Obamacare: Making healthcare unaffordable

Okay, so what is the state of Obamacare? I can tell you from a personal standpoint that it doesn't look good if you are typical U.S. citizen with a family. Our premiums have doubled, and the deductibles we now have to pay are so high we can't even use insurance. It's a pretty sad state.

The cost of my albuterol inhaler increased from $10 for three inhalers ten years ago to $90 for three inhalers today.  It's to the point that I don't even use my inhalers unless I leave the house. When I'm home, and when I'm working, I use nebulizer solution. Obamacare is part of the problem here, but another problem is the Montreal protocol, where politicians decided the ozone was more important than asthmatics breathing better. But that's a discussion for another day.

This is not a criticism of the place I work for at all.  Businesses have to do what they need to do to stay in business.  The reason that the cost of healthcare has gone up so much is because of the people who decided it was "a big deal" to pass the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. It's either raise premiums and deductibles, cut benefits, or close up shop.

It was not supposed to raise our prices. We were told our premiums wouldn't go up. But they have. In Santa Cruz, it is reported that insurance premiums have increased 85%. "Elkhart Teachers Face Double-Digit Hike in Health Insurance Premiums."

The alternative is to have benefits slashed, which is occurring. For instance, the Teamsters Union, which has supported democratic candidates for years, has had no choice but to slash recipient's benefits.  And you have teachers who are seeing their healthcare premiums skyrocket as well.

This was not supposed to happen.  Not to mention that 9% of Americans are still uninsured.  The whole point of Obamacare was to make sure everyone had insurance.  Most people are opting to pay the penalty because Obamacare is too expensive for them, or because they have decided that they are healthy and the risk is worth it.  Besides, the risk is worth it, because, if they need insurance, they can't get turned down anyway, so why pay health insurance when you have little mouths to feed.  Kids get welfare, so they're taken care of.

Yeah, my point is, this whole thing is a disaster.  Liberals see things that aren't ideal, they try to fix them to make them better, and everything gets worse.  That's what has happened to education in the U.S. and now it's happening to healthcare.

My liberal friends will still argue with me and tell me that it's all working great.  But the evidence is never on their side. So when I pose these and other facts, they say that I'm a dogmatic right wing radical who only reads things I agree with. That's Saul Alinsky rule #7, by the way.

This goes back to the point Rush Limbaugh made in 2008: I hope he fails.  Look, his healthcare agenda has passed, and now healthcare is worse.

But, if you look at it another way, Obamacare is succeeding in wrecking our healthcare system to the point, that perhaps some day soon, people are going to beg Uncle Sam for universal healthcare to save the day. The law is making healthcare unaffordable.

That, so they say, was the whole point of Obamacare in the first place: it was never meant to succeed the way we think. Everything that is currently occurring, the rising cost of premiums, the rising cost of deductibles, is all in the cards. When we can't afford healthcare we'll come crawling to Uncle Sam begging for universal healthcare.

A perfect example is what's going on in Colorado.  The Obamacare exchange there is close to going bankrupt, and so the state legislature there has proposed scrapping it for a statewide single payer system. The cost, they say, would be $25 million (although we know it would be much higher than that).

This is all in the name of "free healthcare."  Like when Obamacare was passed, everyone thought it would mean free healthcare. So these legislators in Colorado think a single payer would give free healthcare to everyone. The only problem is that the people who are working, which amounts to fewer citizens every day, have to flip the bill.

Is it possible for Obamacare to be repealed?

Jeffrey H. Anderson, "The Road to Repeal," in the May 26, 2014, issue of The Weekly Standard, (volume 19, number 35), gives us optimism that the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, might some day be overturned.

He said:

Obamacare was profoundly unpopular when the Democrats went ahead and passed it anyway, daring the American people to make them pay. Voters responded by removing more Democrats from congressional seats—69 between the two chambers—than they had since before Ted Williams first donned a Red Sox uniform, in the spring of 1939. In 2012, the failed Republican presidential-selection process yielded a nominee who didn’t make Obamacare a central issue and later called it “very attractive.” He lost despite Obamacare’s continuing unpopularity, which was indicated by exit polling. Now that Obamacare has finally gone into effect, its combined impact on Americans’ health insurance, their health costs, and their personal freedom—not to mention the nation’s solvency—has been far worse than its supporters advertised and possibly even worse than its opponents predicted. In response, President Obama has refused to implement the legislation as written, unlawfully altering parts of it as if he were a one-man Congress. Meanwhile, the 123 polls taken on Obamacare during his second term (according to Real Clear Politics) have all found it to be unpopular, with more than two-thirds of those polls—and 8 of the 10 most recent polls—showing approval deficits in the double-digits.

So—yes—Obamacare can, should, and must be repealed. America’s future as a nation of liberty, prosperity, civil society, and laws depends on it. Indeed, given its unpopularity, the question should be: How can Obamacare not be repealed?

So, there you have it: room for optimism.

Patients losing doctors and hospitals due to Obamacare

Many people who had insurance that they liked, and was affordable, have lost their healthcare plans, or will lose them, and are being forced to, unless they want to pay a penalty, purchases a plan on the Obama website.

To make matters worse, many doctors and hospitals are not accepting these plans, so people are being forced to find new doctors, and new hospitals, sometimes having to travel long distances.
So who do you think is the bad by here? No, it's not Obama, who is above it all. The people who are being blamed are the hospitals and the doctors. They are thinking of their selfish gain over and above their patients.

But, look folks, physicians are people too.  They need to make money just like anyone else.  Many have discovered, and I have met many of them, that it's simply not worth taking patients who are on medicare, and that's basically what Obamacare amounts to.  Doctors can make more money by charging individuals and insurance companies, than they can Medicare.

This should not come as a surprise.  If you want mom and dad to pay, then you are going to have to have to live under their rules.  In order to keep government costs low, it changes the rules, and, in some cases, makes up its own rules. This should not come as a surprise.

Many patients are stunned.  They were told "If you like your plan you can keep your plan."  But there was not way this could have been possible, not when the government is involved.  They were told, "If you like your doctor you can keep your doctor."  But now doctors are refusing to accept Medicare, so these patients are being forced to look elsewhere for doctors.

Kelli Kennedy, writing for the Associated Press, "Consumers losing doctors with new insurance plans," said:

Michelle Pool is one of those customers. Before enrolling in a new health plan on California's exchange, she checked whether her longtime primary care doctor was covered. Pool, a 60-year-old diabetic who has had back surgery and a hip replacement, purchased the plan only to find that the insurer was mistaken.

Her $352 a month gold plan was cheaper than what she'd paid under her husband's insurance and seemed like a good deal because of her numerous pre-existing conditions. But after her insurance card came in the mail, the Vista, California resident learned her doctor wasn't taking her new insurance.

Terry Baynes, writing for Reuters, "California consumers say duped by Blue Shield's limited Obamacare plan, said:

Consumers who purchased new health plans from Blue Shield of California have sued the insurer, claiming they were misled into thinking the insurance would cover their desired doctors and hospitals.

In their complaint filed in California state court on Wednesday, San Francisco residents John Harrington and Alex Talon accused Blue Shield of misrepresenting that their plans, sold on California's health exchange, would cover the full provider network advertised on the company's website.

They sued on behalf of a class of people who had purchased so-called "preferred provider organization" plans from the insurer only to realize that the doctor and hospital networks for their plans were limited.

Stunning? Not really. This is the kind of stuff the opponents of Obamacare have been saying all along.  It's the kind of stuff that was reported as far back as when Hilary tried to get Hillarycare passed pack in the early 1990s.

Despite all the warnings, the media chose not to pay attention. This is why so many people were misiled into supporting Obamacare.  Now, here we have the AP blaming doctors, and Reuters blaming insurance companies.  The rest of us know who the true culprits are.

We know that Obama and the democrats have lied to people for years about what Obamacare is all about, and the media just goes along for the ride.The president has failed the people, the democrats have failed the people, and the media has failed the people.

Is the Affordable Care Act really affordable?

They call it the Affordable Care Act. Some simply refer to it as Obamacare. Regardless,  is the idea it's afordable true, or is it a lie.

Consider that it is not affordable for people making minimum wage.  It is not affordable by most young people starting out in life.  It is not affordable for many retired folks living on a single income.

Consider that the cheapest plan available is $400 a month.  I couldn't even afford that, and I have a good job. So the only way most people can afford it is to receive a subsidy, which means your neighbor is paying for it.  It means I'm paying for your healthcare. Or, it means you're paying for mine.

Some people will say: "Your neighbor is not paying for it, the government is paying for it."  But these people don't realize that hard working people like you and me, people who work hard to support our families, are making sacrifices to pay for it.  We are paying more taxes.  We are taking home less money. That means we have less money to buy food and clothing, and we have less money to pay for college.

And, we also have less money to purchase material items like stereos, computers, cable TV, the Internet, snowmobiles, etc.  So the entire U.S. economic system suffers as a result.

To qualify for a subsidy, you have to earn no more than 400% of the federal poverty level. A family of four can qualify for a subsidy, I think, if your family income's $87,000. So I would, if I didn't have a job that offers it, qualify for a subsidy.  I would be a slave to you.

It's not affordable.  If you have to get a subsidy to afford it, it's not affordable, it just isn't.  In fact, it's welfare.  If you receive a subsidy to pay for your healthcare, you are receiving welfare.

I'm not saying welfare is bad, and I'm not judging those who have no choice but to receive it.  I'm just saying that if you have to receive a subsidy to pay for healthcare, chances are you are going on welfare because the government is forcing you to do it.

Those of us who are receiving healthcare as benefits, we are paying for it with a rise in our premiums.  In fact, premiums for most people have doubled since Obamacare passed.  Many people have lost, or are going to lose, their health insurance plans because of Obamacare.  Copays for prescriptions is doubling, even tripling.

If statistics are correct, three out of four people signing up for Obamacare (that's 75%) received subsidies, that means the cost of Obamacare will be even more than anticipated.

hacer.com notes that it's also not affordable on a national scale: "A nearly 100-page analysis from the government’s official revenue estimators at Congress’ Joint Committee on Taxation pegs the price tag at over $1 trillion, almost twice the nearly $570 billion suggested when the law was passed by legislative trickery three years ago."

Actually, the price tag is now up to $2 trillion.

If the price of Obamacare goes up, surely they will find some way of getting this money from us.  They will raise our premiums, or they will take more of our well earned, hard earned, money.  They will take it from our families.  They will take it from our friends.  They will keep taking it until there is none left, and the entire program falls in and on itself, dragging down with it the entire nation.

In fact, many have, or will, lose their full time jobs because, in order for businesses not to have to purchase healthcare for their workers, they have to be under 50 workers.  So if they are at 49, one person will not be hired.  If a company is at 49, there is no incentive to expand the business, because doing so would mean paying out more for healthcare, or paying a tax that might put the company in the red.  If the company is at 55 workers, it means six people will lose their jobs.

For those people no longer working, or who cannot find work, because of Obamacare, it is in no way affordable. In fact, I think we can see here, that the Affordable Care Act is, in fact, is not affordable at all. Those who say it is might just be telling a lie.