Posted on 09/25/2012 5:48:25 PM PDT by markomalley
"To say it as plainly as I can," President Obama told the American Medical Association in 2009. "Health care reform is the single most important thing we can do for America's long-term fiscal health. That is a fact." Considering that the explosive growth of Medicare and Medicaid spending are the driving forces behind our current deficits, Obama was dead right in that 2009 speech.
But in 2010, on the eve of the passage of Obamacare, Obama told the House Democratic Caucus, "Everybody who's looked at it says that every single good idea to bend the cost curve and start actually reducing health care costs are in this bill." And on that score, he was dead wrong. Many experts, and even former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, said at that time that Obamacare would cause more, not less, health spending. Now a slew of new reports confirms their analysis.
When he ran for president in 2008, Obama promised he would lower health insurance premiums for families by $2,500 in his first term. But earlier this month, the Kaiser Family Foundation released its annual Employer Health Benefits Survey showing that average family health insurance premiums have gone up by more than $2,500 ($2,730 to be exact), not down. Then, this week, the Health Care Cost Institute released its annual Health Care Cost and Utilization Report showing that, after briefly slowing down due to the recession in 2009 and 2010, overall health care spending rose 4.6 percent last year, far outpacing both inflation and wages.
Seniors have also been hit hard by the rising cost of health care since Obamacare became law. Yesterday, Avalere Health, a health care consulting company, reported that premiums for seven of the 10 most popular Medicare prescription drug plans will increase by double digits. Seniors using the Humana Walmart-Preferred Rx Plan, for example, will see their premiums rise by 23 percent, while the Humana Enhanced plan will go up by 11 percent.
"[T]he status quo is unsustainable," Obama went on to say in his 2009 AMA speech. "If we fail to act, one out of every five dollars we earn will be spent on health care within a decade." Obama and the Democrats did act. And this June, the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services reported that, even if all of Obamacare's scheduled Medicare price controls go into effect on schedule, health spending as a percentage of gross domestic product will rise to 19.6 percent by 2021.
If Americans were spending all this money on health care by their own choosing, that would be one thing. The American people should be free to spend money on what they wanted. The flaw of Obamacare, however, which will only become more obvious with every new report, is that it forces some Americans, under penalty of law, to carry a larger and larger share of the price of other Americans' health care, through higher premiums and mandates and new taxes. This recipe has never before led to lower costs, and it's already being proved a repeat failure under Obamacare.
Conservatives are almost always right on almost every issue, and the people in power almost always refuse to listen to them.
According to these convoluted plans, yet another huge layer of federal bureaucracy staffed by well-paid, haughty useless eaters, with great benefits as well, and beholden to the statist party along with their 47% target constituency, and finally, all stacked on the backs of productive citizens ... What could possibly go wrong?
Obama almost always lies, but when he says "that is a fact", you know that his words are not just an ordinary lie but one of the most damaging lies he's planning to tell that year. ObamaCare is the single most destructive thing Obama has done, surpassing nationalizing industry in the corrupt GM bailout, Cash-for-Clunkers, TARP, the Bailout, Stimulus, or even the entire $1.5T annual deficits he is creating. I still pray daily that America will repeal ObamaCare and recover from the rest of the damage - and work hard daily to make sure that we deserve that recovery.
Shocking & unexpected!!
I work for a healthcare insurer/provider company in the Pacific NW and the whole organization is EXTREMELY liberal in their view of healthcare and how to deliver healthcare. A lot of the employees remind me of old hippies trying to be relevant in a business setting. At least in the building where I work.
It was a party atmosphere when the Supreme Court made their ruling a while back and I was just sick to my stomach to hear all of their “happy talk” about how this was the best thing EVER!
Well... the company is bleeding money and has been for almost 2 years now. They have said that they are a “model” for the new healthcare “economy” and a model for Obamacare (whatever that means) and feel they are on the bleeding edge of healthcare reform. They didn’t do layoffs for the past 18 months because, I believe, they didn’t want to contribute to Obama’s unemployment numbers problem and be negatively viewed by the rest of the healthcare insurance/provider community. They have finally decided to start doing some deep layoffs and I just chuckle to myself that perhaps some of these old hippy libs will finally see the light. Prolly not though.
Just like EVERYTHING mac daddy says that to was just anothet lie.
“To say it as plainly as I can,” President Obama told the American Medical Association in 2009...
[-—for all you stupid peons who are sooo beneath me.]
(Geez this guy is arrogant to the core).
Reminds me of his arrogant overuse of “Make no mistake...” phrase [makes the listener feel like they’re an accident-prone fck-up]
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