Obamacare. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA, or pee-pee-ah-cah–it’s missing a “c”). Or just BFD for Big F#$%ing Disaster. While Americans may have different names for it, Barack Obama thinks it’s just great. And he tells everyone so in this week’s address, which sounds like a bad infomercial. A really bad infomercial. It’s open enrollment season again, and he wants to make sure that everyone who hasn’t gotten their names and most personal information on the government’s health care website yet will promptly do so.
He of course tosses in some statistics at the beginning. 17.6 million Americans now insured. Uninsured rate down by 45 percent since 2010. Over 90 percent of Americans now covered for the first time ever! He was citing statistics derived from his own Department of Health and Human Services, which I’m sure are completely reliable. The numbers have been reported by the media as fact, even though every time I read about the numbers, everyone seems to cite different ones. I still don’t think anyone honestly knows how many people Obamacare has insured.
But I will remind those who don’t think past Obama’s statistics that he doesn’t take into account the millions who liked their plans but were informed they couldn’t keep their plans. How many is that? Those numbers aren’t as widely publicized, obviously. But it’s in the millions.
The closing of the nonprofit health co-ops alone have ended coverage or will end coverage by the end of the year for three-quarters of a million people. The co-ops were established through Obamacare as the booby prize when Democrats couldn’t bring themselves to go full socialist-run health care with the public option. They claim the co-ops were added to the law to create more competition in the health insurance marketplace. 23 different co-ops were set up across the country. Only 11 will remain next year, unless more of them go under before the end of 2015.
Democrats lament that the co-ops failed because Republicans in Congress didn’t pay out the entire $6 billion in loans the co-ops expected to receive to get up and running. Instead, the co-ops have gotten $2.4 billion. The failed co-op loans have cost Americans over a billion dollars so far. Does anyone besides me hear the Ghosts of Solyndras Past?
The thing about these co-ops is that if they’re such a great idea, they wouldn’t be failing. They relied on getting money from the government because they couldn’t get off the ground on their own. The nonprofits didn’t expect that all these sick people who enrolled would cost so darn much. The co-ops haven’t been sustainable. They need more money. Republicans have said, “Nuh uh, Democrats built you, but we’re in charge now, so you have to make do with what we give you and the rest is up to you.” The co-ops can’t hack it, so one by one, they’re falling away. That’s a shame.
Now the big, evil corporate health insurers are getting the business, and they’re raising their premiums. Politifact, when trying to fact-check Donald Trump’s claim a couple of weeks ago that “people’s premiums…are going up 35, 45, 55 percent,” in fact proved he was right:
“Yes, some people in some plans through some carriers in some states are, indeed, looking at rate hikes of ‘35 to 50 percent’ if they stick with those plans in 2016,” said Charles Gaba, who runs the popular blog ACAsignups.net, which tracks Obamacare enrollment. …
Blue Cross Blue Shield, a prominent insurer with a significant amount of enrollees, proposed rate hikes of 14 to 38 percent in Illinois and 50 to 65 percent in New Mexico. …
Politifact proved that premiums have risen higher than 35 percent, but they determined Trump’s claim to be “half-true.” I guess we should be satisfied they didn’t determine it was false. Darn them for making me defend Trump.
Politifact also pointed to an estimate by Agile Health Insurance, which said that “[j]ust 7 percent of all plans in the federal exchange had a proposed rate hike of 30 percent or higher.” However, Agile found that almost 14 percent of all plans had a proposed rate hike of 20 percent or higher. It also found that over 30 percent of all plans will have rate hikes reaching the double digits for 2016. Politifact didn’t note that Agile Health Insurance is a short-term, non-ACA-compliant health insurance carrier who doubled the amount of new applicants for its plans from 2013 to 2014 and whose new applicant rate is up again this year. So a lot of people will be paying a lot more for their insurance next year, and an increasing number are resorting to plans that are more affordable than the “affordable” law’s plan.
As mentioned in an article in Forbes this past June, Obama told Americans that Obamacare is a way for families and businesses to not “have to cope with double-digit premium increases year-after-year,” so the information above doesn’t benefit Obama’s marketing plan. Instead, he focused back like laser beams on the HHS analysis in this week’s address, saying that most Americans who go to the government’s health care website “will find an option that costs less than $75 a month.” The number the HHS uses is 7 in 10. They also claim that 8 in 10 will find an option that costs less than $100 a month. After tax credits.
The people getting tax credit don’t have to pay back the insurance companies. But somebody has to. That responsibility falls upon those paying the taxes. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) determined in March of this year that payment on those tax credits will cost $41 billion this year, $60 billion next near, and will keep rising so that by 2025, health insurance subsidies will cost American taxpayers $895 billion. The net cost of Obamacare is projected to cost over $1.2 trillion between 2016 and 2025.
But hey, under 6 percent of the nation now supposedly has health care coverage because of Obama and the Democrats, so yippee for fundamental transformationings. The Seattle Times writes that by the end of next year, the Administration expects the amount of people enrolled in private insurance and paying their premiums will be 10 million people, with only around a third of them being new enrollees. The rest would be people renewing or revising their plans from this year.
At present, 28.5 million–or 9 percent of the U.S. population–are still uninsured, according to the latest information by the National Center for Health Statistics. Next year, the fine, the tax, the penalty, or whatever you want to call it for being uninsured goes up to $695 or 2.5 percent of taxable income, whichever is higher. Many don’t want the government to force them to pay for a service. Others who are in good health simply don’t feel like forking over their money. But a great deal of them simply can’t afford the health insurance, even after the subsidies, or they aren’t eligible for Obamacare because people below the poverty line can’t use the insurance exchanges to get private insurance.
So who does the penalty for being uninsured hurt the most? People earning below the poverty line. Obamacare was supposed to help these people the most, yet it’s punishing them the hardest. That makes no sense whatsoever. Unless you’re trying to foist the single-payer system on America.
That has been the goal all along. Liberals haven’t tried very hard to hide that single-payer, universal health care has been their ultimate plan. Harry Reid has admitted it. Other Democrat lawmakers have admitted it. Obama himself has admitted it. He can say he’s since changed his mind about it, but this is one stance where I doubt he’s evolved a whole lot. Who knows how many sorry suckers have either convinced themselves that it can’t be true, or they’re flat-out lying when they say it isn’t true. All one has to do to know the truth is to hear what the architects, creators, and influencers of the law have said. *Cough-Gruber-cough!*
Obama continued his address by relating an anecdote of one citizen, a software developer from Chicago wanting to start his own company, who expressed his love for Obamacare. Then Obama added that the guy “ended up getting a new and better job anyway.” But it gave Obama the opportunity to say that Obamacare gives people “peace of mind.” Peace of mind would be knowing that one won’t have to worry about facing hundreds of dollars in penalties in the pursuit for happiness.
Obama said,
What we’re talking about is no longer just a law, and it’s certainly not the myths and scare tactics that the cynics have peddled our way for years. This is reality. This is health care in America. And the bottom line is, Americans like it. They’re happy with their plans and they’re happy with their premiums.
Obamacare’s not “just a law” anymore. Obamacare transcends laws. Obamacare is health care. Obamacare is all. Bow to your government masters, plebs.
I did not cite myths. Cynics are not making up this stuff. These are facts, and they should scare you. People’s lives have been directly affected by Obamacare. No matter how many times the President says his law is the bee’s knees, it’s not all that rosy. People are not happy with the law. More people–half of Americans–are opposed to the law than in favor of it. Ask the average worker whose deductibles have increased 67 percent in the last five years if they’re happy with their plans. Ask the men who are paying to have their mammograms covered or the women paying to have their prostate exams covered if they’re happy with their plans. Ask the third of the insured whose premiums are rising into the double-digits if they’re happy with their premiums.
So again, he’s The One peddling myths and lies.
And again, Obamacare–I’m sorry, the pee-pee-ah-cah–was created to screw up the system so that Americans will clamor for socialized health care, just like those other countries with less than 318 million people, where their health care systems work so swimmingly.
Obama ended his disinfomercial of straight-up propaganda with a contest for 20 cities who are part of some “Healthy Communities Challenge.” He also promoted it in local op-eds bearing his name as the author. It’s a challenge to see which of them can sign up the most uninsured citizens before the latest Obamacare sign-up window closes at the end of January, 2016.
The prize to the winner who does the best job of getting people to embrace the Obamacares? A visit from the Pitchman-in-Chief himself who hopes this will lead to the socialization of the entire health care industry. Woohoo. Get excited, America.
It’s ridiculous the lengths this man will go to promote himself.
He says that “this country is at its best when we look out for each other.”
No, this country is at its best when we make the effort to look out for ourselves–as the great men and women of the American Revolution did, and as the many great men and women fighting for true freedom and independence since then have done.
Just thought I’d mention that, in case some people have forgotten.
