Friday, December 22, 2017

December,m2017, Part 2, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Higher Premiums, More Narrow Networks, Less Competition, Same Old Disasters

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) Let’s start off today’s Obama Care disaster discussion with some statistics as compiled by the Heritage Foundation:
  • Since it began making forecasts on the impact of the Obama Care legislation back in 2010, the Congressional Budget office (CBO) has missed badly on just about any prediction it made about Obama Care.
  • For instance, it said that by 2016, there would be 21 million Americans that would be enrolled in Obama Care insurance policies while the actual number was about half of that, 11.5 million, or a missed forecast of about 100%.
  • By 2017, the CBO predicted that there would be 25 million Obama Care customers but there looks like there would only be about 10.3 million people enrolled in Obama Care policies, a lower overall number vs. 2016 and a far higher percentage miss in the enrollment forecast, i.e. Obama Care is going backwards relative to the number of uninsured people it was going to cover.
  • And remember, these Obama Care enrollment numbers, 11.5 and 10.3 million, are gross numbers, not net, since according to independent research, upwards of six to seven million Americans lost health insurance coverage as a result of Obama Care so the true incremental number of Americans with health care coverage as a result of Obama Care is likely between only three and six million people.
  • And the mandate that was supposed to force every American to purchase health insurance is not working also since by 2015 only 6.5 million Americans had paid the mandate financial penalty but another 12.7 million had taken advantage of the numerous exemptions to the mandate requirement, meaning that more people were the exceptions than the rule.
  • And in a final insult to the lower and middle class in this country, the very ones that Obama promised would not be negatively affected by Obama Care, 79% of those Americans who had to pay the mandated insurance penalty had annual incomes less than $50,000 and 37% had annual incomes less than $25,000.
So the mandate to purchase insurance did not work, those that had to pay the mandate penalty tended to be poorer, and the legislation grossly missed its expected enrollment levels. Failure, failure, failure.
2) Robert Moffitt, writing for the CNSNEWS website on November 22, 2017, described a heart wrenching story about a four year old American and how Obama Care is helping to ruin her life, as reported by the Washington Post:
  • Collette Briggs is a four year old girl that is fighting a battle against a very aggressive case of leukemia.
  • She been receiving treatment at a hospital that had medical professionals that specialize in pediatric cancer care.
  • But the family’s then current insurer pulled out of the market and the replacement insurer did not have a contract with that specialized hospital, not surprising in the era of Obama Care which has caused doctor and hospital networks to narrow over time, forcing Collette's family to change doctors and hospitals in the middle of the cancer treatment.
  • According to the Washington Post article: “It is not uncommon for insurers to cut larger research-based hospitals from its plans on the exchanges as a way to cut costs. By narrowing their networks, carriers avoid paying the higher rates that academic medical centers charge.”
  • This reality was proven early in the Obama Care era according to the article since the Congressional Budget Office observed way back in 2014 that Obama Care health insurance policies had “narrower networks” than what CBO experts had predicted and that the Obama Care insurance plans were imposing “tighter management” on the use of medical services compared to employer sponsored health insurance policies and plans.
  • As time went on it got worse since in 2015, Avalere, a respected research organization, reported that Obama Care plans had 34% fewer medical providers than the average regular private health insurance policy.
  • The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation found that 41% of Obama Care “silver plans,” the most popular type of Obama Care plans, had small or “extra small” networks of doctors.
  • And even more narrow networks has not reduced rising health insurance costs by much since compared with 2013, since research shows that insurance premiums for 27 years old in 11 states has more than doubled since then and in 13 states insurance premiums for 50 year olds has increased by more than 50%...so much for Obama’s promise that some Americans would see a $2,500 DECREASE in annual premium costs.
  • The Department of Health and Human Services estimates that Obama Care insurance the average policy premiums jumped 25% this year.
  • These increases have caused more people, mostly younger people, to not sign up for Obama Care policies which has left the insurance carriers of Obama Care policies with a higher proportion of older and sicker patients which has driven up costs which means the future holds more premium increases which drives away people and the death spiral is well underway.
  • Health and Human Services predicts that the average Obama Care policy cost will go up 37% in 2018, according to the article = death spiral.
  • Between just 2013 and 2014, the number of Obama Care insurance carriers dropped by 29% and that decline in competitors in the Obama Care market continued for the following years so that by 2017, 70% of U.S. counties had only one or two insurers covering the county for Obama Care policies despite Obama claiming numerous times that Obama Care would increase competition in the health insurance market.
So let’s review today’s examples, which are very similar to every other review of Obama Care disasters: under enrollment, ever increasing premium costs, more and more narrowly defined doctor networks, a failed enrollment mandate, etc. More disasters to follow in the following days.

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