In the immortal words of Nancy Pelosi – we needed to pass the bill so we could find out what was in it. Now we know. Obamacare is a clusterfuck wrapped in a massive bureaucratic blanket of rules, regulations, and mandates, which is going to cost trillions and cover far less people than advertised. The entire country is about to undergo a giant proctology exam conducted by Obama and his band of control freaks.
Wheels coming off
ObamaCare policies will cost more, cover far fewer than promised
- By BETSY MCCAUGHEY
The central parts of ObamaCare don’t roll out until 2014, but the wheels are already falling off this clunker. The latest news from four federal agencies is that 1) insurance will be a lot less affordable than Americans were led to expect, 2) fewer people than promised will get insurance and 3) millions of people who have coverage through a job now will lose it, thanks to the president’s “reforms.” Oh, and children are the biggest victims.
The Affordable Care Act is looking less and less affordable.
Start with the IRS’s new estimate for what the cheapest family plan will cost by 2016: $20,000 a year to cover two adults and three kids. And that will only cover 60 percent of medical bills, so add hefty out-of-pocket costs, too.
The next surprise is for parents who thought their kids would be covered by an employer. Sloppy wording in the law left that unclear until last week, when the IRS ruled that kids won’t be covered.
Starting in 2014, the law will require employers with 50 or more full-time employees to offer coverage or pay a penalty. “Affordable” coverage, that is — meaning the employee can’t be told to contribute more than 9.5 percent of his salary. For example, a worker earning $40,000 a year cannot be required to pay more than $3.800.
But the law doesn’t specifically mandate family coverage — and now the administration says that won’t be required.
You can see why: If the lowest-cost family plan (again, two adults and three kids) is to run a whopping $20,000, and if the employee’s contribution is limited to $3,800, the employer’s tab would be $16,200 — adding about $7.40 an hour to the cost of that employee. Wisely, the IRS announced on Jan. 30 that employers won’t have to pay for dependents.
But the Congressional Budget Office’s much-cited prediction that ObamaCare would leave only 30 million people uninsured by 2016 was based on the assumption that kids would be covered by employers. At the very least, employers insuring their workers for the first time to avoid the penalty are unlikely to do that.
So how will the kids be covered? They won’t. The IRS shocked the law’s advocates by announcing that the insurance exchanges won’t provide subsidies for a child whose parent is covered at work.
Nor will these parents be penalized for not insuring their children — the IRS will kindly consider the kids exempt from the mandate.
Also exempt are millions of people who’ll stay uninsured because their state is wisely choosing not to loosen Medicaid eligibility.
Some background: Despite President Obama’s promises to help solve the problem of the uninsured by making private health plans more affordable, the law expands coverage mainly by forcing states to loosen their Medicaid eligibility rules. But the Supreme Court ruled that the feds can’t command states in this way.
At first, the CBO said that ruling would only prevent 4 million people from gaining coverage — but more states than it expected are refusing to go along; it could well be 8 million more without coverage.
Oh, and the CBO last week also doubled its previous estimate on how many people will lose the health coverage they now get through work, upping the figure to 8 million by 2016 and 12 million by 2019. Several top consulting firms put the figures even higher.
Yet the biggest setback is that most states are refusing to set up insurance exchanges. The exchanges are supposed to sell the government-mandated plans and hand out taxpayer-funded subsidies to most enrollees.
Here’s the glitch. The law says that in states that refuse, the federal government can set up an exchange. But the law empowers only state exchanges, not federal ones, to hand out subsidies. The Obama administration says it will disregard the law and offer subsidies in all 50 states anyway, but the case will likely go to the Supreme Court.
If the courts uphold the clear language of the law, then some 8 million people in the affected states won’t be eligible for subsidies to cover that $20,000 (or more) insurance bill. That’s another 8 million without coverage.
All in all, at least 40 million people could be uninsured in 2016, only 9 million fewer than before the law was passed.
Expect the momentum for repealing this law to grow as its flaws, perverse incentives and faulty predictions come to light.
Betsy McCaughey is the author of “Beating ObamaCare.”
Eddie says:
Obamacare is the Republicans’ last best hope to get a candidate elected in 2016. Working people are going to rise up and vote against the party that gave them this economic succubus.
“Healthcare…eliminate the middle-man.”
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12th February 2013 at 9:01 am
Mark says:
Well, the good thing about Health Care and high tax rates as well is it will hurt high income cities and high income states at the margin the hardest.
How ironic that the goal of Health Care is to shift the unsustainable cost at the Federal level to the States. And those states voted for Hussein.
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12th February 2013 at 9:30 am
AWD says:
84% of doctors agree,
It’s better to retire or quit medicine than practice under Obamacare.
That should tell you something. Welcome to third-world healthcare!
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12th February 2013 at 9:46 am
AWD says:
More money to HMO’s, letting HMO’s off the leash, and then making everyone buy insurance (from HMO’s). Why? Because HMO’s wrote Obamacare.
More free shit for the FSA (16 million more on Medicaid, which is free healthcare). More taxes, higher taxes, Obamataxes. Fines, and of course, waivers for Obama and democratic campaign contributors.
I’d like to string plastic Pelosi up by her botoxed jowls and flog the bitch.
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12th February 2013 at 9:53 am
Mark says:
Just a thought. Families should opt for the Mexican or Responsible Negro Plan. File for divorce, apply for all aide. Sublet section 8 to friends or just get a kick back from renter to off set increases in health care costs.
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12th February 2013 at 10:29 am
BUCKHED says:
A co-worker who interviewed for a new job was told by his perspective employer that the company will never have more than 19 company employees due to Obamacare. The rest would be hired through a temp. agency in order to skirt the need to implement Obama’s plan.
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12th February 2013 at 10:31 am
BUCKHED says:
Damn Nancy P…..you folks should have read the fucking bill BEFORE you voted on it. Then again what do you expect from a law written by LOBBYISTS !
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12th February 2013 at 10:35 am
Hollow man says:
And you wonder what the military is doing running drills in the cities and towns of the good ol United States. One way to lower health care costs is to have less unhealthy people along with fewer healthy who disagree. Health care law takes care of the first. The police state takes care of the rest.
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12th February 2013 at 11:05 am
Hope@ZeroKelvin says:
Well, as one of the few doctors that I know that actually attempted to read the fucking thing, could have told ya’ so….
Obamacare WILL result in few doctors, less access, less quality and higher cost. “Healthcare with the efficiency of the US Postal Office, the compassion of the IRS, at Pentagon pricing.”
Obamacare WILL result in cascading job losses, cutback in hours and loss of benefits for workers. Ya’ know, Obamacare defines 30 hours as full time to be eligible for benefits. Since 70% of our economy is due to consumer spending, this results in cascading and catastrophic economic contraction.
Obamacare WILL result in the destruction of the private healthcare insurance industry, forcing all the “little people” into giant, faceless, crappy, public systems. If you live near a big charity hospital, like Cook County in Chitown, Ben Taub in Houston, USC Harbor in LA, Charity in NO, take a little tour (in the daylight and heavily armed) and let me know how you like it.
I have ceased to worry about it, actually. Personally, I have prepared as well as I can. If it all goes tits up, yeah, right, McKesson is coming after our practice for a $500K chemo drug bill – NOT.
Now, the G7 meeting starts by announcing that there are no currency wars – which is a tacit admission that there is………
What is troubling is the complete and total failure of the MSM to vet Obama back in 2008 and their loathsome toadying and Obama cock sucking since.
When the revolution comes, the members of the MSM deserve a place up against the wall, IMHO.
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12th February 2013 at 11:23 am
Administrator says:
Dr. Ben Carson On Criticizing Obamacare: “Somebody Has To Stand Up To The Bullies”
DR. BENJAMIN CARSON: There are a group of people who would like to silence everybody and have everybody go along to get along, but that’s not going to be very helpful for us in the long run, in terms of solving our problems. And somebody has to be courageous enough to actually stand up to, you know, the bullies.
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DR. CARSON: One of the things I also said during the speech is there will be some people who will say, ‘but you’re a doctor and you’re a surgeon, you should be sticking to that.’ And I mentioned the fact that five physicians signed the Declaration of Independence and were involved in the framing of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and several other things.
There’s absolutely no reason at all that physicians, scientists, shouldn’t be involved in things that affect all of us. We’re people who’ve learned how to make decisions based on facts, empirical data, rather than on ideology, and one of the geniuses, one of the real things that made us a great nation, is that we brought people from all backgrounds into the legislative process. So that all of us would be able to place our interests there and we’ve gone significantly away from that.
And no one goes up to a lawyer and says why are you getting involved in this, that and the other thing. I don’t see why they would say it to a physician, who has more education than anyone else in society.
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DR. CARSON: There’s no question that [President Obama] has advocated, you know, basically a policy of tax the rich. And I have advocated a policy that comes from the Bible, which is a very fair policy of proportional taxation. If it was good enough for God, why wouldn’t it be good enough for us? The minute you deviate away from that, you begin to get into all kinds of biases. And one could legitimately make the argument that the rich pays too many taxes. The top 1% pays 37% of the taxes, the top 5% [pays] 59% of the taxes, but they don’t make that much of the income. One could make that argument.
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NEIL CAVUTO, FOX NEWS: Obviously, you got a quite a round of applause there. Some in that room and elsewhere since that video has gone viral have said you should run for president. What do you think of that?
DR. BENJAMIN CARSON: Well, actually I’ve had people tell me that for many years now. If I had a nickel for everybody who told me that, I could finance my campaign.
CAVUTO: You and me both. You and me both. Your reaction to that is what? I mean, you don’t think that’s for you? You want to be a doctor and help people, what?
DR. CARSON: I’ve always said if God grabs me by the collar and sticks me in that arena, that’s the only way that I’ll do it. But, no, I’m actually going to retire in June from surgery. I will still teach, I will still be involved, but I’m going to retire from surgery, so it does open up a lot of possibilities for me. I’m very focused on education and getting the populace back to where it used to be — like back in 1831 when Alexis de Tocqueville was so impressed — because an uneducated populace will fall for anything.
And if you and you talk to most people, they mean well but they don’t have much of a breadth of education, of knowledge, of understanding of what the real issues are and, therefore, they listen to pundits on television who tell them what they’re supposed to think and they keep repeating that and pretty soon they say, ‘Oh, well that must be true.’ (Your World, February 11, 2013)
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12th February 2013 at 11:27 am
Hope@ZeroKelvin says:
I have a total crush on Dr. Carson, I confess.
If it was me at that Prayer Breakfast I would have probably snatched Moochelle’s “Flip Wilson/Geraldine” wig off her head and stufffed it down Lord Ovomatoid’s throat. Which is why I never get invited to these things.
As I predicted Sun night: The trashing of Dr. Carson is beginning. That fat toad Bob Beckel was trash talking him on The Five yesterday. Just wait. Hell hath no fury like a liberal progressive shown to be WRONG. And God help the black person that strays off the fed.gov plantation.
Go GO GOOOO Dr. Carson!!!!!
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12th February 2013 at 11:33 am
sangell says:
Hugh Joyce, small business owner, examines actual copy of the affordable care act.
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12th February 2013 at 11:36 am
Hollow man says:
Great guy, Admin and you cannot give up the fight and still live with yourself, if principled. I just think it is to late. The coup was a sucess. Tears me apart but, I must prepare for what is ahead. At what point do you hunker down to protect the family and stop fighting? Most Americans still have no clue. Some are communist and do not even realize it. It is a mad mad mad world.
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12th February 2013 at 11:40 am
DaveL says:
Tonight at the Sof theU speech:
“Tonight I am issuing Executive Order #157. All citizens over age 65 will be deemed to be terrorists and I have instructed the DOD, DHS and the CIA to initiate an immediate drone program. This act will save approximately 572 billion dollars over the next year, which can be used to offset the increased costs in SSDI and SNAP cards. It will also allow us to increase the minutes to 250 on your free cell phone so you can call granny and say goodbye.”
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12th February 2013 at 11:42 am
Kenny G says:
People need to take responsibility for there own health and stop shoveling fat and sugar down there throat every chance they get and stop depending on the tax payer to pick up the tab when the garbage they have been consumming brings sickness and disease………….wake up and realize Obama Care kills.
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12th February 2013 at 12:19 pm
Llpoh says:
Kenny G – that will only kick the can down the road. Most of a person’s medical expenses occur in lat few months of life. People would live longer, but in the end they get sick and die.
For most companies, it will be vastly cheaper to pay the fine than to provide insurance. Gee, I wonder what businesses struggling to turn a profit will do.
$20k for 60% insurance. What a scream. Any major illness – say appendicitis or orthopedic surgery – will send a family to the wall. And where will middle class families get the ten grand a year to add their kids and spouses onto their plans?
What a clusterfuck.
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12th February 2013 at 5:22 pm
Hope@ZeroKelvin says:
My last Obamacare story:
Our attorneys told us that to wade through all the regulations and the bill itself, as well as the other “memos” from HHS, will cost our practice about $1.5 million dollars in attorney’s fees, to figure out if we will be “in compliance or not”. (The legal bill for a major hospital system is about $5 million I am told.)
This is $1.5 million we cannot pass on to the patients as we are contracted and our reimbursements are falling, not increasing.
Mebbe better to just say fuck it and hope for the best. That is my general life strategy anyway so at least I will be consistent, aha aha.
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12th February 2013 at 6:10 pm
Administrator says:
A presentation at my University today about the potential impact of Obamacare said that if we were found to have been in violation of a specific section of the Obamacare law, the fine would be $52 million.
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12th February 2013 at 7:25 pm
AWD says:
Nursing homes, doctors and pharmacies closing and bulldozing their buildings
Lawyers making extra millions
Tens of millions in fines
84% of doctors now want to retire or quit medicine
A $20,000 added expense per family
Taxes, taxes, and more taxes
More free medical care for the FSA
Tens of billions more profits for HMO’s
Massive loss of jobs and cutting hours below 30 per week
Huge new Federal bureaucracy and thousands more IRS agents
What’s not to love about Obamacare?
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12th February 2013 at 7:44 pm
Eddie says:
They will have a harder time finding quality medical care with no doctors. Hmmm. Maybe Obama will just appoint some people to be doctors, the way they appoint judges or something. They can learn on the job. Hope they don’t mind paperwork.
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12th February 2013 at 7:50 pm
llpoh says:
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12th February 2013 at 11:24 pm