More than 15 percent…more than 90 percent…nearly 18 million…up to 129 million…137 million…equals…nuts.
Yes, it’s another weekly address where Obama talked about the Obamacares.
The “more than 15 percent” to which he referred is the percentage of Americans who went without health insurance when he took office.
In the next paragraph, he proclaimed that the “more than 90 percent” is the percentage of Americans who are now covered “for the first time ever.” Huzzah! Historicalness!
Nice little trickery with the numbers. He separated the two statistics by a bunch of words, then reversed the values.
Due to rounding, “more than 15 percent” would mean “less than 15-1/2 percent.” Or “almost 85 percent” when comparing to the “more than 90 percent” figure. Or one could say, “84-1/2 or more percent.”
We can assume by “more than 90 percent,” Obama meant “less than 90.5 percent.”
What difference does it make at this point?
Oh, between a mere five to less than seven percent. That’s the added percentage of Americans who are signed up for Obamacare compared to the time Obama first took office.
“Nearly 18 million Americans have gained coverage,” he stated. For the last couple of months, Obama’s been saying the number’s been “over 17 million.” Now it’s “nearly 18 million.” Hmm. The Department of Health and Human Services must have updated their numbers and the amount has crossed the 17.5 million mark. The number was about 16.9 million back in May. Half a million or so doesn’t seem all that impressive. The total of newly insured will probably be eighty-nine billion-hundred in the next update, with 486 percent of Americans now covered. Numbers are fun.
But let’s take him at his word for once and see what the numbers he gave mean. Divide the current number of Americans–318.9 million–by the supposed number of Americans who have gained coverage, generously rounded upward to 18 million. That would mean there are 5.64 percent more Americans who are covered now compared to seven years ago when Obama first took office.
All this fundamental transformation for an additional 5.64 percent. Totally worth it.
Oh, no, but wait, there’s more. We have those other couple of statistics Obama offered.
“Up to 129 million Americans with pre-existing conditions no longer face the risk of being denied coverage or being charged more just because they’ve been sick.”
Yes, make the insurance companies assume greater risk, the costs of which get passed down to the healthy. The Administration calls it “risk adjustment.” That’s fair to the healthy somehow.
Obamacare’s been working so well for those nonprofit insurance co-ops that more than half of the 23 co-ops run by the states have failed at the cost of over a billion nonprofitable dollars. Risk adjustment is the plan to fix the remaining co-ops. And an administration official recently told a Senate committee that the Department of Justice intends to recoup some of that lost money through legal actions.
So the White House is going to punish others for the mess it created, just as it’s punishing those individuals who haven’t hopped aboard the cliff-diving Obamacare Express. That’s also fair. Somehow.
Obamacare’s been working so well that the nation’s largest insurance provider, UnitedHealth is losing more than a billion dollars—higher than it originally forecasted a couple of months ago, and it might drop out of the ACA exchanges altogether by next year. They don’t even want new enrollees. But people are signing up anyway because of the threat of penalties.
Obamacare’s going to work so well when the Cadillac tax on high-cost plans goes into effect in 2018, even though employers, unions, and politicians on both sides of the aisle have found common ground in their opposition of the tax. Employers are looking to ways they’ll be able to pay the 40 percent excise tax, such as getting cheaper plans with higher deductibles or a narrower amount of health care providers in their networks. The tax will be another funding source for Obamacare, so without it, the money will have to come from somewhere else. Regardless of where the money comes from, it’s still more absurd redistributionism.
I’ve been over this stuff already because Obama’s been over this stuff already. So many times.
Now it is time to move on to that last stat.
“137 million Americans with private insurance are now guaranteed preventive care coverage.”
Yep. Men now have breastfeeding support and supplies available to them at no cost. Nonsmokers have access to smoking cessation programs at no cost. Celibate men and women can receive free condoms and STD prevention counseling. Eighty percent of a woman’s prostate exam is now covered. Pajama Boy’s bill for his cervical cancer exam is zero. Guaranteed.
Okay, so those people won’t actually utilize those services. But that’s the point. It’s misleading to say that these services are free. Everyone’s paying for preventive care services and products they will never use. Everyone’s paying so those who use those particular services won’t see them on their bills. We’re told it’s about sharing fairly. Fair for whom? It’s government-mandated charity in that you will be penalized when you don’t play by the terms of the state. And when people do play by its terms, some benefit while others suffer, seemingly with little rhyme or reason. That’s not charity. It’s tyranny.
Of course, Obama paints a rosy picture. He’s set for life. He’ll never have to be concerned about having to choose between paying for health insurance or paying the mortgage like I’ve heard and read others having to do down here in the trenches. He has no idea of what’s really going on unless he’s read it in the newspapers.
Obama added that “we’ve done all this while cutting our deficits and keeping health care inflation to its lowest levels in fifty years.”
“Health care inflation” may be lower, but premiums and deductibles are higher than before Obamacare–much higher. Even the New York Times was compelled to point this out a few months ago. Based on a report from the Kaiser Family Foundation, the NYT reported that health care “deductibles have risen more than six times faster than workers’ earnings since 2010.” Also,
Those workers’ deductibles have climbed from a yearly average of $900 in 2010 for an individual plan to above $1,300 this year, while employees working for small businesses have an even higher average of $1,800 a year. One in five workers has a deductible of $2,000 or more.
The cost of monthly premiums still far outpaces inflation in general as well as workers’ wages, according to the KFF.
So while Obama repeats the same tired lines about millions of Americans who now have coverage when they didn’t before, the cost sharing and risk adjusting and all the other innocuous-sounding terms carry a severe price tag for millions upon millions of others. Obama isn’t going to admit failure, though, so we get these hand-picked numbers from him instead.
To further his case, he cites some personal story from a small business owner from South Carolina who sent him a letter. He gives her name, but her name doesn’t matter. Obama found somebody who thinks the Affordable Care Act is the bomb-diggity. Good for her. The people who have had their wallets emptied thanks to the health care law don’t want to hear it. And for the President to tell America that this one family adores the law that has his name attached to it, while others are tormented by the law, is purely self-serving. We all know that about him already, so it’s nothing new.
The Snake Oil Salesman-in-Chief continued his pitch, saying that “most folks buying a plan on the Marketplace can find an option that costs less than $75 a month” and that “consumers who switched to a new plan for 2016 ended up saving an average of more than $500.”
Costs less than. Saves more than. Equals a load of.
How these savings are possible is through the tax subsidies–subsidies that have to come from somewhere. They’re often referred to as tax credits, but they’re really subsidies. The government pays the health insurance companies, or it reimburses you during tax time for the money you paid to the health insurance companies, if you chose that option. Without the government subsidies, the cost to most individuals and families would be sky-high. But as I said, that money has to come from somewhere. It comes from the American taxpayers.
The whole reason Obama focused on the ACA this week was to make his final push to get people to sign up for the Health Insurance Marketplace before the 2016 enrollment window closes at the end of this month. If the ACA is supposed to be for the benefit of the uninsured, why is there a deadline? You would think that the government would not put a closing date on something that’s supposed to be for a benevolent cause.
There’s a deadline because the government needs to get its money through taxes/fines to help feed this beast. The people must be kept in line. The deadline puts the fear of the IRS in those who would avoid compliance. The government needs to control all of us. And after it whacks us on our behinds, it wants us to say, “Thank you, sir, may I have another?” and pledge our subservience.
Well, nuts to that.
In relating one person’s story of how her family benefited from the wondrous federal government, he said, “You can’t put a price on something like that…This is health care in America today.”
Health care certainly has a price, and it’s astronomical. But what price has all of America had to pay for Obama’s glory? We won’t know the extent of it until he’s long gone from the Oval Office.
And what the heck did he mean by calling the ACA “portable security for you and your loved ones”? Portable? Like I can carry a doctor in my holster?
“It’s making a difference for millions of Americans every day.”
That’s for sure. But the kind of difference it makes for many is completely different from the perception that Obama has incessantly conveyed.
“And it’s only going to get better.”
Is that less than the truth, or more than a lie? Same-same, I guess.
