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Guest Post: America's Obamacare Nightmare Is Just Beginning
Submitted by Robert E Moffit via TheNationalInterest.org,
This week the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the federal government could continue to subsidize health-insurance coverage through Healthcare.gov, the federal exchanges. An ecstatic President Obama declared that Obamacare is “here to stay.”
No, it’s not.
A judicial victory doesn’t automatically translate into a political victory, let alone a policy success. Once they’ve quaffed their celebratory champagne, the president and White House staff will need to suit up and get ready to play some hard-nosed defense.
Here’s why. The driving force behind health reform has been the desire to control rising health-care costs. From 2008 onwards, President Obama promised that his reform agenda would reduce the annual cost for the typical American family by no less than $2,500. After a while, it became a rather tiresome talking point. But it was pure nonsense from the start.
Health-care spending increases were slowing down well before Congress enacted Obamacare. But with the onset of Obamacare, health-insurance premiums in the exchanges jumped by double digits, while deductibles increased dramatically. If you liked your doctor, you would be able to keep you doctor, the president insisted, but maybe not, in reality, depending upon whether or not your physician networks narrowed. Looking toward 2016, health insurers say premium costs will soar.
In the days, weeks and months leading up to the King v. Burwell decision, commentators obsessed over the roughly 6.4 million persons who could lose health-insurance subsidies. With the Court’s ruling, they can keep the federal subsidies. But that doesn’t come close to ending the debate.
Roughly 6.4 million persons in thirty-four states could have been negatively affected if the Court struck down the federal exchange subsidies. But there is a much wider universe of persons adversely affected by the law: the roughly 15 million persons in the individual and small group market who don’t get—and won’t get—the federal government’s health-insurance subsidies. Under Obamacare, millions of Americans are forced to pay more for their government standardized coverage, regardless of whether they like it or not, whether they want it or not, or whether or not it forces them to pay for medical procedures that violate their ethical, moral or religious convictions.
So, the debate will intensify over the primary issue: costs. In every state, the fundamental components of state health-care costs—the demographics, the underlying costs of care delivery and the competitiveness of the markets—are juiced up by expensive federal benefit mandates and individual and group insurance rules and regulations. These all drive costs skyward. As my Heritage colleagues have demonstrated, this regulatory regime forces young people to pay up to 44 percent more in premiums. Washington’s subsidies simply try to hide the true costs of the law; they don’t control them.
The law remains unworkable. The complicated insurance subsidy program itself has been a mess. H&R Block reported that about two thirds of subsidy recipients had to repay money back to the government because they got bigger than allowable subsidies. With the individual mandate, the administration has been granting lots of exemptions to insulate most of the uninsured from any penalty. That’s rather predictable; after all, even candidate Barack Obama argued that an individual mandate was unfair and unenforceable.
As for the employer mandate—another fractured cornerstone of Obamacare—the administration has delayed it for one year. Even liberal supporters now want to repeal it, fearing damage to the labor markets.
And what about those big “savings” from the Medicare payment reductions? They were earmarked to help cover the costs of the insurance subsidies. Yet the Medicare Actuary and the CBO have both routinely dismissed the massive Medicare payment cuts as either unrealistic or unsustainable.
Meanwhile, other problems mount. The state exchanges are financially troubled. Coverage is still insecure, especially when loss of employment is tantamount to a loss of a health plan. Bureaucracy, red tape and paperwork plague the system, increasing costs and frustrating doctors and patients alike. All of those problems are getting worse, not better.
This is the second time in two years that President Obama has declared the debate over Obamacare to be “over.” Here’s a better prediction: America is entering into the next phase of an equally contentious but broadly educational debate over the direction of the nation’s health-care future.
In a free society, debate is over only when the people decide it’s over.
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affordable care really means affordable for the government
all they got to do is deny payment for what ever reason
then they will have a surplus
true story.
Total control of the people ushered in under the auspices of "affordable health care for all".
Welcome to post liberty amerika.
I've made this comment before - check out Oz for an example of state funded medical care. Pay 2% of taxable income, full coverage, no deductibles. Last time I put this up I got shot down - "Won't work in the USA". Fair enough, but ask yourselves why not?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicare_%28Australia%29#Medicare_levy
Also have a look at your nothern neighbours
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_Canada
From the little I know of the Canadian system government pays private providers e.g. doctors, and has publicly funded hospitals - with NO INSURANCE MIDDLEMEN ! Work it out, folks!
Canada shut down one of its cancer hospitals when I was there one summer. And you know about the Canadians who come south for care here. For a funny look at Canadian health care watch "Return of the Barbarians."
Socialized medical rations with waiting times. We used to by price though that's probably OBE. God only knows WTF we've got now.
If their health care is so bad, why are Canadians not down here in droves, seeking medical care?, clogging up the border checkpoint-or better yet MOVING here in droves;
Cuz they would go bankrupt in short order!
The "Canadian comes here to get faster Cancer" treatment is an old wives tale, pushed by Big HMO, Big Pharma, and idiots
Dont expect help from your Dem/Repuke Congressmen-they get FREE 100% Health Care for the rest of their lives
You and all the girls of your city would be my servants?
Well,... yes I am your god. I am a bird man. You will be my servants.
Screw the 21st Century.
Tom Carper, Chris Coons and John Carney.....the communist contingent from delaware all voted to raise my healthcare costs, and not one of the socialist cowards will write me back explaining why I haven't saved $2500 a year on my health insurance costs....The Dumbocrat Governor has been sticking it to working folks every year since Obowelcare passed.....
I warned my fukktard republican friends that the republicon party wouldn't do shit about Obamacare, but they just called me a "conspiracy theorist"
My closest childhood friend is running for U.S. Representative from Delaware.......won't he be surprised when I come out against HIM and the SHAM of a party that is now the Republicons......
Boner is a child molester.
This will be an epic failure of big government. I just wonder what the aftermath will look like, and of course what language I'll be speaking.
The left does not measure success and failure in the same way as we do. Their morality system is largely inverted from ours.
Technically, we are not a free constitutional society anymore. So the debate is over. Time for a convention of the states.
Here is How we were duped ito Obamacare...
The success of Obamacare is dependent on taking us down the path for so long that the vast majority of us will not be able to remember whether things were better way back then under the old (previous) system of personal insurance policies.
And of course things will be worse for us all. Actual medical expenses were leveling off before Obamacare. The health insurance industry colluded to raise our premiums despite this. This had the effect of conditioning us to the higher expenses related to healthcare in order that we would be reluctant to object to "socialized medicine".
Thought the driving force behind Obummercare was to protect corporate profits and ensure a continuous stream of political donations, revolving door jobs, speaking fees, etc...?
I would rather die than participate in Obummercare.
Corporate welfare for the keep-them-sick industry.
"The driving force behind health reform has been the desire to control rising health-care costs"
No it hasn't.
This is the second time in two years that President Obama has declared the debate over Obamacare to be “over.”
No debate is ever really over.
Re-posting as I sharpen my pencil...
Speaking of trade agreements, a thought dawned on me. Remember the scandal of how it was revealed to be legal for congress to insider trade? After this was made public, Sen. Scott Brown introduced the Stock Act which made it Illegal for that practice to happen, which was enacted but gutted by congress shortly thereafter.
With these trade deals being done in secret, I wonder how many members of Congress are, or are about to, make millions on the information contained therein?
That should piss some folks off.
===EDIT===
To Wit:
Transparency is overrated anyway, says Obama.
Insider Trading - House Rules
When it comes to reforming the Congressional exemption from insider trading rules, lawmakers get a gentleman's F minus. Broadcast April 23.
Part two of the Daily Show segment is below.
--
Stock Act Failure From Congress And Obama
Columbia Journalism Review has the full story...
On Monday, President Obama quietly signed a bill repealing the major provisions of the much-touted ethics law known as the STOCK Act.
Passed in 2012 after a 60 Minutes report on insider trading practices in Congress, the STOCK Act banned members of Congress and senior executive and legislative branch officials from trading based on government knowledge. To give the ban teeth, the law directed that many of these officials’ financial disclosure forms be posted online and their contents placed into public databases. However, in March a report ordered by Congress found that airing this information on the Internet could put public servants and national security at risk. The report urged that the database, and the public disclosure for everyone but members of Congress and the highest-ranking executive branch officials—measures that had never been implemented—be thrown out.
The government sprang into action: last week, both chambers of Congress unanimously agreed to adopt the report’s recommendations. Days later, Obama signed the changes into law. The meager coverage was a striking counterpoint to the waves of media attention that accompanied enactment of the STOCK Act in April 2012—310 articles in the two weeks surrounding its passage, according to a search of Lexis Nexis. Just as striking is that none of the reports on the partial repeal consulted experts who could answer the question at hand: did the disclosure rules in fact threaten individual or national security?
Source: http://dailybail.com/home/jon-stewart-blasts-congress-for-gutting-stock-...
I refuse to participate in the ACA. They have simply priced me out of the health insurance market. One friend just had his policy cancelled and is awaiting the new premium. Another friend who against my advice took the subsidy and is now being hounded for a clawback of $613 x 15 months.
Fuck these corporatist swine. The healthscare system killed both of my parents.
I'm running on prayer and organic food.
Do not participate!
Refuse to be a slave!
Refuse to be governed.
Best way: Get the hell outta dodge!