The average family has spent tens of thousands of dollars in higher health insurance premiums because Obamacare has not met Obama’s pledges.
According to a recently released report, extending employer-provided health coverage to the average American family equates to buying that family a moderately-priced car every single year. This provides further proof that Barack Obama “sold” a lemon to the American people in the form of Obamacare.
The inexorable rise in health care costs—a rise that candidate Obama pledged to reverse—shows how Obamacare has failed to deliver on its promise. Yet Democrats want to “solve” the problems Obamacare is making worse through even more government regulations, taxes, and spending. Struggling American families deserve relief from both the failed status quo, and Democrats’ desire to put that failed status quo on steroids.
Study of Employer Plans
Release of the annual survey of employer-provided health insurance revealed that, for the first time, the average premium for family coverage exceeded $20,000 in 2019—$20,576, to be exact. That figure compares to $12,680 in 2008, the year Barack Obama was elected to office. Recall that in that same year, candidate Obama repeatedly promised his health plan would lower the average family’s premium by $2,500 per year:
Obamacare has failed to deliver on that pledge, as premiums continue to rise higher and higher:
Obamacare’s failure to deliver on its promise has cost the American people trillions of dollars; the average family has spent tens of thousands of dollars in higher health insurance premiums because Obamacare has not met candidate Obama’s pledges.
Why has Obamacare failed to deliver? Several reasons stand out. First, its numerous regulatory requirements on insurance companies raised rates, in part by encouraging individuals to consume additional care.
The pre-existing condition provisions represent the prime driver of premium increases in the exchange market, according to a Heritage Foundation paper from last year. However, because employer-sponsored plans largely had to meet these requirements prior to Obamacare, they have less bearing on the increase in employer-sponsored premiums.
Second, Obamacare encouraged consolidation within the health care sector—hospitals buying hospitals, hospitals buying physician practices, physician practices merging, health insurers merging, and so on. While providers claim their mergers will provide better care to patients, they also represent a way for doctors and hospitals to demand higher payments from insurers. Reporting has shown how hospitals’ monopolistic practices drive up prices, raising rates for patients and employers alike.
Same Song, Different Verse
How do Democrats propose to remedy the problem of ever-rising health care costs and premiums? With the same “solutions” that failed to deliver under Obamacare.
More Regulations: On issues like “surprise” billing or drug pricing, Democrats’ favored proposals would impose price controls on some or all segments of the health care industry. These price controls would likely limit the supply of care provided, while also reducing its quality.
More Spending: Most Democratic proposals, whether by presidential candidates, liberal think-tanks, or members of Congress, include major amounts of new spending to make health care “affordable” for the American people—an implicit omission that Obamacare (a.k.a. the “Affordable Care Act”) has not delivered for struggling families.
More Taxes: Even though some don’t wish to admit it, the Democratic candidates for president have all proposed plans that would necessitate major tax increases, from the hundreds of billions to the tens of trillions of dollars—even though at least two of those candidates have failed to pay new taxes imposed by Obamacare itself.
More Government Control: Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has famously proposed a single-payer health care plan that would make all private health coverage “unlawful.” And former representative Robert Francis O’Rourke (D-Texas) has endorsed a plan that would literally ban private health care—prohibiting doctors from accepting cash for any medical service covered by a government-run health plan, even if an individual wants to opt-out of the government system.
The latest increase in employer-sponsored health premiums demonstrates that hard-working families deserve better than Obamacare. It also illustrates why the American people deserve better than the new Democratic plans to impose more big government “solutions” in the wake of Obamacare’s failure.
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Healthcare is completely, totally broken in the US and was made much worse by Obamacare. But why does this article repeatedly mention Obama? He hasn’t been president for nearly 3 years now. The GOP held the white house and both houses of Congress with a “conservative” USSC for 2 years, no? Nobody in DC really wants to fix healthcare.
Well, as a gentle reminder, it was Obama who got this entire monstrosity going. His helper, Nancy Pelosi, had the bill passed without a single republican vote and the bill was also passed so that we could see what was in it, disregarding the fact that no one was allowed to know what the bill was about until it was law.
In reality Obamacare is a tax and was one of the largest tax increases in US history Another little known factoid is how student loans are tied to Obamacare.
An often-forgotten provision of Obamacare, a/k/a the Affordable Care Act (ACA), was its take-over of the federal student loan program, with claims that doing so would provide vast financial windfalls to help offset the ACA’s costs: $61 billion over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Before the ACA, about half of federal student loans originated with private lenders while being guaranteed by the government. With the passage of the Act, the government became both the lender and the guarantor.
You are correct that DC doesn’t want to fix healthcare which, in fact, is actually health insurance coverage. The medical and pharmaceutical lobbies are powerful and congress is a collection of cheap whores willing to sell to the highest bidder.
An unusual circumstance. You are both correct.
This problem of inflated health care cost goes a very long way back before the Obama administration. Did Obama make it worse? Of course! But It goes back to the Nixon administration. This is why when I was a kid and broke my collar bone in 1973 I went to the doctor and he fixed me up and my dad got a bill in the mail for a whopping $79. Today that would have costed around $5000 or more.
The Health Maintenance Organization Act of 1973 passed by Nixon changed everything.
http://investmentwatchblog.com/did-you-know-that-before-1973-it-was-illegal-in-the-us-to-profit-off-of-health-care-the-health-maintenance-organization-act-of-1973-passed-by-nixon-changed-everything/
Is it just me, or does the goobermint make a mess out of every damn thing it touches ..? The peeps have been getting a steady screwing for decades, but particularly in the last 30 years.
The cheap debt train better keep chugging down the tracks or this whole Ponzi will collapse.
The problem is no the cost of insurance; it’s the cost of HEALTHCARE.
The government can’t even be trusted with Social Security, and people want to trust it with HEALTHCARE??? Ask ANY retired military person, and they’ll tell you what government-run healthcare is like. They’ll know because they LIVED IT!
That’s actually exactly wrong. It’s generally not the cost of healthcare, it’s the cost of health insurance. I’ll re-tell my intensive care experience from a few years ago. I get a bill for $116,000. After insurance processed it, it got knocked down to $14,000 – for 5 days of mostly monitoring (and two CT scans). So the actual cost was $14,000 – of which I paid $5,600 (my individual deductible) and my insurance company paid about $8,400. The fake $116,000 invoice only serves to scare people into buying the overpriced insurance (in my case over $18,000 premium for family coverage with $5,600/$9,900 deductibles). The insurance companies pay the real price, which is usually fairly reasonable. The nominal price (for which an uninsured person is liable) is outrageous, but borne by few.
There are some times when the “care” itself is atrociously expensive- like when I mistakenly took my kid to an out-of-network facility for an allergy test – which took about 45 minutes and cost $2,000.
That was me
Health insurance is money down a hole. We never hit the deductible. We would be better off spending the insurance premiums on care because we cant actually afford to go to the doctor because the insurance covers nothing at all. My free yearly physical bill came to 891 dollars. It was supposed to be free or i wouldnt have gone.
Barry Soetoro said: If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor, your plan……
I am still waiting for all the rebate checks from hussein-he said we’d save something like $2,500 every. Time to pay up.
Let’s start with the socialist bargain of health insurance premiums . A huge number of those employed by government have health insurance & retirement plans that you as a private working person cannot purchase . Same plan same out of pocket expense , no exceptions ,
Otherwise we are forced as private sector working people to subsidize benefits we could never have let alone afford for the same return on investment .
Again see how well socialism works for the connected and their minions
Of course everyone should have known Obama was full of shit ,
Except fo dat free cell phone
But you can keep your doctor. So there is that.
Insurance as a whole sucks. It is good at showing people how their wages haven’t kept up with inflation.
Half the people I know have no insurance, housing, and transportation, and food eat up much of their paycheck.
Recent help wanted add : $12 to $15 dollars per hour must have reliable transportation .
Fuel, Maintenance , insurance eats up that wage so what exactly are you working for in the end ?
Absolutely Nothing !