The legislation has increased insurance costs, stifled the economy, caused millions of people to lose access to their preferred doctors, hospitals, and insurance policies, increased the national debt, and exposed the many lies and intentional deceptions of this President and his political allies. It is a piece of legislation that has no chance of accomplishing its supposed goal of reducing healthcare costs in this country since it never understood nor addressed the underlying root causes of our high healthcare costs. These root causes include, but are not limited to:
- Americans eat too much overall and eat too much of the wrong types of food.
- Americans smoke too much.
- Americans do not exercise enough.
- Washington laws and regulation encourage additives such as high fructose corn syrup to infest our food supply.
- The medical industry is in urgent need of tort reform.
- Current laws and regulations discourage cross state border insurance company competition.
- Federal healthcare programs today are infested with criminal activity that wastes upwards of a $100 billion a year.
- The Obama administration never “followed the money” to find out where the waste and over charging was in the entire medical industry.
So with this quick background, let’s take a look at what Obama Care disasters have popped up in the past month or so:
1) Many states set up their own Obama Care so-called exchanges to market and distribute Obama Care insurance policies to their citizens. Those that did not defaulted to the Federal Obama Care health insurance exchange. To encourage states to build their own exchanges, the Federal government and American taxpayer gave those states billions of dollars to get their operations up and running, with the expectation that this seed money was enough to build a robust and financially stable marketplace.
That has turned out to be a bad assumption. We have already reported on how many states have struggled to establish a credible online exchange, going over budget, curtailing features, opening up customers to identity theft threats, etc. That trend of failure continues according to a recent Washington Post report: "Many of the online exchanges are wrestling with surging costs, especially for balky technology and expensive customer-call centers — and tepid enrollment numbers. To ease the fiscal distress, officials are considering raising fees on insurers, sharing costs with other states and pressing state lawmakers for cash infusions. Some are weighing turning over part or all of their troubled marketplaces to the federal exchange, HealthCare.gov, which is now working smoothly."
I would take issue with the assertion that the federal exchange is working “smoothly.” That process had some serious operations problems during the second Obama Care enrollment period but relative to the horrible state exchanges it was much better. But the fact is that years and billions of dollars later, the state exchanges are mostly a disaster, something recognized by the usually Obama-friendly Washington Post.
2) The website, www.libertyunyielding.com went into further detail from that Washington Post report on what is failing or has already failed at the state exchange level of Obama Care:
- Insurance policy signups in year two of Obama Care at the state exchange level rose only 12% vs. 61% for the Federal exchange.
- “They are literally looking at huge gaps, and they are not sure how they are going to get through the year,” said Caroline F. Pearson, a senior vice president at Avalere Health.
- Minnesota and Vermont are so frustrated with costly data systems problems with their exchanges that they are considering handing over some or all of their functions to the federal exchange.
- Lawmakers in Oregon have already given up and dumped dumped their state exchange in March.
- The Rhode Island legislature is considering a fee on health plans that would go up or down according to the exchange’s operating costs. So much for the state exchanges not being a burden to local and state taxpayers, as promised by Obama
- However, the obvious problem with the Rhode Island solution is that any additional fees on the insurance companies will be passed down to the consumer, something most legislators seem to forget. Higher insurance rates will depress enrollments even more and likely result in more cancellations due to higher costs.
- In Colorado, Connecticut, Kentucky, Maryland and the District of Columbia, fees to support the exchange are imposed on plans sold on and off the marketplaces. Thus, now non-Obama Care policy holders have to subsidize Obama Care policyholders, increasing costs for those non-Obama Care customers.
- In DC, the financials are so bad that about $25 million of their exchange’s $28 million budget comes from user fees assessed on insurance products not offered on the exchange.
- In Hawaii, which has had one of the worst exchange experiences, their exchange needs $28 million to fund operations until 2022, when it is projected to become self-sustaining, something that was supposed to happen already but which is now expected to be seven years later, officials say.
- Without the additional money, “it’s going to be very difficult to keep the doors open,” said Jeff M. Kissel, executive director of Hawaii Health Connector.
- As a backup plan, officials are talking to the Obama administration about a possible federal takeover of the marketplace.
- The cost of the exchange system in Vermont is expected to balloon to almost $200 million by the end of the year, with state officials also thinking of moving to the federal marketplace if things don’t improve.
- In Maryland, where their exchange’s systems problems were so horrible that they turned to Connecticut for help, officials expect to have enough revenue to cover operations for the fiscal year that begins July 1. If not, the exchange would need to ask the governor for more funds.
What a disaster and disgrace. So many promises unfilled, so much time and money wasted, so many lives disrupted for nothing.
3) One of the supposed big selling points of Obama Care was that the legislation would significantly reduce the number of emergency room hospital visits by sick people since they would now have health insurance. And while the legislation did increase the number of people with health insurance coverage, usually via the poor quality Medicaid process, it did not reduce the number of emergency room visits. In fact, according to a recent USA Today report, a survey from the American College of Emergency Physicians found that:
- 28% of those surveyed said they had seen a large increase in emergency room visits over the past few years.
- 47% had seen slight increase in the number of emergency room visits.
- So, three quarters of those working in hospital emergency rooms had seen at least slight increases in visits, the exact opposite of what Obama Care was supposed to do.
- “Such hikes run counter to one of the goals of the health care overhaul, which is to reduce pressure on emergency rooms by getting more people insured through Medicaid or subsidized private coverage and providing better access to primary care,” explains the USA Today article.
But this should come as no surprise since the article also points out that the same thing happened in two states that had preceded Obama Care with similar programs, namely emergency room visits went UP and not DOWN as was promised by Obama and others: “While a survey of emergency department physicians’ impressions lacks hard data about patient behavior and can’t be considered conclusive, the results are consistent with studies about the effects of Massachusetts’ 2007 health care reform law and a 2008 expansion of Medicaid in Oregon.”
So did they lie about reducing emergency room visits or were they that lazy that they never checked for real world examples of what would happen? Given the track record of this administration and the current set of Washington politicians, I go with the former possibility.
That will do it for today but more Obama Care disasters to follow tomorrow, the legislation that keeps on giving...and that is the problem.
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