Obamacare Problems

                I have intentionally avoided Obamacare because I am simply tired of the subject.  I am grateful that other people have the fortitude to continue the fight.  Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi said “we have to sign it in order to know what is in it,” and we are continuing to find out what is in the terrible program called Obamacare.

                Jeffrey H. Anderson of the Weekly Standard  reported on one problem of Obamacare – a bailout of the insurance companies.  “Robert Laszewski – a prominent consultant to health insurance companies – recently wrote in a remarkably candid blog post that, while Obamacare is almost certain to cause insurance costs to skyrocket even higher than it already has, `insurers won’t be losing a lot of sleep over it.’  How can this be?  Because insurance companies won’t bear the cost of their own losses – at least not more than about a quarter of them.  The other three-quarters will be borne by American taxpayers.

                “For some reason, President Obama hasn’t talked about this particular feature of his signature legislation.  Indeed, it’s bad enough that Obamacare is projected by the Congressional Budget Office to funnel $1,071,000,000,000.00 (that’s $1.071 trillion) over the next decade (2014 to 2023) from American taxpayers, through Washington, to health insurance companies.  It’s even worse that Obamacare is trying to coerce Americans into buying those same insurers’ product (although there are escape routes).  It’s almost unbelievable that it will also subsidize those same insurers’ losses.”

                Alyene Senger at The Heritage Foundation reported on two additional problems:  “Yes, Obamacare has raised premiums, caused people to lose their health coverage, raised taxes, and more.  But on January 1, Obamacare started digging in for the long haul:  putting down the deep roots of entitlement programs.

                “Entitlements – like the big three of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid – are the biggest causes of America’s spending and debt crisis.  And Obamacare creates a new entitlement program while expanding another.”

                Senger explained that the new entitlement is “Taxpayer-funded subsidies for millions of Americans.”  “Obamacare created insurance exchanges to sell and subsidize government-approved health care plans.  Most of those who attain coverage through the exchanges will have their costs partially subsidized by federal taxpayers….”  I recently read a new bulletin that 80 percent of Alaskans who have insurance through Obamacare qualified for subsidies! 

                After discussing the subsidies, Senger moved on to explain that the expansion of Medicaid is the expansion of a broken entitlement program.  “Thanks to Obamacare, the already failing Medicaid program will receive an influx of millions of new enrollees in 2014 and beyond.

                “Before Obamacare’s blanket expansion, Medicaid traditionally covered low-income moms and kids and low-income disabled and elderly.  If every state expands its program, as many as 25 million additional people could enroll in Medicaid by 2021 – most of them childless adults….” 

                Obamacare continues to roll forward and destroying everything in its path – much like a huge boulder rolling down a mountain.  Our nation “is already facing a fiscal crisis, largely due to existing entitlements.”  Our health system does need to be reformed to help the poor, needy and vulnerable in our society, but there are good reforms and bad reforms.  The more I know about Obamacare, the more I worry about the results of it.