Desperate Times for ObamaCare: Look at how How Obama’s con is pillaging America.

FrontPage Mag ^ | 03/21/2014 | Arnold Ahlert

[SeekAndFind]

The air of desperation surrounding ObamaCare gets thicker and thicker with each passing day. And no matter how dishonest President Obama, his administration officials, Democrats and their media allies, are in their attempt to fool the public, painful truths about this disaster can no longer be obscured.

We begin with premiums. As revealed by The Hill, they are about to “skyrocket,” with costs in some parts of the country increasing by as much as 200 percent. Unsurprisingly, this revelation runs completely counter to the Obama administration’s claims, most recently advanced by HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius in last week’s testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee. “The increases are far less significant than what they were prior to the Affordable Care Act,” the Secretary said.

Except that they’re not. A report by eHealth explains that premiums in the individual health market have risen 39 percent for individuals, and 56 percent for families, since February 2013. Minus the subsidies, the average cost of an individual plan is now $274, and a family plan is now $663 per month, up from $446 last year. And despite Sebelius’s contention, these figures are higher than those recorded between 2005 and 2013, when individual and family premiums rose at a rate of 37 percent and 31 percent, respectively.

Administration officials counter that subsidies will bring those costs down. That is certainly true, but those so-called reductions aren’t reductions at all. They merely shift the part of a premium’s cost from the individual or family insurance consumers to the taxpayers at large. This cost-shifting goes a long way towards explaining why a plan the president and his party promised would cost $900 billion over a decade when it was first introduced, quickly tripled to $2.7 trillion.

With regard to those premium increases, the biggest driver should have been the most obvious: Americans are now required to purchase “essential health benefits,” another wildly misleading euphemism designed to obscure yet another, but far more pernicious aspect of cost-shifting embodied in ObamaCare. There is nothing remotely essential in requiring a 50-year-old man to be covered for maternity and newborn care, or senior citizens to be covered for pediatric services.

Thus, many insurers are utterly baffled by Sebelius’s contention, especially in light of the disastrous rollout of the healthcare.gov website. “It’s pretty shortsighted because I think everybody knows that the way the exchange has rolled out … is going to lead to higher costs,” said one senior insurance executive who requested anonymity. That same executive said he expects insurance rates to triple in the “populous swing state” from which he hails.

Other insurance executives were equally frustrated with another cost driver, namely the administration’s unconstitutional penchant for changing the parameters of the law. They cited the administration’s decision to allow people to keep their old insurance policies instead of forcing them onto the exchanges, the limited amount of money government has to help cover the costs of older and sicker patients, and the under-enrollment of the so-call “young invincibles” that could help keep costs down. “We’re exasperated,” the same unnamed executive contended. “All of these major delays on very significant portions of the law are going to change what it’s going to cost.”

The lack of enrollment by young healthy Americans could be the deciding factor in determining those costs. The current data is not breaking well for an administration that projected the percentage of ObamaCare purchasers in the 18 to 35 age group would be 40 percent. As of March 1, approximately 4.2 million Americans had selected an ObamaCare plan. Less than 1.1 million, or only 25 percent of them, belonged to that demographic. From October through February, the number of signups averaged out to 840,000 per month. In order to reach the 40 percent figure by the end of this month, more than 900,000 people would have to sign up for the plan — and everyone of them and their covered family members would have to be between the ages of 18 and 35.

And once again, note the term “sign ups.” On Tuesday, embattled White House Press Secretary Jay Carey was finally forced to admit what many Americans have known for a long time: sign ups isn’t remotely the same as pay ups. “We can point you to major insurers who have placed that [pay up] figure at 80 percent, give-or-take, depending on the insurer,” Carney said. That means one-in-five don’t have actual coverage. When Fox News correspondent Ed Henry originally asked Carney why the administration continues to use the word “enrolled,” Carney declined to answer.

The lack of candor is hardly an anomaly. The president and his party promised that health insurance would be more affordable, saving families as much as $2500 per year in costs. That was a baldfaced lie. But it was the lesser of two baldfaced lies with which insurance companies had to cope. The greater lie was the president’s oft-repeated promise that Americans could keep their doctor and their healthcare providers. Faced with bad or worse, insurance companies chose bad: in response to the Obama administration’s benefit mandates, taxes and regulations, they narrowed provider networks to keep premium costs down.

Unfortunately, even that option didn’t work. Despite narrow, sometimes drastically narrow, networks that deprived many Americans of critical care formerly provided by their “bad apple” insurance policies, premium prices still increased by double digits in most markets.

Remarkably, the administration’s “solution” for the problem will inevitably exacerbate it. The HHS sent a letter to insurance companies informing them that they must provide ”reasonable access” to doctors and hospitals beginning next year, including an expansion of access to “essential community providers” from 20 percent to 30 percent. In addition, healthcare regulators will looking at other cost-cutting features in insurers’ plans, in an effort to determine if they are “discriminatory” with regard to discouraging sick Americans to sign up for healthcare.

As is typical with this administration, the term “reasonable access” is left undefined, doubtless to give them case-by-case leverage against those insurers they wish to single out for the kind of political humiliation that deflects blame away from the Obama administration and a Democratic Party wholly responsible for this mess. As for the word “discrimination,” is there even a scintilla of doubt that it will be used as a club to browbeat those same insurers?

Another undefined term could be far more problematic. ObamaCare gives customers a 90-day grace period for unpaid premiums before insurers can cancel their coverage. Yet insurers are only responsible for claims made in the first 30 days. During the next 60 days, insurers can place subsequent claims in a “pending status”–and ultimately deny payment for them if insurance is cancelled, leaving healthcare providers on the hook. The administration contends the grace period rule is limited to those who have already paid one month’s premium, and requires insurance companies to notify healthcare providers “as soon as practicable” when those customers are in arrears.

The American Medical Association (AMA), which shamelessly shilled for the passage of ObamaCare, grasped the implications. ”Managing risk is typically a role for insurers, but the grace period rule transfers two-thirds of that risk from the insurers to physicians and health care providers,” AMA President Ardis Dee Hoven said in a statement. On Wednesday, they provided their members with guidelines to help them manage that possibility. But even those guidelines couldn’t obscure the truth. ”The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) regulations do not specify how the health insurance issuer must notify you when one of your patients enters the grace period,” they stated.

Perhaps the biggest and most painful truth about ObamaCare was illuminated by the Washington Times’ Joseph Curl, who reminds us that original impetus behind the bill was to insure the 46 million Americans President Obama warned us were only “one illness away from financial ruin.” As Curl noted the above enrollment figures of only 4.2 million, or just 9 percent of the 46 million cited by Obama, he asked the obvious question: We changed the $2.7 trillion health care system to sign up 4.2 million people?

If data compiled by Goldman Sachs are correct, even that paltry number is misleading. The investment bank projects that the Obamacare exchanges will end up actually enrolling 4 million people–but only 1 million of them will have been previously uninsured.

Regardless, the bill’s cheerleaders remain defiant. When Obama appeared on her TV show, useful idiot Ellen DeGeneres contended that “everyone’s very grateful” for Obamacare. The terminally clueless Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who defied the available data and contended that ObamaCare has “dramatically” slowed the growth in healthcare costs, insisted Democrats “couldn’t be prouder” of the bill and that it would backfire for the GOP as a campaign plank. Slate’s David Weigel believes all Democrats have to do is ”find Obamacare success stories.”

Again, reality bites. As The Hill reveals, opposition to ObamaCare remains near its all time high with a 53 percent disapproval rating. ABC’s Jeff Zeleny revealed that “privately several Democrats tell ABC News they’re increasingly worried the health care law is political poison.” As for ObamaCare stories, here’s a compilation of 50 negative ones–from every state in the union.

Yet the ultimate reality is the simplest one for the American public to grasp. The president and his administration have taken a duly enacted law and made a complete and unconstitutional mockery of it, altering or delaying every onerous piece for nothing more than transparent political considerations. They have done so with complete complicity from Congressional Democrats, who have made an equal mockery of the constitutionally-mandated separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches. That’s how the president, his administration and Democrats have demonstrated, not talked about their “pride” for ObamaCare.

[A CA Guy]

Justice Roberts allowed this all to happen?

What is the answer? For Democrats I think it is to allow 40 million or so illegals to come in and vote themselves the US Treasury and the party that allows them to access it.

[Liz]

HOW IT WAS SUPPOSED TO WORK IN OBAMA'S UTOPIA
AKA
"IF YOU LIKE YOUR PLAN, YOU CAN KEEP YOUR PLAN. PERIOD."

Once upon a time in Obama's Utopia, tolerant compassionate Democrats kindly conferred cheap affordable universal healthcare on us American who are total scum.

Even though we are all rank cowards of the subect of race, for the first time, we undeserving misogynist, racist, homophobic Americans were going to have our health needs taken care of by our benevolent government.

Kindly Democrats (who despise the 1%) conferred cheap health benefits on all of us Americans, not just those intolerant greedsters with money (who create all the jobs that make the economy run smoothly).

Benevolent Democrats in Capitol Hill offices dreamed of millions of formerly uninsured Americans, and their illegal brethren, marching in lockstep to the polls to vote for kindly Democrats---the givers of all good governmental things.

Kindly benevolent Democrats would sail to electoral victory b/c they stood up to the evil insurance-medical-industrial complex on behalf of us cowardly, undeserving Americans.

Peace, happiness and universal well-being would reign over the land.

And we'd all live happily ever after.....even with astronomical deductibles, drug rationing, and I-PAB Death Panels looming in the distance.

================================================

MEMO TO 2014 VOTERS Lock-stepping Democrats, voting in obeisance to Obama, embedded all of this into law:

(1) throwing millions of Americans off affordable health plans,
(2) burdening Americans w/ ruinous deductibles,
(3) nationalizing 1/6 of the US economy,
(4) installing IPAB's (Death Panels),
(5) abandoning seniors and the chronically ill, and,
(6) decimating intergenerational transfers of wealth (grandma/pa's holdings go to the govt---not to you). Read on.

Ominous cogs in the Obamacare meat grinder----the inexorable forcing of Grandma/pa onto Medicaid--(like cattle herded single-file onto the narrow ramp---knowing the bolt is coming---but not able to do a thing about it).

Medicaid conveniently groups together the sick and elderly---as Obama's IPAB board of radical Boobamba worshippers sit in judgment. Boobamba's Orwellian-speak---the progressive way of saying "Obamacare keeps costs down."

The infamous "Death Panels---are alive and well----but they're not called death panels......for obvious reasons. The treacherous Obama euphemistically calls his death panel "I-PAB----Individual Payment Advisory Board." I-PAB decides what to pay and who to pay---thus rationing medical care to sick oldsters. Obamacare "allows" states to expand their Medicaid recipients pool. Under Obamacare, Washington now covers about 1/2 the cost of Medicaid enrollees.

==================================================

IPAB (Independent Payment Advisory Board)is a "progressive" type of US government agency.

1) IPAB is the first of the “fifth branch” of govt.
2) It will make all important health care decisions by authorizing payment or not.
3) It is not funded by Congress and cannot have its budget reviewed or changed.
4) Its membership cannot be changed by future Presidents,
5) It cannot be repealed by Congress, except for a six month window in 2017.
6) Its decisions are not subject to judicial review.
7) It is not authorized by the Constitution, and is therefore immune to Constitutional processes.

==================================================

Why is Obamacre herding seniors WITH ASSETS onto Medicaid---a program structured for the poor? Can you say redistribution of wealth? Herding the elderly with assets into Medicaid has ominous consequences that are intriguing to the left. B/c assets, perhaps a home owned free and clear, securities, annuities, investment property, can be seized to pay for govt treatment.

Thus intergenerational transfers of wealth (a longtime progressive bugaboo)----are decimated (grandma/pa's holdings go to the govt---not to you).

REMINDER: Lock-stepping Democrats embedded all of this into law.

[Liz]

Obama was a fraud when he first surfaced as the 2008 candidate....said he wanted to be another Reagan (waiting for hysterical laughter to die down) portrayed as a Global Savior. canonized w/ the Nobel Peace Prize. Everything about Obama is a fraud......as far back as 2008, he duped to believe in the fraud known as Obamacare....the damage being done is palpable.

INCONVENIENT FACTOID---Ohaha was spawned from the viper pit of Chicago criminal politics---our WH is/was infested w/ Chicago criminals---these lowlifes never never met a decent, honest person in their entire lives.

INCONVENIENT FACTOID---O's 2008 PR person---Anita "Mao Kiss-up" Dunn---later said they let the media (voters) know only what THEY wanted them to know about Ohaha.

INCONVENIENT FACTOID---O told Putin he'd have more flexibility AFTER his 2012 election---knowing he would win when the campaign had not even begun.

INCONVENIENT FACTOID--- O's political henchman David "I'm Harmless" Axelrod took CBS-TV on a weird tour of 2012 campaign hdq. But nothing was happening. The shady voter fraud work was being conducted in swing states.

THE CHICAGO WAY

==========================================

Romney never looked more stupid than when he sap-happily conceded the 20012 race election night---uttering not a word about Repubs being put through Ohaha's massive voter fraud meat-grinder. ============================================================================== The Chi/Gang are a super-strain of malevolent con artists.

Reminds me of the psychological weapon called "gaslighting"....taken from the film noir classic, "Gaslight."

Charles Boyer's character was a glib con artist, murderer and thief---he ingratiated himself w/ Ingrid Bergman, and married her, in order to move into her house----a house she inherited from her murdered aunt (murdered by Boyer for her hidden valuables).

Later the term "gaslighting" became a term to describe a pattern of psychological abuse in which the victims are gradually manipulated into doubting his/her own reality---involves the con artists using emotional gimmicks---cons often playacting as "victims" so as to dupe and disorient the targets experiencing the catastrophic effects of abusive behavior.

The desired effect of "gaslighting" is to maintain the abuser's image as a sympathetic person, while simultaneously priming the disoriented victim to believe that he/she is to blame for the ruinous mind-bending effects of their calculated mistreatment.

The Chi/crowd is an all-encompassing, well-oiled gaslighting machine......adept at co-opting the entire socio/political structure, duping the MSM and academia into becoming compliant accomplices. Democrats become prostrate----as they willingly march in lockstep, in obeisance to Obama. Too bad the entitlement crowd, the underserved, those "brothers he's keeping with tax dollars, and the 47% dont know they've all been gaslighted.

[Baynative]

I think what the democrats are counting on is the ease of conditioning Americans through propaganda aimed at short term memories.

I think they feel that we will all just adjust to the new normal and then the increases will just continue to grow almost unnoticed until they become accepted as common place - just as gasoline has grown from an almost comfortable $1.80 when Obama was elected to a standard of $3.50 that even the lowest earning Americans have learned to live with.

When dems make big changes to control the population the whining is short lived and normally has no impact. Experience has taught them to forge ahead and we will go along. Whether it is commanding us to buy faulty insurance or give up the rights to our property we can usually be counted on to obey and those who protest can be shut down by concentrated media manipulation.

[alloysteel]

The long con - they have been working on instituting some kind of “national health service” since about the time of the New Deal. It was deferred by the Second World War, then Harry Truman couldn’t get a similar scheme through the “do-nothing” Congress in 1946 and 1947. The Cold War kind of took the focus away from pursuit of the scheme, and Eisenhower could not be convinced of its virtues. The Kennedy-Johnson regime used all their political capital in spreading the welfare state far beyond its original dimensions with the Great Society programs, but never managed to get to the health insurance part of the overall scheme. The next shot they had was the Carter years, in which the Medicaid part of the scheme was much expanded, and then there was a hiatus, until 1993 and the previous draft of Obamacare was introduced, as Hillarycare, which was recognized for what it was, and torpedoed immediately.

And now look, this supposed “law of the land” is crumbling as we look at it, making a total mockery of the formal title, “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010”.

“Prohibition” was once “law of the land” too, and THAT got shot out of the air with almost uncanny speed in 1933, with a change in the regime.

[bigbob]

When the Obamacare House of Cards finally comes crashing down, I just want to see the black-and-white stocking’ed feet of Kate Sebelius sticking out from underneath the rubble!

[cuban leaf]

For us this is really no big deal. We can get health care any time we want, just like we can buy groceries, get our car fixed, etc. And just like with those other two examples, the reason it is so easy is that insurance is not involved. We no longer bother with health care insurance. The money we are saving is so significant that even if one of us needs knee surgery or something similar, it is cheaper than insurance.

And don’t kid yourselves. When you pay out of pocket the prices for services are a LOT lower. I’ve experienced it.

[Liz]

Good points.

[Truth29]

"Regardless, the bill’s cheerleaders remain defiant. When Obama appeared on her TV show, useful idiot Ellen DeGeneres contended that “everyone’s very grateful” for Obamacare. The terminally clueless Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who defied the available data and contended that ObamaCare has “dramatically” slowed the growth in healthcare costs, insisted Democrats “couldn’t be prouder” of the bill and that it would backfire for the GOP as a campaign plank. Slate’s David Weigel believes all Democrats have to do is ”find Obamacare success stories.”"

They are not clueless. Obamacare is not about healthcare. It is about power and control and is a principal tool for an autocracy to rule over an impoverished and dependent citizenry.

[VRWC For Truth]

FUBAR

[NTHockey]

The unholy threesome of Pelosi, Reid and Roberts MUST be impeached for fraud (a felony). Let them sweat out a trial and see if they role over on Elmer Fudd.

[txhurl]

Great article.

[CivilWarBrewing]

Remember THIS video snippet?:

OBAMA: "..the reforms (Obamacare) I'm proposing will not apply to those who are here illegally.." JOE WILSON: "YOU LIE!!"

Joe Wilson should RETRACT his apology!

[Baynative]

"A report by eHealth explains that premiums in the individual health market have risen 39 percent for individuals, and 56 percent for families, since February 2013."

The charts on the eHealth link seem to tell a different story. (I may be missing something)

[drypowder]

obozocare is one huge death panel for the common folks. Empires have crumbled, rulers have been beheaded or hanged over less than this. Time for a serious repeat of history.

[alrea]

ping

[GOPJ]

...cost-shifting goes a long way towards explaining why a plan the president and his party promised would cost $900 billion over a decade when it was first introduced, quickly tripled to $2.7 trillion.

The little democrat liars are destroying the country...

[GOPJ]

Obamacare is a weapon of control. Democrats don’t give damn about anyone’s health... it’s all been a lie from the get go.