October, 2016, Part 2, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Even Obama's Friends and Allies Admit That Obama Care is Failing

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) We have often been very critical of the Obama Care legislation, calling it the worst piece of legislation ever passed by Washington, based on facts and realities. So, it was very refreshing when I came across a Washington Examiner article by T. Becket Adams that was written on October 3, 2016 where she reported that Bill Clinton called Obama Care a “crazy system” where small businesses are “getting killed.”

This is important since the creation of new small businesses has traditionally been the greatest source of job growth in the economy over time. If Obama Care is killing small businesses, than it is logical to assume that job creation is being severely suppressed by Obama Care. This may explain why this economic recovery orchestrated by the Obama administration is so anemic.

Specifically Clinton said: "The people who are getting killed in this deal are small business people and individuals who make just a little too much to get any of these subsidies. Why? Because they're not organized and they don't have any bargaining power with insurance companies and they're getting whacked." 

He continued to point out the realities of Obama Care that we have pointed out many times, Obama Care insurance premiums continue to got up substantially with benefits going down: "So you got this crazy system where all of a sudden 25 million more people have healthcare, and then the people are out there busting it, sometimes 60 hours a week, wind up with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half. It's the craziest thing in the world."

Of course, his solution is just as bad as Obama Care. It wants to junk the entire U.S. insurance company model and let people sign onto Medicaid and Medicare. Yes, two government programs that are hurtling towards fiscal collapses, two government programs that are ineffective, inefficient, and riddled with waste and criminal fraud and he wants to expand them. Insanity.

But his wife is even further out of touch, given her support of Obama Care: "[T]he fact is, we have the Affordable Care Act. That is one of the greatest accomplishments of President Obama, of the Democratic Party and of our country." If this is one of Obama’s greatest accomplishments, I cannot imagine what some of his lesser accomplishments and failures are.

2) If Bill Clinton’s dumping on a primary Democratic “victory” is a true indication of really how bad Obama Care is, consider the fact that the New York Times, the paper that loves anything that involves Obama, is actually critical of the legislation. That is the real indictment for being bad, an Obama program that even the New York Times is critical of. Robert Pear, writing for the Times on October 2, 2016, reported that:

• Janet S. Trautwein, the chief executive of the National Association of Health Underwriters, which represents more than 100,000 health insurance agents and brokers, recently stated: “In many states, the individual market is in a shambles.”
• Even Obama, who is usually so narcissistic that he cannot ever admit a shortcoming, has said that “more work to reform the health care system is necessary.”
• Specifically, he actually pointed out the many problems that we have been pointing out for years: “Too many Americans still strain to pay for their physician visits and prescriptions, cover their deductibles or pay their monthly insurance bills; struggle to navigate a complex, sometimes bewildering system; and remain uninsured.” 
• But wasn’t Obama Care supposed to reduce what we pay for physician visits and prescriptions, help cover deductibles and monthly insurance bills?
• This year’s registration period for Obama Care insurance begins November 1, a period that will see many Obama Care customers and would-be customers seeing higher premium levels and fewer insurer options.

The pathetic outcome of recognizing this failure is that Democrats want to double down on the disaster: they want the Federal government to go into the insurance business to provide competition and another insurance choice for Americans (the so-called “single payer" system). Consider the following realities that top Democrats, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and the New York Times seem to forget when the Federal government tries to operate a healthcare organization:

• Government run Medicare is hurtling towards fiscal insolvency with runaway costs and fraud.
• Government run Medicaid is hurtling towards fiscal insolvency with runaway costs and fraud.
• The majority of Obama Care insurance co-ops have already gone bankrupt, suffered criminal activities, and the rest of them with the exception of one out of 23 is likely to eventually go out of business also.
• The majority of Obama Care online exchanges never came close to meeting their enrollment targets.
• The medical process that the Federal government completely controls, the Department of Veterans Affairs, has been scandal filled and underperforming for years, resulting in the premature deaths and underserving of our veterans.

Einstein once said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. To think that the Federal government could ever run an efficient and effective health insurance program after the butcher jobs they did with Medicare, Medicaid, Obama Care co-ops and exchanges, and the VA system would prove Einstein’s theory to the max.

3) One last set of facts from the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. Katherine Rodriguez, writing for Breitbart on October 4, 2016, laid out the “5 Devastating Obamacare Facts Every American Should Know.” We have covered some of them in other posts but this article updates some of the regularly occurring disasters:

• According to the Baltimore Sun, only six of the original 23 Obama Care co-ops are still in operation because they cannot “attract enough members, draw enough premium revenue and withstand the weight of new and costly regulatory hurdles created under the health reform law.” Not enough customers, not enough revenue, and too much regulation. Sounds about right.
• In Minnesota, Obama Care policy premiums are expected to increase between 50% and 67% in 2017 in a last ditch chance to keep insurance companies from abandoning the state. Ever escalating premiums are not unique to Minnesota.
• 8.1 million Americans have already had to pay $1.7 billion in Obama Care penalties for not having health insurance, as reported by Investor’s Business Daily. This is $1.7 billion that Americans can not use to grow the economy or to use to help pay the medical needs of their families and themselves.
• One of the very bad side effects of Obama Care is that policy deductibles have soared on Obama Care policies, which makes Obama Care policies virtually useless since many families cannot afford to go the doctor, given how much money they have to pay before attaining their high deductible: “According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 18 percent of covered workers in 2008 had a deductible of at least $1,000, up from only 10 percent in 2006. For workers with employer-sponsored plans at small firms, 35 percent had deductibles of $1,000 or more in 2008, up from 16 percent in 2006. In 2016, 51 percent of all covered workers, and 65 percent of workers in small firms, face deductibles of at least $1,000, TIME reported. “Workers at smaller firms must pay an average of $2,069 out of pocket before insurance payments kick in, versus $1,238 for workers at firms with 200 or more employees,” the article reported.”
• The final devastating fact covers the same Bill Clinton Obama Care conclusions we listed above, namely, “So you’ve got this crazy system where all of a sudden 25 million more people have health care and then the people who are out there busting it, sometimes 60 hours a week, wind up with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half. It’s the craziest thing in the world.” 

That will do it for today’s review of the unfolding disasters of Obama Care. Even supporters of Obama are starting to admit to the reality that Obama Care is failing and failing badly. More disasters tomorrow.

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