November,2017, Part 1, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Costs Keep Going Up, Up, Up...Despite What Obama Promised

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) Too many times to mention we have reviewed how Obama Care premiums and deductibles have continued to drive upwards over the years despite Obama’s oft repeated promise that an average American family could see up to a $2,5000 reduction in their annual health insurance costs. Joshua Paladino, writing for the Liberty Headlines website on October 27, 2017, reiterated the latest findings on ever increasing Obama Care premiums as this year’s signup process for Obama Care gets underway:

• A new research study shows that on average the premium costs for the most popular Obama Care plan tier will increase 34% in 2018.
• The study was conducted by the Avalere Health organization.
• Their study blamed three factors for the increasing premiums, the fact that Trump eliminated some illegal taxpayer subsidies to insurance companies, his recent executive order to promote choice and competition in health care, and the debate over repealing and replacing Obama Care in Washington.
• The Alavere people seem to overlook the fact that it is unknown but highly unlikely that the illegal subsidies that Trump cut would have ever filtered down to individual policyholders and if some of that taxpayer largess did filter down it would be relative minor since the main taxpayer subsidies, the legal ones, are still intact.
• Alavere also seems to forget that Obama promised that Obama Care would increase competition in the health insurance market but when Trump does the same thing Alavere looks on it as a bad thing.
• And finally, the argument to repeal and replace Obama Care has been going on for years and over those years Obama Care costs continued to skyrocket so blaming the debate in 2017 is silly and wrong.
• In addition, “a U.S. District Judge in San Francisco said the administration’s stance on withholding the funding had the “stronger legal argument.” Rare is the argument that Democrats, who passed Obamacare without knowing “what’s in it,” failed to fill gaping legal holes such as subsidies that they overlooked.”
• Conversely, the Heritage Foundation’s research shows that Obama Care’s massive regulation burden is a primary root cause of ever higher costs.
• According to Alavere, Obama Care bronze plans’ premiums will increase an average of 18% in 2018, the silver plans will go up an average of 34%, the gold plans will go up an average of 16%, and the platinum plans will go up an average of 25%.
• Average premium costs will go down in only three states, Alaska, Arizona, and North Dakota, small states relative to the overall Obama Care population.

Another day and another set of data that shows unlike what Obama promised, the cost of Obama Care health insurance coverage continues to rise unabated, indicating that it never attacked the root causes of our high health care and insurance in this country.

2) In the course of researching the previous article, I came across another article from the Liberty Headlines website that was put out on May 25, 2017:

• At that time, the Health and Human Services (HHS) organization had just released a report that showed that on average the insurance premiums for individual health insurance policies doubled in cost under Obama Care.
• This doubling took place between 2013, the year the law took effect through 2017.
• The study that reached this conclusion came from the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE).
• HHS spokesperson, Alleigh Marre confirmed the findings: “With data that shows average premiums doubling nationwide and Americans paying nearly $3,000 more for health insurance per year, this report is a sobering reminder of why reforming our healthcare system remains a top priority of the Trump Administration. The status quo is unsustainable.”
• But wasn’t Obama Care supposed to fix this problem, Ms. Marre, with Obama promising that some American families would see up to a $2,500 decrease in annual health insurance policies?
• According to the research, average individual insurance premiums, the core of Obama Care, doubled from $2,784 a year in 2013 to $5,172 in 2017, a 105% increase.
• The 39 states that relied on the Federal exchange to purchase health insurance also saw large increases in individual health insurance plans over that time frame.
• Three states, Alaska, Alabama, and Oklahoma saw premiums triple from 2013 to 2017.

Oh yeah, Obama could not have been further off, or more of a liar, when he promised that annual insurance premiums could down by up to $2,500 a year. Doubling and tripling of premium costs is not a $2,500 reduction.

Premium costs up, deductible costs up, competition levels down, you could not have come up with more of a failure of reforming our healthcare system in this country if you tried.

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