A man comes to your door. He’s good looking, well dressed and
well spoken. He says to you “Hey
there, I couldn’t help but notice you drive a 2004 Honda Civic…Well…I have to
tell you; a Jaguar is a much nicer car.
I mean, the new Jag is fast, comfortable, quiet on the road,
has a premium sound system and takes corners like a dream. So what I’m going to do is…”
You stop him. “Wait, a Jaguar? I don’t want or need a Jaguar. And, I can’t afford a Jaguar. My car runs fine and gives me no
problems at all. I mean, what
you’re saying sounds great but I don't like those cars anyway and it’ll cost me three times as much. I don’t
need something like that. Plus, it’s so much more
to maintain. My car does
everything I need it to do and fits in my budget.”
The man at the door smiles and
says “Well it’s too bad you feel that way because we are towing your car away
right now and we have the new Jaguar right here for you to enjoy. It’s a better car anyway. You’ll get your first bill in two
weeks. And if you don’t pay the
payments on time you will receive a penalty.”
You stand there dumbfounded as he
blithely hands you the keys to a new $80,000 car and walks away and a tow
truck pulls up in front of your house.
America, this is what just
happened to you.
___________________________________________
Arrogant and Misleading
The narrative has been
altered. It went from:
1.) “…you can
keep your healthcare…”
(2008 - 2013)
to
2.) “you can
keep your substandard
healthcare…” (October 30, 2013)
The arrogance. The unbelievable arrogance.
Both of the above statements are
false no matter the context in which they are restated. But the Obama machine keeps
turning. This is becoming a
parody of itself.
Apparently, Americans were so
desperate to change their insurance and sign up for Obamacare that, on the
first day of this widely publicized rollout that took four years to develop and
billions in infrastructure, (including the $678 million website), a mere 6
(six) people enrolled. Six
individuals. By day three only 248
were signed up in total. By the
end of the first week, that number barely reached 2,000.
This is not just due to technical
glitches. The largest piece of legislature ever created is, and always was, a
total failure. People don’t want
it. The people who did want it
thought it was “free” health care or at least very cheap. They were lied to and now they are
slowly beginning to realize it.
To date, 21 million people have
visited the Healthcare.gov and only a few thousand have enrolled. Percentage-wise this is far more than
an anomaly based on technical issues.
93 million Americans will see
their plans lose their grandfather status and will have to sign up for new
plans that are not what they want. The Obama Administration knew this was going
to happen back in 2010. (Forbes, Congressional Budget Office Assessment 2010
– Draft Regulations, Recommendations to HHS Secretary Sebelius.)
What’s happening in reality is
that there is a forced demand being created due to massive cancellations. This is progressivism in action:
engineer a government dependency based on a funneled design, pointing to the
desired end: in this case, a single-payer system. This is not free market economics. They essentially created regulations that would eventually drive us all to buy the healthcare product
THEY deemed right for us, not the one we choose as best suited for
ourselves. This is the very
essence of socialism. If you don’t
agree, please go back and re-take high school political science. Either that, or just move to Europe
where the same kind of system is actually called “Socialized Medicine”.
It failed in Europe, Canada and everywhere else so…hey, let’s try it here!
The Costs and the Quality
Individual market premiums are
doubling and then some. Premiums
have increased dramatically in 45 out of 50 States (Heritage Foundation – Comparing the Costs of Buying
Healthcare Insurance).
I don’t know who’s responsible for teaching math in this country but
apparently, when costs go up as much as 171% (Arkansas) for a twenty seven year
old’s monthly premiums, that does not reflect a reduction in costs.
In Virginia the increase in premium payments for a 50 year old has
increased 256% under Obamacare – more than triple.
Affordable Care Act? Forget
politics. Americans should take
this as a personal insult. The
Administration was fully aware that these increases were built in. They are now prevaricating, again, to
explain it away.
When a bill that was promised to
cost $900 billion over ten years has already cost $1.7 trillion by the end of
its first month in existence, things appear to be out of control. Maybe it’s just me. I don’t know. I could be wrong about this.
More than half of people who have
employer-provided healthcare (153 million Americans) will be forced to have an
Obamacare-compliant plan that is more expensive and has a lot of coverage they
don’t need. Employer provided
healthcare plans are increasing 15 – 20% because of the response to crushing
regulations and bureaucracy. Companies and insurers have been preparing for
this for the past two and a half years knowing it was going to happen. The
Obama Administration continues, however, to insist that this particular market
is not increasing in price when it clearly is. This is an out and out lie still being perpetuated and the
outcome of this is layoffs, lower salaries and diminished plans as employers
scramble to cover the cost increases.
Leftwing talking heads and MSNBC
insist that the insurance plans being replaced were “crappy” (even though 85%
of Americans polled over the last four years said they were happy with their
health care plans), and that the plans mandated by Obamacare are superior and
give more protection. Americans,
already strapped, can’t AFFORD these “superior” plans with coverage for
non-applicable items (ie. maternity coverage included for couples too old to
have children, addiction counseling, etc.). In what way are these plans superior? Do I now get to see a better doctor than I did before? Do I get a nicer lab to go to for blood work with faster
results and better quality control?
Better how? Please indulge
us. Crickets.
It’s just more vague, empty
rhetoric. And then, Obama has the
nerve to come back again during a
recent speech in Boston and say that he told us we could “keep your (our) substandard
plans” which is absolutely not true in the first place! The quality of the plan has nothing to
do with it anyway. There are
plenty of people who had excellent plans that they liked and their new plans
are now simply far more expensive; plans that the government is telling us we
have to have; plans we don’t want.
Obama was so flippant in his
speech in Boston. His smugness was
overt as he said “If you get one of those cancellation letters, just shop
around…”
Wha…? I thought I could keep my plan. Then I get cancelled and you tell me to “shop around”? Shop around on the over-regulated,
barely functioning system that offers me options I don’t want and can’t
afford? This is madness. He didn’t say we’d be shopping around
for new plans if we liked our existing plans. He said we could keep our existing plans.
The facts are this: costs are
going way up. Quality of service
is already going down as more and more top tier care providers refuse to accept
Obamacare. The few people enrolling who can only afford low premium policies
are still facing MASSIVE deductibles.
The President knowingly lied. The
Administration was aware of this and they sold us an election based on facts
they knew were false. “Period!”
The Blame
My favorite move is the
Administration et al saying the policy cancellations are the insurance
companies’ fault. (Laughing as I
type this). The fact is this: the
Obamacare regulations are so strict, they are forcing the cancellation of
policies and again, they knew this was going to happen three years ago. In 2010 draft regulations reviewed by the
Congressional Budget Office were responded to as being “very disruptive” to the
current healthcare system and the CBO noted that there would be massive
cancellations and significant increases in costs. The CBO suggested that over 60% of employer provided
healthcare would be cancelled. HHS
Secretary Sebelius knew this three years ago and still went ahead with the
rollout unfettered.
So you all understand: the
regulations also made it so that normal insurance rate increases could not be
grandfathered in. Major insurers
typically offset premium costs by increasing deductibles over time. This is normal practice. But with Obamacare, the insurance
companies were forced to cancel the policies altogether, not allowing the
consumer to make the choice about whether they wanted to agree to the potential
deductible increase in order to keep the policy they liked while keeping their
premiums low. The premiums are the
monthly nut. That’s how a family
budgets and takes care of itself.
That’s how a business covers its employees. Blow that number out and people go broke. Businesses lay people off.
Policies are being cancelled and
the ones being offered to replace them have far higher premiums with still
very expensive deductibles.
This is NOT cheaper in any way.
It is NOT better quality.
This is simply a way to force the consumer to purchase a product through
the government, mandated and administrated by a massive bureaucracy, feeding
itself on fees and taxes. We can’t
keep our policies and doctors if we want to and the Obama Administration knew
this was going to be the case all along.
The Insulting Political Spin
It’s maddening to hear the spin
from the left. It is incredibly
patronizing. First is the “it’s
better coverage than the garbage coverage you had…”
Huh? If everyone’s coverage was so crappy, how come 85% of
Americans said they were happy with it?
And, how is the new coverage better quality? Did they weed out the bad doctors and now only allow us to
go to the doctors they have deemed good?
Is there a new nationwide oversight organization that provides quality
control experts and rates doctors and hospitals based on quality of care? What quality increases and controls are
they talking about?! This is PURE
FICTION.
This week, US News and World Report ran stories documenting how most top hospitals in
America will only accept insurance from one or two carriers participating in
Obamacare. Ooops.
Americans who sign up for
Obamacare will be getting a big surprise if they expect to access premium
health care that may have been previously covered under their personal
policies. They’ll go to the
hospital they choose (because Obama said they could) and the hospital will tell
them they don’t accept their insurance.
Then they’ll say, “But I have Obamacare….”
Will President Obama call these
hospitals "bad apples" as he now has with the
insurance companies that went along with his “law of the land”? Will this “signature achievement”
of Obama’s really stick as we watch the cancellation of tens of millions of
policies that people liked? It won’t.
Next we get the “he never said
that…what he meant was…” excuse.
No. Sorry. The
pundits should be embarrassed to defend this. It couldn’t have been clearer: “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor…. If you like your health insurance plan,
you can keep your health insurance plan.
Period.”
Those are actual Obama quotes,
ones he dished out repeatedly over the
past five years. He said this over
and over again, clearly and explicitly.
He knew it wasn’t true and said it anyway. And now he’s just saying it in a slightly different way and
continuing to lie after the fact.
Are people for real, still supporting this guy? Do liberals think they are somehow
enlightened because they go along with what they consider to be the subtle
nuances of a progressive agent of change?
The Result of the Bargain
If reality hasn’t sunk in by now
for those who aren’t ashamed to still have their Obama bumper stickers on their
cars, I’m really concerned. The
problem is that they’ll never get an appointment with a decent shrink because
no doctor in his or her right mind is going to accept Obamacare, and the wait
to see a doctor is going to be so long they’ll have to drive their Prius to
another town to get in to see anyone.
There are people actually
claiming Obama’s statements were not misleading. (I’m on the floor now, because I fell off the chair I was sitting
on.) The essence of the
bargain; the very meat and potatoes of the promise, was patently false. They
are saying the system was broken in the first place, so this is all valid. But people, let’s just be real
here. That’s like saying it was
acceptable to sell you a plane that can’t fly because yours had trouble with
sticky landing gear.
The Administration and its
supporters are claiming foul against the insurance companies and, with the
other hand, raising the prices and predetermining the coverage. This is outrageous and amounts to
inferior healthcare and higher prices by design. They rigged the system and then turned around and blamed the
apparatus.
Pundits all over the networks are
rationalizing, justifying, or reframing the lie. They’re making fools of themselves.
There are States that have single
digit enrollment numbers. Forget
the delay. This needs to be
scrapped like the rest of the abysmal disaster that has been this Obama
Administration.
Obamacare will cut costs:
lie.
Obamacare is not a tax:
blatant lie.
Obamacare will allow access to better
coverage: brazen lie
You can keep your insurance
if you like it: lie no matter how you slice it.
By the way, use caution;
questioning Obamacare makes you racist and unsophisticated. Just a reminder.
