December, 2017, Part 1, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: More Medicaid Disasters and a Personal Story of Disaster

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) We have often reviewed what a disaster Medicaid has been relative to Obama Care and reality:

• More than twice as many people signed up for Medicaid under Obama Care’s rules and tenets than expected.
• This put tremendous pressure on state government budgets as a result of increased Medicaid expenses.
• These increased expenses as a result of Obama Care has caused at least four states now having to devote over 30% of their state government revenue solely to Medicaid.
• Numerous university studies have shown that despite more people being enrolled in Medicaid and greatly increased Medicaid expenses, Medicaid is not making Americans any healthier.
• Many people enrolled in Medicaid still cannot get medical care since fewer and fewer doctors accept Medicaid patients so that even though they have health insurance (Medicaid) they cannot get access to doctors.
• The increase in Medicaid enrollment as a result of Obama Care has resulted in decreased Medicaid funding and resources for those that were originally targeted by Medicaid, the disabled, the elderly, pregnant women, and impoverished families and increased funding for people that were never intended to be in the Medicaid fold, able bodied adults.
• And recent studies now indicate that it is highly possible that the increased enrollment in Medicaid has been a major contributor to the increased opioid addiction levels across the country.

A recent National Review article followed up on the disaster that Medicaid has become under Obama Care:

• The Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA) found that 24 Obama Care Medicaid expansion states have added more able bodied, working age adults to Medicaid roles than what had ever been expected.
• Those states were expected to add only 5.5 million people to state Medicaid roles but over twice as many, 11.5 million, signed up for free health insurance under Obama Care and Medicaid.
• For example, Kentucky’s enrollment was 134 percent higher than the projected all-time maximum, West Virginia’s was 84 percent higher than its projected peak, and Maryland’s was 62 percent greater than state officials expected it would ever be.
• These much higher enrollment totals caused Federal government/taxpayer funding to increase far beyond original estimates, estimates that were used to falsely sell Obama Care to the country and which now look obscenely underestimated.
• Kentucky’s state government Medicaid expenses ran almost $2 million over budget in just 18 months and Ohio’s Medicaid expansion cost almost twice as much than expected.

The disasters of Obama Care keep showing up every month, especially when it comes to Medicaid.

2) What would an Obama Care disaster update be without a review of the ever increasing Obama Care insurance policy cost increases. According to Javier Manjarres, writing for the Shark Tank website on December 18, 2017:

• Five years ago, Manjarres had a Florida Blue Cross and Blue Shield healthcare insurance policy with a monthly premium of $150 and an annual deductible of $2,000.
• This plan allowed him to get access to any doctor he chose to see and use.
• But then he got a notice from Blue Cross that “because of the Obamacare law,”, his current plan, the plan that he liked, could afford, and worked for him, was being terminated.
• The notice said he had to find new insurance via an Obama Care exchange.
• Five years later, he is currently working under his FIFTH policy as a result of Obama Care (Aetna, Humana, AvMed, Blue Cross, Coventry).
• His fifth and current insurance policy put him back with his original insurance carrier, Florida Blue Cross and Blue Shield, with a current monthly policy premium cost of $555 (more than three times his first policy with Blue Cross), and annual deductible of $6,200 (more than three times the cost of his first policy with them), and a much more narrow list of doctors that he can use.

Higher premiums, higher deductibles, more narrow doctor networks and incredible stress fo constantly trying to find insurance. Years after Obama Care was made law, the same problems keep recurring over and over.

More disasters to follow in the coming days.

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