November, 2015, Part 5, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: The Insurance Companies Balk, Baillout Time?

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 it 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, 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 health care 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 health care 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 health care 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 but with a big exception: 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 health care 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 deductibles and co-pays 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.

This will be the final review for this month of the latest unfolding disasters from the worst piece of legislation ever written by Washington:

1) Earlier in this series we extensively reported on how the Obama Care co-ops were going out of business on an almost daily basis. These organizations were established to provide Obama Care insurance policies in areas of the country where there was not a lot of regular insurance company competition to hold down insurance costs. 

Unfortunately, most of the co-ops ended enrolling far fewer customers than needed or expected and the customers that did enroll were older and sicker than what was needed to make the co-ops financially viable. As a result, the co-ops are shutting down, over a billion dollars (so far) that they received as Federal loans will likely never be repaid, and tens of thousands of Americans need to hustle to find other sources of health insurance. 

But while the closing of a dozen or so co-ops is a disaster for Obama Care, a much larger disaster is looming, as laid out in a Washington Examiner article by Philip Klein on November 19, 2015:

• UnitedHealthcare Group, which is the largest insurance company in the country, recently announced lower than expected earnings due to policies related to Obama Care.
• And what could be an earth shattering move, the company announced that it may exit out of Obama Care exchanges and not write any more Obama Care policies.
• Stephen J. Hemsley, the CEO of the company stated: "In recent weeks, growth expectations for individual exchange participation have tempered industrywide, co-operatives have failed, and market data has signaled higher risks and more difficulties while our own claims experience has deteriorated."
• In addition, a company press release stated: "UnitedHealthcare has pulled back on its marketing efforts for individual exchange products in 2016. The company is evaluating the viability of the insurance exchange product segment and will determine during the first half of 2016 to what extent it can continue to serve the public exchange markets in 2017."
• The company said its “earning pressure” is "driven by projected losses on individual exchange-compliant products [i.e. Obama Care policies] related to the 2015 and 2016 policy years."
• In a conference call with investors, Hemsley said that customers' claims for medical care against their Obama Care policies were getting worse over time and that there was no sign that this trend would reverse any time soon, if ever.
• When asked about whether the UnitedHealthcare could sustain these Obama Care losses past 2016, Hemsley was very clear: "No. We cannot sustain these losses. We can't really subsidize a marketplace that doesn't appear at the moment to be sustaining itself."
• This is critical since in 2017 the Obama Care programs that were put in place for the first years of the legislation to mitigate insurance company losses on Obama Care policies are scheduled to go away, making any financial cushion that does exist today for insurance company losses a thing of the past in 2017 and beyond.
• This could push other insurance companies to also reconsider their decision to offer Obama Care policies as their financial results possibly deteriorate even faster.

And thus the death spiral picks up speed. As companies like UnitedHealthcare dropout of the Obama Care exchanges, their high risk, high cost customers will migrate over to the remaining Obama Care insurance carriers which will see an increase in their costs from these sicker and costlier customers which will cause them to raise their insurance rates which will cause more people to drop their insurance which will decrease Obama Care insurance company revenues which will cause them to raise rates more……

2) Let’s stay with this mess that is bad financials and Federal subsidies. Another recent article by Philip Klein of the Washington Examiner shows the first hint that the American taxpayer may be on the losing end of another corporate bailout scenario. Klein reported on November 20, 2015 that “The Department of Health and Human Services attempted to reassure private insurers on Thursday that they'll be able to recover losses from participating in Obamacare by claiming it was an "obligation" of the U.S. government to bail them out.”

Yes, America, after bailing out the car companies, the banks, Fannie Mae, AIG, Freddie Mac and who know what other corporations a few years ago, the Obama administration is looking to put together a corporate bailout for the insurance companies that were foolish enough to sell Obama Care policies. The issue revolves around the Obama Care ”risk corridors” program. 

This program was supposed to run from 2014 through 2016. It called for the Federal government to confiscate money from health insurance companies that did better than expected with Obama Care policies and give that money to Obama Care insurance companies that were doing worse than expected. In theory, this was supposed to ease the transition into the Obama Care world and encourage all insurance companies to participate since their losses, if any, would be mitigated by the risk corridor money.

By law, this pool of money can only be replenished by insurance company funds, no taxpayer funds are allowed to be used to help out the insurance companies. Which is where the problem gets tough: as we discussed above, the Obama Care policies are turning out to be from disproportionately sicker and costlier people which is causing more bad financial results than good financial results.

For example, in 2014, Obama Care insurers who lost more than expected ended up asking for $2.87 billion in risk corridor payments. But the Federal government collected only $362 million from insurers performing better than expected from Obama Care policies. Thus, the Feds had only about 13% of the funds needed to fulfill the risk corridor requirements of the law ($363 million in excess earnings divided by $2.87 billion in excess losses).

This is a situation that has ticked off the insurance companies since they are getting back less than what they claim was promised by the Obama administration when they signed up for the Obama Care exchanges. The industry’s lobbying group, America’s Health Insurance Plans, is demanding that its members be kept whole: "We've been very clear with the administration about the serious challenges facing consumers and health plans in this Exchange market. Most recently, nearly 800,000 Americans have faced coverage disruptions as a result of the significant and unexpected shortfall with the risk corridors program. When health plans cannot rely on the government to meet its obligations, individuals and families are harmed as a result. The administration must act to ensure this program works as intended and consumers are protected."

In response to this demand and threat, the Obama administration announced that it would use money collected in 2015 and 2016 to make up for the 2014 $2.5 billion shortfall. Which is a ridiculous statement and promise to make because how are the risk corridors going to pay for the 2015 and 2016 insurance company claims if the excess profits in 2015 and 2016 were used to pay for the excess losses in 2014? It is a zero sum game and unless the people in Obama Care policies get a lot healthier in 2015 and 2016, reducing insurance company costs, there will continue to be a shortfall. 

Thus, one of two things have to happen. The first option involves the Obama administration breaking existing law and giving the insurance companies taxpayer money to keep them happy, i.e. another taxpayer bailout of large corporations. 

The second option involves the insurance companies being stuck with less than what they expected which will eventually lead them to go down the same route as UnitedHealthcare and get out of the Obama Care business. This would then cause the whole Obama Care house of cards to implode onto itself and collapse.

But long ago we and others predicted that this would happen. Obama Care never looked at the underlying root causes of our high healthcare costs in this country. The law mistakes a public health problem for an insurance problem and thus, invokes a bad solution for a misdiagnosed problem. The underlying drivers of high costs still exist, as listed above, and risk corridors and such do nothing to fix those problems. 

And now, the Obama administration is faced with two bad options: try to find a way for taxpayers to bailout multi-billion dollar insurance companies or watch the whole house of cards collapse as more and more companies refuse to offer Obama Care policies.

3) One last piece of disgust from Obama Care this month. We mentioned above that the industry lobbying group is demanding that the Federal government, i.e. taxpayers, keep the insurance companies whole relative to the risk corridors. This lobbying group is headed up by a Marilyn Tavenner. 

Ms. Tavenner just happens to be a former Federal government employee who coincidently was in charge of the government implementation of Obama Care when she was the overall boss at the Centers For Medicare and Medicaid. Thus, she set up the risk corridors and certainly knew the risks involved with them but is now probably a very highly paid consultant trying to tear down those risk corridors at the beckoning of her new employer. 

While probably nothing illegal is going on here, this potential conflict of interest just adds another layer of stench to the whole Obama Care process. A former high government official now using her government knowledge and insights to rip off the American taxpayer and laughing all the way to the bank in the process. Disgusting. 

More Obama Care disasters tomorrow, the legislation that never stops giving….bad news.

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

June, 2015, Part 4, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: The Supreme Court Implications, The Economic Implications,and The Human Suffering Implications

Every month for the past three years or so we have had to take time out and review the latest insanity and disasters from the Obama Care legislation. Long ago it only took a day or so to cover it all. But then the law starting taking effect and the “unfolding disaster that is Obama Care” made it impossible to contain the bad news, the heartache, the rising costs, and the stress put on American families to just a day or two.

To review the past discussions on this horrid piece of legislation, enter the term "unfolding disaster" in the search box above or just page through previous month's posts on the right side of this page and click on the various references to Obama Care. Very quickly, as your read the past posts, you will see that this is easily the worst piece of legislation ever passed by Washington.

Not only has it disrupted lives, stymied the economy, and increased healthcare costs in this country, it never addressed the various root causes of high healthcare costs. Thus, by never addressing some of the root causes listed below, the legislation has virtually no chance of actually reducing healthcare costs in this country:

• Americans eat too much of the wrong kind of food.
• Americans smoke too much.
• Americans do not exercise enough.
• The healthcare industry in this country needs serious tort reform.
• Federal government crop subsidies lead to our food chain being infested with unhealthy sugar and high fructose corn syrup.
• Current government healthcare programs, Medicare and Medicaid, lose upwards of $100 billion a year to waste and criminal fraud, billions of dollars that could be used to reduce other healthcare costs in this country.
• Cross state line insurance competition needs to be made easier to do.
• The Obama effort never “followed the money” to actually map out where the high costs paid by Americans for healthcare actually end up.

Since Obama Care never addressed these root causes, we are still going to have those root causes resulting in higher and higher healthcare costs regardless of how well Obama Care is implemented. And since the prime objective of Obama Care was to reduce costs, the legislation will end up being a failure.

So with that gloomy set up, let’s see what Obama Care disasters unfolded in the past month or so.

1) One of my favorite TV shows is “The Big Bang Theory.” Penny is a character on the show, she is a full time waitress and a part time actress. She is constantly verbally sparring with another character on the show, Sheldon, who is a condescending academic genius. There is a running gag where Penny tells Sheldon never to tick off the people who can spit on your food before it is served.

Which brings us to a quote from the President this past week, a taunt directed at the Supreme Court which is about to hand down a ruling that could collapse the entire Obama Care legislation: "This should be an easy case. Frankly, it probably shouldn't even have been taken up." In other words, you dummies on the Supreme Court, why did you even waste your time on this situation?

Which tells me three things:

• The President is really scared that the Supreme Court will come down with a negative ruling for the law and help it self-destruct and is trying one last desperate attempt to sway the judges.
• Or, the ruling has already been made, it is not good, the President knows it is not good, and is trying to rally public support to make the Supreme Court out as the bad guys.
• Finally, he is really the Sheldon character, calling the Supreme Court (Penny) dumb for even considering the case, in which case the Supreme Court, being comprised of human beings who probably do not like being called dumb, just spit on his food (the Obama Care legislation) to get the final say.

In any case, calling someone dumb while they still control the fate of something you value makes that person the real dummy.

2) The Supreme Court case we are talking about is called King Vs. Burwell. It challenges the administration’s contention that it did not mean what it said in the legislation, namely that only people who get Obama Care policies through state exchanges are entitled to Federal subsidies to pay for those policies. Those people who got their Obama Care policies from the Federal exchange, are not entitled to Federal subsidies, as clearly spelled out in the legislation that Democrats in Congress approved and Obama signed off on.

The writing and intention of this condition is clear in the actual reading of the law. Obama is trying to convince the judges that this is a mere typo and that from a compassion perspective, the judges should ignore was enacted and let his administration does whatever it wants, regardless of what the law says. The reason for the panic is that if the Court cuts off subsidies to about two thirds of Obama Care policy holders, the costs go up, the policyholders cancel their now much more expensive policies and the whole house of cards collapses.

If somehow the judges rule for Obama, then democracy as we know it is over. Any President in the future could then interpret any law anyway he or she wanted, Congress be damned. Obama Care legislation clearly states that only policies obtained via the state exchanges can get subsidies. That was debated, that was what was written into the law, that was what was enacted but is not what the reality is. The administration said, we will ignore that part of the law and do what we want, rule of law be damned.

Theoretically, in the future a Republican President could come into office and say that Roe Vs, Wade is outdated, I will ignore it. He or she could say that “don’t ask, don’t tell” is not what it means,I will ignore it. He or she could say that the Clean Air Act does not apply to clean air,I will ignore it. When the law says “no” and a President wants it to say “yes,” and acts as if it does say “yes,” democracy is over and dictatorship has taken its place.

3) But what it be such a bad thing if the Supreme Court did deal a death blow to Obama Care? From an economic perspective, one recent analysis and research effort says the economy would enjoy a revitalization if Obama Care went away.

The American Action Forum (AAF), a conservative leaning think tank, thinks that would be the case, economically. Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum recently told reporters his organization’s research sees many upsides for the downfall of Obama Care. For background, Holtz-Eakin does have some formidable credentials since he is a former director of the Congressional Budget Office and former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers.

His reasoning goes as follows:

• The majority of Obama Care policyholders previously had insurance policies that were cheaper and better fitted to those policyholders needs so many of the current Obama Care policy hodlers could eventually find their way back to more favorable, less expensive policies.In other words, not every Obama Care polciy holder would then be without health insurance.
• As many policyholders went back to cheaper yet better insurance policies, they would be paying less for insurance, leaving more disposable income to spend in other parts of the economy.
• The downfall of Obama Care would also free up millions of Americans who prefer not to have health insurance and hundreds of thousands of businesses who do not have to pay Obama Care penalties, freeing up untold billions of dollars to expand the economy.
• This analysis estimates that this situation would add 1.2 million workers to the U.S. labor force and increase the hours for 3.3 million part time workers.
• These workers would see wages go up between $830 and $940 a year, putting $13.6 billion back into economic growth.
• “There will be fewer administrative burdens when employers offer full-time employment to qualified employees who will have the opportunity to become specialized and therefore more efficient in their work,” the study says. “We might also expect to see more job growth in these states as employers expand their businesses and offer more hours without the cost of complying with the ACA.”
• Brittany La Couture, the health policy counsel at the AAF, agrees with the studies findings: “Because they will not be subject to the mandate, small to medium size employers may expand employment to more people, or allow their employees to work more than 30 hours per week.” 
• Also, “AAF estimates that there are currently about 3.3 million part-time workers in the states affected by the ruling who are seeking but are unable to find full-time employment.”
• And while the AAF leans conservative, the New York Times recently credited the organization with “following the numbers” and not being swayed purely by ideology.

Economic forecasting like this is often not much more than a stab in the dark. However, it does provide a rational and logical approach to considering the upside of terminating Obama Care, a solution that has no chance of ever fulfilling its goals and promises. 

4) While the AAF study shows that Obama Care has killed job creation and restricted economic growth, which could be reversed if Obama Care was killed, another study, this one by the American Health Policy Institute also concluded that the legislation is shrinking the labor force since it reduces incentives to work. Why? The more a person earns from working at a job, the less they get in Obama Care subsidies to pay for health insurance.

Thus, some people have and will decide the effort of working is not worth it given the decrease in Federal Obama Care subsidies. These people then become net takers from the Federal government, and the American taxpayer, than net contributors to the country and the economy. Eventually, these people become long term, chronic unemployed and their chances of ever finding full time, fulfilling work will approach zero over time. Nice law, incenting people to become idle, lazy and wards of the state.

5) As we often do in this series,m let's finish up today with some heart wrenching stories of how ordinary Americans have gotten screwed by this legislation, courtesy of the website:

www.ourhealthcarestories.com

We can argue economic theories and economic forecasts all day but these stories are the realities of Obama Care and they are not pretty:

ANGELLA - NEVADA: “Housekeeping is a tough job—many of us suffer serious injuries doing this work. And ObamaCare would cause my husband and I even more pain. The Obamacare website says we would have to pay $8,057.04 a year more to keep the great insurance we have now. That’s a $3.87 per hour pay cut. We work hard for our insurance. Why should we have to take a cut in pay for it?”

LIONEL - LOUISIANA: Baton Rouge public relations consultant Lionel Rainey said Wednesday the price of his health insurance will double even though he rarely makes a doctor’s appointment.

His policy is among the 92,793 individual insurance plans that Louisiana Commissioner of Insurance Jim Donelon reported would be discontinued because the coverage does not meet the coverage standards set by the federal Affordable Care Act.

Rainey’s plan didn’t meet the minimum standards but he was happy with it. “I don’t go to the doctor much. This was the plan that fit me and fit my lifestyle,” the 35-year-old said.

Rainey declined to name his insurer, but he said the new policy will cost him nearly $600 a month. He said he also will get coverage he does not need, such as a maternity plan. Rainey put plans to expand his business on hold when he got the letter from his insurance company.

He wanted to hire an additional person but is unsure whether he can afford it. As a newlywed, he also must buy insurance coverage for his wife, a full-time graduate student. He does not qualify for subsidies for the exchange.

MARY - CONNECTICUT: My husband & I are self-employed. We own a small retail business and pay for our own health insurance. When ObamaCare was introduced with all the hype of saving money and better coverage, we checked it out. The least expensive premium would triple our cost and increase our deductible from $5000 to $12,500. We then received a letter from our insurance carrier saying we could keep our current policy for another year, but after that, our premium will triple. We may have to close our business if something isn't done about this outrageous plan.

That will do it for today but we still have more unfolding Obama Care stories for tomorrow. Today we learned that the Supreme Court might,and should, render all of the unfolding Obama Care disasters moot when they rule alter this month. Killing off Obama Care might actually improve the economy beyond its tepid and weak performance since Obama Care was enacted. And individual Americans and their families continue to live through the horror of the law’s restrictions, requirements, and higher costs.

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

May, 2015, Part 1, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Emergency Room Visits Up, Exchanges Crashing, and More

Ever month for the past few years we have had to dedicate multiple posts every month to the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. It is without a doubt the worse piece of legislation ever passed passed by Washington, as one can see from our dozens of posts and the hundreds of mini-disasters we have discussed in each of those posts.

The legislation has increased insurance costs, stifled the economy, caused millions of people to lose access to their preferred doctors, hospitals, and insurance policies, increased the national debt, and exposed the many lies and intentional deceptions of this President and his political allies. It is a piece of legislation that has no chance of accomplishing its supposed goal of reducing healthcare costs in this country since it never understood nor addressed the underlying root causes of our high healthcare costs. These root causes include, but are not limited to:

• Americans eat too much overall and eat too much of the wrong types of food.
• Americans smoke too much.
• Americans do not exercise enough.
• Washington laws and regulation encourage additives such as high fructose corn syrup to infest our food supply.
• The medical industry is in urgent need of tort reform.
• Current laws and regulations discourage cross state border insurance company competition.
• Federal healthcare programs today are infested with criminal activity that wastes upwards of a $100 billion a year.
• The Obama administration never “followed the money” to find out where the waste and over charging was in the entire medical industry.

Without understanding and alleviating these root causes, it makes no difference how many people get Obama Care insurance policies, the costs will keep going up and care quality will keep going down.

So with this quick background, let’s take a look at what Obama Care disasters have popped up in the past month or so:

1) Many states set up their own Obama Care so-called exchanges to market and distribute Obama Care insurance policies to their citizens. Those that did not defaulted to the Federal Obama Care health insurance exchange. To encourage states to build their own exchanges, the Federal government and American taxpayer gave those states billions of dollars to get their operations up and running, with the expectation that this seed money was enough to build a robust and financially stable marketplace.

That has turned out to be a bad assumption. We have already reported on how many states have struggled to establish a credible online exchange, going over budget, curtailing features, opening up customers to identity theft threats, etc. That trend of failure continues according to a recent Washington Post report: "Many of the online exchanges are wrestling with surging costs, especially for balky technology and expensive customer-call centers — and tepid enrollment numbers. To ease the fiscal distress, officials are considering raising fees on insurers, sharing costs with other states and pressing state lawmakers for cash infusions. Some are weighing turning over part or all of their troubled marketplaces to the federal exchange, HealthCare.gov, which is now working smoothly."

I would take issue with the assertion that the federal exchange is working “smoothly.” That process had some serious operations problems during the second Obama Care enrollment period but relative to the horrible state exchanges it was much better. But the fact is that years and billions of dollars later, the state exchanges are mostly a disaster, something recognized by the usually Obama-friendly Washington Post.

2) The website, www.libertyunyielding.com went into further detail from that Washington Post report on what is failing or has already failed at the state exchange level of Obama Care:

• Insurance policy signups in year two of Obama Care at the state exchange level rose only 12% vs. 61% for the Federal exchange.
• “They are literally looking at huge gaps, and they are not sure how they are going to get through the year,” said Caroline F. Pearson, a senior vice president at Avalere Health.
• Minnesota and Vermont are so frustrated with costly data systems problems with their exchanges that they are considering handing over some or all of their functions to the federal exchange.
• Lawmakers in Oregon have already given up and dumped dumped their state exchange in March.
• The Rhode Island legislature is considering a fee on health plans that would go up or down according to the exchange’s operating costs. So much for the state exchanges not being a burden to local and state taxpayers, as promised by Obama
• However, the obvious problem with the Rhode Island solution is that any additional fees on the insurance companies will be passed down to the consumer, something most legislators seem to forget. Higher insurance rates will depress enrollments even more and likely result in more cancellations due to higher costs.
• In Colorado, Connecticut, Kentucky, Maryland and the District of Columbia, fees to support the exchange are imposed on plans sold on and off the marketplaces. Thus, now non-Obama Care policy holders have to subsidize Obama Care policyholders, increasing costs for those non-Obama Care customers.
• In DC, the financials are so bad that about $25 million of their exchange’s $28 million budget comes from user fees assessed on insurance products not offered on the exchange. 
• In Hawaii, which has had one of the worst exchange experiences, their exchange needs $28 million to fund operations until 2022, when it is projected to become self-sustaining, something that was supposed to happen already but which is now expected to be seven years later, officials say. 
• Without the additional money, “it’s going to be very difficult to keep the doors open,” said Jeff M. Kissel, executive director of Hawaii Health Connector.
• As a backup plan, officials are talking to the Obama administration about a possible federal takeover of the marketplace.
• The cost of the exchange system in Vermont is expected to balloon to almost $200 million by the end of the year, with state officials also thinking of moving to the federal marketplace if things don’t improve. 
• In Maryland, where their exchange’s systems problems were so horrible that they turned to Connecticut for help, officials expect to have enough revenue to cover operations for the fiscal year that begins July 1. If not, the exchange would need to ask the governor for more funds.

What a disaster and disgrace. So many promises unfilled, so much time and money wasted, so many lives disrupted for nothing.

3) One of the supposed big selling points of Obama Care was that the legislation would significantly reduce the number of emergency room hospital visits by sick people since they would now have health insurance. And while the legislation did increase the number of people with health insurance coverage, usually via the poor quality Medicaid process, it did not reduce the number of emergency room visits. In fact, according to a recent USA Today report, a survey from the American College of Emergency Physicians found that:

• 28% of those surveyed said they had seen a large increase in emergency room visits over the past few years.
• 47% had seen slight increase in the number of emergency room visits.
• So, three quarters of those working in hospital emergency rooms had seen at least slight increases in visits, the exact opposite of what Obama Care was supposed to do.
• “Such hikes run counter to one of the goals of the health care overhaul, which is to reduce pressure on emergency rooms by getting more people insured through Medicaid or subsidized private coverage and providing better access to primary care,” explains the USA Today article.

But this finding is not new since in May, 2014, the Huffington Post reported that: “The American College of Emergency Physicians polled more than 1,800 emergency room doctors last month, and 46 percent reported increases in patients coming through their doors since Jan. 1, the day coverage took effect for millions under Obamacare.”

But this should come as no surprise since the article also points out that the same thing happened in two states that had preceded Obama Care with similar programs, namely emergency room visits went UP and not DOWN as was promised by Obama and others: “While a survey of emergency department physicians’ impressions lacks hard data about patient behavior and can’t be considered conclusive, the results are consistent with studies about the effects of Massachusetts’ 2007 health care reform law and a 2008 expansion of Medicaid in Oregon.”

So did they lie about reducing emergency room visits or were they that lazy that they never checked for real world examples of what would happen? Given the track record of this administration and the current set of Washington politicians, I go with the former possibility.

That will do it for today but more Obama Care disasters to follow tomorrow, the legislation that keeps on giving...and that is the problem.

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

February, 2015, Part 2, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Less Competition, Less Privacy, More Personal Agony

For over a year we have had to dedicate multiple posts each month to cover the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. If you follow all of the disasters from this legislation that we have discussed, you cannot help but conclude that this is the worst piece of legislation ever passed by Washington. 

Millions and millions of Americans have been forced off of their current and preferred health insurance policies. Millions have lost access to their preferred doctors. Millions have lost access to their preferred hospitals. Millions are paying higher premiums and deductibles than before. Over a trillion dollars will be added to the national debt. Unemployment and underemployment has been made worse because of the law’s criteria. Economic growth has been stifled. Millions of Americans are now at a much higher threat of identity theft as a result of the poor data system processes of the law. Many Americans now have health insurance, at a higher cost, but are having trouble getting access to health care as doctors are retiring earlier as a result of the law and many doctors are not accepting the lower payments they will receive from Obama Care insurance customers. And after tens years, there will likely still be tens of millions of Americans who do not have health insurance coverage despite the purported objective of Obama Care.

And as we have pointed out dozens and dozens of times, the legislation will never be successful because it never addressed the underlying root causes of our high health care costs in this country. Obama put forth an insurance solution to a public health problem:

• Americans eat too much.
• Americans eat too much of the wrong kind of food.
• Americans smoke too much.
• Americans drink too much alcohol.
• Americans do not exercise enough.
• America’s food chain is infected and infested with high fructose corn syrup and sugar.
• America is aging making citizens much more likely to be victims of aging diseases such as dementia and Alzheimers.
• Medical practice tort reform is needed nationally and has been shown to work at the state level.
• Cross state border insurance company competition needs to be encouraged.
• The Federal government loses tens of billions of dollars every year via Medicare and Medicaid through waste, inefficiencies, and outright criminal fraud, money that could be used to make America healthier, not criminals wealthier.

In the face if these ten root causes, Obama chose to ignore all of them and put n place a Rube Goldberg like government bureaucracy that has no chance of succeeding. To prove this point, let’s take a couple of days and look at the latest unfolding disasters being spawned by Obama Care:

1) The implementation of the Obama Care program was one of the worst data systems rollout disasters in the history of the country. Systems locked up, systems failed, systems lost personal information, the data security processes were called an identity thief’s paradise, a total disaster and embarrassment. Even more of an embarrassment in that the Obama administration had over three years and spent at least hundreds of millions of dollars preparing for the rollout.

One of the main culprits in the mega failure was a company called CGI Federal. CGI Federal was fired in the midst of the implosion of the Obama Care rollout and replaced with other companies who were at least able to get something up and running even if it was pathetic. CGI Federal was paid millions of taxpayer dollars before being shown the door after really delivering nothing of value in return.

But as the Washington political class and Federal government often do, they add insult to injury relative to taxpayer wealth. Merely seven months after CGI was fired from the Obama Care effort in the Department of Health and Human Services, the IRS rehired the company to help manage the enforcement of the Obama Care tax program. Unbelievable, a company so flawed is rehired less than a year later. Even worse, the company is set to receive $4.5 million on its new IRS contract that runs only until August, 2015.

An attorney, Scott Amey, for the nonprofit government watchdog group, Project on Government Oversight, called the company the “poster child for government failure.” He want on to say: “I am shocked that the IRS has turned around and is using them for Obamacare IT work.”

But failure seems to be synonymous with this company. It failed to deliver on its promises relative to Obama Care in Vermont and Massachusetts on their exchange websites. According to the Daily Caller reporting, the Massachusetts site never ended being operational and yet cost taxpayers $170 million that was paid to CGI.

Back to the old Einstein saying: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” Unfortunately, the Federal government uses this as a rule rather than the exception.

2) One of the real and large fears of the Obama Care data systems failures was and is the reality the systems’ security measures were not good enough to prevent massive identity theft impossible. However, as it turns out, identity theft from criminals is not the only threat to personal information that Americans may have entered into the Obama Care data systems.

It turns out that the Federal government itself is secretly sending consumers’ personal data out to private companies that are involved in advertising and marketing, according to a recent Associated Press report. According to the AP, information being shared with private firms could include age, income, zipcode, whether or not the person is a smoker, and whether the person is pregnant. It can also include a person’s computer Internet address, which apparently sophisticated marketers can eventually translate into a person’s name and address.

Apparently, this type of personal information is being sent not just to a few companies but to dozens of third party marketing and data analysis firms. While the administration has guaranteed that the information is not being abused and is used only to make the Obama Care data systems operations more efficient, this the same organization that guaranteed that if you like your current insurance policy, you can keep it, if you like your current doctors, you can keep them, that the Obama Care exchange process would be simple and easy, that Obama Care would not add one dime to the national debt, all of which turned out to be bogus guarantees, if not outright lies.

3) Speaking of Obama Care and Presidential lies, deceptions, and false guarantees, let’s go back in time a few years to 2009 and review another Obama promise, namely that the Obama Care legislation would set up health care exchanges that had a robust set of competitors in each exchange to drive down the cost of health care insurance:

We’ll…[create] a new insurance exchange — a marketplace where individuals and small businesses will be able to shop for health insurance at competitive prices. Insurance companies will have an incentive to participate in this exchange because it lets them compete for millions of new customers. As one big group, these customers will have greater leverage to bargain with the insurance companies for better prices and quality coverage.

Sounds great, turns out to be bogus, also like most other Obama promises and ideals that have failed relative to the law. Alyene Senger, writing for the Heritage Foundation on January 16, 2015, pointed out how this promise has fallen flat relative to competition and driving down costs:

• Her analysis is based on data taken directly from Health and Human Services government reports and from state exchange data sources.
• She examined how many insurance companies were actively present in each U.S. county prior to the implementation of Obama Care and how many are present now and actively involved in offering healthcare insurance in each county.
• She found that there is over 20% LESS competition now than prior to the law being enacted, the direct opposite of what Obama promised.
• In one third of all the counties in the country, there are only one, or at most two, companies offering insurance plans in the Obama Care health care exchanges, hardly a robust competition situation.
• In some states such as Kansas and Wyoming, EVERY county has only two competitors in the exchanges from which to choose from.
• In some states such as Iowa, South Dakota, Arkansas and others, every county has no more than three competitors. So much for the Obama promise that insurance companies will have the incentive to take part in the exchanges.
• In a whopping 58% of all U.S. counties, there are no more than three competitors’ plans from which to choose.
• While there are 14 insurance companies competing in Texas, more than half of the counties have three or fewer companies competing within their borders.
• And while the Heritage Foundation article acknowledges there has been some improvement in 2015 vs. 2014 regarding competition, its analysis does show that competition was still more robust BEFORE Obama Care and took effect.
• Thus, fewer competitors and fewer choices within those competitors since Obama Care tenets strictly dictate a limited set of different insurance options makes for a much less attractive and affordable set of policies than prior to Obama Care.
• The article does not cover the reality that by 2017, Federal subsidies to insurance companies in the Obama Care exchanges will be terminated, a situation that will in all likelihood further reduce the number of competitors since the one incentive for remaining, Federal subsidies, will be gone.

The county by county analysis is illustrated below:

4) We will wrap up each Obama Care disaster post this week with real stories coming from real Americans who have seen their lives seriously disrupted by the legislation. Their stories and the stories of many like them can be accessed at the following website:

www.ourhealthcarestoires.com
PAM - MAINE As President Obama reached out Thursday to millions of Americans receiving cancellation notices from their health insurers, Pam Pultz waited to see what the latest twist in the health reform law will mean for her.Pultz, who owns an Agway store in Dover-Foxcroft, buys her own health insurance through Anthem. The plan suits her needs and she wants to keep it, but she said she has been told to expect a cancellation notice by the end of the month because her $14,000 deductible is too high to comply with the Affordable Care Act.

“My fear is I’m going to lose something that I bought and paid for and shopped for,” Pultz said. “I’m not doing anything wrong, and I’m being penalized.”DAN - OREGON I am a Durable Medical Equipment specialist and after 15 years of helping people with medical equipment, I am now unemployed and buying my own insurance which costs me 10 times what I paid previously. Obamacare has ended my career and my affordable health insurance. [Note: I am assuming that Dan worked in the medical device field, a field that has seen thousands of Americans laid off from their jobs as a result of the medical device taxes embedded within the Obama Care legislation.]

KENT - NEBRASKA We had our long time blue cross policy cancelled because it was not good enough for O'bama care. The policy we got offered cost us 25% more premium and increased our deductible from 5000.00 year put of pocket to 12,500.00 out of pocket. It had to include crap like birth control and maternity which 50 year old people do not need. To apply for a subsidy we had to give out all of our personal financial data to lord we do not even know who.So today’s disasters include the fact that the company that bungled the whole Obama Care exchange data systems rollout was actually rehired to track down Americans who owe Obama Care taxes, we learned that not only do identity theft hackers likely have access to your personal information, the government’s Obama Care data processes are actually giving out that information to dozens of third party, private companies for them to exploit at our expense, Obama’s promise of robust insurance company competition in the exchanges has fallen apart, and three more Americans shared their personal stories on how Obama Care has screwed up their lives. Sounds about right for this very bad piece of legislation. More disasters 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.loathemygovernmobama,washington post,politifactent.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 4, the Unfolding Disaster That is Obama Care: Lower Quality, Higer Costs, Broken Promises, Bad Operations, 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) Robert Moffit, writing for the Heritage Foundation’s Daily Signal, did a nice job recently summarizing the disasters that came out of the Obama Care legislation in the first year of its existence. These shortcomings. learnings, and failures included the following realities:

• Despite a three year lead time and probably about a billion dollars spent, the Federal government could still not deliver a workable website for Obama Care polices on time and on budget.
• The only worse performance was a number of states that NEVER got their Obama Care websites up and working despite millions and millions of dollars spent.
• While the average annual deductible for employer-based coverage was a little over $1,000 in 2014, the Obama Care health insurance policies sold through the Obama Care exchanges had average deductibles nationwide that usually topped $2,000.
• These higher deductibles occurred, along with higher premiums of Obama Care policies, despite the fact that the President promised promise the typical family insurance cost would go down by $2,500 annually.
• Statistics for the individual insurance policy market show that the average annual premiums for single and family coverage rose in a large majority of state and federal health-insurance exchanges all around the country. 
• In eleven states, premiums for twenty-seven-year-olds more than doubled in 2014 vs. 2013.
• In thirteen states, premiums for fifty-year-olds increased more than 50%. 
• The Office of the Actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) estimated in early 2014, that 65% of small companies would experience health insurance premium rate increases, while only 35% were expected to have reductions. 
• CMS estimated that 11 million Americans employed by these small companies would experience premium rate increases, while only 6 million would see reductions. 
• A national study by the Heritage Foundation found that between 2013 and 2014, the number of insurers offering coverage in the individual insurance markets in all fifty states declined nationwide by 29%. 
• The Obama Care systems were so poorly developed that we really do not know how many American actually got insurance via the legislation, a disgrace from an operations and taxpayer perspective. Or in the words of the Congressional Budget office: “The number of people who will have coverage through the exchanges in 2014 will not be known precisely until after the year has ended.” One year after introduction and we still have no idea what really happened. Disgraceful.
• In order for Obama Care financials to work, the number of younger Americans obtaining Obama care policies needed to be in the 40% range. However, using the best sketchy data available, it seems that the actual percentage of younger, healthier people getting policies via the legislation is closer to only 28%, as announced by the White House on April 17, 2014.

Higher prices and costs, bad operations and planning, bad mix of customers, bad, bad, bad.

2) The overall purpose of Obama Care should have been to reduce the ever escalating cost of health care in this country. One year into the program, it does not look like it is working, at least yet, according to an October 13, 2014 Associated Press article:

• The article found that one in four privately insured adults in this country say they doubt they could pay for a major unexpected illness or injury, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, 
• The survey found the biggest financial worries were among people with high-deductible plans that require patients to pay a big chunk of their medical bills each year before insurance kicks in, a primary driver of both employer provided insurance and Obama Care policies.
• Edward Frank of Reynoldsville, Pennsylvania, said he bought an insurance  plan with a $6,000 deductible last year through the Obama Care national exchange but still ended up paying $4,000 out of pocket for a shoulder condition: "Unless you get desperately ill and in the hospital for weeks, it's going to cost you more to have this plan and pay the premiums than to pay the bill just outright. The deductibles are so high, you don't get much of anything out of it [his Obama Care policy]." 
• The poll found that 19% of all privately insured adults did not go to the doctor when they were sick or injured, because of costs while those with high-deductible plans, the figure was 29%.
• Seventeen percent of privately insured adults skipped a recommended test or treatment but 23% among of those with high-deductible plans skipped them.
• Eighteen percent of all adults went without a physical exam or other preventive care while 24% among those with high-deductible plans.
• Many of those polled claimed they made financial trade-offs to pay medical bills with 33% of all adults saying they cut back on entertainment, 18% saying they used up all or most of their saving, and 19% said they dropped down their contributions for retirement savings.
• Those with high deductible plans made even deeper cuts to other expenses.

Regardless of whether or not you have an Obama Care policy or not, it appears that the law had not had the intended effect after one year of reducing household health care expenses as promised by the law’s supporters since according to this poll, health care expenses are still causing a lot of hardship for a lot of Americans with no end in sight.

3) The midterm elections are on November 4, 2014 but the Obama Care exchange websites will not have the new 2015 insurance premium costs loaded for consumer review until November 15, 2014. Could it be that the cost increases for Obama Care policies for 2015 are going to be so high as to negatively influence election decisions? Or is it just a coincidence that the open period for enrollment in 2014 is a month later than it was in 2013? 

Given the track record of this administration for honesty and integrity, I know where I fall relative to this answer but I will let you decide for yourself: political maneuvering or coincidence?

4) David Hogberg, writing for Amy Ridenour’s National blog, is one of the foremost experts on the inner workings of Obama Care. He recently published some additional fun, but not funny facts, on Obama Care:

- We have discussed the reality many times that even though you may now have health insurance via Obama Care, it does not mean you have quality health insurance via Obama Care. Mr. Hogberg cites a recent study the Avalere organization did for the American Heart Association:

• The study looked at the doctors available through three lower cost silver plans on the Obama Care exchanges in 10 metropolitan areas.  
• Avalere analyzed whether the silver plans covered the top 10 physicians in a metropolitan area in three specialties: cardiologists, neurologists, and diagnostic radiologists. 
• A physician was included in the list of 10 if he was one of the 10 highest in terms of Medicare payments, with the assumption that higher Medicare payments was a surrogate for being in demand in his specialty field. 
• The study found that in many metro areas, Obama Care customers had access to few, if any, of the top ten doctors in that specialty and that metro area.
• In Atlanta, Chicago, and Los Angeles, for example, there was zero access to the top ten cardiologists.

You have insurance but you do not have quality health care.

- Mr. Hogberg also cited a recent LA Times article that reported that: 

• The “state’s largest health insurers are sticking with their often-criticized narrow networks of doctors, and in some cases they are cutting the number of physicians even more, according to a Times analysis of company data.” 
• California insurer HealthNet is terminating one of its Obama Care Preferred Provider Network plans and “switching to a plan with 54% fewer doctors and no out-of-network coverage, state data show.”
• Despite the reduced network, "premiums for that new stripped-down policy are going up as much as 9% compared with pricing for the PPO….HealthNet said its cutbacks were necessary to avoid even steeper rate hikes.”

That will do it for today, more of the same: higher costs, lower quality, less choice, more stress, failed objectives, broken promises. And more of the same 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