September, 2016, Part 3,The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: More of the Same, Real Americans Suffering

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, 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.

This week we will be reviewing the latest unfolding disasters from the worst piece of legislation ever written by Washington:

1) Over the past couple of days we have been checking in around the country to see where Obama Care insurance policy rates are headed for 2017 and the results are all the same: they are going up and they are likely going up a lot. Tom Tillison, writing for the BizPac Review website, recently discussed the situation in Nebraska.

He cited an analysis done by the Omaha World-Herald that found that Obama Care insurance filings for next year will range from a low of 12% increase in insurance rates to an almost 50% increase with all Obama Care plans in Nebraska averaging a 35% increase. It is pointed out that these types of rate increases may drive people out of their insurance policies and make the options of paying the Obama Care fine less burdensome than paying more for insurance policies that are looking more and more unattractive everyday.

Now, the article does point out that some Obama Care policy holders will not see all of the increases since their subsidies from the American taxpayer will also increase. But nevertheless, there are still two major problems going on here: 

• No one, absolutely no one, is seeing the $2,500 DECREASE in their annual health insurance costs that Obama promised over and over.
• Obama Care is still not even close to “bending the cost curve” as Obama promised over and over, the costs are still there but are just being moved around from taxpayer to Obama policyholder, which continues to add to the national debt and makes the original Obama Care business case look pathetically inaccurate.

Another state, another disaster.

2) It seems like talk of the Obama Care death spiral has been a main theme this week as the disasters unfold so let’s stay with that thread. Bob Livingston, writing for the Personal Liberty website on August 12, 2016, posted an article entitled: “The Obamacare Death Spiral Is On.” Details from his article include the following:

• Aetna and Anthem, two of the largest insurers in the country have reversed their plans to expand their Obama Care business and are actually going to shrink that business next year.
• The Kaiser Family Foundation predicts that overall across the country, Obama Care insurance rates will go up by at least 9% in 2017, more than four times the rate of inflation.
• Blue Cross has announced that rates will go up on average 40% in Alabama and by 60% in Texas.
• The article correctly points out that “Higher premiums and deductibles created disincentives for young healthy people to throw money into the Obamacare pit for services they’ll never use and deductibles they’ll never reach unless they experience a catastrophic event. Meanwhile, people getting heavily subsidized or “free” coverage are overusing health services by seeking treatment for common minor illnesses and injuries.” 
• Thus, the young and healthy that were supposed to subsidy the old and ailing never materialized and the old and ailing are overusing their insurance since they are not paying for a lot of it, a double whammy on the insurance companies’ financial results.
• Only 11 million people got Obama Care insurance coverage in 2016, which was barely half of what was forecasted by the Congressional Budget Office originally.
• But about 1.6 million who signed up in 2016 never paid for their premiums and were dropped by the insurance companies in June, meaning less than half of the expected enrollments have showed up.

The total impact of the disasters from Obama Care were nicely summed up at the end of the article: “Thanks to Obamacare we’ve seen health insurance premiums rise, deductibles rise, taxes rise, rural and community hospitals close, penalties for non-participation enforced, loss of privacy, the creation of health system monopolies and the retirement of many doctors. Medicare now has a $43 trillion unfunded liability. And hundreds of Obamacare “Innovation Center” cubicle dwellers are creating “cost-containment” strategies that will lead to rationed care. Already, 75 so-called “innovation models” to ration care have been rolled out, with several of them mandating participation nationwide.”

Rising costs, higher taxes, loss of privacy, rationing of care, a doctor shortage made worse, etc. Sounds about right for the worst piece of legislation ever passed.

3) My mom always said it is not nice to say, “I told you so” when someone is wrong. But I will ignore that advice today and use a piece from a recent Investors’ Business Daily article that could have been entitled, “I told you so Obama Care supporters:” 

"Critics, however, were spot on. They said that, despite the individual mandate, ObamaCare wouldn't attract enough young and healthy people to keep premiums down.

Critics predicted sharp hikes in premiums and big increases in medical claims. That's what's happened.

Critics said people would game the system, waiting until they got sick to buy insurance, then canceling it once the bills were paid, because of the law's "guaranteed issue" mandate. That's happening, too. In fact, administration officials are trying to tighten the rules to mitigate this problem.

Critics said insurers would abandon ObamaCare amid substantial losses. Anyone want to dispute that this is happening?"

Critics also pointed out that many of the tenets of Obama Care had been tried in the past and had also failed. A report from Milliman, Inc. back in 2007 had examined what happened in the past when eight states tried the Obama Care approach of denying no applicant insurance coverage or be charged more if they had a pre-existing condition. The report found that premiums skyrocketed, enrollment dropped, and health insurance companies left the market. Sound familiar?

Obama should have heeded the advice of Albert Einstein: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” Einstein was so much smarter than today’s political class, as the unfolding disasters of Obama Care prove.

4) As we often do, let’s finish up today’s and this month’s unfolding disasters that is Obama Care with some real life stories from real Americans who have undergone some really bad hardships as a result of this inane law. The source of these stories is the website, www.ourhealthcarestories.com. Listen to the despair this law has caused so many Americans:

JESSICA, INDIANA: We have insurance through my husband's work. With the ACA, our premiums have increased and our co-pays have tripled. Our maximum benefits have gone down as well.

I used to be able to visit my Chiropractor for a monthly adjustment that kept my lower back pain and migraines away. Now, I cannot afford the higher co-pay, especially with the increase in premiums.

Seems this affordable care act is not so affordable after all.

KATE, NEW MEXICO: We own our own business and pay for our own healthcare. As of January 1, 2014 the cost of a comparable healthcare policy tripled and our old policy was cancelled. We have been unable to afford the cost increase and as of May 2014 we have no insurance at all. This has been a very frustrating situation for us.

STEPHEN, NEW JERSEY: Business premiums went from $1600 to $2900 for two families while our deductible nearly doubled to $5000. The pressure on our business to produce is ridiculous. I work constantly. We are dropping it if it goes up again.

DANIELLE, CALIFORNIA: Aliso Viejo resident Danielle Nelson said Anthem Blue Cross promised half a dozen times that her oncologists would be covered under her new [Obana Care] 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.

SARAH, WASHINGTON: Sarah's daughter was approved for treatment at Seattle Children's Hospital, then was denied four days later because hospital was "out of network" under the plan she had through the exchange.

This is not an isolated incident. The exclusion of a major provider like Seattle Children’s from a major insurance network in this market is unprecedented. We’re seeing denials of care and disruptions in care.

Higher premiums, higher deductibles, dropped coverage, non-access to needed doctors and hospitals, the disasters being rained down on typical Americans and their families. More disasters next month, I am sure, as the death spiral continues on the worst piece of legislation ever passed by Washington.

And I am sure the disasters will keep on coming until the root causes of our high healthcare problmes, as listed above, are finally addressed with a rational, sane approach.

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