The ObamaCare Doomsday Express is fast approaching. In a few short months, your life will change forever. Forget keeping that nice insurance package through your employer and just be grateful you have a job, even if its been reduced to part-time, to pay for those outlandishly expensive, lower coverage ObamaCare insurance packages.
Max Baucus warned earlier in the year that Obamacare implementation looked like a “huge train wreck” and I don’t think he was exaggerating. Nick Tate, author of “The ObamaCare Survival Guide: The Affordable Care Act and What It Means for You and Your Healthcare” said that “with so many moving parts and pieces, it’s hard to image that anyone, including the proponents of the law, fully anticipated the problems that would develop because so many specific and complicated things have to fall into place, in exactly the right way, for ObamaCare to work as designed.” If you don’t have a copy of his Survival Guide, I’d suggest you get one and a large bottle of aspirin and Rolaids.
The CBO has already estimated that some 6 million people will lose their employer-provided health insurance by 2019 and that figure could reach as high as 20 million, and 30 million people will be uninsured by 2022. With the Supreme Court ruling that states do not have to participate in Medicaid expansion, the CBO is estimating that 11 million people will be added to Medicaid rolls.
Seniors will be especially screwed since ObamaCare cuts $500 billion from Medicare spending through 2019 and $716 billion by 2022. Those on Medicare are in danger of losing their doctor and those approaching 65 will find that even fewer doctors will be willing to accept Medicare patients. Everyone will face cuts in services.
Already some doctors have begun the switch to “concierge medicine” also known as direct-pay because it cuts out third party insurance. Unfortunately, in order to operate under concierge medicine, these doctors are cutting their patient load. Many doctors say they are responding to an ever increasing bureaucratic interference and uncertainty over insurance and Medicare payments, some directly citing ObamaCare.
The AMA, which backed ObamaCare, is now warning that we could face a shortage of 66,000 doctors over the next decade as a direct result of ObamaCare. Taxpayers will be financing $137 billion a year in federal subsidies according to the CBO. And, whether you have a job or not, ObamaCare taxes will cost Americans an estimated $1.24 trillion by 2022.
The only possible way ObamaCare will work is if young healthy Americans agree to buy overpriced health insurance that provides less coverage to pay for the care of the elderly, and disabled. If too many of these people decide to pay the penalty rather than bankrupt their budgets, the government can’t possibly balance the books. Of course, balancing the books has never been one of their strong points – they usually compensate for their ignorance by raising taxes but with over half of working age Americans unemployed or underemployed, that could pose another set of problems.
Scenarios presented by health plans to the Virginia State Corporation Commission in July put the price tag for a 29-year-old at about $2,400 to $2,700 a year through the federal exchange. For some of the healthiest, that could translate to a 50 percent to 90 percent jump in cost compared with what they would pay for coverage now on the private market. For firms looking to sell individual coverage in the Roanoke and New River valleys, forecasts for the extra cost of covering those consumers range as high as 48 percent.
Keep in mind now that Obama single handedly delayed the federal mandate for employers and their employees, until after the 2014 elections. He did not, however, spare individuals who purchases health insurance for themselves and/or families from the painful reality that is about to expose all those ObamaCare lies.
Health insurance policy holders across the country will soon be receiving letters from their insurance providers notifying them of “staggering” rate increases. An actuary for Humana told the Kentucky Department of Insurance in a rate filing last month that clients could expect premium increases as high as 80% under Obamacare. and in some instances reach as high as 300%. Humana also sent letters in August to their policy holders warning them of substantial rate hikes, including one advising a senior AMAC executive Andrew Mangione, who is a long-time client and resident of Louisville, that he can expect the rate on his family’s policy to increase from $333 to $965 per month. Mangione said “It’s not Humana’s fault, they are being forced to go along with the program, what bothers me is that we were told our premiums would go down and that we could keep our policies. It looks like we were lied to.” You think?
Since Republicans have spent the better part of the last three years doing the Obama cave dance, opponents of socialized medicine have decided to take matters into their own hands.
Twila Brase, a nurse in Minnesota who is behind a national “Refuse to Enroll” campaign said “We look at the exchanges as the Achilles’ heel of Obamacare, and we are targeting them with that understanding.” She is encouraging people not to sign up for insurance through the exchanges, arguing that a federal takeover will lead to limited options for exchange consumers and higher premiums for everyone.
FreedomWorks recently launched their own “Burn Your Obamacare Card” drive. Undaunted by the fact that no such card exists, the Alexandria-based organization has been printing them up and handing them out for use in demonstrations. “The whole point of ‘Burn Your Obamacare Card’ is to puncture the idea that people have some sort of patriotic or legal duty to go into the exchanges to get the coverage they need,” said Dean Clancy, vice president of public policy for FreedomWorks. “They don’t.”
Stephen Moore, economist at the Wall Street Journal predicts that ObamaCare is going to derail and will either be repealed or replaced in the next few years. Of course that is hardly compensation for the lives it will have destroyed.
Moore also says that we shouldn’t count on Obama making any reforms to the unpopular plan. “Unfortunately, the president is in such a bubble right now, he ignores the whole thing and just figures somehow it’s all going to work out at the end of the day – and he’ll have his place on Mount Rushmore.”
