January, 2019, Part 2,The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Why Trump's Dismantling of Obama Care is A Good News Story

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.

We talk a lot about how bad Obama Care is and deservedly so. It kicked millions of Americans off of their existing and satisfactory healthcare plans. It denied access to their favorite doctors and hospitals. It raised premiums and deductibles while reducing coverage and options. It’s data systems operations exposed millions of Americans to increased identity theft threats. It caused many doctors to leave the profession, worsening an already bad doctor shortage. It added trillions of dollars to the national debt. It treated a public health problem as an insurance problem, leading to its inevitable failure.

Fortunately, there has been some movement to fix this monstrosity of a law to give Americans a break financially and medically regarding their health and health insurance:

• Let’s start with the following link which does a good job explaining why Obama Care was never going to work in the first place:

https://www.libertyplanet.com/articles/why-obamacare-was-never-going-to-work/

• Deroy Murdock, writing for the National Review on October 26, 2018, explains how the Trump administration is trying to fix what Obama broke.
• By signing the “Right To Try” legislation, Trump okayed the rights of terminally ill Americans to try experimental drugs not yet approved by the FDA in a last attempt to save their lives, an act that will positively affect over one million sick Americans a year.
• According to Trump this act will stop the following desperate practice: “People who are terminally ill should not have to go from country to country to seek a cure. I want to give them a chance right here at home.”
• Sadly, only 22 Democrats voted for this act in the House, raising the question why the other 169 Democrats would not give sick Americans a chance at life?
• Congress eliminated the individual mandate penalty that Obama Care imposed, a penalty that fined and made criminals out of ordinary Americans if they did not choose to obtain healthcare insurance, which according to Trump: “People are paying a lot of money for the privilege of not paying a lot of money for bad health care. And we’ve ended it.” 
• Trump signed legislation that killed Obama Care’s Independent Payments Advisory Board, also known as the “Death Panel,” which would have rationed health care in this country based on costs.
• Last June the Trump administration re-established “association health plans," which will allow entrepreneurs, small employers, and civic organizations to ban together to get reduced insurance groups rates from insurance companies, plans that extend across state lines, something that Obama Care killed.
• The Trump administration extended the length of short-term, limited health insurance plans from three months to one year, with renewals permitted up to three years. 
• According to the article, the cost savings from these short term plans are significant because of this extension: “For example, according to E-Health, the average lowest premium for an Obamacare plan for a 40-year-old woman is about $4,200 per year,” Trump noted. “By contrast, the average lowest premium for short-term coverage for this individual is about $1,300 a year — a savings of $3,000,” or 69 percent off.”
• These short term plans are cheaper because they are more customized and narrow to a person’s individual health needs: “Every Obamacare plan must include pediatric vision coverage — even if the policy holder is childless, sterile, and mortally terrified of small, screaming objects.”
• Trump now requires hospitals to post their prices for health care online so that customers can finally shop around for the best prices for their hospital needs and force hospitals to become more efficient because of the visibility of their costs.
• In addition, the President signed two pieces of legislation that increase drug price transparency: “Our great citizens deserve to know the lowest price available at our pharmacies. They’ll be able to see pricing. … And as they start leaving certain pharmacies, those pharmacies will be dropping their prices.”
• Trump removed so-called “gag clauses" on Medicare Part D drug plans so that now pharmacists can tell patients about more cost effective drug options.
• The current administration sped up the FDA drug approval process, so much so that in 2017 the FDA approved over 1,000 generic drugs, the most in its history, which should reduce Americans’ drug costs.
• The administration has already approved seven state waivers that give states more flexibility to serve their sickest patients by allowing insurance companies to lower premiums: “We have approved seven state waivers that provide federal assistance to help states pay for the sickest patients and allow insurers to keep premiums lower, all without increasing taxpayer burden,” Seema Verma, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), wrote last week. “These waivers appear to be working. For example, Wisconsinites will see their individual market premiums decrease by an average of 11 percent, due to the waiver.”
• The administration loosened the reins on Health Reimbursement Accounts, allowing employers to more easily deposit up to $1,800 into an employee's HRA account each year to offset healthcare costs, killing a stupid Obama Care ban on such plans.

All good steps, much of which begin to address the root causes of high healthcare costs we listed above. A lot more has to be done: we need public health efforts to get Americans to stop smoking, start eating right, start exercising and doing a number of other things to address this public health problem. But fortunately, the overbearing, one size fits all monstrosity and bureaucracy of Obama Care is starting to fall away and being replaced with more rational, effective, and efficient processes.

Keep in mind that Obama Care was supposed to “bend the cost curve” of ever increasing healthcare costs. Obama himself promised that many American families would see upwards of a $2,500 reduction in their annual health insurance costs. Instead, according to HealthCare.gov, average annual individual insurance premiums increased a whopping 105% from 2013 to 2017, from $2,784 to $5,712. 

But given the above changes, Obama Care premiums are actually expected to decrease 1.5% in 2019, the first decrease ever, with customers in Pennsylvania seeing a 16% decrease and those in Tennessee seeing a 26% decrease. More insurance companies are entering the individual insurance market, for the first time since Obama Care went into effect. 

So something good is going on. It is just a shame that Obama Care delayed the good news for seven years, causing havoc and financial strain on millions of Americans in the process.

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