A Walk to Nowhere. Image by Justin Leonard/Flickr
After the Supreme Court ruled in his favor, Obama strode into the Rose Garden and just made stuff up. Straight-faced, he said families are paying about $1,800 less per year on average now. But government actuaries tell the real story that the ACA has increased the average family’s yearly healthcare costs by around $800.
When 2016 rolls around, the insurers will be jacking up prices—20 to 40 percent or more because the marketplaces have failed to attract those healthy young people they desperately need. So buckle up. Here come the price increases.
Santa Fe, New Mexico, 09 July 2015
by TAMMM Staff
Welcome to Single File Healthcare
The public is now joining our Veterans who have been put on embarrassing long waiting lists that in some cases have led to death (lists that are being hidden by those in the position to do something about it in the first place). Wasn’t this problem raised years ago? Never mind, it’s still going on today and Congress sits and takes more lies from those in charge at the VA.
A new study on wait times is examined in the June 29, 2015 Medscape article, “The Doctor Will See You Eventually: Long Wait Times Scrutinized,” reveals that it can take several months to get an appointment in some areas.
Factors responsible for long wait times included mismatched supply and demand, the current provider-focused approach to scheduling, outmoded workforce and care supply models, priority-based queues, care complexity, reimbursement complexity, and financial and geographic barriers, the report notes.
Those who can’t afford insurance at all will go on Medicaid, which is largely paid for by you via the Feds—with money they don’t have! This accelerates our overall downward spiral as a society and does little to provide evenhanded access to true, quality care.
After reading our post, “Will Good Doctors Be There When You Are Most in Need?” one commenter expressed the heart of the situation with this view:
They will be there for the truly rich because they can pay for it and the political elite has ensured that their rich supporters are taken care of.
For the rest of us, we will receive the dregs of coverage and medical expertise and will be chained to support the rest as tax slaves for as long as we might live. We will be bound against our will to support these dictators and slugs for as long as we can avoid having disease or inadequate medical care kills us.
The winners in this game are the insurance monopoly and the poor, leading to further disenfranchising the middle-class and creating a class-based society vs. a democracy. I think this is what the lobbyists bought when they rammed through the ACA—and very deliberately so.
So buckle up. Here come the price increases, the monopolistic consolidations and value-based (Optum-based) payments established on shaky evidence and value. In case you hadn’t heard, “value-based” is their hip sounding code for price fixing, justified by pseudoscience.
Brilliant and Machiavellian.
The Insured are the Uninsured to Be Insured
Read these four simple sentences from a Notre Dame University engineer who cleverly took the 10,535 pages of Obamacare and summarized it as follows:
- In order to insure the uninsured, we first have to uninsure the insured.
- Next, we require the newly uninsured to be re-insured.
- To re-insure the newly uninsured, they are required to pay extra charges to be re-insured.
- The extra charges are required so that the original insured, who became uninsured, and then became re-insured, can pay enough extra so that the original uninsured can be insured, so it will be ‘free-of-charge’ to them.
If it wasn’t so true we’d be laughing.
Lie All You Want, It’s Just Not Working
A recent Huffington Post poll shows that Obamacare has a nationwide disapproval rating of approximately 43 percent. Another CNN/ORC poll says that 55 percent oppose the law, a number up six percentage points from a year ago.
The evidence is stacking up that Obamacare is largely a failure. One thing is for sure, it’s clearly not improving care. If patients can’t afford to see the doctor because the deductibles are outrageous, in effect, they are uninsured.
This June 26, 2015 article on Newsbusters, “After 8 Years of Financial Downturn, Far More Americans Delay Major Life Events,” says 19 percent of Americans have put off a medical procedure, compared with 9 percent in 2007.
The AICPA survey was done in March, 14-plus months after Obamacare took effect. Yet the percentage of people putting off a medical procedure was more than double what it was during the awful Bush 43 era, to the point where it’s now almost one in five Americans. That’s a far higher percentage than any estimate in the past several decades of the number of Americans without health insurance. How can that be?
I’ll tell you how it can be. Obamacare’s deductibles and copays are astronomically higher than they were with comparable insurance policies. Employers have responded to Obamacare’s coverage mandates and its maze of regulations by sharply raising deductibles and copays in their own medical plans (but generally not to the level seen in plans available at HealthCare.gov). Obamacare’s regulations on medical providers and insurance have added astronomically to their costs.
Forbes staff writer Avik Roy claims even Obama is worried about the future of his pièce de résistance. After the Supreme Court ruled in his favor, Obama strode into the Rose Garden and just made stuff up. Straight-faced, he said families are paying about $1,800 less per year on average now. But government actuaries tell the real story that the ACA has increased the average family’s yearly healthcare costs by around $800.
The vast price increases in premiums make the previously insured unable to afford care. Even if they pony up to buy insurance, patients can’t afford the deductibles, and therefore don’t seek access to care. The premiums, after all, are a tax. But reality is setting in and the truth is crippling. While the powerful benefit, the populace and the medical professionals suffer.
Scant Alternatives
With a Democratic ticket win in 2016, Obamacare might be transformed into universal healthcare—Medicaid for all. The consolidation of insurance companies and their push for value-based medicine is indicative that they believe this scenario will come about sooner rather than later. Their plan is to take the place of the government in terms of being the single payer for all medical services and the single source for running America’s healthcare exchange.
On the repeal and replace side, even if a Republican Congress could ram through legislation to replace and repeal the law, what are we going to be left with? There is little unity among politicians and presidential candidates about what the alternative is unless it’s all or nothing. We are waiting to see true reform that eliminates the mandate and returns the practice of medicine to those with licenses!
Health insurance is supposed to be a protection against the costs of medical services that you can’t pay out of pocket. People understand that auto insurance is for emergencies. An accident is going to be covered, but an oil change isn’t. That’s why the co-pay system is supposed to work for routine doctor visits when the flu hits.
But it’s clear that since the government decided to implement a mandate and take away the option of healthcare insurance, the theory that healthy people would cover the sick has backfired. Since only the sick and subsidized are signing up, premiums will have to increase in order to compensate.
And here’s the proof: When 2016 rolls around, the insurers will be jacking up prices—20 to 40 percent or more because the marketplaces have failed to attract those healthy young people they desperately need. Not to mention the “pent-up need” for medical care… everyone flooded the system getting needed procedures that had been put off for years.
So Much for So Little
In 2013, it was groups going door-to-door to encourage enrollment in Obamacare and now it’s talking point tips on how to chat up the ACA during our holiday get-togethers.
Doctors are even being pressed to make the link between poor health and climate change. As Mac Slavo writes, “If having your doctor quiz you about owning a gun isn’t enough to raise your blood pressure, then this new Obamacare policy surely will.” Never mind being a chain-smoker or genetically pre-disposed to a disease, if you are not driving a socially responsible green vehicle you’ll be paying higher premiums.
It doesn’t matter what they try. From the moment that disastrous healthcare.gov website rolled out the gears were already gnashing. With an upward potential of nearly $300 million spent on that monster, if you can even sort out the fuzzy math from the GAO, what more will it take to convince you that Obamacare has never been about anything affordable for you.
