…is dead:
The fact is that Obamacare has fallen apart without Republicans’ dismantling it. Almost all of its basic promises have failed, it is an economic shambles, and it is a political mess: Unsurprisingly, people still don’t like it. Less than a third of Americans support the individual mandate, three-fourths oppose Obamacare’s tax on high-end health-care programs, and more voters oppose the law categorically than support it. A quarter of voters say the law has hurt them personally. The question isn’t why Republicans haven’t gotten around to repealing and replacing it — the answer to that question resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for a while, still — the question is when Democrats will get around to admitting that, purity of their hearts notwithstanding, they and they alone — not one Republican voted for Obamacare — have created a mess that has introduced nothing to American health care except chaos.
"Dead" is such a harsh word, @KevinNR. We prefer the phrase "metabolically challenged." https://t.co/UsB0Zmpvmd
— HealthCaliphate (@HealthDotGov) November 4, 2015
[Update a few minutes later]
Surprise! Rates going up three times as much as reported.
But a fair chunk of the damage caused seems to be nigh irrevocable.
At least, I don’t think it will be easy at all to de-merge the swaths of private practices and minor hospitals out of the metropolitan near-monopoly Big Hospitals.
IOW: Even a repealed Obamacare will have severely wounded a market that was fairly lame in the first place.
I think that was their plan all along. They knew it would fail but that was a necessary stepping stone to their ultimate wet-dream – single payer. It’s called “failing upwards.” We’re supposed to overlook the mess they’ve made of things (my premiums are going up almost 28%) and let them have total control over the health care system.
Sorry, but no.
Do you suppose the ACA is Amtrak for Healthcare?
Yes, it will probably never, ever go away, and its proponents will be ever more complaining that it is underfunded. But just as Amtrak isn’t anything like the Western European or East Asian trains, the ACA will never by “like what they have in those other countries.”
Conservatives have tried to kill Amtrak for years and years and years and it isn’t going way. On the other hand, Amtrak is only a couple billion per year, if that, to support a tenth of a percent of total US passenger miles. If we had European style trains, we would be spending the Federal Highway Budget (about 30-40 billion) on trains every year to carry, say, 4 percent of total passenger miles (the vast preponderance of passenger miles here as well as “over there” are with cars). When people complain that we don’t have trains, well, we do, we have your Amtrak, which y’all who wanted trains said ya wanted, so go live with that and stop complaining . . .
Do you suppose the ACA is Amtrak for Healthcare?
No way. Amtrak is happy to take a piece of your paycheck whether you ride Amtrak or not. But you aren’t fined/taxed, if you don’t ride. And they don’t share their ridership data with the IRS.
Hey! Don’t give ’em ideas!
But the left won because they got their foot in the door. We still have a law. That was their intent all along–just to get something passed. That law will be tweaked or made worse with single payer.
Agree with Jon. I’ll believe it is dead when those I know suffering from it have happiness return to their lives. Personally, my own observation is that Obamacare makes it much easier to pay out of pocket directly to your doctor. It makes you and the doctor happy, because it is cheaper for both.
The liberals will never admit ObamaCare is a failure. They’ll just insist the it is underfunded. If there are any shortfalls in the program, well, too bad. Take a look across the past few decades and see how many big government programs (and there are few bigger than ObamaCare) that were ever canceled due to poor results.
Enter ZombieCare, the shambling undead corpse of ACA.
Yes, the solution to the State-shtuppers is that if Big Government fails, always rush in Bigger Government.
“Bend ’em and spread ’em, peasants! Dear Leader has spoken!”–Baghdad Jim.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/11/05/obamacare-website-threatens-bigger-fines-dont-sign/
when Democrats will get around to admitting that, purity of their hearts notwithstanding, they and they alone — not one Republican voted for Obamacare — have created a mess that has introduced nothing to American health care except chaos
Nothing? No longer can any citizen be refused coverage. Ask someone who couldn’t get coverage before if that’s nothing. The number of uninsured has dropped by more than 20 million. That isn’t nothing. The law helped save 50,000 lives. Ask one of them if that’s nothing.
Lies, lies, lies and you know it. You PROMISED everyone would be insured and you are a million miles away. There are still 9 million people uninsured using your own statistics. That might be because the co-ops are failing (did you forget about that?)
http://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/11/04/aca-co-ops-dropping-like-flies/
It’s okay to read the above link, Jim. He’s a democrat. I know you refuse to look at my links (while accusing me of playing ‘foul’), but Mead is a democrat.
And, I took a little look at your first link and found something very interesting. The number of private adults insured is roughly the same since the late nineties, so absolutely no change there. It probably declined because of the 2008 recession but is coming back.
Meanwhile, the public assistance is going up with adults and children. There is a critical factor: retiring baby boomers. Suddenly medicare is increasing. Quelle surprise! And, as everybody knows, the amount of poor people on public assistance increased when they could’ve been on it in the first place, long before obamacare.
The law helped save people’s lives? There is not one mention of obamacare in the study. In fact, here is a quote:
Although the precise causes of the decline in patient harm are not fully understood, the increase in safety has occurred during a period of concerted attention by hospitals throughout the country
to reduce adverse events, spurred in part by Medicare payment incentives and catalyzed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Partnership for Patients initiative led by
the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS.)
In other words, the government is trying to save money (which is good) and it has nothing to do with obamacare.
And, the Washington Post also mentions this: Administration officials concede the number of preventable deaths is a bit fuzzy, in that the 50,000 is an estimate of an estimate.
Tell media matters to look at the studies before providing links.
You PROMISED everyone would be insured and you are a million miles away.
Nobody promised that everyone would be insured. The rate of uninsurance is the lowest its been in 50 years — that’s success.
the co-ops are failing
Yes, many are. That doesn’t mean Obamacare is dead, or a failure.
The number of private adults insured is roughly the same since the late nineties, so absolutely no change there.
No, it shows an uptick since 2013.
In other words, the government is trying to save money (which is good) and it has nothing to do with obamacare.
Those efforts were part of the ACA (aka Obamacare) legislation.
Nobody promised that everyone would be insured. The rate of uninsurance is the lowest its been in 50 years — that’s success.
You did. You promised. You promised to get the 30 million uninsured health care. And you failed.
Those efforts were part of the ACA (aka Obamacare) legislation.
It doesn’t say anything about that in the piece. As I said, it’s a good idea, but it has nothing to do with Obamacare.
No, it shows an uptick since 2013.
Yes, and I said that is because boomers are retiring and going on social security.
You promised. You promised to get the 30 million uninsured health care.
1. I never promised that everyone would get health insurance. It would be a silly thing to promise. For one thing, there are about 10 million undocumented aliens who aren’t eligible for Obamacare subsidies or expanded Medicaid.
2. I never promised that 30 million people would get insurance by 2015. If I remember correctly, the original CBO estimate was for 20-30 million to get insurance by 2023 (i.e. in the first decade of the exchanges and Medicaid expansion). That was before the Supreme Court made Medicaid expansion optional. Getting to 20 million by 2015 when half the states haven’t expanded Medicaid is a big success.
3. You’re changing your story — first you write that I promised that everyone would have insurance, now you write that I promised that 30 million would. Are you referring to a specific statement I made, or just making stuff up?
It doesn’t say anything about that in the piece. As I said, it’s a good idea, but it has nothing to do with Obamacare.
I think you missed this sentence: “The study looked at the impact of the Partnership for Patients, a $460 million program funded by the health law….”
Yes, and I said that is because boomers are retiring and going on social security.
Why would that increase the percentage of people age 18-64 with private health insurance?
Too bad that most of the newly insured are on Medicaid – not the Glorious Plan.
Too bad premiums are going up by double digits.
Too bad deductibles are huger and growing.
Too bad people cannot afford Obamacide because they make just a little too much money for the subsidies and cannot afford the premiums.
Too bad the cost curve is accelerating…UP – not down.
Prove to us that Obamacaare “saved lives”. Whose life? How?
Hint: hard to prove since anyone can go to the emergency room if sick or injured.
Every prediction of every bad thing came true….
Every promise made by Obama, Pelosi and Reid proved was a lie and they knew they were lies when they uttered them……
And the lies were for the gullibles like you, Jim, who would swallow their lies and believe them….they had no intention of having any of that stuff come true. But they knew their mark….you.
Collapsing Obamacare Co-ops Signal Big Trouble to Come
The Fiscal Times.
“A key piece of the Obama administration’s plan to control the health insurance market is in a state of collapse. With it will go the philosophical underpinning of big government solutions to private-sector problems–and that will pose a core question for voters in the upcoming national elections.”
Too bad that most of the newly insured are on Medicaid – not the Glorious Plan.
Medicaid is part of the Glorious Plan. People who can’t afford private insurance should still have coverage.
Too bad premiums are going up by double digits.
Too bad deductibles are huger and growing.
Both were the case before Obamacare.
Too bad people cannot afford Obamacide because they make just a little too much money for the subsidies and cannot afford the premiums.
Better that than nobody getting subsidies.
Too bad the cost curve is accelerating
Nope.
Every prediction of every bad thing came true
Republicans predicted that the number of people with insurance would go down in 2014. It went up, by millions.
Medicaid is part of the Glorious Plan. People who can’t afford private insurance should still have coverage.
Duh, most people on medicaid were eligible before Obamacare and didn’t bother to show up. That is not a success of Obamacare.
Both were the case before Obamacare
Obamacare did nothing to fix it, as the promised, cross their heart hope to die.
Duh, most people on medicaid were eligible before Obamacare and didn’t bother to show up. That is not a success of Obamacare.
Obamacare both made millions of people newly eligible, and helped inform millions of people who were already eligible that they could get it (and made it easier for them to do so). Millions from both groups went from not having coverage to having it. Each of those millions of cases is a success of Obamacare.
“Medicaid is part of the Glorious Plan. People who can’t afford private insurance should still have coverage.”
Except that Obamacare DROVE millions more towards Medicaid. It didn’t provide a path to affordable insurance..it out people on Medicaid. That is not good for a legion of reasons.
One is that the doctors are more and more refusing to see Medicaid patients. How nice.
“Both [deductibles and premiums] were the case before Obamacare.”
Not by many thousands a year (deductibles) or double digits (premiums).
Driving millions on Medicaid is no justification for Obamacide’s destruction. Only 10 million have signed up…less than half of what Obamaciders predicted by this time.
You keep touting some people getting subsidies is better.
NO, it isn’t. The problem wasn’t solved by handing out some money. It was made far worse. NONE of the benefits of Obamacide have actually happened. NONE. That includes the fact that a few people who get insurance subsidies – the destruction wrought in no way justifies that.
It’s a flop and a lawless flop.
Care to comment on Obama’s lawless tyranny?
“Medicaid is part of the Glorious Plan. People who can’t afford private insurance should still have coverage.”
More to the point Jim:
You didn’t need Obamacide to enroll people on Midicaid as it was already there.
You didn’t need 2500 pages of legislation
People thrown off their coverage
People losing their doctors
Hospitals and clinics closing
Premiums skyrocketing
Or the economy drag…..
JUST to sign people up on Medicaid.
And yes it’s there for people who can’t afford insurance but this that’s the case you destroy any pretense of argument you ever had:
If the millions who couldn’t buy insurance before Obamacide had Medicaid available to them, tell us then WHY we need Obamacide.
Answer: You don’t.
You don’t seem to get this at all:
You don’t feed one family by killing 10 other families and giving their food to the one.
“Ask someone who couldn’t get coverage before if that’s nothing. The number of uninsured has dropped by more than 20 million. That isn’t nothing. The law helped save 50,000 lives. Ask one of them if that’s nothing.”
Those are nice talking points, but what do they mean?
Who are the now-insured? Are they getting care any different now than they could get before just by going to the emergency room? Are the wait times longer or shorter? The quality of care better or worse or the same?
And, what happened to the estimates of 40-50 million uninsured used to sell the program? Did they never actually exist?
More importantly, is this policy sustainable? Will costs be contained (sure doesn’t look like it)? Will medical professionals begin retiring early, with fewer replacements in the pipeline opting for a life in which their every waking moment belongs to someone else with a “right” to it? Will this hurt health care generally in the future?
Helped save 50,000? Is that like the jobs saved or created by the “stimulus” that wasn’t? Is there anything verifiable here, and not just a casual counterfactual?
I suspect the answers are:
1) misdirection
2) people who were actually already covered one way or another
3) no
4) longer
5) worse
6) down the memory hole
7) no
8) no
9) no
10) yes
11) yes
12) rhetorical
13) yes
14) no
7)
noyes.13/14 on my own test. Damn.
Those are nice talking points, but what do they mean?
They mean Jim gets other people to pay for his family’s preexisting conditions.
If they are life threatening, or significantly life diminishing, I do not mind paying my share for them. Somebody’s got to pay, and people shouldn’t be driven into poverty based on conditions beyond their control. We are wealthy enough to pay.
The problem is that, wealth is not always enough. All the money in the world cannot buy something which does not exist.
To the extent that reducing the rewards drives people out of the medical professions, and hinders investment in new treatments and efficiencies, the ACA will extinguish supply of medical services, and those services then become unavailable.
A rational approach to providing universal healthcare would have looked to increasing the supply of medical personnel and equipment, streamlining regulations, and promoting efficiency. This approach simply declares universal healthcare by fiat. That approach will fail over time.
You cannot stoke demand, and reduce supply, and expect costs to stay in place. It just cannot happen in the real world.
Saved lives? How many lives has it taken, or will it take? How many hospitals have closed, and how many doctors’ offices? How many people died because they were just a little bit farther from a hospital? How many people lost the doctor they liked, and got worse care from a doctor that was forced on them – and died? How many pieces of medical equipment were never developed because of the heavy tax on them – and we’ll never know what difference they could have made?
And what about those that didn’t die, but just got inferior medical care, because they couldn’t afford as good a policy as before, or because their doctor stopped taking their insurance – and ended up with an inferior medical outcome?
Are you counting those things? You can’t really, because there’s no way to quantify them. But regulation kills people.
“The law helped save 50,000 lives.”
Prove this assertion or admit you have no idea what you are talking about
And all the bad things (and all the Obamacare effects are bad) would be far FAR worse if Obama didn’t just…..decide and decree…that certain parts of the law – WHOLLY CRAFTED BY DEMOCRATS – would just be….ignored.
Waivers, delays in dates…just..ignored….. by Presidential decree.
So along with destroying a large chunk of the economy and placing Federal noses where they don’t belong, Obama has also added lawless tyranny…
that’s right…lawless tyranny
into Federal government SOP’s.
More News:
From American Thinker:
This already reported above:
“More than half of the non-profit state insurance co-ops have gone belly-up. ”
This already reported above…
” Premiums have shot up double digits. ”
But now there’s this:
” And the fund that is supposed to reimburse insurance companies for their losses is massively underfunded, according to Standard and Poors.”
From The Hill:
“Under the so-called “risk corridor” program, the Obama administration charges insurers with more-than-expected profits and redistributes the money to plans with losses.
In the first two years of the healthcare law, more insurers than expected have ended up with balance sheets in the red. As a result, the risk pool now has only about $1 to cover every $10 in claims – an equation that is not likely to improve until the market stabilizes.”
And this is sure to help:
“The situation could improve this year, with more insurers raising their premiums, Banerjee said.”
Rising premiums????? Who couls have guessed! (We did)
Ahhhh and how will this shortfall be made up?????
Take a guess:
““In our view, it looks like appropriations may be the only way to fully fund the risk corridor deficits,” the analysis warned.”
Appropriations…the ONLY way……
‘“Under the so-called “risk corridor” program, the Obama administration charges insurers with more-than-expected profits and redistributes the money to plans with losses.’
Sounds like the Anti-Dog-Eat-Dog Rule. With similar results.
And just because numbers are increasing does not mean they are legit. We spend over 100 billion dollars a year in fraudulent payments. Over a trillion dollars since 2003!
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-16-92T
The metric, “the more on our plan the more successful” is foolish and mendacious.
Another inconvenient truth on social security corruption: 6.5 million Americans on social security are over 112 years old. But that’s good because the numbers are up!
http://freebeacon.com/issues/feds-have-social-security-numbers-for-6-5-million-112-year-olds-on-file/
What does Social Security corruption have to do with Obamacare?
Are you serious?
Yes, I’m serious. “Obamacare is a failure because there is Social Security fraud” is a non-sequitur.
Jim, what he’s trying to explain to you is that lately there have been hundreds of Obamacare signees who are dead.
Fraud in other words.
An example from the Albany Times Union:
“Of $3.4 million in overpayments found by auditors, $325,030 in claims associated with 230 deceased New Yorkers identified as active Medicaid recipients was paid out, according to the audit. In total, 354 deceased New Yorkers were found to be enrolled in the system, with 21 of those people officially enrolled after they had died.”
This is just one example.
Fraud never seems to enter your thoughts, but it comes hand in hand with government.
1. I never promised that everyone would get health insurance. It would be a silly thing to promise. For one thing, there are about 10 million undocumented aliens who aren’t eligible for Obamacare subsidies or expanded Medicaid.
You were told in 2009 about the 10 million undocumented [sic] and democrats still spouted the mantra of 30 million uninsured. We were told Obamacare would fix all the problems, including getting 30 million people insured. It was in the news every day.
2. I never promised that 30 million people would get insurance by 2015. If I remember correctly, the original CBO estimate was for 20-30 million to get insurance by 2023 (i.e. in the first decade of the exchanges and Medicaid expansion). That was before the Supreme Court made Medicaid expansion optional. Getting to 20 million by 2015 when half the states haven’t expanded Medicaid is a big success.
The democrats promised it. Yet the numbers we see today are pathetic. You are in no way going to have every American insured by 2023.
3. You’re changing your story — first you write that I promised that everyone would have insurance, now you write that I promised that 30 million would. Are you referring to a specific statement I made, or just making stuff up?
By you I mean democrats. And since you spout all of their talking points, there is no difference.
I think you missed this sentence: “The study looked at the impact of the Partnership for Patients, a $460 million program funded by the health law….”
The bill is monstrously sized. Can you prove it was part of Obamacare or just something tacked on? You know, just have to read the bill to know what’s in it. I think you also forgot this part :
And, the Washington Post also mentions this: Administration officials concede the number of preventable deaths is a bit fuzzy, in that the 50,000 is an estimate of an estimate.
Why would that increase the percentage of people age 18-64 with private health insurance?
It wouldn’t, but that wasn’t what I was talking about. I was talking about the uptick in public spending. The private, as I told you, is about the same as the late nineties.
We were told Obamacare would fix all the problems, including getting 30 million people insured. It was in the news every day.
30 million isn’t “all the problems”. According to the Census Bureau, there were 49.9 million uninsured in 2010, when the bill was passed. Nobody predicted that there would be 30 million more insured by 2015, much less that everyone would have insurance by 2015.
Can you prove it was part of Obamacare or just something tacked on?
From the linked article:
It was part of the ACA.
Administration officials concede the number of preventable deaths is a bit fuzzy, in that the 50,000 is an estimate of an estimate.
Yes, the actual number might be less or more than 50,000. It isn’t nothing, which is what the National Review article (quoted by Rand) claimed.
that wasn’t what I was talking about. I was talking about the uptick in public spending
We were talking about the increase in the number of people with private insurance since 2013. Let’s play the tape:
You wrote: The number of private adults insured is roughly the same since the late nineties, so absolutely no change there.
I replied: No, it shows an uptick since 2013.
You replied: Yes, and I said that is because boomers are retiring and going on social security.
Obamacare both made millions of people newly eligible, and helped inform millions of people who were already eligible that they could get it (and made it easier for them to do so). Millions from both groups went from not having coverage to having it. Each of those millions of cases is a success of Obamacare.
Most people joining were already eligible (except for those who got kicked off their plans and had to join, and that is okay with democrats, I’m sure.) But you had to shove a monster bill down our throats when a simple tweak of the system that encouraged more people to get on medicaid would have fixed it. Why is that? For control?
The GOP had control of the White House and Congress from 2003 to 2007. If there really is a “simple tweak of the system” that could extend coverage to 20 million more people, they were free to propose and pass one, but they didn’t. [They’re free to propose and pass one today, for that matter, if only to shame Obama for vetoing it, but they haven’t.]
If covering another 20 million people was easy, someone would have done it by 2010.
An improved economy would have done more to lower the number of uninsured than Obamacare and with less cost and meddling. But now we have politicians dictating our medical choices for us. Every year politicians are going to be forcing changes to the doctor patient relationship.
Doctors are being conscripted into the Democrat party and will be forced to inflict nut job Democrat ideology on patients. I thought we had separation of church and state?
“I thought we had separation of church and state.”
Not from Reverend Jim’s church:
https://grrrgraphics.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/shrine_of_the_statists1.jpg
“Why is that? For control?”
That’s what it’s all about, Jon, and why the willing serfs of the liberty-is-overrated crowd–you know, people like Baghdad Jim–will defend Obamacare to their last breath. (And then crawl to Big Brother for more oxygen.)
Jim pretends to know:
“The law helped save 50,000 lives.”
Prove it.
“Better that than nobody getting subsidies.”
Prove it.
“Nope.” ( as in Jim thinks the cost curve is not accelerating..
Prove it.
And just to help you along check these out – neither place a bastion of Conservatism:
Medical cost inflation: Highest level in 8+ years
Dan Mangan
Friday, 22 May 2015
”
An eyebrow-raising jump in the prices of medical care that helped boost the Consumer Price Index surprised economists and health-care experts, who can’t figure out what’s driving the large increase. It’s also not clear whether the pace will be maintained beyond just one month.
“I find this maddening,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, an economist and former director of the Congressional Budget Office who’s now president of the American Action Forum policy institute.
“I’m now obsessed,” he said.
Holtz-Eakin told CNBC he downloaded a decade’s worth of data, and spoke to a half-dozen economists and health-care analysts, to try to figure out what drove medical care prices surprisingly higher in April. The increase was largely driven by reported hikes in the prices of hospital services.”
Or this from the HuffPo:
“The BLS report also revealed that the broad subset of medical care services grew by 0.9 percent. Medical care services, which is the largest component of the medical care index, includes the prices of professional services, hospital and related services and health insurance. Hospital services rose 1.9 percent for the month, the BLS said.
That number really caught Holtz-Eakin’s eye. He said “blips,” “anomalies” or other oddities in economic data happen at times, only to vanish when new numbers come out a month later. But a 1.9 percent monthly blip—which, if maintained, would equal a nearly 24 percent annual rate of hospital services inflation—is “pretty big.”
Pretty big.
Prove the costs are going down.
More on health care costs:
WaPO:
“In his post-election news conference, President Obama hit on a theme that we have explored before — that the Affordable Care Act has led to lower increases in health care costs.”
3 pinnochios.
From the http://www.cms.gov:
National Health Expenditures 2013 Highlights
In 2013
U.S. health care spending increased 3.6 percent ….
Increased……..
National Conference of State Legislators
Updated July 2015
“The increased cost of health insurance is a central fact in any discussion of health policy and health delivery. As annual premiums edged beyond $16,800 for an average family, costs are blamed for rising uninsured and “under-insurance.” For those Americans who are fully-covered, these cost realities affect employers, both large and small, plus the “pocket-book impact” on ordinary families.”
INcrease…..
“Rising uninsured……..”
U.S. News Health Care Index Shows Massive Increase in Consumer Costs
The new annual index measures changes in health care access, jobs and spending over time.
“But what stand out most are trends in the rates of spending for private and public health insurance. There was a decrease in the number of Americans covered by private plans since 2000, and an overall increase in those covered by public health insurance, including Medicaid, the government’s insurance plan for poor or disabled Americans, and Medicare, which covers seniors.”
Decrease in Private plans..increase in Medicaid……
Who needed Obamacare to increase Medicaid enrollment?
They continue:
“Health insurance premiums have been one of the fastest-growing health care economic measures since 2000.”
“Barring a serious overhaul in the way health care is reimbursed, we anticipate the trends to continue – the government will become even more involved in health care, and Americans will pay a greater share of their health care costs,” Kelly says.
Politico (also not a Right Wing group):
Experts see big price hikes for Obamacare
Premiums could rise more sharply in 2016.
”
Share on Twitter
The cost of Obamacare could rise for millions of Americans next year, with one insurer proposing a 50 percent hike in premiums, fueling the controversy about just how “affordable” the Affordable Care Act really is. “
Note Obama’s words…”cost curve”
NOT Cost rate curve….
“….reduce the cost of health care…: NOT reduce the rate of increase of health care.
Very important distinctions missed by the kool aid drinkers and slack thinkers:
“We agree on reforms that will finally reduce the costs of health care,” Obama said. “Families will save on their premiums; businesses that will see their costs rise if we do nothing will save money now and in the future. This plan will strengthen Medicare and extend the life of that program. And because it gets rid of the waste and inefficiencies in our health care system, this will be the largest deficit reduction plan in over a decade.
“Now, I just want to repeat this because there’s so much misinformation about the cost issue here. You talk to every health care economist out there and they will tell you that whatever ideas are — whatever ideas exist in terms of bending the cost curve and starting to reduce costs for families, businesses, and government, those elements are in this bill.”
And of course, those promises met their expiration date.
Determining Obamacare a success by how many people have insurance or medicaid is a rather low bar because its illegal not to have insurance. Also, thinking this way has a perverse incentive where the more people on subsidies is viewed as being increasingly successful.
On the first point, even though it illegal, many people choose to pay the penalty. A lot of these people would even qualify for a subsidy or for the horror show of medicaid. Medicaid is a horrible program. Its hard to find a doctor and even harder to get quality care. It more like a punishment for the people on it.
On the second point, that so many people need subsidies, is a sign of how bad our country is doing. The goal should be for people to afford their own insurance and health care. But when success is determined by how increasing the number of people receiving subsidies, there is a perverse incentive to keep people poor or to ignore the problem of how best to reduce dependency.
What does Obamacare do to help reduce dependency on subsidies? Nothing. And if your economic situation changes you get to pay back taxes that could amount to thousands of dollars. This particular problem is made worse by forcing people with subsidies to buy more expensive plans. This is just another perverse incentive built into Obamacare.
And as Gregg points out, Obamacare was sold on making healthcare and health insurance systematically cheaper. By that measure it is a failure and it is rather dishonest to claim that subsidizing insurance makes things cheaper. It doesn’t. Subsidies drive up the price of health care and health insurance. Saying that a family getting subsidies is experiencing lower costs is dishonest because it raises the costs of the entire system. Also, it ignores that the plans these people are buying, were cheaper and with better benefits under the old system.
I know a lot of people are in the same boat I am where I pay out every month for insurance but it doesn’t help me at all with treating my pre-existing conditions or any new health problems that spring up. People like me are paying our monthly tax and get nothing in return but we get to subsidize people getting quack homeopathic treatments as well as the system in general.
It kind of sucks that I can’t treat my pre-existing conditions just so that some other schmuck gets a free ride off my premiums. I think my benefit changes this year kick me off of seeing any specialists. I get to lose my ENT guy that I have been seeing for over 20 years.
Unexpectedly (only to guys like Jim)!!!!!!!
Cost of Cheapest Obamacare Plans Is Soaring
By Megan McArdle
Last week, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released the 2016 premium data for the “benchmark” plans in the states using federal exchanges. Those are the second-lowest-cost Silver plans in each area, a benchmark chosen by health-care experts using arcane methods involving chicken entrails and a pound of dry rhinoceros horn.
(Just kidding! They don’t use rhinoceros horn, which would be illegal. They use the ground-up bones of an ox slaughtered at midnight on the summer solstice.)
This data, which showed premiums rising an average of 7.5 percent, is useful.
………………..
Contrary to expectations, the mandate really doesn’t seem to be doing much to get people to buy insurance, at least yet (the penalty is set to go up again this year, and that may get people to pay attention).
“Contrary to expectations, the mandate really doesn’t seem to be doing much to get people to buy insurance, at least yet (the penalty is set to go up again this year, and that may get people to pay attention).”
What does this tell us? Well a lot of things.
The main thing it demonstrates is that when a few hundred knuckleheads in Congress and the White House make a plan, they think they know how the public will react.
They think they can predict behavior.
They think they can coerce behavior.
They are totally wrong, and they will almost always be wrong. I say “almost” because there are a few things they can predict…they can predict that people will act in their own best interests. But the government simply cannot know what those best interests are, nor whether the governmental edicts serve those interests, nor how people will react to the governmental edicts.
That’s why they do olling…because they thin they can know in detail how the public will react.
This is one of the many fatal flaws of centralized big government….
a fatal flaw demonstrated countless times yet the Statists and their tools keep trying to get it right. There is no “right way” that can make socialism, centralized very big government work.
And Obamacide is the poster child for centralized very big government.
From the original article:
“three-fourths oppose Obamacare’s tax on high-end health-care programs, ”
Evidently that 3/4’s includes Democrats:
Democrats Asked for Obamacare but Now Try to Duck Out of Paying for It
“Congressional Democrats led by Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are quietly working to repeal the “Cadillac tax,” a 40 percent excise on certain expensive health-insurance policies enacted as part of the so-called Affordable Care Act, which grows less affordable by the minute. The Cadillac tax was never going to be long-lived. It was a lie from the beginning, a part of the great fiction that allowed Democrats to claim that Barack Obama’s signature health-insurance initiative would add “not one dime” to the deficit, as the president repeatedly insisted. But the tax was and is bitterly opposed by important Democratic constituencies: the AFL-CIO and the American Federation of Teachers, the members of which enjoy very generous health-care programs (the teachers at your direct expense, suckers) and don’t much like paying taxes despite their endless nattering about the need to make sure everybody pays his “fair share.”
“When the Affordable Care Act was being debated, many on the right, myself included, argued that the optimistic projections of the Congressional Budget Office were wildly unrealistic, inasmuch as it was not at all likely that the unpopular revenue-raising provisions of the law, such as the Cadillac tax, would be enacted or that, if enacted, they’d survive long. Our criticism of the CBO estimates was echoed by . . . the CBO, which expressed the same reservations for the same reason: All the political pressure is on higher spending and lower taxes, but the architecture of Obamacare requires the opposite if it is to perform as advertised.”
“…including the CBO…”
You know..that’s the CBO that Jim loves to point to in order to prove his fantasies……….. it continues…..
“The Democrats indulged the worst sort of dishonesty — we’ll cover millions more people while saving money and improving quality and look a unicorn! — and they cooked up the Affordable Care Act, with Nancy Pelosi famously insisting that Congress had to pass it to discover what’s in it. Now that she’s discovered what’s in the act, she doesn’t much like it.”
Well Nan we never liked it.
Williamson concludes:
“For now, eliminating the Cadillac tax is one tax cut that Republicans should resist. The teachers’ unions and the AFL-CIO put these clowns in office and inflicted Obamaare on the country, and we should make them pay for it. As Ed Koch famously said: The people have spoken, and now they must be punished.”
I think he’s right. They voted for the dumbass…let the suffer for it.
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/426748/obamacare-cadillac-tax-democrats-unions-harry-reid-nancy-pelosi