Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Time to Rethink Obamacare

TOP 10 FACTS EVERY ILLINOISAN SHOULD KNOW ABOUT OBAMACARE AND MEDICAID. It's time for our leaders to re-engineer this impending disaster.

Illinois-Facts-Header-newestFrom the Illinois Policy Institute -
The Affordable Care Act, or ACA, commonly known as ObamaCare, is a train wreck. For many, since ObamaCare was enacted the cost of coverage has dramatically increased and will continue to do so. People aren’t enrolling in ObamaCare at the rate the Obama administration predicted – by a long shot. And many are finding out that they can’t keep their insurance or their doctor.
And for all the damage the ACA has caused, there is little reason to believe that it will actually expand health care access and affordability. Today, the majority of Americans prefer the flawed health care system that we had prior the ACA.
Here are some important facts every Illinoisan should know about ObamaCare and Medicaid:

1.  “If you like your health insurance, you can’t necessarily keep it.” Bureaucrats in the Obama administration wrote regulations that deemed millions of policies as substandard. These regulations were intended to throw large numbers into the ObamaCare exchanges.
2. Many of the reported ObamaCare “enrollees” were actually already insured before ObamaCare cancelled their policies. When you account for all of the individuals who had their policies canceled as a direct result of ObamaCare, as well as those who would have been eligible for Medicaid before the Affordable Care Act, or ACA, it is possibly that ObamaCare has done little to actually expand coverage to the previously uninsured.
3. The ACA has provisions to bailout insurers that lose money in the ObamaCare health care exchanges. Americans could be on the hook for $47 billion.
4.  Work hours in Illinois have dropped since ObamaCare was signed into law. ObamaCare is likely to cost more jobs and work hours in an already-frail economy. The evidence from Illinois shows that employers, particularly those with the lowest wage and lowest average hours, have been dramatically cutting labor hours since 2011. This trend is highly suggestive and points to employers cutting employees’ hours to avoid ObamaCare’s harshest penalties.
5.  ObamaCare enrollments are falling far short of the Obama administration’s stated goals. The low enrollment level spells trouble for ObamaCare. Premiums are likely to skyrocket even higher in 2015 without a much larger share young people in the ObamaCare exchanges.
6. According to the state’s own auditor, state workers consistently failed toverify eligibility under the Medicaid program. Continued waste, fraud and abuse in the program were the impetus for hiring a contractor to verify program eligibility.
But instead of saving taxpayers $350 million by using a private contractor to verify Medicaid eligibility, the state is now hiring 500 new government workersto do the job.
7.  Even though the ACA requires members of Congress to enroll in ObamaCare, they have managed to avoid the ObamaCare experience almost entirely. Apparently, many members are perfectly comfortable living by a different set of rules than the people they supposedly represent.
  • Despite the law’s failure on so many levels, some lawmakers in Springfield would still like to furtherexpand ObamaCare’s reach into the state.
  • That is why we are asking Illinoisans to sign our “You First” petition. The petition calls on state lawmakers who continue to support ObamaCare to forgo their generous, taxpayer-funded health insurance benefits and voluntarily enter the ObamaCare exchange.
8. Contrary to popular belief, ObamaCare was never designed to dramaticallyexpand private health care coverage; it has always been a massive Medicaid expansion scheme.
9. ObamaCare threatens to run roughshod over Americans’ most personal financial and health care information. There will always be vulnerabilities in any system, but the federal government failed to take the same security stepsthat any Fortune 500 company would take to protect your most sensitive information.
10. It is time for the Obama administration to #ComeClean on ObamaCare enrollment numbers. Instead of counting people who have actually paid for a plan, the administration is counting anyone who put a plan in his shopping cart, but has not necessarily paid, as being enrolled.

5 comments:

  1. Anonymous2/05/2014

    Obamacare Bronze Plan:

    $400 a month in premiums.

    $6000 annual deductible.

    Insurance pays 60% and I pay 40% AFTER I've already paid $10,800 per year in premiums and deductible.

    How is that affordable?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous2/05/2014

    The Obama administration’s public relations machine has been trumpeting the success of the Affordable Care Act, commonly referred to as ObamaCare, despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary. Enrollment has been anemic, the website is plagued with problems, and it is possible that there are now more people without insurance as a direct result of the law. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced recently that 2.1 million people have enrolled in a private insurance plan in the ObamaCare exchanges.

    But this number is misleading.

    Instead of reporting on actual plan enrollments, the administration defines “enrollments” as individuals and families who have placed a plan in their shopping cart, but have not necessarily purchased a plan. The distinction is critical. As anyone who has ever shopped online knows, putting something in your shopping cart is not the same as actually purchasing it.

    In Illinois, only about 61,000 people had “enrolled” in ObamaCare exchanges through the end of December. At best, the program was just less than 40,000 shy of its year-end goal for the state.

    But that 61,000 estimate would still not tell you the number of people covered. Only the number of people who have actually paid for a plan can tell you who is actually going to be covered.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous2/05/2014

    The Unaffordable Care Act. Or the minority transfer program.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous2/06/2014

    Sheriff Dart signing inmates up for Obamacare!


    Being arrested in Chicago for, say, drug possession or assault gets you sent to the Cook County Jail to be fingerprinted, photographed and X-rayed. You’ll also get help applying for health insurance. “When someone gets discharged from the jail and they don’t have insurance and they don’t have a plan, we can pretty much set our watch to when we’re going see them again,” said Ben Breit, a spokesman for the Cook County Sheriff’s Office..


    http://www.sfgate.com/business/bloomberg/article/Jails-Enroll-Inmates-in-Obamacare-to-Pass-5210597.php

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous2/06/2014

    Update : Progressive blogs brag Sheriff Dart can help Obama reach his goal for ObamaCare signups.. Dart tells another interviewer he may be able to reach several hundred thousand inmates who cycle in and out of the Cook County Jail.

    Awesome: If you wind up at the Cook County Jail you can be enrolled in ObamaCare:

    Considering the crime rate in Chicago we’ll probably meet the enrollment goals in no time.
    http://www.jammiewf.com/2014/awesome-if-you-wind-up-in-cook-county-jail-you-can-be-enrolled-in-obamacare/

    ReplyDelete