are healthier than in the U.S., but outcomes for cancer and very serious illnesses are less good there. It's a great place to live as long as you don't get too sick, as one critic put it.”
But he also stated that since Canada has many more primary care doctors that can catch bad health trends earlier, which may account for the better ordinary health care and the horrible acute health results.

So, a lot of data but let me summarize: if you are relatively healthy then the Canadian system is better for you. If you do not need specialists, diagnostic scans, prescription drugs, have good, strong healthy teeth, you do not need to travel abroad for basic tests, are willing to risk a slightly higher cancer rate of diagnosis and death, and are willing to wait longer and endure more pain and get sicker and sicker, possibly endangering your life, while waiting to get treated by a specialist for a disease that you do get, than Canada is for you.

Thus, the numbers do nothing to change our conclusions: single payer systems cause more pain, cost more, have much more bureaucracy which cuts down on the efficiency of providing healthcare. If you are working under the Canadian single payer system, you are going to wait for a very long time just to get a single diagnostic test, tests we take for granted and expect to be done immediately in this country.

We are seven posts into this theme and we still have more to discuss on how badly single payer healthcare systems are in Canada, England, and elsewhere in the world. Stay tuned.

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:

https://www.amazon.com/Walter-Bruno-Korschek/e/B002KYU08Q/ref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

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

Sunday, August 11, 2019

August, 2019, Part 2, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: The Failure of Single Payer Health Care Systems Around the World

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.

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 previous post we reviewed the many, many failures and disasters of Obama Care, probably the worst piece of legislation ever passed when it comes to comparing it to its objectives and its promises. This was the Federal government’s most recent and deepest attempt to try and control the healthcare of Americans and it has ended badly.

But despite this fiasco, many Democratic candidates for President want the Federal government to go even deeper into controlling our healthcare via a so-called single payer system. In such a system, the government controls virtually all of a country’s health care needs and requirements, greatly reducing an individual’s choice in their own healthcare needs.

Somehow they think that more government control, and the increased taxation that comes with it, is a good thing despite the government’s failure to run any kind of health care program effectively and efficiently, be it Obama Care, Medicare, Medicaid or the Veterans Administration.

Today we have pulled out some material from previous posts on the pitfalls and utter failure of single payer systems from around the world. Despite the following shortcomings and failures of the single payer concept to deliver high quality health care at reasonable prices and taxation levels, still some Democrats think it is a good idea:

1) A couple of years ago, there was a flu epidemic in England, home to one of the oldest and worse single payer health systems in the world. How did their single payer healthcare system react to the flu epidemic:

In short, the system was overwhelmed.
People waited up to twelve hours just to see a doctor for a flu examination.
The British Health Service, the operator of their single payer system, was so desperate that they cancelled over 50,000 non-urgent surgeries so that the limited and overworked doctors and other medical professionals could have their attention diverted to treating flu victims.
Things were so bad that then Prime Minister, Theresa May, had to come out with a public apology of how bad the healthcare situation is in England today: “I know it’s difficult, I know it’s frustrating, I know it’s disappointing for people and I apologize.”

It is rarely a good thing when the leader of the country has to publicly apologize for the bad operation of a government bureaucracy.

2) But this English single payer fiasco should not surprise since back in 2015, the Independent newspaper in England wrote: “The UK has one of the worst healthcare systems in the developed world according to a damning new report which said the nation has an “outstandingly poor” record of preventing ill health.

Hospitals are now so short-staffed and under equipped that people are also dying needlessly because of a chronic lack of investment. The verdict, from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), will make embarrassing reading for (then-Prime Minister) David Cameron who denied the cash-strapped NHS is heading for its worst winter crisis.

Britain was placed on a par with Chile and Poland as countries still lagging behind the best performers in survival following diagnosis for different types of cancer. The UK came 21st out of 23 countries on cervical cancer survival, 20th out of 23 countries on breast and bowel cancer survival and 19th out of 31 countries on stroke.”

“Outstandingly poor, one of the worst healthcare systems, chronic lack of investment, lagging behind the best performers in survival,” etc. Still think Obama Care did not go far enough? Still think that far away faceless politicians and government bureaucrats know what is best for your healthcare? No way either Obama Care or a single payer system is efficient or effective, reality is the proof.

3) But England’s single payer system is not the only failure in the world. We have previously reported on the failure of Canada’s single payer system to deliver efficient, timely and effective health care. For example, we have already reported on how tens of thousands of Canadians come to the United States every year because it is far easier to get timely health care in the States than it is back home under Canada’s single payer system.

Reason magazine provided a real life example of the single payer failure history in Canada:

Joy Hataley, a doctor up in Ontario, Canada, recently had to refer a patient to a neurologist at Kingston General Hospital.
Obviously a referral to a neurologist likely represents a potentially grave and dangerous situation.
When the patient went to make the appointment on the doctor’s referral he was told it would be four and a half YEARS before he could even get an appointment, never mind whatever treatment might be necessary.
The doctor was told that if this inane four and a half year waiting period was not acceptable they would try to get their patient in to see a neurologist in another city altogether.
But if the wait time was four and half years Kingston General Hospital, what are the odds that the wait time in a different city would be much shorter?

Single payer systems always result in the rationing and the delaying of receiving medical attention. If someone needs to see a neurologist, it is doubtful that a four and a half year wait is an acceptable time frame to wait from a life and death perspective. The more government intervenes in the healthcare industry, be it Obama Care or a single payer system, the worst the health care that will be provided becomes.

Okay, that will do it for today but in the next post or two we will continue to show why a single payer health care system is a very, very stupid idea, despite what Democratic candidates might say. The proof is in the numbers and the reality that single payer systems fail to deliver high quality health care at reasonable costs and taxation levels.

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:

https://www.amazon.com/Walter-Bruno-Korschek/e/B002KYU08Q/ref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

Saturday, December 1, 2018

November, 2018, Part 2, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care:Why Medicare For All Stinks and Why Trump Has Made Healthcare Better

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.

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) We have often reviewed how horribly the Federal government’s track record has been when providing healthcare to the American public:

Medicare is going bankrupt with tens of trillions of dollars in predicted unfunded liabilities.
Medicare and Medicaid lose tens of billions of dollars every year to incompetence and criminal fraud.
The Veterans Administration has been so inept that thousands of veterans have had to wait months just to get an appointment to see a doctor with untold numbers dying before they could actually get a doctor’s appointment.
Obama Care never came close to attaining its stated goals along every financial, medical and health insurance perspective.

And yet, despite this horrid track record in the healthcare industry, many Washington politicians think it would be a good idea for the Federal government to control EVERY aspect of Americans’ health care needs. They even have a name for this travesty, “Medicare For All.”

Jack Crowe, writing for the National Review website, described how idiotic this concept is,besides the track record of failure in this area in the past:

A viable estimate of the cost of “Medicare for All” concludes that the concept would cost the Federal government, and American taxpayer, $32.6 TRILLION over just the first ten years.
This is the estimate that as developed by a forecasting model developed by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.
This estimate is in line with another study that was done independently by the liberal Urban Institute.
This average cost of $3.26 TRILLION a year is almost equal to the total amount of record setting Federal tax revenue collected in 2017, i.e. the country would have to double the amount of wealth going to the Federal government every year to pay for this program.
This $3.26 TRILLION a year, if paid in taxes, is wealth that could not be used to support and grow the economy, depressing economic growth and the financial well being of the country with no guarantee the Federal government could even execute such a big effort in light of its failures listed above.
In fact, the study found that “the government could double all corporate and individual income taxes and it would still lack requisite revenue to fund the program.”
Specifically, “Enacting something like ‘Medicare for all’ would be a transformative change in the size of the federal government,” said Charles Blahous, the study’s author.
Bernie Sanders, rather than read and criticize the study based on its merits, decided to attack the study’s credibility solely based on the reality that his political enemies, the Koch brothers, fund some of the activities of the Mercatus Center:“If every major country on earth can guarantee health care to all, and achieve better health outcomes, while spending substantially less per capita than we do, it is absurd for anyone to suggest that the United States cannot do the same.”
This is a totally self serving and incorrect statement since in our previous post we showed that single payer systems like “Medicare for All” has not delivered what Sanders claim they have.

As we have said before, any single payer health care system is a stupid idea that refuses to die, similar to just about every other idea or program that Washington politicians all too often come up with.

2) Trump has made some pretty substantial changes to Obama Care’s tenets and rules and, of course, liberals and Democrats have cried disaster all along the process, claiming that Trump is heartless and causing health care suffering among Americans. But according to reality as described by Warren Todd Huston in a November 6, 2018 article for the Godfather Politics website, Trump’s changes have actually made health care better for millions of Americans:

Mr. Huston cites an article in the New York Post by Mary Vought that showed that Trump has made life easier for Americans who are chronically ill and others with pre-existing conditions.
Trump has encouraged the Food and Drug Administration to speed up the approval of generic drugs which generally cost less than equivalent brand name drugs.
In Trump’s first two years the FDA has approved over 1,900 generic drugs while only 1,143 were approved in the last two years of the Obama administration.
An analysis by the Council of Economic Advisors found that drug price growth over the past two years probably saved consumers about $26 billion.
Trump also signed the “Right To Try” legislation that allows terminally ill patients to try experimental drugs as a last ditch effort to save their lives.
Also, according to the article: “The Trump administration has expanded access to more coverage options — not fewer as Obamacare did...To individuals who can’t afford pricey ObamaCare plans, changes to short-term, limited-duration insurance will give alternatives with more reasonable rates — and a guarantee that they can maintain their coverage should they develop a costly illness that requires treatment after their plans’ expiration date.”
Trump also eased Medicaid rules to allow states to better their Medicaid rules to more efficiently handle the needy in their states since according to Ms. Vought, “Disability groups aligned with Democrats didn’t mention it at the time, but ObamaCare effectively created a two-tier Medicaid system — with individuals with disabilities and other vulnerable populations at the back of the line. Under the Affordable Care Act, states get 90 cents from Washington for every dollar they spend covering able-bodied adults, but only 50 to 75 cents for covering individuals with disabilities. That has led states that expanded Medicaid under ObamaCare to treat people with disabilities as lower priorities.”

So, Trump’s Obama Care’s changes made drugs less expensive, gave no hope to the really sick Americans in this country, made it easier to get insurance policies that fit a person’s needs, and made it easier for the truly needy to get Medicaid help for their health needs. Yeah, he really screwed things up [sarcasm.]

More unfolding disasters of Obama Care next month are highly likely since Obama Care is the law that keeps on giving...bad news.

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

Friday, May 25, 2018

May, 2018, Part 1, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Adding To The National Debt and Fatal Medicaid Waiting Lists

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.

1) One of the many lies Obama told us about Obama Care was that it would not add “a single dime” to the national debt. Given the hundreds of other times he lied during his administration, it should not be s surprise that this was a big fat lie also:

According to a recent Tim Brown article on the Freedom Outpost website, the Federal government will spend $685 billion just in 2018 and that number will grow to $1.2 TRILLION by 2028.
These figures come from the latest analysis from the Congressional Budget office.
Other interesting forecasts and another indication of Obama Care’s failure, the CBO says that in 2018, about 244 million Americans under the age of 65 will have health insurance while 29 million will not and that by 2028, only 243 million will have health insurance and 35 million will, thus killing Obama’s promise that ALL Americans will get health insurance coverage under Obama Care.
The Federal payment for health care will grow from 3.4% of GDP in 2018 to 3.9% in 2028, killing another Obama Obama Care promise that this legislation would “bend the cost curve” downward which it obviously is not doing.
Just the Medicare expansion within Obama Care will require an additional $842 billion in Federal taxpayer subsides vs. what would have been required without Obama Care by 2028.

How do you count the number of ways Obama Care failed? Some days it is really hard to count that high.

2) Part of Obama Care was to loosen the requirements for people to get healthcare insurance and coverage under Medicaid. Medicaid originally was supposed to be reserved for the poor, disabled, the blind, the elderly, and the really truly needy in our country. Along comes Obama Care and those truly needy people are joined by millions of other fully functional, not as poor people, as reported by a recent Nicholas Horton National Review article:

While Medicaid was designed to be a safety net only for the truly needy in our society, Obama Care overwhelmed the system by adding almost 13 million not truly needy people to Medicaid roles.
This caused there to be more able bodied Americans being served by Medicaid than truly needy Americans being served by Medicaid, a complete bastardization of the process and original intent.
This overwhelming of the Medicaid system has resulted in at least 21,904 Americans dying while on Medicaid waiting lists since Obama Care expanded eligibility, according to a recent analysis by the Foundation for Government Accountability.
Thus, Obama Care, which was designed to save lives, was designed so poorly that it has resulted in the incremental deaths of potentially over 21,000 Americans.
The article explains more fully what is happening: “To put a finer point on it: Expansion states have chosen to spend tens of billions of their dollars on non-disabled adults instead of helping those on the waiting list. They’ve chosen to further strain the safety net by adding nearly 13 million more adults to welfare instead of helping people with traumatic brain injuries and other serious disabilities get the care they need. And we now know that at least 21,904 of these needy individuals have died before ever getting those services.”

As often happens, a government program that is supposed to fix a problem actually makes it far worse, i.e. Obama Care was supposed to make people healthier but in this case made waiting lists longer and increased the fatality rate of those on waiting lists.

That will do it for today.Huge incremental costs from the Obama Care while still leaving almost 30 million Americans without healthcare insurance many years after the legislation was enacted. A Medicaid problem that has been overwhelmed by Obama Care that has resulted in long waiting lists for Medicaid patients needing medical treatment, delays that potentially have already killed upwards of 21,000 people. Broken promises, higher costs, dead Americans, the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. More to follow.

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:

Monday, January 25, 2016

January, 2015, Part 3, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care:Costs Are Up, Competition Is Down, and Personal Stories Of Obama Care 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 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.

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 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.

For the past several days we have been reviewing the latest unfolding disasters from the worst piece of legislation ever written by Washington:

1) The Freedom Works website recently had an interesting graph in an article on its website (click on the graph for a larger view):

It is my understanding that this is the per person cost that governments paid in 2012 for health care in their country divided by the number of people in their country. As you can see, with the exception of Norway and the Netherlands, no other country spent more government money and wealth on health care for their citizens than the United States.

By 2014, the U.S. government was spending almost $1.4 TRILLION of taxpayer wealth on health care or about $4,500 per U.S. citizen, every man, woman, and child. Thus, in just two years, in the presence of Obama Care which was supposed to reduce healthcare costs as promised by the President, U.S. government spending on healthcare increased by almost 8.2%, orders of magnitudes higher than the overall inflation rate in the country. Thus, by this measure, government spending on healthcare per capita, Obama Care has failed to accomplish a main goal of its original intent, reduce healthcare costs. It has not “bent the cost curve” like Obama promised.

2) The best way to keep costs down in any market is to ensure that there is a healthy and large mix of competitors in that market that compete for customers. Basic economics: fewer competitors, higher costs for consumers, more competitors, lower costs for consumers. Which is what Obama Care should have been trying to do, increase the competition in the health care industry and let market forces drive down costs.

Of course, given how the legislation was written, it did the exact opposite. We have already reviewed how the largest insurers in the country have gotten even larger by merging with their large competitors. We have already reviewed how hospital groups have merged with their competitors in order to compete with the now larger health care insurers.

And now a recent Businessweek article discussed how drug companies are getting into the larger and larger mode when last November, two drug company giants, Pfizer and Allergan were merged in a mind boggling deal worth $183.7 billion. Thus, in all aspects of the American health care industry, insurers, hospitals and now drug companies, the competitors are getting fewer and fewer and remaining competitors are getting larger and larger, the exact opposite of what one would want from an economic perspective. Fewer players = ever higher costs, all due to Obama Care.

3) We will end today’s discussion on Obama Care disasters and this month’s discussion with a series of heartbreaking stories of how Obama Care has messed up the lives of Americans and their families. These stories are self reported and collected on the website, www.ourhealthcarestories.com. They tell the stories of Americans losing access to their favored doctors, insurance policies, and hospitals, of Americans paying ever more for insurance premiums, co-pays, and deductibles. They tell the stories of people changing doctors, insurance companies, and hospitals in the middle of cancer treatments. These are the real stories of what Obama Care did to America, beyond the macro financial, economic results and numbers, it screwed Americans all over the country.PATRICIA - MINNESOTA: In order to keep my monthly payment the same, I had to raise my annual deductible from $3,000.00 to $5,000.00. I also lost the three times each year that I could go to the doctor for a $30.00 co-pay. I also lost the flat fee I paid on prescriptions of $10.00 for generic and $25.00 for non-generic. These items I now pay from dollar one. This conceivably could cost me a lot of money each year.REBECCA - KENTUCKY: I know I can't keep my plan, which I liked, but as I'm trying to decide what to do going forward, I've spent weeks, with days on the phone getting confidently delivered wrong answers, conflicting information, it's becoming quite obvious to me a lot of agencies, almost everyone I talk to, is having a lot of trouble figuring out the new rules.DENNIS - FLORIDA: I had great insurance for my daughter and myself. In 2008 I paid only $200 a month. On December 31st I lose my insurance because it is to good for the law. I have an autoimmune disease and will not have access to my medications since the managed plans do not cover them. I only see specialist which will end since I will need a referral every time. The price of the new plans $450 a month for less coverage. President Obama is a liar.RON - MICHIGAN: His name is Ron Byelich from Higgins Lake. He is semi-retired and had insurance with BC/BS of Michigan for $179/mth with a $1,000 deductable. He was about to have neck surgery, but received a letter that his insurance was cancelled because it didn’t meet the HHS requirements. He went on the site and found out that a similar policy would cost $640/mth with a $1,000 – 1,500 deductable. So now he has no insurance and can’t afford the neck surgery.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 except able 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 with out 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 I 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!"Sad, sad stories. More unfolding disaster from Obama Care next month, the worst piece of legislation passed by the worst set of Washington politicians ever.

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

Tuesday, December 29, 2015

December, 2015, Part 4, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Personal Horror Stories

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.

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 are going to focus the entire post on the hardships that Obama Care has rained down on Americans across the country and point out which shortcomings of ObamaCare caused their problems. The source of these stories is the website:

www.ourhealthcarestories.com

1) JOE - NEW JERSEY: Joe Porzio, a 57-year-old construction worker in Wayne, has bought his own insurance through Aetna for years. When he received a letter saying his plan was being canceled by Dec. 31, he began looking at the federal marketplace for new options soon after it went live Oct. 1. He was eventually able to fill out an application, but the website locked him out and he has not been able to access it.

He finally completed a new application last week by phone but, as of Wednesday, was unable to access that one also. “The deadline is approaching, and I’m still in limbo,” Porzio said. “I also found out that my doctors, who I have been seeing for years, will now only accept the highest offered plans. So, it’s true, you have to pay to keep your doctors.”

Obama Care Disasters: Lost access to preferred doctors, current policy cancelled, and difficulty accessing the Obama Care website.

2) DONNA - GEORGIA: Donna Hill in Duluth, Ga., just outside Atlanta, said premiums are 80- to 100-percent higher than those under current policies that offered wider networks

Obama Care Disasters: Increase in premium costs and narrow, restricted healthcare networks.

3) LARRY - MICHIGAN: “I sold my business because of Obamacare. I opened my restaurant, Schu’s Grill & Bar, in 1990. There’s no question that the new health law has impacted not only my current business but future projects, too, to the point where I sold my restaurant in January and I’m in the final stages of moving on. I won’t be working in a brick-and-mortar business and putting people to work. I’ve chosen to go into consulting for myself and the ACA was one of the reasons, though not the only reason.

During our busy season, we are well over the 50 full-time employee threshold, which meant we had to offer private health insurance under the new law. As a small-business owner, I don’t have a chief financial officer and the paperwork required would have added probably another 20 hours per month to my accounting staff. We didn’t have the dollars to put into those additional labor hours.

It would have actually cost me all the profit I generated from the restaurant. Profit is not a dirty word. It’s important to survive. Before the ACA, we already offered private insurance to our employees and we paid 50% of their policies, which would have cost us $150 a month per worker. But we hired a lot of young professionals who were 27 or 28 years old and they would opt out of medical insurance because they said they didn’t need it. That’s the irony.

Yes, they extended the deadline for small-business owners to comply with the ACA until 2016. They bought more time, but unless there’s an evolution in the policy, it’s still unacceptable. I’m disappointed. I’m disappointed in the Obama leadership but I’m more disappointed in the real problem, which is that Americans don’t really take the time to study and understand what’s really happening in politics. We’re the ones that voted him into office.

Obama Care Disasters: Business crushing government bureaucracy.

4) LEE - OHIO: I recently had to utilize my local ER. Obamacare was supposed to eliminate the use of ER's as substitute Doctor's Offices; however,my experience disproved that. I was there for post surgery complications, but had to wait behind people who complained of a sore throat, a cold, a pain in their shoulder, pain in their shin, an upset stomach, and three headaches. I waited 90 minutes in distress before being attended to. By the way, I was the only patient close to an emergency there...no broken bones, severe lacerations, or head injuries in sight.

Obama Care Disasters: Failure to reduce emergency room visits as promised.

5) DOMINIC - NEW YORK: As a retired information technology specialist, Dominic Saglibene is amazed. First, at the botched rollout of Obamacare website.

Second and, personally more important to Saglibene, at the dollar hit for healthcare he's going to face next year because his company reimbursement contribution will decrease.

It's such a hit, said Saglibene, who knew surgery was in his future, that he "rushed to do the operation now, before the end of the year, so I could get the maximum deductible."

Which leaves Saglibene, of Westerleigh, where?

At home recuperating and pondering what he calls "the not-affordable healthcare act."

After 36 years on the job as an IT specialist, Saglibene retired last year.

He said under the Obama administration's Affordable Care Act, his "retirement medical premium will go up $103 a month beginning in 2014."

Also, said Saglibene, his "maximum out-of-pocket has risen from $6,000 to $9,200 for my family in network, and the Health Reimbursement Account from my company will decrease from $2,000 to only $800."

Added Saglibene: "I have a fixed pension. I would expect our medical needs would go up as we get older."

Obama Care Disasters: Increase in premium costs, higher deductible costs, and difficulty accessing the Obama Care website.

6) CHIP - OREGON: I would like to relay a real story about the Obamacare nightmare! My family and I had great Insurance. We got the 3 months extension so we have it up to March 31. I had to have emergency open heart surgery and our deductible is $5,000. Now I had the operation but have A fib, and our insurance will be gone. Our new insurance that is comparable is $306.00 more a month and has a $12,500 deductible! Our out of pocket health bill will be close to $20,000 this year! [ . . .]If you want to use us for an example of how bad this law is please let me know

We need to end this nightmare that they have thrown at us!

Obama Care Disasters: Increase in premiums and higher deductibles.

7) 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.

Obama Care Disasters: Increase in premiums and failure of Obama to deliver his promised $2,500 reduction in premiums.

8) SUSAN - FLORIDA: Our policy last year went from 600.00 a month to 700.00 a month, then we just received a new letter a week ago saying that our policy is going from 700.00 a month to 1050.00 a month, plus raising our deductable from 10,000 to 12,000.00 a year. This start in Jan. We must repeal Obamacare.

Obama Care Disasters: Increase in premiums and higher deductibles.

9) 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).

Obama Care Disasters: Increase in premiums.

10) KENT - NEBRASKA: We had our long time blue cross policy cancelled because it was not good enough for Obama care. The policy we got offered cost us 25% more premium and increased our deductible from 5000.00 year put of pocket to 12,500.00 out of pocket. It had to include crap like birth control and maternity which 50 year old people do not need. To apply for a subsidy we had to give out all of our personal financial data to lord we do not even know who.

Obama Care Disasters: Increase in premiums, current policy cancelled, and forced to pay for health care services that are not needed.

11) ED - OHIO: Even after the administration made hundreds of improvements to the troubled Obamacare website, many people are still encountering difficulty.

Ed Anderson, a graphic designer from Columbus, Ohio, who was recently bumped from his wife’s insurance policy for reasons relating to the new law, discovered that his family’s monthly premiums will double even if he chooses the most inexpensive plan available to him through the new federal insurance exchange in his state.

Anderson said he and his wife currently pay a monthly premium of $460 through Blue Cross Blue Shield. But now that he can no longer stay on his wife’s plan, he will have to get his own coverage. The most inexpensive option would cost him a $428 monthly premium. And he and his wife can’t qualify for a federal subsidy because their joint income exceeds the cutoff. The new insurance policy will cost the Andersons an extra $5,000 a year in premiums alone.

“When you’re trying to keep your house, pay car insurance and put your kid through college, it’s tough,” Anderson said. Everything we do is going to be affected by this. Getting groceries, eating out. Going anywhere. It’s just crazy.”

Obama Care Disasters: Current policy cancelled and increase in premiums.

12) JOE - MICHIGAN: Lost my employer plan and now pay 21.6K per year for a Gold plan with no tax credit or subsidy. The coverage is not as good as the old plan and the premium is 32% of my retirement income after taxes. Obamacare has put our retirement plans in the tank.

Obama Care Disasters: Current plan cancelled, increase in premiums, and restricted healthcare networks.

13) LORI - CALIFORNIA: The Anthem Blue Cross representative who answered my call told me that there was a silver lining in the cancellation of my individual P.P.O. policy and the $5,400 annual increase that I would have to pay for the Affordable Care Act-compliant option: now if I have Stage 4 cancer or need a sex-change operation, I’d be covered regardless of pre-existing conditions. Never mind that the new provider network would eliminate coverage for my and my son’s long-term doctors and hospitals.

The Anthem rep cheerily explained that despite the company’s — I paraphrase — draconian rates and limited network, my benefits, which also include maternity coverage (handy for a 46-year-old), would “be actually much richer.”

I, of course, would be actually much poorer. And it was this aspect of the bum deal that, to my surprise, turned out to be a very unpopular thing to gripe about.

“Obamacare or Kafkacare?” I posted on Facebook as soon as I hung up with Anthem.

Obama Care Disasters: Current plan cancelled, increase in premiums and forced to pay for health care services that are not needed.

So, the next time that someone like Hillary Clinton says Obama Care “is working,” tell them about Lori, Joe, Ed, the rest of the Americans above who are suffering through higher premiums, higher deductibles, lost coverage, coverage that they will never need, lost access to preferred doctors, and the myriad of other burdens Obama Care has forced on the nation. Maybe say a little prayer for them this holiday season as they struggle to cope with Obama Care’s fallout, Lord knows that the Obama family, frolicking on the beach on Hawaii is not going to do so.

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

Love My Country, Loathe My Government

Friday, August 16, 2019

August, 2019, Part 7, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: The Failure of Single Pay Health Care Systems Around the World, Continued

Sunday, August 11, 2019

August, 2019, Part 2, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: The Failure of Single Payer Health Care Systems Around the World

Saturday, December 1, 2018

November, 2018, Part 2, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care:Why Medicare For All Stinks and Why Trump Has Made Healthcare Better

Friday, May 25, 2018

May, 2018, Part 1, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Adding To The National Debt and Fatal Medicaid Waiting Lists

Monday, January 25, 2016

January, 2015, Part 3, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care:Costs Are Up, Competition Is Down, and Personal Stories Of Obama Care Disasters

Tuesday, December 29, 2015

December, 2015, Part 4, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Personal Horror Stories

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