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,m but are not limited to:
- Americans eat too much overall and 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.
- Without understanding and alleviating these root causes, it makes no difference how many people get Obama Care insurance policies, the costs will keep going up and care will keep going down.
1) Most of the damage to Americans insurance plans so far by Obama Care has been to individual insurance plans, not insurance plans obtained from an employer. But in 2018, that could change dramatically since the so-called Cadillac Tax kicks in. This Obama Care tax levies a 40% on insurance plans above a certain threshold. This could cause a large number of employees to change and likely reduce the quality of the current health insurance plans they provide to their employees, given this extra 40% tax that would be levied on top of the cost of the health benefits themselves.
However, according to a recent article by the Heritage Foundation by Robert Moffit, there may be a good alternative. already in use and successful, to combat the extra Obama Care tax and the reduction in quality of employer insurance plans. The alternative is called private health insurance exchanges and include the following features:
- Rather than offering only one type of health insurance program from only one provider, in a private exchange, a company’s employees would have access to a wide array of different insurance policies from DIFFERENT providers.
- This would allow employees to choose a policy that best fits their needs, not settle for just the one option most companies provide today.
- The larger buying power of companies vs. an individual, along with the fact that insurance companies would be competing side by side for that company’s employees health insurance dollars, would, and has been, keeping health insurance costs down.
- In a private exchange world, the employer would make a defined, monetary contribution to a tax-free private exchange group plan chosen by the employee.
- If the employee opted for a less expensive plan, the employee would keep the difference in savings.
- An employee who wanted a more expensive plan can use the employer’s contribution along with her own money.
- According to the consulting firm Accenture, there are already 6 million Americans enrolled in private exchange employer plans today, a number that has doubled in one year.
- The enrollment is expected to grow even faster when the Obama Care Cadillac Tax hits.
- A typical example already in place, as outlined in the article, is that for enrollees on Bloom Health’s private exchange, insurance costs are cost 22% less than the national average.
A creative way of using the free market to curtail costs while increasing options, choices and quality. I am not an expert on private exchanges and have no idea why existing private exchanges reduce health insurance costs but Obama Care exchange policies increase health insurance costs, but it is pretty obvious one exchange approach is working and one is not.
Wouldn’t it be ironic if one of the most dastardly parts of Obama Care, the Cadillac Tax, actually reduced healthcare costs by driving employers to find a free market solution?
2) We will finish off this month’s review of the unfolding disasters of Obama Care with looks at individual Americans’ stories of how Obama Care has disrupted their lives and endangered their health. We will start off with a near tragic story of a family in South Carolina who fought the Obama Care flawed bureaucracy for months to restore their rightful Obama Care health insurance policy for their ailing young son.
The bureaucracy put their son in mortal danger, given his health condition, all because a clerk did not fill in a blank on a form. This is the type of agony, worry, and endangerment this law has imposed on many Americans, a law and underlying process that was never properly tested and vetted because of political expediency.
Rather than me try to communicate this family’s worries and frustrations, go to the following link to read about their sad saga:
http://dailysignal.com/2015/05/06/this-family-struggled-to-secure-health-insurance-under-obamacare-for-their-4-year-old-son/
3) And we will finish off this post with shorter stories of Obama Care frustrations and danger from the website,
www.ourhealhtcarestories.com
MICHAEL - GEORGIA
From Dawson News:
[Michael] Boyette, 28, is married, has one child and another on the way. The Boyettes have insurance through the state through his wife's job. Under the new law, his family's insurance premium has gone up $190 a month, from $350 to $540.
"We have less coverage than before at a higher out-of-pocket expense," Boyette said. "One company, three choices, that was it. This was not what [President Barack Obama] assured me and many others."
JOHN - ARIZONA
The horrible law MUST be repealed and start over by getting the government OUT of the health insurance business. I received a letter from Blue Cross stating that my family coverage would be dropped due to obozocare. I had a very good policy with a low deductible. Great coverage and a very affordable premium. I could not afford the new policy that they were offering which was DOUBLE the premium that I had been paying. I was forced to take a substandard policy with a $3000 dollar deductible PER family member, as this is now all that I can afford. So what was that bold face LIE that obama told us over and over again.
DANIELLE - CALIFORNIA
Aliso Viejo resident Danielle Nelson said Anthem Blue Cross promised half a dozen times that her onco would be covered under her new policy. She was diagnosed last year with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and discovered a suspicious lump near her jaw in early January.
But when she went to her oncologist's office, she promptly encountered a bright orange sign saying that Covered California plans are not accepted.
MARTIN - CONNECTICUT
Connecticut psychologist Martin Klein has plenty of experience dealing with insurance companies. After all, he's been practicing in the state for 11 years and runs two offices, one in Branford and one in Fairfield. But his experience with insurers over the past couple months has surprised even him.
Since 2008, Klein has held an insurance policy from Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield of Connecticut, the state's largest insurer. The policy offers what he considers comprehensive coverage at a reasonable price. It does not however, meet the minimum coverage criteria set by the Affordable Care Act.
On September 26, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield sent Klein a letter notifying him that his plan would no longer be offered for renewal when it expires in January.
Losing his insurance plan is a big financial blow for Klein. He makes just enough to not qualify for a subsidy on the health exchange, but lives in a New York City suburb where the cost of living is high. Based on his research on and off the exchange, Klein says he would have to pay 50% more to get a plan that he deems comparable to the one he is losing.
Klein says he cannot afford a comparable plan, so he has decided to purchase an HMO with a $12,700 deductible for himself and his family.
What concerns him most about the plan is that it limits him to a narrow network of providers, all of which are in Connecticut. This prevents him from keeping some of his doctors in New York City.
Basically, said Klein, he's going to accept his new policy and, "hope nothing major happens."
PAULA - MARYLAND
My company health insurance renews July 1. We have a high deductible Carefirst plan 2700/5400 for single and family coverage, respectively. My employer pays 50% of individual and 20% of other. We are a small group and employer does not have to offer health insurance under Obamacare. My family premium was $800/month last year, this year the renewal rate is-get ready for this-remember this is affordable-$1,677/month. Even in your wildest dreams this is not affordable.
That will do it for this month’s failures and disasters. Higher taxes on existing plans and more people struggling to cope with the dishonesty, the higher costs, the lower coverage, and lesser quality that has been spawned from Obama Care, the worst piece of legislation ever passed by the Washington political class.
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