Conservatives warned time and again that government interference in healthcare would be bad for the market and drive up prices. Despite these protests from the right, Obamacare was pushed into law.
Now, President Obama is desperate to cover-up the truth, and recently claimed in a press release that health care premiums only increased 1.1% in the year ending in August.
This news from the Obama administration, however, seems to be a direct contradiction to what numerous news agencies are reporting. Everything conservatives warned about the program is coming true (yes, even the infamous ‘death panels’).
Reports indicate that in the past two years, the price of health insurance for consumers has risen at an alarming rate.
And it’s only going to get worse.
Across the United States, those on Obamacare will see their insurance premium rates go up an average of 7.5 percent for 2016. Depending on where you live, the increases could be even more substantial.
In Alaska and Oklahoma, premiums will increase 25 percent and 36 percent, respectively, in 2016.
And healthcare consumers in Albuquerque, NM and Charlotte, NC, will see their premium prices for 2016 rise 15 percent.
Much of the cost is attributed to costly new regulations. Pharmaceutical companies and insurance providers are passing those expenses directly on to customers.
In order to maintain their profitability, major health insurers have also started merging, which is limiting consumer choice and making cost control difficult.
In July, health insurance giants Humana and Aetna merged in a $37 billion deal. Later in the summer, health insurance company Anthem – a Blue Cross and Blue Shield insurer – acquired Cigna in a $54 billion deal.
Worse still, almost half of the government-subsidized health insurance cooperatives have already closed, and more will likely follow soon.
Health insurance cooperatives were originally formed to act as an alternative to private insurers by providing health insurance to poor and low-income Americans. Each co-op received 15-year loans from the federal government with favorable rates, but recent federal cuts have hurt these co-ops’ bottom lines.
On October 1 of this year, the Obama administration announced that loan repayments from the co-ops was lagging, leading to $900 million in taxpayer funds lost.
Medicare has also announced it will pay doctors to help patients in the long-anticipated “death panels,” or advanced care planning, that were intended to be included in the 2010 Affordable Care Act bill. Due to public concerns about encouraging euthanasia and deciding which Americans were “worthy of medical care” at the end of their lives, the provision was initially removed.
Now it’s back, and the advanced care planning will provide patients an unlimited number of counseling sessions to determine their preferred care at end of life — including possible euthanasia in certain states.
The panels were revived last summer and will take effect Jan. 1.
Aimee Pointee is an Editor for The Horn News
What a shocker !…..Who’d a thunked it…..So when do they roll out their single payer system?
Didn’t the lying potus already deny this would happen. PERIOD!
Don’t even buy it….I wouldn’t satisfy Obama for anything that he wants, that I don’t want…
Obamacare is a perfect example of what happens when the government tries to do things best left to free enterprise. The Post Office is a good example of what awaits government-run healthcare. With the Post Office the rates continually increase, the quality of mail delivery decreases and innovation is nowhere to be found. The Post Office tried to mimic for-profit deliverers by providing tracking numbers; yet the tracking numbers seldom provide useful information.
The best thing that could happen now would be for the president to sit down with congressional leaders and work out a plan to phase out Obamacare and return to a free market model.
Kentucky “reformed” its healthcare laws in the early days of the Clinton administration. Most insurers left Kentucky, including the one I used. Blue Cross/Blue Shield was my only choice thanks to Kentucky’s insurance reform. BC/BS premiums were much higher than my previous carrier and its service quality was much worse. Then Gov. Brereton Jones bragged to Bill Clinton on TV that Kentucky would show the nation how to reform healthcare. Kentucky ended up showing the nation that reforming health care leads to fewer choices, higher premiums and lower-quality customer service.
The reasons for the upcoming escalations in insurance premiums are numerous and complex, and by no means are simply related to implementation of the AHCA. These increases were predicted by experts BEFORE the passage of the AHCA, and indeed were part of the impetus to get some sort of universal health care mechanism in place. At the core of the problem are 1) a rapid escalation in the basic costs of medical technology, which has been going on for years, and for which no one seems to have any answer; 2) an ongoing deterioration in the physical well being of the general population in which a host of high cost maladies like diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular and a host of other issues are rampant; 3) an aging population with a high need for expensive interventions, among other factors. Trying to blame all of this on Obama or Obamacare just shows the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of right wing mud slingers and is insulting to the intelligence of anyone familiar with the details of the case.
Maybe the high cost is health care insurance itself? If health care was cash/check only, then a patient would have to decide if they could afford a procedure, med or whatever. With insurance someone else makes the decision if you can afford it, doctors have extra, non medical trained personnel and the insurance companies or govt have lots of people on their payrolls that contribute nothing to anyone’s health. Obama care also contributes nothing to anyone’s health, except for those that get free HC. We all are responsible to keep our selves healthy.
One thing for sure. Good health is not an entitlement. Or using entitlement’s other names, it is not a civil right or an equal right. It is not even a human right whatever those are. We can ruin our health but I am not sure intrinsic health programmed by our DNA can be improved by ????
This is why I didn’t buy into Obama care. I pay all my own bills, with cash, I was ripped of once by insurance, I payed for, for over 5 years, and was tod it was pre existing so they would not pay my bill of $3,000.00 , I have no interest in insurance companies telling me how to care for myself with poison drugs. I’d rather die . I’ll take all my parts with me, not a downer, I payed for all my organs.
Odrama is The Son Of Satan a born liar fron Kenya.
Speaking of corruption and Obama what about TPP? Why the secrecy for 6 years until last Thursday? While the majority was engrossed with the Confederate flag TPP was passed. So the middle class of this country will be annihilated and the U.S. economy and its laws will be governed by TPP committee nullifying U.S. sovereignty.
IMO the fundamental problem, with govt as it presently operates which has been accelerated by this Admin, is this. The govt is a govt for the govt, or as a NY transit official said years ago. “The public be damned”. The promise/hope of Constitutional govt is govt for the people, by the people. With elected officials being public servants not rulers as is the current mind set, attitude in DC. And it is a govt by the party elites who are our “royalty”. or in the case of Obama, our ayatollah in charge!
Interest money paid by the govt to the owners of the fed res to the tune of perhaps hundreds of billions per year, no strings attached, is the basis of our campaign funding and lobbyists. Essentially we the people are disenfranchised. This is clearly illustrated by the election of Obama, probably a muslim sympathizer, who has not mentioned our freedoms a single time while in office! Civil rights are now just a form of patronage to all three branches which have withered because the root of the govt, the Constitution, has been severed or damaged. Does anyone in DC have an affection and belief in the form of govt described by the Constitution as viable, legitimate, desirable? Or is DC chaos city with reelection/career the reason they are in office? Using spending of more and more money as the answer/solution to being ‘electable’? Praise the dollar is their battle cry! Meanwhile muslims are engaged in a stealth crusade to destroy and eliminate, not just Israel, but all of western civilization. Their Trojan Horse is their religion! Islam is the mother of all socialism.
A major loss in our society, since the end of WWII, is loss of identity that we are all responsible for our own actions! An illustration of this is the idea advanced by elected officials when calling SS and “entitlement”. SS was created by elected officials, not by citizens and people contribute into a fund embezzled by elected officials. I did not create this program nor did I force myself to pay SS taxes with age restrictions so how did it become an entitlement? Amnesty and allowing undocumented Syrians or others to become citizens just because they are here or to give only homosexuals the “right”, entitlement, to be married are examples of entitlements. Being born in America is also an entitlement to citizenship. The govt is an incubator of dependency instead of self responsibility which is a product of individual freedom.
I COULDN’T POST THE PICTURE SO I JUST GOT THE LINK.
YES OBAMA IS HORRIBLE, A VERITABLE POS!
The point of the article is that the president is lying about the increases and he is. In 2014, my premium was $125/mo w/ $250 Annual Deductible. In 2015, here comes the AFFORDABLE Health care. Premium is $739.64 w/ a deductible of $6,300. Just received my letter from ins company this week. 2016 premium is $849.50/mo w/ a deductible of $6,850 annually. So, yes he lies. That is more like 40% increase. So, I went from actual affordable ins with great coverage to basically not having insurance because after working full time all my life, I can not afford to go to the doctor.
We have all been screwed, or Grubered since he was the one who said American’s are too stupid to understand they were being screwed. Obamaccare was designed to screw all but the very poor, standard operating procedure of white house liberal liars. My premiums have doubled, my deductible tripled and I lost my health plan and doctor, and as the facts come out slowly as they are to insure the fraud is out of office by the time we all see we have been screwed, only then will the masses of asses who vote will see the truth, this was designed to fail so as to destroy the health insurance industry and become just another government program as in single payer tied to IRS as its enforcer and then even the poor will suffer the consequences of this disaster called obamacare and it will be the final nail in the American economy as trillions more will be wasted in the end. PERIOD
When are folks, particularly the media, going to understand that ObamaCare is not a disturbance in our health care. The Lenin-Marxist doctrine requires government control of public health care as the pivotal lynchpin in creating a socialist takeover. Too many people still caught-up in the details to miss the larger insidious plot. Wake up America!
I do believe that it would be prudent if a limit of 2 terms be applied to the Senate, Congress and House of Representatives.
Doing this would make them think on how they are voting for their state.
When you see a Supreme Court Justice fall asleep during a presidential speech, which I admit is usually of no significant information, isn’t it time for them to be replaced.
Also, how about all the above I mentioned before have a report card every six months, posted so we can see how they are voting and who is funding their campaigns. There is so much dirt in the government that it certainly needs a clean up.
Hillary has to turn over her emails, how about EVERYONES EMAILS be read. How do you think other countries know about what’s going on here. You can say what you want about Bill Clinton. Frankly I really don’t care what he did in his office or anywhere else. At least when he left office, WE WERE IN THE BLACK !!!!!!!!!!!! Now we owe trillions to the Chinese!!
When are the people of these United States going to start being UNITED???