December, 2016,Part 1, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Root Causes That Were Never ASddressed, Schumer Tellss Americans To Suck On Obama Care, and More

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) The Daily Caller website recently had a discussion that even though many millions of Americans have insurance as a result of Obama Care, many of them cannot use that insurance because the insurance deductibles are so high. As we have said many times before in this blog, for many Americans the “good news is that you now have health insurance but the bad news is that it is too expensive to use.”

According to the article:

• A recent study found that despite many more Americans having health insurance, one in three (33%) "went without recommended care, did not see a doctor when sick, or failed to fill prescriptions because of costs."
• But in 2009, prior to Obama Care being enacted, 29% of those surveyed answered the same way.
• Thus, six years after Obama Care went into effect, more Americans went without medical despite needing it.
• Which is really not surprising since many Obama Care policies have deductibles in the thousands of dollars.

Much like buying a really expensive car, often with taxpayer help, but never getting to drive it because the car insurance is too expensive.

2) Fix This Nation website recently ran a piece that reviewed an article that the Washington Post did with the new Senate minority leader, Democrat Chuck Schumer, regarding the potential to repeal and replace Obama Care. Recall that not a single Republican voted for the Obama Care legislation, the disasters of Obama Care are solely on the Democrats. The ever skyrocketing premium costs, the ever skyrocketing deductible costs, the narrow doctor and hospital networks, the stress of losing their favored insurance policies and doctors, the trillion dollars are so of incremental national debt that the legislation will cause, the lack of competition as more and more insurance companies pull out of the Obama Care policy market, etc. are all as a result of the worst piece of legislation ever passed by Washington, and passed solely with Democrats’ votes.

As a result of this hideous piece of legislation, one would have hoped that Schumer would be anxious to work with the Republicans in Congress to fix it and make it more effective to take the heat off of the Democrats that passed it in the first place. One would have hoped that a real leader would have wanted to correct the many ills of the legislation to help ease the hardships it has caused so many Americans. 

But as always, when discussing hope and leadership relative to the American political class it is a futile discussion. According to Schumer: “We’re not going to do a replacement. If they [Republicans] repeal without a replacement, they will own it. Democrats will not then step up to the plate and come up with a half-baked solution that we will partially own. It’s all theirs.”

Nice guy, political name calling and the blame game is more important than doing the right thing for millions of Americans. Pathetic leadership.

3) Remember when Obama promised that Obama Care “would bend the cost curve” of health care spending in this country and put the brakes on ever escalating healthcare costs? Remember when Obama promised that an average American family could see up to a $2,500 decrease in their annual health insurance costs? 

Those promises ring so hollow today years after Obama Care came into existence since according to a December 4, 2016 article in by Ali Meyer, writing for the Washington Free Beacon:

• The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid recently reported that health care spending in the United States grew 5.8% in 2015, multiple times higher than the rate of inflation.
• In total, the country spent a record $3.2 TRILLION in 2015.
• This comes out to about $9,960 for every person in the country, up from $9,523 in 2014.
• And much of that total and a majority of that increase percentage fell on the Federal government and the American taxpayer: “Federal government spending on health increased 8.9 percent in 2015 after growing 11.0 percent in 2014, and outpaced all other sponsors of health care in both years,” the Centers found. “In 2015, the federal government was the largest sponsor of health care at 29 percent, up from 28 percent in 2014 and 26 percent in 2013.”
• Over a third of total health care spending in 2015 was paid for by Medicare and Medicaid with Medicare cost the American taxpayer $646.2 billion and Medicaid costing $545.1 billion.

So much for “bending the cost curve.”

4) We listed many of the root causes of our high health care costs in the beginning of this post, e.g. Americans eat poorly, Americans do not exercise enough, Americans smoke too much, etc. And unless you address the many root causes of our high health care costs, you have very little chance of actually resolving the problem of high healthcare costs, a reality that Obama Care proves every day since the creators of Obama Care put forth an insurance solution to a public health problem which failed miserably.

The December issue of the AARP Bulletin listed out the “Best Advice From Top Doctors” on how to stay healthy and if you stay healthy, your health care costs come down. These top notch doctors’ advice included the following recommendations:

• Take a daily 30 minute walk.
• Reduce your consumption of junk food.
• Cut back on refined carbohydrates, i.e.eat healthier.
• Cut back on on soda, ice cream, and overall sweets consumption.
• Cut back on eating at fast food restaurants.
• Stop smoking cigarettes.
• Start exercising.
• Spend time with a friend or loved one.
• Focus on being less angry and stressed and more time being happy.

Does this look very similar to the root causes we listed above? How come everyone understands what it takes to make the country healthier and reduce the associated healthcare costs except the people that actually wrote and enacted Obama Care? Insanity.

More Obama Care disasters tomorrow.

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