By: Roger Landry (TLB)
The fiscal year 2016 saw major increases in healthcare (Obamacare) premiums as more insurance companies try to cover their losses, or withdraw entirely from the exchanges … I have written on this national fiasco many times over the past few years trying desperately to raise the alarm on what I consider to be the most destructive legislation in modern American history.
And now House Republicans are suing the Administration after they found that The White House paid for Obamacare exchanges illegally.
Point by point it has become blatantly clear that this is the biggest and most far reaching lie perpetrated on We The People since the birth of the Federal Reserve and the Income Tax … and one that is presently having seriously disastrous consequences on just about all of middle class America.
If you are not familiar with the history of this massive deception please read the following excerpts from a very predictive and still very relevant article I wrote in 2014. If you are intimately familiar with the Obamacare debacle then skip over what follows immediately below, to the attached article (Obamacare On “Verge Of Collapse” As Premiums Set To Soar Again In 2017) for a serious shocker.
****
Excerpts from – Obamacare: Welcome to the Waiting Room For Hell
Let’s start with the disastrous launch of an inept, seriously dysfunctional and massively overpriced national website that screamed volumes on what was to come. Then move on to the almost $500,000,000 already lost on failing state healthcare exchanges in only 4 states – Massachusetts, Oregon, Nevada and Maryland, and the government is already writing checks to the tune of over 120 million additional dollars to give these exchanges a second chance. Now add in the fact that the GAO has already stated unequivocally that this program will add many TRILLIONS of (almost worthless) dollars to the backbreaking debt the American people already suffer … but WAIT … weren’t we told this program would not add a single penny to that debt? There is no doubt left that this is the most disastrous and detrimental program an inept government could ever conceive of and we are just getting started.
Let’s not forget the significant movement away from full-time employment by medium to small sized businesses (the backbone of the American economy), or due to Obamacare, ones that will never be started in the first place, and the moving offshore of larger businesses to avoid Obamacare premiums. The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) Research Foundation released a study showing taxes found (hidden) in The Affordable Healthcare Act will cause major job losses in the private sector. Most duly noted is that the health insurance tax (HIT) “will have a greater effect on private sector job loss than previously projected .” Projected (initially) by who … the cronies that wrote this bill?
We have already beat to death the You can keep your doctor, You can keep your insurance lies that have exploded in the face of countless Americans. And the lies just kept on coming. Whatever happened to “This is NOT a TAX” … well the Supreme Court ruled it HAD to be a tax to be legal at all … So it is another colossal Lie. And then Obama told the nation that this program would result in an average savings per individual of $2500 a year … REALLY … WHERE … . Most (who can afford it the least) are realizing huge increases up to and in some cases exceeding 100% of what they where paying prior to this monumental facade.
Many high-priced specialty care scenarios such as cancers, re-constructive surgery or extended therapies just to name a few, will now (depending on your policy which the government already states the cost for an average family is $20,000 per year) be out of reach for you and your family. Sure you may live longer if you are treated at these high priced specialty clinics and hospitals instead of local facilities (if at all), but insurers say they’d have to raise premiums for basic and mid level exchange plans even higher … So go ahead and tell me again how your health or that of your loved ones will not suffer (and in some cases fatally) due to the institution of this program.
You wont lose your coverage … HaHaHa! Some reliable estimates are relaying that as many as 30 million people are going to lose their coverage, far exceeding the number who lost coverage in individual plans this year. For the same reasons that millions of policies in the individual market were canceled, employers who buy plans in the small-group market may not be able to renew their old plans this year. Many will have to choose between providing the more costly Obamacare benefit package (and possibly drive them out of business) or dropping coverage altogether (increasing your out of pocket costs). And if you are full time (over 30 hours per week) requiring your employer to cover you … guess what, you will either be knocked back to part-time, or your job will be eliminated!
And now another master lie … Just say for arguments sake (good luck) you can actually find a healthcare policy that costs less than what you where paying for, or co-paying with you employer … and you find yourself thinking GEE maybe all this crap I heard about the high cost of Obamacare is just that, crap. Millennials who heard Obama say that they can buy a health plan for the price of a cellphone contract stopped be laughing when they realized what the $5,000 deductible meant. (It’s like a cellphone contract that makes you pay $5 a text for your first thousand texts.) Rather than pay thousands out of pocket for care while also paying premiums, some (many) will quit paying premiums.
And now another straw is loaded onto this burdened down camel’s back … and maybe the one that will break that back … MANY doctors are deserting their practice in favor of retirement, or just flat out refusing to treat patients who fall under the Obamacare disaster, and many more are threatening to follow. Many doctors ridicule this program as a disaster of monumental proportions, ill-thought-out and executed. Understand that even if this program had worked exactly as described, there would have been a shortage of doctors to facilitate it, and now there will be a deficit of doctors on a biblical scale! If you still think that those of us who warned of medical treatment rationing and death panels (deciding who will get necessary and rationed care by what they still have to offer the state) are nuts or Doom Sayers, think again because this my friends is a serious reality check !!!
Read more from this article HERE
****
As you can see just about all we suffer from Obamacare today was easily predictable from the get-go … but if you still think after all is said and done that this is till a viable system … that all is getting better … the system will eventually work … you need to get you proverbial head out of your rectum and wake up to the reality of this fiasco! Please read on …
****************
Obamacare On “Verge Of Collapse” As Premiums Set To Soar Again In 2017
By: Tyler Durden
If Obamacare enrollments continue their current trend and insurers continue to hike premiums at alarming rates then Republicans may not have to worry about “repealing and replacing Obamacare” as it might just work itself out “naturally”. The 4th open enrollment period for Obamacare begins on November 1, 2016 and industry experts are warning that another year of tepid demand from “young and healthy” Americans could force more insurers out of the exchanges effectively marking the end of Obamacare as we know it. According to a story published by The Hill, 11 million people bought health insurance through the exchanges for 2016 which was drastically below the Congressional Budget Office’s initial projection of 21 million.
Well we’re shocked! Turns out that whole “adverse selection bias” was a real thing. So you’re telling us that young, healthy people don’t want to pay for insurance they know they’ll never use? We guess America’s youth can actually do basic math, after all. Apparently they were able to figure out they would rather take the lower tax associated with Obamacare penalties than the larger tax associated with buying a healthcare policy they’ll never use. We guess Millennials are a little less enthusiastic about embracing socialism when the costs are coming out of their pockets.
With America’s youth continuing to shun health insurance, insurers are all racking up massive losses on the exchanges. For many insurers the losses will simply result in massive premium hikes but others have decided to withdraw from the exchanges all together. In fact, UnitedHealthCare recently announced plans to exit most state exchanges by 2017 (see our post entitled “Largest US Health Insurer Exits California, Illinois Obamacare Markets“) Per The Hill:
In the last month, two major insurers – Aetna and Anthem – both reversed course on their plans to expand in the marketplace. Now, all five of the nation’s largest insurers say they are losing money on the exchanges.
“From a policy point of view, we’re basically seeing the exchanges unravel,” said Michael Abrams, a healthcare strategist with Numerof & Associates who consults for insurers including UnitedHealthGroup.
2016 average premiums were up substantially in most states (see map below) and, with no one making money, 2017 seems no better. According to The Hill:
Already, many insurers this year are proposing substantial rate hikes with the hopes of making up for higher recent medical costs. The average premium increase next year is about 9 percent, according to an analysis of 19 cities by Kaiser Family Foundation. But some hikes are far higher: Blue Cross Blue Shield has proposed increases of 40 percent in Alabama and 60 percent in Texas.
For her part, Hillary Clinton has vowed to stick with Obamacare insisting that taxpayers just need to spend more money on advertising to drive higher enrollments:
Clinton has already laid out plans to help boost enrollment by making coverage more affordable for people who are still priced out of ObamaCare.
Like Obama, she vowed to invest in advertising and in-person outreach to help more people enroll. Clinton would also increase ObamaCare subsidies so that customers spend no more than 8.5 percent of their income on premiums – down from 9.5 percent under current law.
She has also proposed a tax credit of up to $5,000 per family specifically to offset rising out-of-pocket costs – a side effect of cheaper plans offered under ObamaCare.
Right, more advertising should fix it because no one in the country is familiar with Obamacare. As Obama likes to say when things don’t go as planned, it’s not that Obamacare is bad it’s just that we’ve failed to explain it properly. No, we think people get and they just don’t like it.
We also find it hard to understand how a Clinton administration could make healthcare cheaper than “free?” Perhaps we should start paying people to take taxpayer subsidized healthcare? If at first you don’t succeed, throw more taxpayer money at it…
This (attached) article (Obamacare On “Verge Of Collapse” As Premiums Set To Soar Again In 2017) by Tyler Durden originally appeared on ZeroHedge.com. TLB recommends you visit Zero Hedge for more pertinent articles and information.
****************
Leave a Reply