Posted on 11/11/2013 5:28:25 PM PST by xzins
There is nothing about ObamaCare that’s working. It took a pack of lies to sell ObamaCare – which passed in the Senate by a single vote.
But the ultimate problem that dooms ObamaCare is cost — the sticker shock of the monthly premiums people are experiencing right now who have been thrown into the ObamaCare exchanges. According to a 49-state study by the Manhattan Institute , ObamaCare is causing an average increase in premiums for individuals of 41 percent.
The primary reason this is happening is that the architects of ObamaCare confuse health insurance with health coverage.
The purpose of health insurance is to protect one from a financial catastrophe in the event of a serious accident or a catastrophic illness. If you want to keep your monthly premiums cheap, you accept a high deductible of $5,000.
That is, your insurance pays nothing unless your medical expenses exceed $5,000 in a year. Until you hit the $5,000 in expenses level, you pay your health care costs out of pocket.
You pay for your doctor visits, your check ups, your prescriptions, your flu shots, your colds and sniffles. You pay for your routine vision care and routine dental work — teeth cleanings, fillings, and the like.
I keep my car insurance premiums low with the exact same approach. I have a $2,000 deductible. More importantly, I don’t make insurance claims for fender benders. I pay for those of pocket.
But that’s not the ObamaCare product.
Instead, according to the list on HealthCare.gov, everyone’s health insurance plan must now include:
Contraception, including the abortion-inducing “morning after” pill and vasectomies;
Maternity and newborn care (even though I’ve a 55-year old male with kids out of the nest)
Mental health and substance abuse counseling and treatment
Prescription drugs
Pediatric services
Behavioral health treatment
Rehab treatment
Dental and vision care
Alcohol Misuse screening and counseling
Aspirin use to prevent cardiovascular disease for men and women of certain ages
Blood Pressure screening for all adults
Cholesterol screening for adults of certain ages or at higher risk
Colorectal Cancer screening for adults over 50
Depression screening for adults
Diabetes (Type 2) screening for adults with high blood pressure
Diet counseling for adults at higher risk for chronic disease
HIV screening for everyone ages 15 to 65, and other ages at increased risk
Immunization vaccines for adults–doses, recommended ages, and recommended populations vary: Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B, Herpes Zoster, Human Papillomavirus, Influenza (Flu Shot), Measles, Mumps, Rubella, Meningococcal, Pneumococcal, Tetanus, Diphtheria, Pertussi, Varicella
Obesity screening and counseling for all adults
Sexually Transmitted Infection (STI) prevention counseling for adults at higher risk
Syphilis screening for all adults at higher risk
Tobacco Use screening for all adults and cessation interventions for tobacco users
Anemia screening on a routine basis for pregnant women
Breast Cancer Genetic Test Counseling (BRCA)for women at higher risk for breast cancer
Breast Cancer Mammography screenings every 1 to 2 years for women over 40
Breast Cancer Chemoprevention counseling for women at higher risk
Breastfeeding comprehensive support and counseling from trained providers, and access to breastfeeding supplies, for pregnant and nursing women
Cervical Cancer screening for sexually active women
Chlamydia Infection screening for younger women and other women at higher risk
Contraception: Food and Drug Administration-approved contraceptive methods, sterilization procedures, and patient education and counseling, as prescribed by a health care provider for women with reproductive capacity.
Domestic and interpersonal violence screening and counseling for all women
Folic Acid supplements for women who may become pregnant
Gestational diabetes screening for women 24 to 28 weeks pregnant and those at high risk of developing gestational diabetes
Gonorrhea screening for all women at higher risk
Hepatitis B screening for pregnant women at their first prenatal visit
HIV screening and counseling for sexually active women
Human Papillomavirus (HPV) DNA Test every 3 years for women with normal cytology results who are 30 or older Osteoporosis screening for women over age 60 depending on risk factors
Rh Incompatibility screening for all pregnant women and follow-up testing for women at higher risk
Sexually Transmitted Infections counselingfor sexually active women
Syphilis screening for all pregnant women or other women at increased risk
Tobacco Use screening and interventions for all women, and expanded counseling for pregnant tobacco users
Urinary tract or other infection screening for pregnant women
Well-woman visits to get recommended services for women under 65
Autism screening for children at 18 and 24 months
Behavioral assessments for children at the following ages: 0 to 11 months, 1 to 4 years, 5 to 10 years, 11 to 14 years, 15 to 17 years.
Blood Pressure screening for children at the following ages: 0 to 11 months, 1 to 4 years , 5 to 10 years, 11 to 14 years, 15 to 17 years.
Cervical Dysplasia screening for sexually active females
Depression screening for adolescents
Developmental screening for children under age 3
Dyslipidemia screening for children at higher risk of lipid disorders at the following ages: 1 to 4 years, 5 to 10 years, 11 to 14 years, 15 to 17 years.
Fluoride Chemoprevention supplements for children without fluoride in their water source
Gonorrhea preventive medication for the eyes of all newborns
Hearing screening for all newborns
Height, Weight and Body Mass Index measurements for children at the following ages: 0 to 11 months, 1 to 4 years, 5 to 10 years,11 to 14 years, 15 to 17 years.
Hematocrit or Hemoglobin screening for children
Hemoglobinopathies or sickle cell screening for newborns
HIV screening for adolescents at higher risk
Hypothyroidism screening for newborns
Immunization vaccines for children from birth to age 18 —doses, recommended ages, and recommended populations vary: Diphtheria, Tetanus, Pertussis, Haemophilus influenzae type b, Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B, Human Papillomavirus, Inactivated Poliovirus, Influenza (Flu Shot), Measles, Mumps, Rubella, Meningococcal, Pneumococcal, Rotavirus, Varicella
Iron supplements for children ages 6 to 12 months at risk for anemia
Lead screening for children at risk of exposure
Medical History for all children throughout development at the following ages: 0 to 11 months, 1 to 4 years, 5 to 10 years, 11 to 14 years, 15 to 17 years.
Obesity screening and counseling
Oral Health risk assessment for young children Ages: 0 to 11 months, 1 to 4 years, 5 to 10 years.
Phenylketonuria (PKU) screening for this genetic disorder in newborns
Sexually Transmitted Infection (STI) prevention counseling and screening for adolescents at higher risk Tuberculin testing for children at higher risk of tuberculosis at the following ages: 0 to 11 months, 1 to 4 years, 5 to 10 years, 11 to 14 years, 15 to 17 years.
Vision screening for all children.
This is not a joke or satire. I copied and pasted all this directly from the healthcare.gov website.
All this cumulatively is very expensive.
Obama must think we are all living in the doctor’s office. We don’t need or want all this crap. Most people don’t need most of the items on this list.
I’ve never had a flu shot. I don’t plan on ever getting one. I pay for my own eyeglasses, teeth cleanings, and annual physical exams.
When and if we need some of these items, most of us can pay for these kinds of routine items out of pocket, which would be even easier with tax-free health care savings accounts.
How expensive is a condom?
Is that what we really need health insurance to cover? Should I really be required to pay for someone else’s STD screenings?
Insurance is always a bad bet — which is why you want as little insurance as possible. Insurance companies make a good profit by betting on your continued good health. I don’t think this makes them evil.
You should follow the example of the insurance companies and bet on your own good health. You only need insurance to protect yourself from a true disaster.
And, of course, anything and everything the government gets involved in gets more expensive. usually exponentially.
But, you might ask, what about people pre-existing conditions?
That’s an easy fix.
They can be put in a high-risk pool and subsidized. But let’s not include self-inflicted illnesses (such as alcoholism, drug abuse, and obesity) in the pre-existing condition category.
But what about the elderly?
We have Medicare. Without ObamaCare, we could restore the $716 BILLION that Obama stole from Medicare to pay for ObamaCare.
What about the poor?
We have Medicaid.
So there was no need at all for anything like ObamaCare.
Yes, the old system needed some reforms — some tweaks here and there.
My Nine Tweaks that Would Have Fixed Most of the Flaws in America’s Health Care System
After we repeal ObamaCare, here would be my nine-point plan (tweaks) to fix the old U.S. health care system, which was the best in the world:
1) If really needed, expand Medicaid to address the uncovered poor (easy to expand an existing, well-established program).
2) Make health insurance tax-deductible for individuals (like it is for businesses).
3) Allow insurers to compete across state lines (competition always brings costs down, improves quality and choices)
4) Expand Health Care Savings Accounts (Tax-deferred, like-IRAs)
5) Cap Medical malpractice lawsuit awards (a big upward driver of health care costs)
6) Subsidize those with expensive pre-existing conditions. This could probably be done through Medicaid.
7) Those who show up at an Emergency Room without health insurance would be treated, but then sanctioned criminally. Probably pay a fine or do community service. Multiple offenders risk jail time (like deadbeat dads). That takes care of the Emergency Room problem. It’s a requirement that everyone have some kind of health insurance done the right way.
8) Medical costs and doctor visits should be tax-deductible to encourage illness prevention.
9) Restore the $716 billion that was stolen from Medicare to pay for ObamaCare.
I actually think Medicare was a pretty good idea. Our parents and grandparents should not be bankrupted for the getting old, or not treated when they get cancer or other fatal or debilitating illness through no fault of their own. Getting old is beyond the scope of what we can expect private insurance to cover. But we certainly don’t need Medicare for all, including the healthy who are producing income. The private insurance market most certainly can cover the young and healthy.
These reforms could fit on a single sheet of paper — in contrast to the 2,700-page ObamaCare law, plus 15,000 pages of ObamaCare regulations.
There.
Health care insurance problems fixed.
We bring overall health care costs down by phasing out third-party payment systems as much as possible (including employer-provided insurance) and by making individuals responsible for the lion’s share of their own health care coverage. Then watch health care costs drop.
Flat screen TVs, personal computers, and cell phones used to be prohibitively expensive for most people. Now almost everyone can afford them, even people on welfare. A flat screen TV used to cost $20,000 when they first hit the market. Now they cost $600 — for a good one.
When the market is allowed to operate freely, without a lot of government interference and mandates, costs always come down — often to almost nothing.
This is how human progress occurs. This is how free-market capitalism helps everyone become better off, including the poor — as even oneof my favorite rockers Bono admits .
We then take care of the elderly with Medicare (when health care really can become prohibitively costly). And we provide for the poor with Medicaid. All this was happening under the pre-ObamaCare system.
We had a mostly good health care system. It just needed a few tweaks, some minor adjustments.
There was no need to completely reorganize 18 percent of the U.S. economy with ObamaCare.
Dummies will still blame the evil Republicans regardless. At least I have one convert at work. He’s all quiet now about Obamacare.
While I agree with you that we should always question their motives, I think it’s important for our fellow citizens to see some of the absurd things that are required to be in EVERY policy.
WHY should maternity be in the policy of EVERY American?
Why should ASPIRIN be paid for by insurance AND required in every policy?
If you’re a reckless driver, then you should have to have that kind of car insurance, but I’m not, and the government shouldn’t be requiring me to have it.
If you like fragrance in your car, then go buy it, you shouldn’t have the government requiring it in EVERY car insurance policy.
This kind of nonsense is exactly what opens peoples’ eyes sometimes about the difference between too much government and a government that only handles essential items for governments. When they start thinking along those lines, then it’s possible that good can follow close behind.
I don’t think it isn’t working.
It’s working grandly to blow back in the Dems’ faces!!
Those evil Republicans didn’t stop the evil Democrats from being too evil :-)
Perhaps at the outset, when the thing was just a plan and a piece of legislation. Now that the roll-out has produced a catastrophic fail of truly epic proportions, accompanied by almost universal ridicule, NOBODY wants to be associated with it, particularly nobody running for re-election in the midterms. It's only the Obama-worshipping denizens of the media, with their desperate search to find any miniscule silver lining in this massive black cloud, who have anything remotely positive to say about it.
It is true that some people don’t have the money to pay for any kind of health insurance. Especially if there are dependents involved, that’s an important issue. Some people — many irresponsible — will never get there.
The Good Samaritan type coverage in emergency rooms for that kind of thing was not necessary, but I understood it, and in the context of a Good Samaritan, I was willing to go along with it.
It got abused and got crazy.
At least they should have been tracking individual abusers by SSN, so they could modify to deny emergency room care.
Without something as harsh as the threat of jail time, you're giving hospitals no other choice but to: (1) require uninsured patients to pay cash or post a bond up front, or (2) close down.
That's OK, neither does the Government.
I am not even sure what really qualifies as a GOP-E anyhow. I guess that’s GOP lite or something. Dunno. Hard to be as demented as a modern Democrat.
Well these plans as employer benefits were never that for a long time. They were more like health maintenance plans. It would be like car insurance that covered oil changes.
Really? Glad you got that off your chest.
But what about oil changes? At first glance it would seem silly for an auto insurance policy to cover routine maintenance like an oil change. But what if an auto insurance policy covered powertrain failures in addition to loss and damage from collisions, theft, etc.? In a hypothetical case like that (which might be a good parallel to medical insurance), the insurance company has a huge financial incentive not only to cover oil changes, but to require you to have the oil changed regularly as a condition of maintaining your insurance.
You beat me to it! See Post #53.
Well whatever it is, it isn’t quite an insurance policy now. It’s maintenance.
There isn’t any well-man visit coverage since men tend to vote Republican.
Behavioral assessments for children at the following ages: 0 to 11 months, 1 to 4 years, 5 to 10 years, 11 to 14 years, 15 to 17 years.
You seem to be missing the whole reason for ObamaCare. It has nothing to do with healthcare, nor with insurance. It is all about control. Control over your decisions. Control over nearly every aspect of your life. And control over who lives, and who dies.
Much like the reason for Marine boot camp, where the DIs mentally and emotionally "break down" the Marine recruits, only to mold them into a cohesive fighting force, the reason for this nightmarish "roll-out" is to break down the public's expectations of what health care should be, and in many cases, what the public has come to depend on, in order to replace it with a nationalized health care system, much like that in Great Britain. IIRC, one of the "architects" of ObamaCare has been repeatedly quoted as admiring the NHS, and hoping to turn the US health care system, formerly one of the best in the world, into a clone of the NHS.
Mark
I’m glad you posted the article. I’m NOT against the exposition of the listed absurdities, and have often called for in my commentaries the exposing of Leftist idiocies.
MY POINT being we need be more active exposing the true motives of the Marxists.
Obamacare is a tool, a stealth transport tool to sneak past our populace’s sensibilities, our securities under the guise of healthcare the basis of the control the Marxist’s require to establish a form of government the Marxist’s can protect long enough for it to become accepted as the ruling entity. It doesn’t take much time once established for the masses to acquiesce. They already are.
That stood out to me...what does that mean? Is this psychological analysis?
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