May, 2014 The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care, Part 4: Another Politicians Sepaks From Another World, Cancer Patients Cannot Afford Their Obama Care Drugs, Maryland Uninsures More Than It Insures and More

This is our fourth and final update post this month to the continuing saga, “the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care.” Despite being live in the market for well over six months, every day there seems to be another fiasco or unintended negative consequence of this law. That is why every month since last August we have had to dedicate multiple posts every month to discussion on what this disastrous law is doing to Americans, their health, the economy, and our freedoms.

1) We usually get our silly quotes or out of this world quotes from Nancy Pelosi, as we have already shared this week. However, she apparently does not have a monopoly on inane statements as we see from what U.S Senator Angus King said on a Sunday morning news show: “There’s no such thing as Obama Care. You can’t sign up for Obama Care. You sign up for an Anthem policy, or an Aetna policy, or a Welthorn policy. It’s private insurance.”

Who knew, there is no such thing as Obama Care. That 2,500 page piece of legislation that Reid, Pelosi, and Obama rushed through for passage was apparently a mirage. The fact that millions and millions of Americans have lost their insurance because of that piece of legislation is just a smoke screen. The fact that the American taxpayer spent billions of dollars on non-working health insurance websites because of the legislation was just a piece of mass hypnosis.

Of course it is private insurance, driven by the OBAMA CARE legislation. Again, what world, what reality do these Washington politicians live in? Pathetic.

2) On May 19, 2014, the website of Judicial Watch put out a public relations release that described the chaos and ineptness of the Obama Care rollout’s initial days and how that ineptness was likely still affecting the numbers that the Obama administration have been hyping as proof of success. Specifically, Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act request went after “any and all records concerning, regarding, or related to the number of individuals that purchased health insurance through Healthcare.gov between October 1, 2013, and October 4, 2013.”

October 1, 2014 is critical since that was the first day that people could sign up for health insurance via the Federal Obama Care web portal/website. As you may recall, those first few days were an unmitigated disaster from a data systems perspective despite the government having over three years and having spent probably over a billion dollars trying to get ready.

The Judicial Watch posting reminds readers how it was impossible to get a total number of enrollees during those early days in October from the administration: “Marilyn Tavenner, head of the HHS Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, refused to disclose the number of people who had purchased insurance through the site saying, “We have just decided not to release that yet.””

We now know, via this Freedom Of Information Act effort, why the government was a little reluctant to tell what the enrollment numbers were:

• On October 1, there were 43,208 accounts created and a grand total of…one enrollment.
• As of October 31, 2013, there were 1,319,425 accounts created nationwide, resulting in only 30,512 actual enrollments in Obama Care, an enrollment closure rate of a measly 2.3%.
• At the end of the first day of open enrollment for Obama Care, October 1, 2013, the Senior Advisor at Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Brigid M. Russell, sent out an email to her staff with a subject line celebrating “2 enrollments!” The body copy of the email read: "We have our second official FFM enrollment! The first two Form 834s sent out are to: 1) CareSource in Ohio, 2) BCBS of North Carolina."
• Serious problems were not restricted to ordinary American citizens since all 24,000 Congressional staffers that are required to use Obama Care also faced numerous failures and delays. An October 2, 2013 email from HHS Special Assistant Marianne Bowen indicated serious problems with Congressional enrollments: “The Congressional issue (68 attempts for Direct enrollment) was an issue stemming from incomplete applications being sent through (started, not finished, sent anyway) and the way the issuers are assigning unique numbers. Turns out there were only 4 complete Direct Enrollment applications that went through, the other 64 were not complete."
• On October 2, 2013, the Obama Care website had 70 million page views but only 5 million were unique visitors, and a whopping 48% of registrations failed. 
• And here is the truly critical take away from the Judicial Watch information cache. On April 17, 2014, President Obama announced that eight million people had signed up for health insurance on Obama Care health insurance exchanges. However, this number may be seriously over estimated since, according to testimony earlier this month by the America’s Health Insurance Plans Association in front of the House Commerce Committee Subcommittee on Oversight, “Because of the challenges that surfaced with the launch of the Exchanges in October 2013, some consumers were advised to create a new account and enroll again. As a result, insurers have many duplicate enrollments in their system for which they never received any payment.”

Pathetic performance despite billions of dollars spent in systems development and government salaries dedicated to probably the worse product launch in the history of mankind. And eight months later, we still do not know how solid that 8 million number is, given the multiple accounts that the same people put into the fatally flawed system to begin with.

3) One Obama administration person who was in the thick of the whole chaos and disaster was HHS Secretary Kathleen Sibelius. She is no longer in that position, having left government employment a few months ago once the initial Obama Care enrollment period ended. 

Given how awful the launch was back in October, it is quite beyond belief that she was not booted out of her job long before she left due to incompetence. However, that is a story for another post, namely how incompetent does one have to be as a government employee before being fired for being…incompetent? 

During the chaos of the launch, a local Oklahoma television reporter was interviewing Ms. Sebelius and discussed the fact that Obama Care was very unpopular. He then paused, waiting for a reaction to that observation from the Secretary. Embarrassingly, Ms. Sebelius just sat silently, at a loss for words in reaction to his statement. 

After about seven awkward seconds without a response, the reporter speaks up and says that perhaps the sound isn’t working. Sebelius replies that the sound is working just fine. She just didn’t have anything to say. The video clip on how she was stunned to think that Obama Care was unpopular can be seen at:

http://www.ijreview.com/2014/03/125684-awkward-moment-reporter-tells-sebelius-unpopular-obamacare-speechless/

This is a “deer in the headlights” embarrassing from the government leader that was supposed to hold it all together but who could not even react to a simple question.

4) One of the emerging problems of Obama Care that is just being talked about is the high out of pocket costs that Obama Care patients have to pout out before they start seeing any benefits of their Obama Care policies. Apparently, in their previous policies, policies that were killed by the Obama Care legislation, they did not have the large out of pocket costs that they have to live with now.

A recent Associated Press report had some examples of what this new potentially deadly wrinkle is:

• One of the problems is that Obama Care policies have little or no flexibility when it comes to out of pocket costs, just about everyone is treated the same way.
• Breast cancer survivor Ginny Mason can now no longer afford her arthritis medication, Celebrex, under Obama Care because of her higher out-of-pocket costs. 
• To keep taking Celebrex, Mason would have had to pay $648 a month up to a $1500 deductible, and then a co-pay of $85 a month: “I was grateful for the Affordable Care Act because it didn't turn me down but ... it's like where's the affordable on this one,” Mason said. 
• Brian Rosen, senior vice president for public policy for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society explained in the article that specialty cancer drugs are prohibitively expensive under Obama Care: “The challenge is for the sickest patients, the ones that need access to these specialty drugs, the costs are going to come in most cases from that out of pocket cap ... they are likely to hit that $6,350 ceiling and in some cases quickly.” 
• In other words, in many Obama Care policies, the ailing customer will have to put out over $6,000 of their own money before seeing any benefit from their policy. Many people do not have $6,000 available in their household cash flow to afford such an outlay upfront. That is why their previous policies may have higher costs per month but avoided large cash outlays upfront.
• This is very distressing and potentially fatal since a recent study from the University of North Carolina School of Medicine “found that patients with higher co-payments were 70 percent more likely to stop taking their cancer treatment and 42 percent more likely to skip doses.”
• Thus, many Oabma Care patients may be faced with a decision that is critical and contingent on their cash flow: do they scale back taking their medicine because of the high upfront costs of their Obama Care policy deductibles or do they skip a mortgage payment of a college tuition payment. The North Carolina study looks like they will skip the medicine, imperiling their health.

Saving a few dollars upfront on an Obama Care insurance policy just to face a life or death decision on a higher cost impact on a household’s cash flow is not solving the nations’ high health cost problem, it is only redefining it in ways that may prove fatal.

5) One last Obama Care disaster before we sign off for this month. Back in early April, the head of the Maryland Health Insurance Exchange testified in front of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that only 60,000 Maryland residents had signed up for Obama Care through the state’s exchange. But it was noted at the hearing that it was well known and accurate that about 73,000 Maryland residents had lost access to their current insurance policies because of Obama Care. 

Thus, the net gain, or in this case loss, of health insured residents in Maryland was negative 13,000. Only in Washington can you try to get more people health insurance and after years of prep and billions of dollars of expense, in at least one state, Maryland, you end with FEWER insured people eight months after you launch your program…to get people insured. 

That will do it for this month’s disasters. Unfortunately, I am pretty sure we will be right back here at the end of next month reviewing even more disasters from the worst piece of legislation ever enacted by the most inept set of politicians ever to be in power.

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.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

June, 2014 The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care Update, Part 3: Refusing To Treat Sick Kids, Creating More Uninsured Americans, and More

This is our third post this week as a we continue our monthly series on the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. The first post in this month’s review can be seen at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/05/may-2014-unfolding-disaster-that-is_9001.html

We will need at least today’s discussion to cover the idiocy and futility of the Obama Care fiascos from the past month or so. Previous month’s fiascos can be seen by typing “the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care” in the search box above.

1) In what may be one of Obama Care’s scummiest tenets is recent news that has been uncovered relative to non-profit hospitals. Recall that under the Obama Care law, every American is required to purchase health insurance or face fines via IRS procedures for not purchasing.

However, many of America’s hospitals have treated sick kids for a long time whose families do not have health insurance policies in effect. If that behavior was to continue into the future, the Federal government, under Obama Care, could fine those hospitals thousands of dollars for each instance of serving a sick uninsured kid or eventually revoke that hospital’s non-profit status, if it was non-profit, causing the hospital to now pay taxes to the Federal government. 

Under Obama Care’s newly created IRS Section 501, financial penalties will be incurred by hospitals that provide care for uninsured, poor Americans. The underlying, and underhanded reason, for this approach is that by providing needed medical care to sick kids the kids families might not be anxious to sign up for Obama Care insurance policies. By threatening hospitals for serving the needy, it can force the needy to buy insurance as required by Obama Care.

The situation is better described by John Kartch of Americans For Tax Reform: 

“Failure to comply, or to prove this continuing need, could result in the loss of the hospital’s tax-exempt status. The hospital would then become a for-profit venture, paying income tax— hence the positive revenue score. Obama Care advocates turned over every rock to find as much tax money as possible.”

Pretty sad when a Washington law goes after more tax revenue at the expense of sick kids.

2) Almost as despicable as using sick kids to attain your political goals is to accuse anyone who disagrees with your view of being a racists. Critics of Obama Care have been called racists for years under the assumption that if you disagree with what an African-American President says, it must be because you are a racist. 

Has nothing to do with expressing an opinion or holding an honest and legitimate contrary view, a view that has been proven right over the years. Disagree with Obama, you must be a racist. Senator Jay Rockefeller repeated this tired cliché recently relative to critics of Obama Care:

“I’ll be able to dig up some emails that make part of the Affordable Care Act that doesn’t look good — especially from people who made up their mind that they don’t want it to work because they don’t like the president. Maybe he’s of the wrong color, something of that sort. I’ve seen a lot of that and I know a lot of that to be true. It’s not something you’re meant to talk about in public but it’s something I’m talking about in public because that is very true.”

Hey Senator, maybe we do not want Obama Care to work because, as we have reviewed many times in this blog:

• The legislation makes the cost of insurance premiums and deductible go up in cost.
• Millions of Americans have lost their health care coverage as a result of Obama Care.
• The legislation never understood or attacked the underlying root causes of our high health care costs so it has little chance of being successful.
• It only signed up a net two million people to health insurance policies despite spending untold billions of dollars.
• It is causing millions of Americans to lose work hours, lose their jobs, or not get access to jobs that would have been created without Obama Care.
• The cost of the program is now well north of two trillion dollars.
• Americans are losing access to their preferred doctors and hospitals and the top hospitals in the country.

Had enough, Senator? These are not racist reasons for opposing Obama Care, these are legitimate realities for resisting Obama Care that have nothing to do with “color.” Stop the nonsense and fix this disaster before you retire in the fall.

3) A recent poll of potential voters in so-called competitive Congressional districts by Politico showed how unpopular Obama Care is with a majority of Americans:

• 89% of respondents said it will affect their votes.
• 60% of respondents said the debate and finality of Obama Care is not over while only 39% said it should be.
• 48% said Obama Care should be repealed, 35% said they would “keep the law, but with modifications,” and only 16% would keep it as is.
• Thus, more than five times as many voters want some changes or the total repeal of the law vs. those that want to do nothing and keep the law as is.

A question to Senator Rockefeller: does that make 83% of those opposed in some way to Obama Care racists? Or are they concerned Americans that realize what a loser this legislation is? Speaking of losers, I would not want to be a Democratic Congress person going against five to one odds in November.

4) We have often talked about and provided examples of government actions and laws that do the exact opposite of what they were intended to. And according to a new study out of the University of Minnesota, Obama Care might actually INCREASE the number of uninsured Americans, the exact opposite of what is was supposed to do.

According to a recent Washington Post article, Professor Stephen Parente and Adjunct Professor Michael Ramlet did an economic analysis of Obama Care and its projected effect on the number of uninsured Americans over the next ten years. They concluded that the number of uninsured will go up starting in 2017, due to the declining purchasing power of the government subsidies. 

In other words, the legislation will not curtail the growth of health care enough to continue to make the Federal subsidies for low income Obama Care policy holders attractive. When the costs go up too fast and the subsidy levels do not keep up, policy holders will drop the Obama Care policies because of the higher out of pocket expense.

They also found that health insurance costs will increase by nearly $1400 for those individuals with “silver” Obama Care plans and $4200 for families with “silver” Obama Care, as they explained in the article from the Post:

Nationally, we estimate an initial decrease in the uninsured with greater use of the private health insurance subsidies, but over time health plan prices are likely to increase faster than the value of the insurance subsidy. As a result of the declining purchasing power of the insurance subsidy, the implementation of the qualified health plan requirements and the end of the reinsurance and risk corridor programs we estimate a significant reduction in the private insurance market in 2017 with steady declines continuing for the rest of the decade.

Great do something and get the exact opposite of what you planned for, only in Washington and only with our politicians.

5) We have often talked about how the web based Obama Care health insurance exchanges that were developed by some of the states have often been a disaster. The state of Oregon wasted tens of millions of dollars on a site that signed up one customer online. Nevada had to opt out of its site as has a number of other states (e.g. Maryland, Massachusetts, etc.).

The reason that these states are getting out of operating their own websites for Obama Care signups is that they could not manage to put together a website system that worked. But other states are having other problems even though their websites for Obama Care signups worked adequately.

It turns out that even if your website works okay, the cost of operating it is getting way out of line of expectations. Apparently, Rhode Island is considering getting out of their website process and letting their citizens default to the Federal website since the estimated annual cost of maintaining and operating their own site is about $23 million, much more than they expected or budgeted for. Illinois is even in worse shape with the annual operating expenses of their Obama Care exchange website likely to be about $100 million. Since the entire state of Illinois is a financial basket case, a large unexpected expense like this can be devastating.

Thus, either because of operational ineptness or overwhelming operating expense, the majority of states that built their own website, at a total costs of probably billions of dollars, will likely dump them anyway and default to the Federal Obama Care website. And given how poorly that website process has worked, adding millions of additional users from these states is sure to make the entire operation collapse under its own weight and incompetence.

Another bad day for Obama Care. Forcing hospitals to not serve uninsured sick kids, opponents are still racists despite the ungodly bad realities of this law, the vast majority of Americans still do not like the law, the law might be doing just the opposite of what it is intended to do, and the political class still cannot build an efficient and cost effective website process. Insane and pathetic and more 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.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

May, 2014 The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care Update, Part 2: State Insurance Exchanges Implode, Another Obama Care Tax To Kill The Economy and More

This is the second post in this month’s series on the continuing disaster that is Obama Care. Yesterday, we learned that the vast majority of Obama Care policy enrollees already had health insurance, that many of them will face sticker shock next April when they realize they have to pay back part or all of their Obama Care subsidies on their tax forms, and that Nancy Pelosi is still not of this reality. Today and the next few days will not be much better from a disaster perspective. 

1) We have covered many, many examples of Americans seeing their lives completely screwed up as a result of Obama Care. Recently, a local television station covered another example out in California. Apparently, a young Marine veteran in California cannot locate a doctor who will accept his Anthem Blue Cross insurance plan, an insurance plan he purchased through Covered California, the state's Obama Care exchange. 

Local TV station KPIX reported that the Marine, named Kyle, claims he was on the phone for two hours with Anthem, trying to find a doctor within a 20-mile radius of his home, with no luck. "Finally a supervisor said, 'Sir, we have to go. we have other people to help. And [they] advised me I need to cancel my plan."

Unbelievable treatment of an American in so many ways. First, Obama Care sold him a plan that was useless. Second, the customer service department of the company that sold him the plan was useless. And third, rather than handle the situation, they told him to cancel his plan and basically lose any money he had already put into the pockets of the insurance company for absolutely nothing.

But for Obama Care, often par for the course. Lousy, or in this case, no insurance coverage, lousy or no access to medical care under the Obama Care policy, and horrible customer support and lack of respect to the customer.

To access the TV report, go to:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/california-veteran-cant-get-care-under-obamacare_793457.html#!

2) Politico reported on May 20, 2014 that the state of Nevada would be joining a number of other states in scrapping its Obama Care state health exchange system since it has been such an unmitigated failure. Those in charge decided that the current systems used for the state exchange could not be fixed by November, the start of the next enrollment season and that Nevada residents would have to use the Federal Obama Care exchange until further notice.

Thus, Nevada joins Oregon, Maryland, and Massachusetts as states whose politicians and government bureaucracies could not build and manage a website process for Obama Care. Nevada had awarded the original contract to Xerox at a cost of $73 million. For that $73 million, Nevada was expected to enroll 118,000 people by March 31.

However, severe tech problems with the web based exchange forced state officials in January to slash the projection to 50,000 as the Nevada exchange spit out incorrect subsidy information for enrollees among other problems. As of May 10, just 35,000 state residents had officially enrolled in Nevada online for Obama Care, less than 30% of the original expectations.

Certainly a failure by any measurement or set of expectations.

3) But as we just said, Nevada is not the exception in the Oabma Care world, it is almost becoming the rule. Consider the widespread failures of Obama Care’s state exchanges, as compiled by a recent analysis done by the Heritage Foundation:

• In the case of three states that have called it quits relative to their own state exchange for Obama Care, Oregon received more than $300 million in Federal taxpayer money, Massachusetts received $179 million, and Maryland received a little more than $171 million. 
• That’s more than $655 million in Federal taxpayer-provided money for absolutely nothing in return. 
• Additionally, although it already has admitted failure relative to its exchange site, Massachusetts wants another $120 million to try again.
• But it gets worse. State managed Obama Care exchanges in Nevada, Hawaii, Vermont and Minnesota are all also failing to deliver what they were supposed to deliver, beginning last October. 
• In total, Federal taxpayers have spent $834 million in just six states that collectively enrolled 270,000 people. That’s more than whopping $3,000 dollars per enrollee.
• For those costs, we would have been better to just write a check to each of them for over $3,000 and have them apply it to any insurance coverage they could find on theri own.
• As we discussed in previous posts, Oregon takes the prize for the worst. Despite spending $305 million dollars, not one person during the 2014 enrollment period was registered successfully online via Oregon’s Obama Care exchange.
• Hawaii spent almost $25,000 for every enrollee who signed up during the Obama Care enrollment period ontheir state exchange website.
• And in Colorado, the Obama Care exchange website has not come close to hitting is sign up objective, it’s managers have consistently fought against an audit attempting to track how the exchange used its millions of dollars, and in the ultimate insult, are now proposing the $13 million in user fees be assessed on the health insurance policies of state residents who do NOT get their insurance via Obama Care in order to subsidize those that do get their policies via Obama Care’s processes.

As a result of these many state Obama Care exchanges collapsing into a pile of trash and the disaster of a rollout of the Federal exchange, do we really think that allowing the political class, and their ineffective and inefficient government bureaucracies they operate across the country, are the people you want to entrust your health care to? 

If they cannot build and maintain simple web based programs after spending over three years and probably over a billion dollars to try and do so, maybe they are not the ones to manage the nation’s health care issues. Since they have not been able to fix our failing public schools, win the war on drugs, develop and deploy a strategic energy policy, secure our borders, etc., the probability of them being successful in this area is next to nil.

4) This item is a new one to me so I am not really sure how it works except for the fact it will increase the cost of health insurance for every person and every company, small or large, in the United States. It is called the Health Insurance Tax and a consulting group, Oliver Wyman, has completed an analysis which examines and estimates the effect of the new “HIT” tax on insurance market segments and public programs: 

• Impact on individual market consumers: Increase premiums over a ten-year period for single coverage by an average $2,150, and for family coverage an average $5,080. 
• Impact on small employers: Increase premiums over a ten-year period for single coverage by an average $2,760, and for family coverage an average $6,830. 
• Impact on large employers: Increase premiums over a ten-year period for single coverage by an average $2,610, and for family coverage an average $7,130. 
• Impact on Medicare Advantage beneficiaries: Increase costs $16 to $20 per member per month in 2014 and will increase to between $32 and $42 by 2023. The average expected increase in the cost of Medicare Advantage coverage over ten years is $3,590. 
• Impact on Part D beneficiaries: Increase average premiums by $9 in 2014 and by $20 in 2023 for a total increase of $161 over ten years. 
• Impact on Medicaid managed care beneficiaries: Increase the average costs of Medicaid coverage by about $1,530 per enrollee between 2014 and 2023. 

Thus, a family who gets their insurance via a large employers’ health insurance program could end up paying over $700 a year more under the Obama Care HIT tax. Small businesses, which annually create the vast majority of new jobs in the economy, could see its cost of providing health care insurance to its employees increase up to almost $700 a year also. All these tax hits have to have a severe damping effect on business hiring and the growth of the economy.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that over a ten year period, the HIT tax will take about $100 billion out of the economy and hand it over to the Federal government. This is $100 billion thast cannot be used efficiently by the economy to build economic growth and job opportunity. Given what we just discussed regarding the incompetence of the political class in buidling simple websites, it is doubtful that the Washington politicians will be able to use this $100 billion efficiently or effectively.

But again the bigger issue is the deception and lying of the President when he boldly stated that the average American family will see their annual health insurance costs go down around $2,500 a year. Tough to do when just this single Obama Care tax is likely to increase those same costs upwards of $700 a year. Pathetic leadership from a pathetic Washington.

That will do it for today but we probably need at least one more day to update everyone on the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care.

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.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

May, 2014 The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care Update, Part 1:

Unfortunately, its that time of month again where we need to review the latest fiascos and disasters coming out as a result of Obama Care. Over the past few years, but especially since last August, we have been reviewing what is turning out to be the worst piece of legislation ever to be enacted by Washington. It is a law that is increasing rather than decreasing health care costs across the country, restricting our freedom and liberties, and failing miserably to get more Americans health care insurance.

The biggest failure of all is that the writers and supporters of this legislation never understood the true root causes of our ever escalating health care costs. By never understanding the root causes, their legislative efforts had little chance of actually eliminating the root causes. Instead, we are stuck with a Rube Goldberg like health insurance contraption that has little chance of fulfilling the President’s solemn vow that the average American household would see an annual $2,500 reduction in their health insurance costs.

The dozens of disasters we have previously reviewed can be seen by looking at past month’s posts or searching for the phrase, “the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care” in the search box above. Of particular timeliness is the multiple monthly posts we have had to do since last August. We have proposed our simple, root cause based solution to our nation’s health care problem in previous posts and will not be reviewing them again in this series, that solution can be viewed in past posts. This week we will be blitzing through what is another sad list of failures from this legislation.

1) The Obama administration took a victory lap back in early April when they claimed that about 8 million Americans had signed up for Obama Care, claiming this proved that the law was a success. However, we have also covered the fact that reputable sources have shown that five to six million Americans LOST their current health care coverage as a result of Obama Care. Thus, the net gain due to Obama Care is not eight million but just around two to three million when you take out those Americans who lost insurance coverage.

But that is old news. The new news is the world renowned consulting group McKinsey did an analysis of Obama Care enrollees and found that only 25% of the enrollees had previously been uncovered for health care insurance. Thus, there were not eight million newly insured Americans under the program, only two million newly insured, 25% of eight million. 

Thus, billions and billions of dollars were spent only to get two million uninsured Americans insured, leaving about another 48 million uninsured. At this rate, it will take far more than two decades to get the primary objective of Obama Care fulfilled, hardly a success by any stretch of the imagination.

2) The LA Times recently ran an article that points out how the Obama administration is trying to manipulate the law to keep everything together as just about everything is coming apart. The Times article pointed out that an impending illegal Obama Care bailout is in the works for heath insurance companies across the country.

The Times found and reported on how a little noticed HHS regulation issued May 16 opened the door for the Department of Health and Human Services, and the American taxpayer, to spend billions of taxpayer dollars bailing out health insurance companies through Obama Care's "risk corridor" program. According to the text and intent of the law, the risk corridor programs were supposed to be revenue neutral for the Federal government and the American taxpayer. It was supposed to be funded by the insurance industry itself and the funds would be used to make up profit shortfalls of member companies relative to Obama Care.

But as the results of the Obama Care enrollees profile analyses became clearer, insurance industry lobbyists started doing their thing in Washington relative to the self imposed caps on the risk corridors' funds. Their lobbyist group in Washington, America's Health Insurance Plans, sent a letter to the Obama Care people in the government which demanded that, "risk corridors should be operated without the constraint of budget neutrality." 

In other words, the insurance lobby wanted a guarantee that if Obama Care's losers needed more money out of the risk corridor program than Obama Care's winners were paying in, that U.S. taxpayers would be forced to pay the difference. 

And that is what the HHS people did last week, according to the LA Times, putting the American taxpayer on the hook for another big industry bailout, not unlike the bailouts of General Motors, AIG, mortgage brokers, banks, etc. You cannot say this program was a success if billions of dollars are illegally paid out to some of the biggest companies in the country to cover their loses in a program they freely signed up for themselves.

3) The law was written so that if you are an Obama Care policy holder and your income falls below a certain level, the Federal government, via the American taxpayer, will pay you a subsidy to help pay for your Obama Care premiums. However, according to a recent Washington Post article, the Obama administration never built the necessary software that tie IRS records to the Obama Care subsidies data systems. 

This foul up exists even though the Obama administration had promised Republicans in Congress that it would be up and running in time so that the American taxpayer would not get screwed in paying too much out in subsidies. Thus, according to the Post, there is likely to be a lot of financial shock next year when Obama Care policy holders file their income tax. 

They will find out that as a result of the Obama Care income software having never been built and used, they received too large of a subsidy, requiring them to pay more in taxes next April. The Heritage Foundation recently discussed a study which estimated that up to 38% of Obama Care enrollees will see an incremental tax hit when they file their income tax returns.

How many Obama Care policy holders do we think will cancel their program next year when the find out that they are not entitled to as much financial help as the Obama Care effort promised them? That eight million claimed enrollees might take a mighty big step backwards next April.

4) We have previously reported on how hundreds and hundreds, possibly thousands by now, of companies and other types of organizations have had to cut back hiring, cut employee hours, and cut down the size of their staffs as a result of Obama Care, all of which is killing the chance for decent economic growth in this country.

And the downsizing pain is not over. A Des Moines, Iowa NBC affiliate recently reported that Mercy Medical Center, a hospital in Des Moines, will have to lay off 29 staff people, a cut that is being partly attributed Obama Care, according to Bob Ritz, president of Mercy Medical Center: “As the federal government and state payment systems continue to ratchet down on what they pay us and our costs go up, we have to look for opportunities to create cost efficiencies. And one way you do that is you reduce your management costs. So if we have a department that has a director and a manager and two supervisors for let’s say 75 staff, we may remove one of those positions to what we say are the layers of management.”

Just a another few dozen people who likely lost their careers and futures as a result of this dysfunctional law.

5) We will finish up today with a quote from my favorite politician, Nancy Pelosi. She is not my favorite because of what she does for America but what she does for blog writers everywhere, speaking up on topics where it becomes obvious she lives in different reality vs. most Americans. She is constantly spouting off numbers and results that are not real and not true with little understanding of what she is saying, at least in our world and reality.

Her latest out of this world observation goes as follows: “So what this legislation has done is it will save a trillion dollars over the lifetime of the bill, and it will — it will reduce costs for people. And even if they pay a little more in some cases, they’re getting much better care.”

Couple of problems, Ms. Pelosi:

1. The Congressional Budget Office now puts the cost of Obama Care over the next ten years at comfortably above $2 TILLION in costs, not a TRILLION dollars in savings.
2. It will not reduce costs for the majority of Americans. The professional group representing insurance actuaries have already shown that health care premium and deductible costs as a result of Obama Care will go up, and up substantially, in 45 states and decrease or stay the same in only five states
3. They are not paying a “little more” in some states, they are paying a lot more.
4. And finally, they are not getting better care. The Obama Care policies they are stuck with has a highly restricted set of doctors and hospitals allowed under the terms of Obama Care policies, so that they are not getting better care, especially when you recall that many of the best hospitals and clinics in the country, e.g. Sloan Kettering in New York, are NOT included in Obama Care policies’ coverage.

It just amazes me that one person so intimately involved in the nation’s political business can be so out of touch with the reality of Americans’ lives and the unintended consequences of her legislative efforts. I still wonder what the color of the sky is in her world.

That will do it for today but rest assured plenty more disasters will be put forth in the course of the next week or so.

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