Ten Untold Obamacare Stories

Have ye not  known? Have ye not heard? Hath it not been told you from the beginning?

The Holy Bible: Isaiah 40:21

July 6, 2012- The stories of health reform are not about tales told but tales untold and often unappreciated by the general public

These stories include.

1)       To pass the law, politicians frontloaded the benefits – coverage for college students under their parents’ plans, coverage for the uninsured, and coverage for seniors reaching the donut hole – and backloaded the expenses and taxes until 2014.

2)       Only 10 million Americans have so far received benefits while 300 million have yet to see any benefits.

3)      So far,  over  2  1/3 years into the “plan”,  health care premiums have increased rather than decreased for insured Americans, and companies, fearing the uncertain expenses of Obamacare, have dropped health coverage for 10 to 20  million Americans.

4)      The 2700 page  Patient Protection and Affordability Act does neither protects nor makes care more affordable. It is an uncomprehensible mixture of mandates and regulations that  affects different people differently at different times and creates an awkward gargantuan  bureaucracy that  includes 159 new federal agencies, boards, and commissions and requires hiring of 16,500 new IRS agents to collect fines, penalities, and taxes.

5)       The Affordable Care Act, unlike Social Security and Medicare,  has never been favored by the majority of American people, partly because it poisoned the political process by passing a law affecting all Americans against unanimous Republican opposition,  unheard of by any previous piece of major social legislation.

6)       In the history of the Republic, major social entitlement programs, promising “free” or nearly “free” benefits,  have never “saved” money,  as promised by Obamacare;  entitlement programs  always cost more and are plagued by cost overruns, as Medicare and Medicaid have been.

7)      Medicare and Medicaid are sitting ducks for fraud and abuse, which is why these fraud and abuse of these programs,  eat up 15% or $60 to $70 billion per annum , of their budgets.

8)        The American legal system,  which creates a casino-like environment for winners of malpractice suits with relatively little losses for losers,  causes doctors to practice “defensive medicine,” which may cost $50 billion or more for unnecessary or superfluous tests.

9)       So far the only proven method of decreasing costs and saving money for employers and employees have been health savings accounts, now being offered by 30% of employers;  yet Obamacare curtails growth of HSAs by limiting deductible amounts of HSAs to $2500 per year.

10)  The premises and promises of Obamacare have dramatically reduced the attractiveness of medicine as a profession, causing only 25,000 to enter the profession each year while 35,000 are leaving, while the demand for physician services is escalating, setting the stage of a massive political crisis three or four years out as newly minted Medicare and Medicaid recipients enter the health care system.

Tweet:  The Patient Protection and Affordability Act is a classic example of good Intentions gone awry and of untold stories about its consequences.