Fevruary, 2017, Part 4, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Less Competition, Less Choice, Higher Costs, and Nancy Pelosi Latest Delusion

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.

Today we will focus on some of these root causes to show how they are the main drivers of our high healthcare costs, causes that Obama Care never addressed and which still stay unresolved:

1) The Fix This Nation website recently had an article where a major insurer’s CEO explained that Obama Care was indeed in a death spiral:

• Aetna’s CEO, Mark Bertolini, in an interview at a Wall Street Journal event, stated that Obama Care was in a death spiral from which it could not recover.
• He predicted that more insurance companies would pull out of the Obama Care policy market in the coming weeks which could leave parts of the country without access to Obama Care policies.
• Specifically, he stated: “It’s not going to get any better. It’s getting worse.”
• His prediction comes in the wake of another major insurer, Humana, announcing that it would also no longer provide insurance policies through the Obama exchanges, stating that it could not make a profit based on the existing customer base it was serving via Obama Care.

Another day, another day closer to spiraling into oblivion.

2) One of the cruelest lies that Obama and his like dumped on the country was that Obama Care would allow people to keep their existing insurance policies, access to their favored current doctors, and access to their preferred hospitals if they wanted to. We now know that was one of the grossest, most deceitful lies that Obama ever told since millions of Americans lost access to their preferred doctors, hospitals, and policies. The lie was so outrageous that the usual Obama-loving Washington Post gave him the Lie Of The Year award several years ago.

Which brings us to the latest Nancy Pelosi rant and example of how out of touch with reality she is. Pelosi was one of Obama Care’s biggest cheerleaders. Of course, she made another infamous Obama Care quote with the inane quote that Congress had to pass the Obama Care legislation “so that we can see what is in it.” Yes, why read legislation BEFORE voting to enact it!

Well, Pelosi was at it again. House Speaker Paul Ryan is putting together plans to try and save Medicaid which is rapidly heading towards fiscal insolvency and collapse. I do not know if Ryan's plan is workable and fair, he is still working on it. 

But that did not stop Pelosi from getting into her delusional act again, stating boldly and indignantly: “They won’t be able to go to their own doctor if you take this away.” Really, millions of Americans lose access to their preferred doctors as a result of Obama Care and Pelosi is silent. A potential, non-final plan is under consideration and all of a sudden she is worried about Americans losing access to their preferred doctors. Pathetic and delusional, as always with this over the hill politician.

3) Jean Morrow, writing for the Heritage Foundation on February 15, 2017, reminded everyone of the major broken promises of Obama and the Obama Care effort and legislation:

- Although Obama promised that the average American family would see their annual health insurance costs go down by up to $2,500 the exact opposite happened:

• According to an eHealth analysis, from 2013 to 2017, the average individual market insurance premium increases were 99% for individuals and 140% for families, hardly a $2,500 decrease.
• According to a Kaiser Family Foundation analysis, premium costs for employer sponsored insurance from 2010 to 2016 for employer family programs increased almost 32%.
• HealthPocket found that the lowest Obama Care bronze plans in 2017 had an average deductible of $6,092 for individual plans and $12,383 for family plans, leading to the Obama Care reality that the good news is that many people now have insurance, the bad news is that it is too expensive to use.

So much for that $2,500 decrease Obama promised.

- Obama promised that his legislation would increase competition, resulting in more choices and cheaper costs for insurance policies. But that was also a lie:

• Humana recently announced that they were leaving the Obama Care market because of unprofitability.
• This follows the lead of other major health insurance companies who have also left the market including UnitedHealthcare, BlueCross, and Aetna.
• As more insurers leave Obama Care it leaves about 70% of American counties with only one or two Obama Care insurer options, up from just 36% in just one year.
• And the infamous Obama Care co-ops did not help fill the competition void since 18 of the original 23 have already gone out of business, taking $1.9 billion of taxpayer wealth with them, and most, if not all, of the remaining co-ops will also go out of business. 

So much for Obama Care increasing competition.

- Obama claimed you could keep your existing plan and access to your preferred doctors if you wanted once Obama Care was enacted. This was by far the most persistent lie that Obama and his administration leaders said, stating this vow at least three dozen times.

But in 2014, the first year that Obama Care was in effect, the Associated Press reported on an analysis they did that found that 4.7 million families and individuals saw their existing, preferred health insurance policies cancelled as a result of the tenets within Obama Care. And this analysis covered just 30 states, indicating that possibly millions more Americans in those other 20 states also lost access to their preferred policies.

- Not only can you not keep your preferred policy, you cannot keep your preferred doctors lie. The legislation and the provisions included in it caused insurance costs to rise dramatically which caused Obama Care insurers to severely narrow their doctor and hospital networks. Many times this required people to change doctors in the middle of treatments they were undergoing for life threatening diseases. And typically, these more narrow networks did not include the best doctors, specialists, and hospitals.

That will do it for today’s unfolding disasters that come from Obama Care: higher costs, less choice, loss of preferred policies, doctors, and hospitals, lies and deceptions from the President and his cohorts, and of course, more delusions from Nancy Pelosi. More failures tomorrow.

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