The Shocking Truth About Obama Care

The Unorganized

American Militia

King George didn’t listen to us either!

A key contention of President Obama and the congressional sponsors of health insurance “reform” is that a health insurance “exchange” – allowing consumers to choose between private health plans with premiums artificially jacked-up by government mandates, and a government program with artificially low premiums – would increase competition.

In fact, “It would reduce competition by driving lower-cost private health plans out of business,” reports Michael Cannon, co-author of the book “Healthy Competition: What’s Holding Back Health Care and How to Free It,” in an Aug. 6 Cato Institute paper titled “Fannie Med? Why a ‘Public Option’ Is Hazardous to Your Health.”

“President Obama’s vision of a health insurance exchange is not a market, but a prelude to a government takeover of the health care sector,” Mr. Cannon found. “In the process, millions of Americans would be ousted from their existing health plans.”

In a speech to the American Medical Association, President Obama recently reiterated a promise that he has made repeatedly since the 2008 presidential campaign: “No matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise to the American people. If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.”

But after the Congressional Budget Office estimated as many as 15 million Americans could lose their existing coverage under Senator Kennedy’s legislation, the Associated Press reported on June 19, “White House officials suggest the president’s rhetoric shouldn’t be taken literally.”

The new government program “would literally oust millions of Americans from their current health plans and threaten their relationships with their doctors, as employers choose to drop their current employee health plans and as private health plans close down,” Mr. Cannon reports.

A Lewin Group analysis estimated that Obama’s campaign proposal would move 32 million Americans into a new government-run plan. But Lewin subsequently estimated that if Congress used Medicare’s price controls and opened the new program to everyone, it could pull 120 million Americans out of private insurance – more than half of the private market.

(There is a socialist letter-writing tree that attacks anyone who cites the Lewin Group as a source, pointing out the outfit is an Ingenix company, and thus a wholly-owned subsidiary of United Health Group – despite the fact that’s clearly disclosed on the organizations’ Web site at www.lewin.com/WhyLewin/AboutUs/ – where we also find U.S. Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Bob Bennett, R-Utah, telling the Wall Street Journal “The Lewin Group (is) the gold standard of independent, health-care analysis.” Why is it that economic analyses funded by free-market sources should be held suspect, while government analysts – who have an obvious bias in favor of continuing big-government “solutions” – go unchallenged? Since no government analyst has ever lost his or her job for lowballing the likely cost of a government boondoggle, shouldn’t it be the other way around?)

“The share of Americans who depend on government for their health care would rise from just over one quarter to two-thirds,” under Obamacare, Mr. Cannon reports. And what’s more, “Many of those millions would be involuntarily ousted from their current health plans.”

Wow. Just as all those fearful citizens showing up to express their concerns at this summer’s “town hall” meetings – dismissed by congressional leaders as racists, hate-monger, and worse – have been saying.

No one should be surprised at all this, Mr. Cannon notes. “President Obama has repeatedly affirmed his preference for a single-payer, government-run health care system, such as exists in Canada. Many people, including New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, support a new government program precisely because they believe it will lead to a single-payer system.”

Jacob S. Hacker of the University of California-Berkeley School of Law quips, “Someone once said to me, ‘This is a Trojan Horse for single-payer,’ and I said, ‘Well, it’s not a Trojan Horse – it’s right there!’”

If Congress wants to make health care more efficient and increase competition in insurance markets, there are far better options, Mr. Cannon suggests. Congress should let consumers – rather than employers or the government – control their health care dollars and choose their health plan. It should convert Medicare into a program that gives seniors a voucher and frees them to purchase any health plan on the market.

Reforming the tax treatment of employer-sponsored insurance with “large” health savings accounts would give workers the thousands of dollars of their earnings that employers currently control, and likewise free workers to purchase any health plan on the market.

Finally, Congress should expand competition by prohibiting states from denying market entry to health plans and providers licensed by other states – that is, by making clinician and health insurance licenses portable across state lines.

These real reforms would reduce costs, increase innovation, and reduce the number of uninsured – without higher taxes or additional government pending, Mr. Cannon concludes. So why aren’t they even on the table in Washington?

Perhaps because this isn’t really about affordability, but rather about a vast new federal bureaucracy providing lucrative jobs for legions of unionized registered Democrats – and even more importantly, about who gets to run your life. Thus, it is worthwhile to take a comprehensive look at the freedoms we will lose.

Of course, the bill is supposed to provide us with security. But it will result in skyrocketing insurance costs and physicians leaving the field in droves, making it harder to afford and find medical care. We may be about to live Benjamin Franklin's adage, "People willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both."

The sections described below are taken from HR 3590 as agreed to by the Senate and from the reconciliation bill as displayed by the Rules Committee.

1.You are young and don't want health insurance? You are starting up a small business and need to minimize expenses, and one way to do that is to forego health insurance? Tough. You have to pay $750 annually for the "privilege." (Section 1501)
2.You are young and healthy and want to pay for insurance that reflects that status? Tough. You'll have to pay for premiums that cover not only you, but also the guy who smokes three packs a day, drink a gallon of whiskey and eats chicken fat off the floor. That's because insurance companies will no longer be able to underwrite on the basis of a person's health status. (Section 2701).
3.You would like to pay less in premiums by buying insurance with lifetime or annual limits on coverage? Tough. Health insurers will no longer be able to offer such policies, even if that is what customers prefer. (Section 2711).
4.Think you'd like a policy that is cheaper because it doesn't cover preventive care or requires cost-sharing for such care? Tough. Health insurers will no longer be able to offer policies that do not cover preventive services or offer them with cost-sharing, even if that's what the customer wants. (Section 2712).
5.You are an employer and you would like to offer coverage that doesn't allow your employees' slacker children to stay on the policy until age 26? Tough. (Section 2714).
6.You must buy a policy that covers ambulatory patient services, emergency services, hospitalization, maternity and newborn care, mental health and substance use disorder services, including behavioral health treatment; prescription drugs; rehabilitative and habilitative services and devices; laboratory services; preventive and wellness services; chronic disease management; and pediatric services, including oral and vision care. You're a single guy without children? Tough, your policy must cover pediatric services. You're a woman who can't have children? Tough, your policy must cover maternity services. You're a teetotaler? Tough, your policy must cover substance abuse treatment. (Add your own violation of personal freedom here.) (Section 1302).
7.Do you want a plan with lots of cost-sharing and low premiums? Well, the best you can do is a "Bronze plan," which has benefits that provide benefits that are actuarially equivalent to 60% of the full actuarial value of the benefits provided under the plan. Anything lower than that, tough. (Section 1302 (d)(1)(A))
8.You are an employer in the small-group insurance market and you'd like to offer policies with deductibles higher than $2,000 for individuals and $4,000 for families? Tough. (Section 1302 (c) (2) (A).
9.If you are a large employer (defined as at least 50 employees) and you do not want to provide health insurance to your employee, then you will pay a $750 fine per employee (It could be $2,000 to $3,000 under the reconciliation changes). Think you know how to better spend that money? Tough. (Section 1513).
10.You are an employer who offers health flexible spending arrangements and your employees want to deduct more than $2,500 from their salaries for it? Sorry, can't do that. (Section 9005 (i)).
11.If you are a physician and you don't want the government looking over your shoulder? Tough. The Secretary of Health and Human Services is authorized to use your claims data to issue you reports that measure the resources you use, provide information on the quality of care you provide, and compare the resources you use to those used by other physicians. Of course, this will all be just for informational purposes. It's not like the government will ever use it to intervene in your practice and patients' care. Of course not. (Section 3003 (i))
12.If you are a physician and you want to own your own hospital, you must be an owner and have a "Medicare provider agreement" by Feb. 1, 2010. (Dec. 31, 2010 in the reconciliation changes.) If you didn't have those by then, you are out of luck. (Section 6001 (i) (1) (A)).
13.If you are a physician owner and you want to expand your hospital? Well, you can't (Section 6001 (i) (1) (B). Unless, it is located in a county where, over the last five years, population growth has been 150% of what it has been in the state (Section 6601 (i) (3) ( E)). And then you cannot increase your capacity by more than 200% (Section 6001 (i) (3) (C)).
14.You are a health insurer and you want to raise premiums to meet costs? Well, if that increase is deemed "unreasonable" by the Secretary of Health and Human Services it will be subject to review and can be denied. (Section 1003)
15.The government will extract a fee of $2.3 billion annually from the pharmaceutical industry. If you are a pharmaceutical company what you will pay depends on the ratio of the number of brand-name drugs you sell to the total number of brand-name drugs sold in the U.S. So, if you sell 10% of the brand-name drugs in the U.S., what you pay will be 10% multiplied by $2.3 billion, or $230,000,000. (Under reconciliation, it starts at $2.55 billion, jumps to $3 billion in 2012, then to $3.5 billion in 2017 and $4.2 billion in 2018, before settling at $2.8 billion in 2019 (Section 1404)). Think you, as a pharmaceutical executive, know how to better use that money, say for research and development? Tough. (Section 9008 (b)).
16.The government will extract a fee of $2 billion annually from medical device makers. If you are a medical device maker what you will pay depends on your share of medical device sales in the U.S. So, if you sell 10% of the medical devices in the U.S., what you pay will be 10% multiplied by $2 billion, or $200,000,000. Think you, as a medical device maker, know how to better use that money, say for R&D? Tough. (Section 9009 (b)). The reconciliation package turns that into a 2.9% excise tax for medical device makers. Think you, as a medical device maker, know how to better use that money, say for research and development? Tough. (Section 1405).
17.The government will extract a fee of $6.7 billion annually from insurance companies. If you are an insurer, what you will pay depends on your share of net premiums plus 200% of your administrative costs. So, if your net premiums and administrative costs are equal to 10% of the total, you will pay 10% of $6.7 billion, or $670,000,000. In the reconciliation bill, the fee will start at $8 billion in 2014, $11.3 billion in 2015, $1.9 billion in 2017, and $14.3 billion in 2018 (Section 1406).Think you, as an insurance executive, know how to better spend that money? Tough.(Section 9010 (b) (1) (A and B).)
18.If an insurance company board or its stockholders think the CEO is worth more than $500,000 in deferred compensation? Tough.(Section 9014).
19.You will have to pay an additional 0.5% payroll tax on any dollar you make over $250,000 if you file a joint return and $200,000 if you file an individual return. What? You think you know how to spend the money you earned better than the government? Tough. (Section 9015). That amount will rise to a 3.8% tax if reconciliation passes. It will also apply to investment income, estates, and trusts. You think you know how to spend the money you earned better than the government? Like you need to ask. (Section 1402).
20.If you go for cosmetic surgery, you will pay an additional 5% tax on the cost of the procedure. Think you know how to spend that money you earned better than the government? Tough. (Section 9017).

President Obama declared that the new health care law "is going to be affecting every American family." Except his own, of course.

The new health care law exempts the president from having to participate in it. Leadership and committee staffers in the House and Senate who wrote the bill are exempted as well. A weasel-worded definition of "staff" includes only the members' personal staff in the new system; the committee staff that drafted the legislation opted themselves out. Because they were more familiar with the contents of the law than anyone in the country, it says a lot that they carved out their own special loophole. Anyway, the law is intended to affect "ordinary Americans," according to Vice President Joe Biden (who - being a heartbeat away from the presidency - also is not covered), not Washington insiders.

Mr. Obama frequently tossed around the talking point that the new law gave people the same type of coverage as Congress enjoyed. In his health care pep talk to wavering Democrats on Capitol Hill, the president said one of the advantages of the health care legislation was that "people will have choice and competition just like members of Congress have choice and competition." At yesterday's signing ceremony, Mr. Obama said Americans will be "part of a big pool, just like federal employees are part of a big pool. They'll have the same choice of private health insurance that members of Congress get for themselves." But the American people will have a public pool; the executive branch and congressional staffers kept their country-club pool private.

Obama Care: Robbing

From Peter to Pay Paul

By Frank S. Rosenbloom, M.D.

President Obama is committed to fixing health care. He wants to make health care affordable for all Americans. In much the same way, Barney Frank and company wanted to make houses affordable for all Americans -- and we know how well that idea turned out. Mr. Obama has wisely offered more than $600 billion dollars as a deposit for his idea. Yes, he has frugally set aside money he does not have. He has borrowed money he can never hope to repay, perhaps printed money as well, as a deposit toward his idea, or more precisely his ideology.

Even President Obama himself admits that the debt is unsustainable. Even without further spending on remaking health care, Obamanomics will pile up almost $10 trillion in deficits over the next decade. Mr. Obama himself complained that health care costs had doubled over the preceding 8 years, rising 3.7 times faster than wages. Yet with wages decreasing by 1.8% last year, he tripled the deficit in less than 90 days in office, with a yearly rate of rise exponentially higher than that of wages.

U.S. health care costs were $2.4 trillion in 2008, or 17% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Over the next decade this is expected to rise to 20% of GDP. According to the numbers most often cited by Obama, 45 million people are without health care. Let us be clear, even if that number were correct regarding health insurance coverage, there is a difference between the number of persons without health insurance and those without health care.

Emergency departments and hospitals by law must provide unreimbursed care for all comers, uninsured Americans as well as illegal aliens (in liberal speak, undocumented residents). While many people are uninsured for short periods of time, the number of chronically uninsured in reality is much lower, between 9 and 13 million. Around 17% of "uninsured" Americans lived in households with incomes above $75,000 per year and could presumably afford insurance.

Additionally, 14 million of those listed as uninsured were eligible for Medicare or Medicaid, about the same number as chronically uninsured. It is worth noting that to cover only these people at Medicare rates Obama's "deposit" would last for nearly 6 years, but without the far reaching dependence on government programs he needs to further his policies. Additionally, his assertions that health care costs are a major cause of bankruptcy are an outright lie.

As a matter of ideology, Mr. Obama wants to provide government health insurance to at least 45 million more Americans, the majority of whom do not need it. However, they will surely avail themselves of it because it will undoubtedly be less expensive, initially, than other health insurance policies. So, the people in the households earning $75,000 yearly will jump on board. Since Obama care will compete directly with private insurance, many other people in this group of the "poor" uninsured will as well.

Remember that Medicare does not provide health insurance only for poor retirees, but for wealthy ones as well. Warren Buffet is eligible for Medicare. Once Obama succeeds in starting another entitlement program and in driving private health insurance out of business, he can raise taxes to any level necessary since he will have done away with the competition. Whatever happened to the government protecting us from monopolies? Oh, yes, that did not include government monopolies.

Let's look at the cost of a Medicare or Medicaid like program for 45 million Americans. For the sake of argument, let's assume that another 15 million will join Obama care. Obama has also proposed cuts in Medicare to pay for his "Medicare II". Talk about robbing Peter to pay Paul! The taxpayer cost of Medicare was $391 billion to cover 43 million people and costs are expected to grow by nearly 8% per year. With the inclusion of out of pocket expenses, the total cost of Medicare, not counting the billions it costs each year in punitive regulations and cost shifting, was around $536.4 billion.

The same program today for 60 million people would cost $715.2 billion yearly, or 30% of the health care costs for 20% of the population. At the end of eight years, the number of years during which health care doubled as noted by Obama, costs would be $1,323.4 trillion, or nearly double. True, Medicare covers older Americans, but the cost to implement his program has not been taken into account and the growth of the program will undoubtedly be faster than projected, given the history of all other government entitlement programs.

Perhaps at some point it will include providing cars to the uninsured to enable them to get to the doctors' office and perhaps free food to help keep them healthy. Oops, I forgot, we already do that, but we certainly can expand these programs. The point is that Obama's plan will do nothing to stem the rising cost of health care because government, directly or indirectly, is the cause of much of that rising cost.

President Obama now wants to raise taxes on health insurance benefits in order to pay for health insurance benefits! He truly is robbing Peter to pay Paul. We do need to reform health care coverage. However, this can be done utilizing private health insurance in a much more affordable and sustainable way, without creating increased dependence on the federal government.

The health care systems of Switzerland and Holland are interesting option[TL1] s. The Swiss system covers 99% of the population for 11.6% of GDP. Health insurance is private, but the government subsidizes the cost for those who are unable to afford the premiums. Since each citizen has some financial responsibility, there is an incentive to prevent cost escalation. Best of all, the government and hence the taxpayers pay about 25% of health care costs as opposed to over 45% in the U.S. The Dutch system is similar. Insurance companies offer a mandatory basic package with optional upgrades. No health care system is perfect, but Obama Care will be catastrophic and will bankrupt the nation.