October, 2017, Part 4, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Stopping Illegal Insurance Company Payments and Giving Freedom and Power Back To Individuals

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, sugar, 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 copays 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.

1) There has been so much done in the name of Obama Care that was either illegal or un-Constitutional. One of the likely un-Constitutional actions taken under the Obama Care umbrella was killed off by Trump last week. He signed an executive order that terminated the illegal and un-Consitutional payments to insurance companies 

These payments were called cost-sharing reduction payments (CSRs) that were made directly to insurance companies to help them offset their potential losses under Obama Care’s tenets. This action has absolutely no bearing on the Federal subsidies that low income Obama Care customers receive legally under the Obama Care legislation, they are strictly bribery payments directly to insurance companies to entice them to continue to offer Obama Care policies.

This termination follows court actions that Congressional Republicans took in which they rightfully argued that Congress never approved such payments and thus, under the articles of the Constitution, they were illegal. After two years of legal motions and arguments, a Federal court ruled that their complaint had legal validity and would be allowed to go forward.

Part of the White House press release read as follows and highlighted the reasons for the termination: “The bailout of insurance companies through these unlawful payments is yet another example of how the previous administration abused taxpayer dollars and skirted the law to prop up a broken system. Congress needs to repeal and replace the disastrous Obamacare law and provide real relief to the American people.”

This closes out another disaster from Obama Care, a piece of legislation that was so bad that insurance companies had to be illegally bribed with taxpayer wealth seven years after Obama Care started to do its damage. Again, this action does nothing to directly affect the Federal subsidies that low income Americans receive to help pay for their Obama Care policies. That legal process is still intact and working under the direction of the IRS. It is the direct billion dollar payments to insurance corporations that have been stopped.

2) The Trump administration also moved positively forward on several other Obama Care issues. First, it is relaxing the rules that stipulate that every Obama Care policy had to fulfill many, many unwanted requirements as far as what was covered. For example, a 64 year old gay male, if he wanted an Obama Care policy, had to pay for coverage of maternity costs as required by the legislation. An Amish family, if they wanted an Obama Care policy would have to pay for drug and alcohol addiction treatment coverage, habits that they usually do not partake in.

Obviously, the insurance companies loved these requirement since it forced customers to pay for more coverage than they needed or wanted and were for options that the insurance companies would likely never have to pay out for. But this drove up the cost of Obama Care policies which made them more expensive than what the customers needed them for. Hopefully, by relaxing these onerous Obama Care requirements, the cost for health insurance policies will go down as companies can now customize policies to specific needs of potential customers.

The President also signed an order that allowed it easier for Americans to band together to form Association Health Plans (AHPs) including the ability to band together across state lines (see our root cause list above where we have always recommended that): “Barriers to insurance company competition across state lines need to come down.” This should help independent contractors such as web designers, artists, writers, etc. to get together and go to insurance companies as a formal group to negotiate lower insurance rates for their AHP members. 

And finally, the President ordered the Federal government to expand the use of tax advantaged health reimbursement accounts to help Americans pay for their health insurance.

It is refreshing to finally report some good news in our continuing series of the “unfolding disasters of Obama Care.” Since Congress has refused to do anything to fix this horrible law and the heartbreak it has caused millions and millions of Americans, these first three steps under Trump are a welcome set of good news for a change: no more bring rich insurance companies, no more buying coverage that was not needed, and allowing individuals to get together to negotiate better health insurance terms.

Rand Paul one of the few advocates for freedom now serving in Congress found the President’s actions to be commendable as do we:  “President Trump is doing what I believe is the biggest free-market reform of healthcare in a generation. I want to commend the president for having the boldness and foresight and leadership to get this done.”

So, some good news finally on the Obama Care front. The President has restored Constitutional order by stopping illegal payments to insurance companies and he has given back some control of Americans’ health insurance choices to the folks that actually know best what is best for their health needs, the individuals themselves. One more post on the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care yet to come.

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