I THOUGHT OBAMACARE WAS GOING TO REDUCE HEALTHCARE COSTS

Remember when Obama told us with a straight face that his government healthcare solution would add 30 million people to the health insurance rolls, cover dependents until they were 26 years old and stop insurance companies from denying someone insurance for pre-existing conditions and not result in an increase in healthcare costs? OOPS!!!! It seems he may have been off by a trillion or three. Close enough for a lying politician. Since Barack forced my employer to expand dependent coverage to 26 year olds and cover pre-existing conditions for new employees, I’ve seen my premiums go up and my co-pay go from $15 to $25. I’m still waiting for that windfall raise from the 3,000% decrease in insurance premiums for my employer. How long do you think I’ll need to wait?

“How many people are getting insurance through their jobs right now? Raise your hands. All right. Well, a lot of those folks, your employer it’s estimated would see premiums fall by as much as 3,000 percent, which means they could give you a raise.”Barack Obama

Obama Health Care Bill Signing Ceremony

Health-Care Spending to Reach 20% of U.S. Economy by 2021

By Alex Wayne – Jun 13, 2012 12:01 AM ET

An aging population, improving economy and President Barack Obama’s health-care overhaul will push spending on medical services to almost 20 percent of U.S. gross domestic product by 2021, the government projected.

Spending on hospital visits, medications and other health care rose an estimated 3.9 percent in 2011 and consumed about 17.9 percent of GDP, the same as the previous two years, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said yesterday. The increases in such expenditures will continue to outpace economic growth projections, jumping 7.4 percent in 2014, when much of the insurance expansion created by the health law begins.

With a Supreme Court decision looming this month on the constitutionality of the health law, the Obama administration and Republican opponents have squabbled over whether the measure can trim medical spending while adding more than 30 million people to insurance rolls. The law would add 0.1 percentage point to average annual health spending through 2021, according to an analysis published in the journal Health Affairs.

“The real mystery is, what happens once we get past this projection period, when things have the real potential for spending going way out of control?” said Joe Antos, an adviser to the Congressional Budget Office who works as a health economist at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington- based research group that advocates for limited government.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a blog post that the law “is helping control health costs and expand coverage, and ensure better health and better health care, for all Americans in the next decade and well beyond.”

Glide Path

Chris Jacobs, a health-policy aide to Republican lawmakers on the Joint Economic Committee in Congress, said in an e-mail that the law puts government programs “on a glide path to becoming the majority of all health-care spending.”

Federal, state and local governments are projected to spend $2.4 trillion on health care in 2021, half of all U.S. medical expenditures, according to the analysis in Health Affairs by actuaries and economists from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Government accounted for about 46 percent of health spending through 2013.

Increased rebates from drug companies selling to Medicaid patients and limits imposed by the law on insurers’ profits had “little overall impact” on national health spending in 2011, the researchers said. Total U.S. health-care expenditures will surpass $3 trillion in 2014 and reach $4.8 trillion in 2021, according to the government data.

The government researchers may have underestimated growth by assuming that scheduled cuts in Medicare payments to physicians and hospitals aren’t reversed by Congress, said Antos of the American Enterprise Institute.

“That’s too rosy,” he said by telephone.

44
Leave a Reply

avatar
  Subscribe  
Notify of
No Field Five
No Field Five

Admin says “I thought Obamacare was going to reduce healthcare costs?”

We had to pass the bill to find out that it wouldn’t. 🙂

Nice pic – figures that ol’ permasmile is the only one staring at the camera. I think I could do without ever seeing that face again.

Wyoming Mike
Wyoming Mike

In all seriousness, is that Gary Coleman in that picture?!?!?!?

Robmu1
Robmu1

Histrorians will puzzle over those huge rallies that greeted Obama’s election with bewilderment as they look back at the catastrophe that was his legacy.

Persnickety
Persnickety

The most likely legacy of Obummer is paving the way for overt fascism here. What’s that quote – fascism will come to town waving the flag and quoting the bible? Does that sound like any candidates we have this year? Anyone? Bueller?

Anyone voting hopefully for rMoney is going to get at least as rude a shock as the legions of doped-up lemmings who elected Obummer.

TC
TC

They’re all smiling because they know they will never have to work an honest day’s work for the rest of their lives, and more than likely their children won’t have to either.

AWD

The Supreme Court will do the right thing. Please say a prayer that they will. It is, without a doubt, the biggest abortion of the long and destructive career of BHO. It puts a knife into the back of healthcare.

Not to worry though, black voters “have got his back”
comment image

DaveL
DaveL

Asmin says: “How long do you think I’ll need to wait?”

Well, let’s see. I’d say, by the time my ashes have floated from Sesuit Harbor in Dennis, MA to the Republic of Fiji in the south pacific.

AWD

he called you “Asmin”

Origin and Meaning of the Name Asmin:

Gender: Girl

Origin: Armenian

Meaning: Jasmine

Pronunciation: (AS mihn)

Form of: Hasmig

DaveL
DaveL

I can be a cheap prick sometimes. There are prictically no letters left on my keyboard, and you don’t have an edit button so I can correct my faux pas. But, perhaps Assman would be appropriate on occasion. Afterall, you do hang out a the Jersey Shore and Snookie’s is big enough to spot when you’re out in the Pequod.

MuckAbout

@DaveL: Let me know if you need me to go on Ebay and buy you a nice used KB for $6 to $8. I found 10 or more. It would be worth us buying it for you so we wouldn’t have to decipher your sorry typing!

MA

DaveL
DaveL

“Administrator says:

12 freaking dollars.”

Yeah, and the fucking letters wear off in 3 months. What I do sometimes is gouge out the letters on the keys with an awl and then paint over them. Just don’t do it often enough. $2.00

ron
ron

How do you wear them off so fast? you hanging out in porn chat rooms or what?

Hope
Hope

Let me ‘splain to youse that are hard of thinking of what Obamacare was REALLY about.

Obamacare. Has. Nothing. Nothing. NOTHING. To. Do. With. Healthcare Access. Or. Health Insurance. Nothing What So Fucking. Ever.

Read that sentence about 10 times then keep reading.

Obamacare is about:

1) The destruction of the private healthcare industry. Yup, youse read that right. While the healthcare insurers were backing the bill, they were too stupid and greedy to realize that they are the dog on whom’s nose the scorpion was perched to cross the river. Remember what happened the dog? Riiigghht. Once the river was crossed, the scorpion stung, and killed, the dog. The dying dog asks, “Why”? The scorpion replies, “Why? I am a fucking scorpion. Killing things after I have extracted all maximum value is how I roll, dawg. Bye sucker!.”

The fed.gov is the scorpion in this story, duh. So, the reason your private health insurance premiums are either skyrocketing or disappearing all together, is because Obamacare calls for no pre-existing conditions, no upper limit on the amount of coverage and keeping your kids on until the age 26. There are now MORE services being supported by the SAME amount of premium. Since the margin for health insurance is very slim, AND the fucking CEO has to be paid $20 million for his “services”, the subscribers are gonna (be assfucked) have to pay more $$$.

At some point, the amount of FEDERALLY mandated services exceeds the amount of inflows from the premiums and the health insurer goes tits up. Then what happens? Ding, Ding, Ding!! Looks like today’s Daily Double Alex!!! Here’s the clue: What is the name for a business entity that is not allowed to go bankrupt in 2012 Amerika? Answer: What is TBTF? Ding, ding, Ding!! We have a winner!!!

Now, for a triple bonus question: What happens next to the TBTF entity? Why, I do declare, here is what happens: The actual owners/stakeholders get fucking pennies on the dollar for their UNDER THE LAW FIRST TO BE PAID in bankruptcy assets while the lickspittles and toadies to the current Adminisration get first dibs. (hat tip auto bailout)

So, the private health care industry basically goes tits up, throwing everybody onto the fed.gov system.

Oh, thank you. Having healthcare delivered by the fed.gov is like having the customer service of the IRS with the efficiency of the US Post Office – all at Pentagon prices!!! Thank you!! Can I have some more, please?

2) Obamacare is about CONTROL. It is about CONTROL over the citzenry in the most fundamental way possible – about controlling your health. Your (good) health has a value that is incalculable because once it is lost, no amount of $$ can restore it. The EPA under the insane Lisa Jackson and Obama already want to regulate every single fucking breath you take, ie carbon dioxide. Of course, CO2 generation is part of the fucking KREB’s cycle of cellular respiration, for fuck’s sake, the basis for fucking life on the fucking planet, for fuck’s sake, so by controlling your CO2 emissions, these motherfuckers can control all fucking life on the fucking planet.

Ahem.

Actually, I have ceased to worry about Obamacare. The collapse of my beloved country is, sadly, baked into the cake in soooo many other ways. Worrying about Obamacare is like worrying about which particular tree is consumed when the whole fucking forest is on fire. So sad, too bad.

There, fixed it for ya’.

Got KY?

llpoh
llpoh

Hope – glad to see your sunny disposition has returned.

Colma Rising
Colma Rising

Hope is angry.

Hope
Hope

No, guys, I am my usual sunny self and I am not angry, angry you do not want to see, heh.

What I am is resigned to the inevitable after an exhaustive evaluation of my reasonably available “options”.

That is gobbledegook for:

EMBRACE THE DOOM!!!

sensetti
sensetti

Hope so you think Doctors and nurses will become government employees ?

Hope
Hope

@sensetti:

HAHAHAHAHA! We ALREADY ARE government employees, sans the cushy pension plan, guaranteed salary and benefts.

Most docs have at least a 50% case load of Medicare/Medicaid patients. The rest of our business is so heavily regulated by the fed.go that we might as well be on the fed.gov plantation.

We docs are so fucking stooopid despite being so highly educated.

GAAAHHHH!!!!

By the time we are “official” government employees, there will be NO cushy pension/salary/benefits. We will probably be essentially drafted in by some Executive Order mandating our “voluntary” participation for “the duration of the emergency”.

Oooohhh.

Haven’t said it in a while.

FUCKITY FUCK FUCK DOUBLE FUCK WITH A CHERRY ON TOP.

indialantic
indialantic

Hope @ ZH:

This link of California Rep Maxine Waters speaking with Shell Oil Executives is old, but your above point is about Obamacare is a good one.

Hope
Hope

@John: By their words, ye shall know them.

That video is fucking priceless.

That Hofmeister guy, head of Shell, was just telling Waters what the reality was: You either increase supply or decrase demand or prices will rise, period. It is a fundatmental law of the universe and so completely lost on such a POS as Waters.

BTW: Waters has represented Watts since the 1970s and that part of LA is still a complete piece of shit, no-go area for the lightly pigmented, urban wasteland almost 50 years after the riots.

The problem with the testimony of the oil executives is that it was a bunch of staid boring white guys speaking the reality of supply/demand to a bunch of pyschotically deluded multicultural socialists.

This is the same problem Mittens has in the 2012 election.

FoxFire
FoxFire

I have decided to opt out of the sick-care scam.
If I get broken, and my primary vehicle is a motorcycle, so that deck is slight;y stacked, I will allow the docs to fix me. (I do have very good employer supplied and paid insurance)
However, from watching people I know get treated for “conditions”, if I get sick I’m just going for spontaneous remission.
I have this in writing in my Advanced Health Directive.

sensetti
sensetti

Hope I work with InterQual and advise a group of Doc’s helping them beat back the denials. So far we are fairly successful, but still facing many changes to come as you well know.

Hope
Hope

@sensetti: Thanks for your efforts and God Bless you. There are very few on the side of us and our patients.

I have about 4-8 phone calls daily to make for “peer to peer” discussions to get imaging studies “approved” by some fucking health insurance overseer, most of whom are NOT oncologists and have no fucking clue.

Usually they involve CT/PET scans which I prefer because these studies give me a metabolic correlate with the anatomy and do not involve nephrotoxic iodinated contrast administraion. Many of the patients I treat are elderly with compromised renal function as it is, the use of the iodinated contrast dyes can put many of them in acute renal failure.

Oh, no, the NON-heme/onc doc says. You need to so the study that will 50% chance put your patient in renal failure and then if you can’t make a decision with the CT scans we will approve the PET scan.

Gee, thanks. By the time their kidneys are nuked by contrast dyes, I can’t treat them with chemo anyway so I guess the CT/PET is fucking moot.

Maybe that was the point in the first place.

Like I have said above. We docs are sooooo fuckin stooopid despite being so highly educated.

sensetti
sensetti

gotta watch the creatinine

Hope
Hope

@sensetti:

Yeah, oncology is really very simple. If the performance status is >2, the creatine >2 or the total bili >2, you do not have a realistic hope of delivering effective treatment for most cancer types.

Gee, everything I needed to learn about oncology I learned in kindegarten.

*hat tip Robert Fulghum**

sensetti
sensetti

I think the numbers will end up 60 see ya on the other side. I am in shape and going to stay that way.

sensetti
sensetti

I don’t know what happened half my post is missing, what i said was less than 60 years of age you might get treated over 60 see ya on the other side. I am in shape and going to stay that way

Persnickety
Persnickety

“Gee, thanks. By the time their kidneys are nuked by contrast dyes, I can’t treat them with chemo anyway so I guess the CT/PET is fucking moot. Maybe that was the point in the first place.”

A good friend has worked in-house at several large health insurers. While he hasn’t shared anything quite as blatant as that, the general attitude he’s experienced and shared would absolutely condone that. I think the only reason he hasn’t mentioned something that blatant is that most of the drones aren’t smart enough to come up with that kind of idea, and the few that are, are there by happenstance and actually have ethics.

Alpha Chris
Alpha Chris

This country is fucked and its being led to disaster by TPTB in Warshingten who just wanna line their pockets with cash before they quit/retire/get fired. Assholes.

DaveL
DaveL

“ron says:

How do you wear them off so fast? you hanging out in porn chat rooms or what?”

Too old for porn. I type with one finger and poke, rather than the two hand dainty method. I don’t know what I write all the time, but the following key letters are worn off. E R T I A S D G H N What word can you make from that?

dilligaf

@ DaveL “What word can you make from that?”

eat shit and die.

SAH

Husband works at the Pharmacy. Everyone has to give their DOB to get their scrip. Here are how the generations break down:

1. The few 19teens-1930s people who are alive are in remarkably good shape. They come in and get 1 or 2 meds, often a prescription eyedrops for cataracts or something and are sweet and polite.

2. Boomers are in terrible shape at younger ages, way worse off than their
Elders, but they have great coverage… Either private insurance or union/government or medicare. They come in for a whole laundry list including psych meds, pain killers, diabetes, heart, blood pressure, meds for their bariatric surgery, hormone replacent, viagra, cancer meds and whatever else. Their bill will be $967 for their scrips, and they will have a $12 copay and they freak out and start screaming at him that they have insurance why should they have to pay $12. My uninsured old Millennial husband just bites his tongue. He works 2 jobs and we are uninsured.

3. Gen x and Millennials fall into 2 groups. The uninsured who maybe begrudgingly come in to pay cash for an asthma inhaler or BC pills, or Medicaid/fake disability Drug seekers. They come in jonesing for their next refill of Opiates, muscle relaxers, psych meds. All on the government dime, and obviously scamming the SS Disability system as well. Total bottom feeder scum. But they are the
Minority, most of the post-Boomers can’t afford healthcare since we rolled off of Mom and Dad’s plan. Either it isn’t available at our crap job, or our premiums are 30% of our wage so we waive it and wish for the best and pay out of pocket without. Maybe by not being able to afford to pay the overpriced premiums ( which go to making sure the Boomers get their drug fixes) we are forcing the Boomers to have to pay $12. I don’t know.

What I do know is that when people are in the healthcare “system” they tend to spend a shit-ton of money, especially if they are spending other people’s money. Obama Care was designed to force rebellious post-Boomers into the system, and force us to pay.

flash
flash

The boomers caused this as well.http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/dgkeysearchresult.cfm?word=title_id_list:2034756&slabel=%255BFarm%2520Security%2520Administration%2520Photographs%252E%255D&sScope=images&sLevel=1

SAH, I’m sure you’re off the tit , but don’t you still have a thumb to suck on…how about your blankie?

comment image

Oh, you poor baby…would you like a ba ba?
But don’t worry SAH, the collective borg will always reign supreme over individual liberty.
Imbecilic sheep throughout history have seen to it and there’s no reason this “turning” will be any different.
Human nature being what it is..

So ,Why doesn’t you husband quit supporting the Big Pharma’s drug pushers who are poisoning Americans by the millions with legal drugs and get out in the community and educate people on natural ways to heal your body..OK…it’s the money…just like those evil boomers….always the money…the root of all evil.

Try probiotics for starters— http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Fermentation-Exploration-Essential/dp/160358286X

sensetti
sensetti

Flash some of the young will get theirs too with Obamacare. If you are deemed non compliant with your Dr’s instructions after a period of time you are dropped from the program. I see many, many, young people that will fall into this group. Think the 30 blocks of squalor
.
Disclaimer; the young people I am referring to in the above post are not the college students Admin walks amongst.

efarmer

My wife’s primary oncologist at Mayo was on the Obama health care team, headed to DC all the time, helped write it.

She was FAR, FAR, more concerned with that work than with saving my wife.

I will never forget her for that. Bitch.

EF

Hope@ZeroKelvin
Hope@ZeroKelvin

@efarmer: You can either be a good doctor (concerned and conscientious about your patients) OR you can be a political hack. You can’t be both and do either very well.

Which is why the physicians are continously outflanked by the politicians, insurers and technocrats.

I am very sorry that your oncologist was more concerned with kissing the collective ass of the Obamanistas than trying to help your wife. If it is any comfort to you, this person will go down in history as one of the stupidest useful idiot of all time.

Any doctor that is promoting such a POS “fix” as Obamacare is might as well sit down with Satan and have him serve them a shit sandwich.

Dan
Dan

I’m hoping some day I have the opportunity to punch my father in laws oncologist in the face.

SAH

@flash we don’t want Pharmies, or any Dr care other than triage or actual emergency medicine. Hubby likes being employed, and dispensing legal poison to Drug-hungry Boomers helps push them into the grave faster. The more drugs they take, the faster the system crashes and burns and the faster they go I the grave. We hate Obamacare, and would rather spend our money on non-poisonous whole foods, exercise equipment, and hiking boots. We are on NO scrips. Lifestyle choices are the only thing that keeps people healthy, and if you are a Obese lazy fatass who fried your lungs with cigarettes and your organs with fast food and drugs, you are doomed. No Dr can solve a lifestyle disease. The only helpful, lifesaving medicine they have is Trauma care (fractured bones, massive bleeding, MVA, etc). Obama care takes money out of my budget that is devoted to healthy lifestyle choices – PERSONAL choices – and forces me to subsidize other asshole’s chronic lifestyle diseases. Bullets are cheaper. There is a simpler end to their self-inflicted poor health.

SAH

Paying out of pocket:
We went to the ER 2 years ago when son fell of playground equipment and broke his arm. We are uninsured, so we paid cash right out of our meager savings. Here is what we got for our money.

ER Visit was 4 hours, and cost us over $4,000. We spent 30 min filling out paperwork with a desk person (probably a $12/hour employee). We spent 2 hours waiting in the waiting room. Hubby drank
1 cup of ‘free coffee’ ($1 value) and there was 2 hours of cable TV playing that we didn’t watch ($0.25 value). We made it in and they gave our son pain med so he would stop crying ($5 value). Then we waited 30 more minutes. Then 15 min of X-rays with a Tech ($28/hour employee) but the use of the equipment maybe cost $100 (I’m being generous). Then 1 hour of waiting. Then 15 min with the Dr to put a plastic split on the arm (not even a cast – just a cheap plastic split – 2 min job, with a little bit of talk and exam mixed in). They gave us a 10 page computer print out ($2.50 @ .25/page). We were out the door.

Why $4000? Because uninsured cash-pay people have to subsidize medicare and Medicaid. Because the Feds will only reimburse a hospital $500 for open heart surgery that takes a surgical
team 7 hours of intensive work, they have to overcharge cash-clients, they have to jack up
Fees to private insurance, because the Fed FORCES them to provide certain types of extraordinary care, and then the Fed mandates the payment (always WAY under the actual
Costs). The Hospitals have to make it up, so they drastically overcharge self-pay people.

The system is already fucked. Everything needs to be personal, individual fee-for-service. All ala carte. Pick your services from a menu that has clear prices. You pick, you pay. The Fed Healthcare ponzi scheme has been silently fucking us for years, but now NO ONE HAS A CHOICE. We all are forced by the FED to be all-in. Hospitals are forced to ration care since they can no longer pass the costs along. The Federal Government is the problem with everything.

Discover more from The Burning Platform

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading