November, 2017, Part 3, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Personal Horror Stories and More

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 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.

1) Many people, mostly liberals and Democrats, have finally realized that Obama Care is a failure. But rather than admit that government bureaucrats and politicians meddling in the healthcare market makes things worse, they want to double down and increase government meddling in the market. 

Most frequently mentioned meddling efforts include the so-called single payer system used in such countries as England where the Federal government, and the bureaucrats and politicians that operate it, would be in charge of ALL health care decisions in your life. Given that these same people cannot operate a postal system effectively or a government railroad system (AMTRAK) efficiently despite decades or centuries of practice, doesn't bode well for letting them take over the country’s health care industry.

Recent news out of England shows what happens when the government is in charge of all of your healthcare needs:

• The largest government single payer system in the world, the British National Health Service, recently announced that it will no longer provide non-urgent surgery to people who smoke or who exceed a certain BMI level, i.e. they are fat or obese.
• The driver for this restriction is the need to get costs under control since the system is facing a severe shortage of money to spend.
• Before getting medical care, obese people will have to to lose enough weight to qualify for health care and smokers would have to have not smoked for at least eight weeks prior to getting care.
• Now, while these folks may have gotten themselves into these health conditions because of their actions, over eating, under exercising, smoking, etc., does it make sense to make them suffer by denying them health care when they probably need it most?
• Is it humane to make them wait longer for care, quite possibly making their eventual care more expensive, more painful, and more dangerous?
• Or as we discussed above, would it have been a better idea to attack the root causes of high healthcare ahead of time rather than afterwards?

Much like Obama Care, it appears that Great Britain tried to apply an insurance option against a public health problem with the net result being that root causes are never wiped out or reduced and eventually the system’s monetary resources start to cause cutbacks and rationing.

Lots of good questions that show a single payer system is not the answer to ever increasing healthcare costs. Plus, in a free country, do you want a government bureaucrat deciding whether or not you should see your healthcare needs taken care of even if you paid into that health care process via taxes for years and years? 

And one final question: while you may not care if someone dies or suffers because they were denied medical treatment as a result of being overweight or were a smoker because you are not overweight or a smoker, where does the bureaucracy stop in order to be financially stable? If you are a beer drinker, a pot smoker, a non-exerciser, someone with a bad gene, who knows, you may be next to be denied medical treatment in order to save a few bucks to keep the bureaucracy functioning.

Fixing healthcare costs in this country is not going to get done by creating government bureaucracies and deciding who and what gets medical treatment. It gets fixed by addressing the root causes and treating those causes as a public health crisis, not coming up with some Rube Goldberg insurance process doomed to failure.

2) As we do with most monthly reviews of the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care, let's hear from real Americans who suffered some real trauma, medical and financial, as a result of the failure that is Obama Care. As always, our source for such agony is the following website:

www.ourhealthcarestories.com

Jerry - Arkansas:  When Jerry Buckley of Marion bought a health insurance plan for him and his wife two years ago, he wasn’t worried about whether he would be able to keep it after new regulations took effect under the federal Affordable Care Act.

“I didn’t pay any attention to that because the president kept telling you, this won’t affect you if you like what you have,” Buckley said last week.

A few months ago, Buckley received a letter from Arkansas Blue Cross Blue Shield advising him that his plan does not comply with new standards taking effect Jan. 1 under the health care law. Buckley was told that he and his wife could stay on the plan through the end of 2014, thanks to an extension allowed by the Arkansas Insurance Department, but after that they would either be rolled over into a plan with triple the monthly premiums or they would have to shop for another plan.

Plans that were in effect when the Affordable Care Act was signed into law on March 23, 2010, are exempt, but the Buckleys are among millions of Americans who bought plans in the individual market that are not grandfathered in because they were purchased after that date.

The issue is giving more ammunition to opponents of the health care law who have also been sharply critical of the myriad technical problems surrounding the roll out of insurance marketplaces, including breakdowns in the national national website built to provide information and take applications for coverage.

Critics say President Obama’s repeated pledge that people who liked their insurance could keep it were at best misleading, as some Americans — estimates range from 7 million to 16 million — are on insurance that cannot continue to exist in its current form under the Affordable Care Act.

Supporters of the law say the people in that group will end up with fuller coverage, and many of them will be eligible for subsidies to help them buy insurance through the new insurance marketplaces.

But Buckley, whose income makes him ineligible for subsidies, doesn’t see an upside to switching. He said he likes his current plan, which has a $400 monthly premium, a $7,500 deductible and 100 percent coverage after the deductible, plus 80 percent coverage for dental and vision services.

He said that if he switches to the most closely comparable plan available through the Arkansas Health Insurance Marketplace, his monthly premium will increase to $600, his deductible will increase to $8,000 and he will have only 70 percent coverage after the deductible. Dental and vision coverage are not included but can be bought separately.

Buckley would gain some new benefits, such as coverage for maternity, mental health and substance abuse services, but he said he and his wife, who are middle-aged, neither want nor need those benefits.

“Our plan was custom-designed for our lifestyle,” he said. “To sit there and mandate that every plan has to have maternity coverage in it is absolutely ridiculous.”

Barbara, New York: said Barbara Meinwald, a solo practitioner lawyer in Manhattan.

Ms. Meinwald, 61, has been paying $10,000 a year for her insurance through the New York City Bar. A broker told her that a new temporary plan with fewer doctors would cost $5,000 more, after factoring in the cost of her medications.

Ms. Meinwald also looked on the state’s health insurance exchange. But she said she found that those plans did not have a good choice of doctors, and that it was hard to even find out who the doctors were, and which hospitals were covered. “It’s like you’re blindfolded and you’re told that you have to buy something,” she said.

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.

Fred, California: I am self-employed and had a modest but workable policy for my wife and two kids paying $350 a month or $4200 a year. The best we found this year under Obamacare was a Cigna policy at $1200 a month with a huge deductible. I have a small business and don't qualify for any subsidies [As if I would want them], so our premium went from $4200 to $14,400 or an increase of 342%, hardly affordable. So, we're part of a medical sharing program and we're paying the FIRST $5000 of our own medical expenses.

We've been knocked in the teeth by OBAMACARE.............not to mention the loss of freedom and the government coercion.

Sky high increases in premiums and deductibles, lost coverage, forced to pay for coverage that is not needed, and loss of access to favored doctors and hospitals: the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. More disasters sure to follow 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

July, 2015, Part 3, The Unfolding Disaster That Is 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 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.

This week we have been taking a look at the latest disasters from Obama Care, including the gathering evidence that ObamaCare 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) Correction to previous version at the request of parties involved.

2) Some supporters of Obama Care actually think that the legislation did not go far enough in giving the Federal government bureaucrats and Washington political class more control over our lives and personal health care situation than what Obama Care does. these folks favor the complete takeover of health care by the government, similar to the so-called single payer systems in some European countries.

There are at least two serious problems with this mindset, both of which we have discussed already in past blog posts:

• The Federal government is incapable of doing anything efficient or effective. There is no reason to think that putting them in charge of every facet of our personal health care would somehow come out any differently.
• The actual, real life experiences of Europeans who get sick under a single payer plan have been absolute horror stories, with people waiting months and months just to get a simple medical test done, people dying before they could get treated, etc.

But there is another reason to fear a single payer plan as outlined in a Recent Washington Times article. A recent survey of health care executives in Britain found that many of them plan on rationing health care options in order to get their skyrocketing costs and financial obligations under control. 

About 40% of England's 211 clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) are considering putting limits on eligibility for services such as foot care, hip replacements, knee replacements, and other treatments. In addition, smokers and those who are considered obese will be among those denied surgery and other treatment, according to a survey conducted by the HealthService Journal, in an extension of the controversial policy of “lifestyle rationing”.

Chief executives, chairs and board members at 67 CCGs were asked: 

• “Is your CCG considering introducing new limits to access/eligibility for services during 2015/16, for financial/efficiency/value reasons?”
• Among the respondents, 39% said yes, 57% said no and 4% did not know.
• Jeremy Taylor, chief executive of National Voices, which represents 140 health charities, stated:  
• “It’s very worrying to hear this because access to services that people need is a key aspect of what makes the NHS the NHS. It’s comprehensive, it’s national, it’s free at the point of use and it’s not based on ability to pay, so if you want to ramp up rationing then you call into question the extent to which it’s still a comprehensive service based on clinical need. This is worrying but not surprising, given the overall financial state of the NHS.”

This is what happens when government bureaucrats start taking over your life, in this case, your health care aspect of your life.  By never attacking the root causes of high health care costs, see the list above which includes such maladies as smoking and obesity, you never the tame the causes of ever rising health care costs. As a result, with limited financial resources and rising health care costs, you have to at some time start cutting back on quality and quantity of services, the exact same thing that is happening in England's single payer system.

And Obama Care is taking us down the same road since it also did not attack the root causes of our rising health care costs. By allowing the root causes to fester and grow in this country, you can be sure that at some time down the road in the world Of Obama Care, rationing will also occur in this country, it is the simple rule of supply and demand.

3) One of the root causes of our ever rising health care costs is the ever rising incidents of cancer and dementia-related illnesses. Unless research and breakthroughs occur in these two illness areas, it will not matter who has an Obama Care health care insurance policy since at some point in time the entire health care industry collapses in this country.

Consider the current incidence and projection of Alzheimer's diseases, just ONE of the dementia related diseases. According to statistics in a recent article in the AARP Bulletin newspaper:

• Current national spending to treat Alzheimer's patients in 2014 was $214 billion.
• That annual number will grow to $486 billion by 2030 and $1.2 TRILLION by 2050 unless something is done to curtail the disease.
• The number of Alzheimer's patients in 2014 was about 5 million people.
• That will grow to 8.4 million by 2030 and 13.8 million by 2050.

Obama could have made an epic contribution to history, the country, and his legacy if he had proclaimed to the country back in the early stages of the Obama Care legislation development that the country would make a concerted research and financial effort to cure Alzheimer's disease within ten years. This would have been the equivalent of John F. Kennedy's proclamation that America would put a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s decade.

But, alas, as always with this President, he was not epic. he focused on trying to fit an insurance solution to a public health problem and failed miserably.  Without taming the Alzheimer's threat, without curbing the obesity epidemic, without getting the country to kick the smoking habit, without making our food supply healthy, etc., without putting a public health solution together for the problem, it does not matter how much an Obama care Bronze plan costs today. 

Because very shortly, no one will be able to afford any health care as the rising costs of our public health problems overwhelm the ability to provide care.

4) As we often do with these Obama Care posts, lt us close today with real life stories of real life Americans and how ObamaCare is ruining their lives. The source of these true stories is the website:

www.ourhealthcarestories.com

STEVE - ALABAMA: Like many, my health premium has nearly doubled ,and my deductibles and co-pays have increased some four fold. Yesterday my wife, who has a serious illness that has attacked her eyes over the years, learned that she could no longer receive a prescription that her doctor wants to write for her. This drug would help maintain her condition as to avoid flair ups with her eye problems. Her doctor informed her he can no longer prescribe the medication due to the recent health care law changes. 

PATRICK - VERMONT: My wife and I are both over 65 and on medicare. Our supplement in the past was free and all we paid was co-pays for medical care and prescription, with no yearly deductible. Our supplemental insurance, United Healthcare, said they were not allowed to offer that plan any longer. So, this year we have to $30.00 each, plus a $2,500.00 each for deductible. It is pretty tough living on a fixed income. So it pretty evident that the elderly can no longer go to a movie, restaurant or any form of enjoyment. The little extra we had after regular bills is being sucked up by the insurance and medical needs.

ERIN - MASSACHUSETTS: I lost coverage with doctors in my area. It's not right and it's not fair. The current federal government and their policies are detrimental to the health of my business and my family.

ROBIN - CALIFORNIA: My premium went up $350 my deductible went from $500 to over $5000 and my benefits were not at all any better.

That will do it for today and this month on our continuing update on the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. More individual Americans suffering as a result of the law, the continuing failure to address the root causes of the rising health care costs, more jobs lost as a result Of Obama Care, and how rationing might be coming to this country sooner than later. I am sure that more disasters will bring us back to this topic 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:

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