Obamacare’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week

This week started off with the news that Obamacare of the 8 Million proported signups apparently only 67% of those have paid.

Insurance companies have been saying for months that about 80% of enrollees ended up paying their first month’s premium. Given how many have paid to date, it doesn’t look like they’re even going to make the 80% mark when all is said and done. One thing is absolutely certain; there aren’t 8 million people who are covered under Obamacare. There may not even be 6 million when the final tally is announced.

Despite that surge at the end, Obamacare has also missed their target for youth enrollment. Philip Klein of the Washington Examiner notes that

the final number of 2.2 million signups, out of 8 million total, was just 28 percent.

Before the launch of the open enrollment process in October, White House officials were saying2.7 million of an expected 7 million enrollees (or nearly 40 percent) should be from the younger demographic in order to offset the cost of insuring older and sicker enrollees.

Whatever the actual number hit, the White House – king of the news cycle and court jester of governance – is going to claim victory and hope that everyone moves on. By pushing “success” as hitting a number when you have mandated people by law to buy your product is shall we say,disingenuous.  Obamacare should be measured by the metrics it was sold on and those were more intrinsic promises to the American people.

  • If you like your Plan you can keep it.

Nope!  So untrue its the LIE OF THE YEAR. Obamacare forced millions off their affordable plans into more costly plans that provide worse coverage.

  • It will make Healthcare affordable

Nope!

  • It will increase access to healthcare for millions of uninsured

Based on the paltry numbers of previously uninsured that signed up. Failure again. Worry not though, the White House has a plan. Change how the data is gathered when you count the uninsured. Problem solved.

If someone had told me that we could have just changed one survey instead of our entire healthcare system, that certainly could saved us all a lot of time and money.

  • It will bend the Healthcare cost curve

Truly funny. RT @conncarroll: Shot: http://t.co/huRqMjTdbz Chaser: http://t.co/OoukEQKzsk

— Byron York (@ByronYork) May 1, 2014

 

Wrong again. In fact the other bad news this week is that Healthcare spending increased for Q1 2014.  The ongoing chant from the left was that Obamacare was reducing healthcare costs already. ( See “Why Healthcare Costs Continue to Slow so Dramatically”) This wasn’t true since costs had been in decline for some time but it makes it even more fun, when as of yesterday not only does Think Progress and various other left wing barking dogs state that “Health Care Spending is on the Rise and that’s a Good thing”

In fact Obamacare is what is keeping our GDP at 0.1% growth according to the left, proving once again they don’t care how they spend your money – they just want to spend it.   By looking at some estimates and revisions, we could see that number will go negative and if Q2 looks as paltry we may already be in a recession coincidentally in the same year that Obamacare takes effect. Imagine if they had the guts to implement the whole thing and not push that out until 2016.  If Obamacare is what’s saving our economy, why are those pesky Democrats not implementing the whole thing?  Do they hate America, or do they know that its complete nonsense to assume that Obamacare is a net positive for the economy? In 2009, I didn’t hear that second part after “We Just Can’t Wait” ……until 2016.

Lastly, as Scott W. Atlas notes today in the WSJ, Obamacare is creating a class system. Wait, I thought the Democrats were opposed to inequality? I get so confused.  Even better, is the notoriously  invoked “middle class” are the ones going to get stuck with the bill.

Worse it the expansion of government provided Medicaid and Medicare act on the private market by shifting even more costs to those who aren’t on the government dime.  The routine under reimbursement by government provided insurance is picked up by you.

Less widely known is that inadequate reimbursement by government insurance to doctors substantially increases private-insurance prices. According to a December 2008 Milliman report presented by Will Fox and John Pickering, a shortfall of more than $88 billion in payments from Medicaid and Medicare beneficiaries added more than $1,500 extra a year in premiums and $1,800 extra in total out-of-pocket costs to every family of four with private insurance. With increasing enrollment into government insurance, private premiums will undoubtedly rise even more.

For those who see this and say, THIS IS WHY WE NEED SINGLE PAYER, because we don’t want HEALTHCARE INEQUALITY, FAIR , faulty WHO studies falsely accusing the US of bad healthcare outcomes, well..

As America doubles down on government authority over health care, Europeans with the means to do so are increasingly circumventing their own centralized systems. In Britain, even though they’re already paying for the National Health Service, six million Brits—two-thirds of citizens earning more than $78,700—now buy private health insurance. Meanwhile, more than 50,000 travel out of the U.K. annually, spending more than $250 million, to receive treatment more readily than they can at home. Even in Sweden, the mother of all welfare nations, half a million Swedes now use private insurance, up from 100,000 a decade ago.

The relentless pursuit of “fair” only serves to make things worse.  Democrats are deciding for you that having things be worse for most people is better than a few rich people having it better.

Less access, more cost, more rationing and only the truly rich being able to escape it is the path blazed by Obamacare.

Watch for more studies like “Mammograms May be Usesless”  as reasons to ration care.  I’m sure its just a coincidence that this study was conducted in a single payer country. When your government is both the single payer of healthcare and arbiter of what medicine, screening and treatments work, there’s an inherent conflict of interest. Budgets eventually must be balanced and the easiest way to ration care is to disprove the need for care to escape being “the bad guy” . Undervaluing or disputing the value of a treatment makes your populace feel protected and unaware they are being deprived. Mammograms I can attest to personally, saved my mother’s life. To tell women they should skip them is reprehensible.  When Government is the sole decider on medical access and value, the risk and temptation is too high for abuse.

Freedom may be more complicated than single payer but giving up competition on value in healthcare to a single arbiter of the truth will likely lead to less healthcare innovation and access for all Americans.

Those who are content with redistributing the inventions of the past, have turned away from what a prosperous future may hold.  Let us choose wisely.

Obamacare. It still sucks.