July, 2017, Part 1, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Republicans That Cannot Plan and Democrats Who Cannot Tell The Truth

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 me start this month’s Obama Care disaster review with a quick hit on Congressional Republicans. For like seven years they have correctly ranted and raved about how much of a disaster Obama Care is. They have correctly pointed out that none of the rosy promises Obama made about the legislation came close to becoming reality. Many of their successful election campaigns were based on how bad Obama Care was and how it needed to be repealed and/or replaced. 

Thus, given that they had seven years to come up with a workable and working alternative to this rancid piece of legislation, one would have hoped that when they did regain control of both houses of Congress and the Presidency that would have done their homework and had a replacement bill ready to go the first day they could. That they would have negotiated out any differences within their party over the past seven years to have the best bill possible that would sail through to enactment.

But alas, as always when dealing with the political class, hope does not exist. When it was their turn at bat, they could not find their bat. When it was their turn to go for a touchdown, they could not find their helmet. They had nothing ready to go once the situation was perfect for them and as a result, their infighting has resulted in nothing to replace or repeal Obama Care. Heaven help us from all politicians and their inability to resolve any problem.

2) More than half of those who got health insurance under Obama Care did not get it through robust individual insurance policies purchased on the open market. They got Federal government insurance via Medicaid. While Medicaid is a low cost insurance option, it is also a low quality health insurance and health care option in so many ways, many of which we have previously discussed in this blog.

Betsy McCaughey is the chairperson of the Committee To Reduce Infection Deaths so she obviously knows something about health care and disease. In a July 5, 2017 article for the Heritage Foundation, she lays out her expert opinion on why Medicaid is so frigging bad for your health:

• First off she destroys the myth that liberals and Democrats are spewing that Republican efforts to fix the damage done by Obama Care will get senior citizens evicted from nursing homes, calling it “sheer demagoguery.”
• But she does imply that in one sense that would be a good thing in some cases since many Medicaid nursing homes are afflicted with “filth, rampant infections, and neglect—conditions routinely tolerated by our indifferent public officials.”
• For example, New York state pays out some of the highest Medicaid rates in the country but according to the Federal government ratings a whopping 40% of New York state nursing homes provide inferior care.
• This 40% is not even the worse in the country since 10 other states have higher rates of inferior care in their nursing homes.
• Across the country one third of nursing home residents, often Medicaid patients, incur serious, often permanent injuries due to neglect according to a recent Federal government inspector general report.
• The Federal government estimates that annually 380,000 Americans in nursing homes die from infections that they caught in those nursing homes.
• So you can see, in one sense, getting kicked out of a sub par nursing home might IMPROVE your health.

But that is besides the point. Republicans efforts to fix the Obama Care damage does not “gut” Medicaid spending as liberals and Democrats claim, it just slows down the rate of growth in Medicaid spending. And if Washington was doing its job and cleaned up the massive inefficiencies and criminal fraud in Medicaid that results in horrible nursing home conditions and the criminal pilfering of the Medicaid program then everyone’s health would be a lot better, And their would be more than enough money to help those that truly need better help than what they are getting today.

And by the way, Medicaid spending growth has to be brought under control. As we have reported previously, in four state budgets today Medicaid spending accounts for over 30% of the entire state government budget. As Medicaid keeps growing in costs, there is less and less state government resources for roads, schools, and other needed services. 

Medicaid is like a fifty year old pickup truck that was designed to tow two tons. It was never fixed up and kept in good shape over those fifty years. And then Obama Care came around, without upgrading anything within that old pickup truck, and told it to haul ten tons. As a result that fifty year old pickup truck is falling apart and costing more and more every year to do a job it was not designed to do. Fix the Medicaid truck, Washington or get a new one so that 40% of New York state nursing home patients do not live in squalor.

Depressing stuff to start off this month's Obama Care disaster review. Republicans that cannot plan ahead and Democrats who cannot tell the truth. Lord help us as we continue this week with the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

October, 2014 Part 2 - The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: 30 Million More Americans To Lose Coverage, Higher Costs, Lower Quality, and More

Over the past few years, but especially over the past fourteen months, we have had to devote more and more posts each month to the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. This legislation, without a doubt, is the worst piece of legislation ever passed, likely passed by the most inept and useless set of Washington politicians that this country has ever had to endure. The disasters from this law include at least the following downsides:

• It has and will continue to increase the national debt.
• It will leave tens of millions of Americans still uninsured ten years from now.
• It has restricted overall economic growth.
• It raised taxes on all Americans in dozens of ways.
• It has reduced the job growth rate in this country.
• It has turned many full time workers into part time workers or into unemployed workers.
• It has generally increased the cost of health insurance, both premiums and deductibles, over what was available in the insurance market before it was passed.
• The Constitution was violated any number of times when the Obama administration unilaterally and illegally changed components of the law without the permission of Congress or the American people.
• The American people were lied to over and over, directly by the President and Democrats in Congress, on the negative ramifications of the law.
• It has caused millions of American to lose access to the current insurance policies they had.
• It has caused millions of Americans to lose access to their preferred doctors, preferred hospitals, and in many cases, current medicine treatments.
• It has likely increased the volume of people visiting hospital emergency rooms.
• It has caused thousands of doctors to retire early or change professions in order to not deal with the bureaucracy and idiocy of the law.
• It has exposed the inability of the Federal government and various state governments to develop, launch, and operate any kind of successful program.
• It has exposed millions of Americans’ personal financial information to identity thieves.
• It never addressed, and thus, never resolved, the root causes of our escalating health care costs in this country.

I am sure that I omitted some of the negative ramifications of the legislation but you get the idea. To review past discussions of past disasters from Obama Care, enter ”the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care” in the search box above. To see what disasters have popped up over just the past month or so, read on:

1) Daniel Mitchell, writing for the Townhall website on October 8, 2014, reviewed some Obama Care analyses that were done by the Cato Institute’s Mike Tanner. 

Here is what Mr. Tanner had to say about Obama Care and the promise you could keep your existing health insurance plan:

…roughly 6 million Americans were kicked off their insurance because their plans failed to offer a lengthy-enough maternity stay, didn’t provide sufficient drug and alcohol rehabilitation benefits or otherwise fell short of the insurance that federal bureaucrats thought that they should have. …on average, ObamaCare plans were worse than the plans they replaced, in terms of both providers covered and cost-sharing. A new wave of cancellations is about to begin as well. …In several states, insurers have dropped plans that they offered on the exchanges or even withdrawn from the market altogether. And if that was not bad enough, Americans with employer-based insurance may find out their insurance has to be changed starting next year.

So we pay more, get less, deal with lots of uncertainty, and still millions of Americans could not keep their original plans despite the Presidential promise and/or deception.

What about saving consumers money:

If judged against President Obama’s promise that health-care reform would save us all at least $2,500 through lower premiums, ObamaCare deserves an F. …In states where the individual market was not already dysfunctional, there were significant premium increases.

Another Presidential lie/deception.

What about the impact on taxpayers?

This summer the Congressional Budget Office announced that it had given up trying to score the cost of ObamaCare, given the frequency with which the administration was making unilateral changes to the law. …roughly 85 percent of those enrolled through exchanges are receiving subsidies, higher than predicted. Overall, the best estimates suggest the law will cost $2.63 trillion over the next 10 years. That will be paid for by $1.38 trillion in new taxes and at least $1.25 trillion in additional debt.

Over another trillion dollars in debt for the Federal government, an additional debt load of almost $11,000 for every U.S. household.

What about the impact on jobs?

…surveys from Federal Reserve Banks in New York, Philadelphia and Atlanta confirmed that businesses are cutting employment and shifting workers to part-time positions because of ObamaCare. According to the New York Fed, 21 percent of manufacturers and 17 percent of service companies have reduced the size of their workforce because of the law. In addition, roughly 20 percent of both manufacturers and service companies said that they have shifted workers from full- to part-time jobs.The overall impact on employment could be as high as two million workers.

So, according to reputable and often government sources, Obama Care will stifle job growth, add over a trillion dollars to the national debt, generally raise insurance premiums while reducing the quality of care, and cause millions of Americans to lose access to insurance policies that they were perfectly happy to have for their specific needs.

Oh, by the way, none of these analyses include the fact that the Obama administration is likely to offer billions and billions of dollars in bailout money, really bribes, to insurance companies that partake in the Obama Care program. How can anyone argue this is not the worse piece of Federal legislation ever passed?

2) Although the Obama administration promised, and failed miserably, at being the most transparent administration ever, that has not stopped it from taking its love of secrecy, lack of transparency, and stealth over to the Obama Care website exchanges. According to an October 7, 2014 New York Times piece written by Margot Sanger-Katz, the new head of the www.healthcare.gov effort, Kevin Counihan is promising that the next round of Obama Care signups will be a tremendous improvement over the fiasco that occurred last fall.

In an interview with Alex Wayne of Bloomberg News, Mr. Counihan said his objective was to create a consumer experience so satisfying that it would result in “raving fans” for the insurance shopping site. Compared to last year’s botched rollout, he has a pretty low bar to get over for this kind of experience.

But will it really be so satisfying given the reality that the so-called improved experience and website won’t have any tools to allow consumers to see which doctors and hospitals are covered by individual insurance plans? Mr. Counihan explicitly told Bloomberg that HealthCare.gov would not change to allow consumers to comparison shop on insurance plan networks.

How is that major shortfall going to get people “raving” about the experience? Are we just supposed to blindly choose a plan and hope that it has good doctors and hospitals and that there is a broad enough selection to satisfy our family’s needs? 

When you buy a new car, you get to test the engine, sit in the seats, choose your color, see what the maintenance plans are ahead of buying, and compare that information to other dealers, that is a good consumer experience. If the government was running a car showroom, you would see the price and the options but nothing else, a totally unsatisfactory buying experience. But to expect anything more out of Obama Care would be folly.

3) While an estimated 5-6 million Americans lost access to their preferred individual health insurance policies as a result of the first wave of Obama care tenets, you might not have seen the whole carnage yet. According to an October 4, 2014 NewsMax article that interviewed health policy expert Betsy McCaughey:

• 30 million more Americans could lose their current health care coverage due to the next wave of Obama Care rules and regulations.
• These 30 million Americans could lose their employer-sponsored healthcare at the end of the year because those plans will not meet the requirements of Obamacare: "Most people still get their health insurance through an employer. Thirty million people could lose their on-the-job coverage this year and be forced onto one of those exchanges."
• The reasons these policies are being killed is: "The plans that the employers bought in the small-group market are suddenly no longer eligible — and employers are going to be stuck with going to the very expensive Obama Care one-size-fits-all requirement or saying to their employees, 'I am sorry, you will have to get it somewhere else.'
• Under the Obama Care legislation, many small companies with fewer than 50 employees have insurance plans that are set to expire this year. However, as the plans expire, businesses will either be required to provide plans that meet Obama Care's long list of requirements, making them more expensive, or they can drop coverage, forcing employees to obtain coverage on their own.
• But because those companies with fewer than 50 workers are most likely to drop coverage rather than pay the higher costs due to the Obama Care requirements, millions of Americans will most likely get "a very raw deal" when those policies expire at the end of the year, according to McCaughey: "Rates will go up for quite a few people." 

Great, so if you thought six million Americans losing their preferred health care insurance plans was a tragedy, what would you call 30 million more Americans who work for small businesses losing their health insurance? All this grief, aggravation and stress for a piece of legislation that has no chance of ever being successful along any dimension of measurement. Pitiful.

That will do it for today’s disasters. Higher costs, worst quality, massive disruption of peoples’ lives, the song carries on but never changes, And worst yet, we still have more Obama Care disasters to cover tomorrow.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w