Today is ObamaCare’s 5th birthday, the most partisan major law ever passed, and it was done so by a president using procedural tricks, lies so expansive the word “Nixonian” doesn’t do them justice, and a complicit and corrupt mainstream media that protected rather than vetted it.
Like most on the hard-left, President Obama doesn’t understand America, and he surely doesn’t understand Americans. This is why he and his ilk foolishly believed that once the law was enacted it would grow in popularity. What a folly. According to the most recent polls, a majority (by a huge +9.5% margin) of the American people want the boondoggle repealed. Disapproval is up almost 5 points since the first poll of the law taken back in 2009.
The American people hate ObamaCare because they are Americans, and Americans don’t believe it is the government’s place to coerce them into buying something. Moreover, after decades of evidence, we also know that everything the federal government touches goes to hell.
Five years on, here are five reasons why ObamaCare still sucks:
1. Premiums are 24.4% Higher Than They Would Have Been Without ObamaCare:
The most vulnerable in the insurance market, those in the individual ObamaCare market who are not covered through their employers or another form of group insurance, are getting killed with premium increases. Keep in mind, millions of these ObamaCare victims were already insured and happy with that insurance. After serially-lying to them with false reassurances, Obama had their policies canceled and forced them into the ObamaCare exchanges.
This not only juices ObamaCare’s enrollment figures in a way that makes the “beneficiaries” look much higher than they really are (and ObamaCare more successful than it really is at covering the uninsured), it is effectively a massive redistribution of wealth.
NYDN:
“In the Obama administration,” candidate Obama boasted in 2008, “we’ll lower premiums by up to $2,500 for a typical family in a year.”
Not quite. A recent report from the National Bureau of Economic Research examined the non-group marketplace, where families and individuals who don’t get coverage through work shop for insurance. The report concluded that 2014 premiums were 24.4% higher than they would have been without Obamacare.
2. Less Choice For Patients: From 1232 Private Market Insurers To 310
Prior to ObamaCare, the individual insurance market (non-group, non-employer) offered a wealth of choices and health care options. ObamaCare has devastated that market, and with it the quality of health care. Keep in mind, the cost of premiums and deductibles have increased as choice and competition collapsed.
NYDN:
The Government Accountability Office reports that insurers have left the market in droves. In 2013, 1,232 carriers offered insurance coverage in the individual market. By 2015, that number had shrunk to 310. …
Patients may also have fewer doctors to pick from. More than 60% of doctors plan to retire earlier than anticipated — by 2016 or sooner, according to Deloitte. The Physicians Foundation reported in the fall that nearly half of the 20,000 doctors who responded to their survey — especially those with more experience — considered Obamacare’s reforms a failure.
3. Deficit Exploded to $1.2 Trillion with a “T”
Forget the original lies that ObamaCare would be deficit neutral, or even cut the deficit. The ObamaCare deficit is now in the trillions.
NYDN:
This month, the CBO estimated the law’s 10-year cost will reach $1.2 trillion — a far cry from the President’s initial promise of $940 billion.
4. Media and Government Lying About ObamaCare Expanding Coverage to Millions
You keep hearing about how ObamaCare is covering millions, when it really isn’t. A huge majority of those the White House and its media throne-sniffers are advertising as “newly-insured” are in fact victims of cancelled policies who were forced into the ObamaCare exchanges. They already had insurance and are therefore not “newly insured.”
Even some of those “newly insured” under ObamaCare’s expansion of Medicaid were once paying for their own insurance. Now they are on the government dole.
NYDN:
Further, as many as 89% of the Americans who signed up for Obamacare when the exchanges opened in 2013 already had insurance. In other words, many exchange enrollees simply switched from one plan to another.
5. ObamaCare’s Deductibles Are Killing Families
One of the great untold stories about ObamaCare is that while ObamaCare has skyrocketed premium costs in the individual market, deductibles have also increased. ObamaCare is really nothing more than catastrophic insurance priced like regular insurance.
This year, ObamaCare’s lower-priced bronze plans have a $5181 individual deductible and $10,545 family deductible. The more expensive silver plan has a $2927 individual deductible and $6010 family deductible.
On top of your monthly premiums, the deductible is the amount you have to pay out-of-pocket before your insurance kicks in. The last time I looked, if I enrolled in ObamaCare, my out-of-pocket expenses (premiums plus deductible) would exceed $8,000 before insurance started paying anything.
One result of this is has been an increase over the last 5 years of the percentage of people who put off treatment due to cost.
Unless something catastrophic happens to you, in most cases, you are still paying out of pocket for all of your health care. On top of that you are paying for premiums that are doing you absolutely no good. It’s just free money for the insurance companies.
Also, when you are insured, your out-pocket expenses are usually higher. Most health care outlets offer steep discounts for the uninsured.
Basically, ObamaCare is nothing more than a massive tax increase disguised as insurance; a massive financial boon to the same big insurance companies Democrats have demonized for years; a massive redistribution of wealth that primarily soaks the middle class while diminishing their quality of health care.
In summation: The ObamaCare victims vastly outweigh the beneficiaries. It is not even close.
John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC