Obama Care: Res Ipsa Loquitur:

I just believe that issues like universal health care and gun control represent far more than just health care for all and guns.  Taking away any part of a persons ability to freely determine the outcome of his life is objectionable to a large portion of Americans.  I feel that a lot of outsiders are lacking in an understanding of the philosophical individualism underpinning Americans' belief systems.  Conversely, it is difficult for many here to understand why the British didn't implement the French solution.

I want everybody to have affordable access to health care.  I don't want anybody to suffer malnutrition.  I want a world where people are able to achieve their full potential in life.  Society  benefits greatly when all these conditions are met.  Society should feed the hungry, care for the disabled and elderly and help heal the sick.  The issue is that the government is not society.

Sometimes you need a helping hand to get you through hard times. Failing that, all of life's work is destroyed. If you get that little help, you can breath to fight another day.

The problem with the medical approach in the US is this: if you're unlucky enough to need the helping hand of the medical establishment when you're unlucky enough not to have medical insurance: the establishment will trample your head to the ground. :-)

A friend had to go in to the ER for sudden high BP. They put him in an ambulance (even though I would have been fine driving him to the other hospital) and kept him one night under observation.

If he did not have insurance, the total medical bill would have been close to $25000. The 3 mile ambulance journey was itself $998. Now, the bill they presented the insurance company was $25K. Because it was 'In-Network' the negotiated rates brought it down to around $10000 total. He had to pay around $1000 out of pocket, and the insurance company took care of the rest.

At least Two problems with this story:

a) If you don't have insurance, they'll actually try to come after you for that whole amount. You can negotiate it down a little but not much, I suspect.

b) That's still way too much, IMHO. Ultimately, it's the customer who buys insurance that is paying for this.

IMHO, All that Obamacare has done is force everyone to pay insurance companies so they can continue to pay the medical establishment exorbitant prices. 

I hope I'm wrong, but haven't seen evidence to the contrary.

Call it a tax or mandatory health insurance, its a similar end result.

We have a gvt run health insurance plan called Medicaid/Medicare .  Provides for poor, disabled and elderly.

We have a gvt run health insurance plan called Medicaid/Medicare .  Provides for poor, disabled and elderly.

What if you're not poor, disabled or elderly, but just scraping through ..

@JasonF: Not entirely sure whether you're talking about Kevin-W or Kevin-Richardson.  :-)

Maybe I had one smiley too little ?

In any case, It's probably clear from my posts that I'm not taking any one side. I've lived in Europe long enough (about 6 yrs) to appreciate it, and the medical system - but also to realize that not everything over there is perfect.

The point is - I'd rather discuss potential solutions - rather than dissing any given country.

There is a lot to be proud of, and a lot of not very pleasant memories - on all sides.

Maybe I'm doing Russ a disservice - but I don't take his posts very seriously. He paints himself as a caricature of his true self.

I think obamacare is a disaster - because it didn't go far enough to curtail costs.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/03/health/as-hospital-costs-soar-single-stitch-tops-500.html

Some time ago, I endured the whips and scorns cast by many of my well-meaning European and American friends by having the gall to question the policies of the chosen one whom I should very well know is better able to guide my future than I am.  At that time, I promised all of those who sang my praises on that thread that at some point I would pontificate on Obama Care.  Well, I wanted to, but I have been too busy watching with a combination of horror and amusement, the vast body of material which we are now provided by the Democrats themselves.  At first you could only hear about it on the hated Fox News channel, but eventually even the liberally-oriented cable organizations as well as the New York Times and Washington Post had to acknowledge what was going on. 

Now, Obama Care was passed when the Democrats held not only the White House, but both houses of Congress.  Not a single Republican voted for it—all of them predicting disaster.  The Democrat Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi famously said: “We need to pass the bill so we can find out what is in it.”  Go Nancy!  Heartfelt Republican opposition was characterized as obstructionism and racism.   The bill mandated that all private health insurance plans include:

Insurers not being able to deny coverage for pre-existing conditions

Insurers not being able to drop coverage for those who become sick

A ban on price discrimination based on sex, medical history, or community rating

Allowing “children” or dependents to remain on a parent’s policy through age 26

No lifetime or annual coverage caps on essential benefits—broadly defined in the bill as:

"ambulatory patient services; emergency services; hospitalization; maternity and newborn care; mental health and substance use disorder services, including behavioral health treatment; prescription drugs; rehabilitative and habilitative services and devices; laboratory services; preventive and wellness services and chronic disease management; and pediatric services, including oral and vision care."

Contraception supplies mandatory

Elimination of co-pays and deductibles     

And with all of these “freebies”, Obama promised:

1.  Health Insurance will be more affordable—across the board—saving families an average of $2,500.00 per year.
2. If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.
3. If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan------PERIOD!

Hell, we really don’t need any of our mythical Supreme Beings to bring about miracles—we have Obama!

Now of course, like all the freebies promised by this unapologetic socialist—(who occupies the same Oval Office where Franklin Roosevelt worked day and night with Sir Winston Churchill to defeat Adolph Hitler and where William Jefferson Clinton worked day and night to get hum jobs from Monica Lewinski,) this was patently and obviously false—at the very least to anyone who could add two and two.  Unfortunately, it is apparent that a majority of the American People—at least a majority of Democrats, did not fit into that category.  The very Democratic leaders who pushed through passage of the bill are all on videotape parroting Obama’s talking points—word for word, just as they parroted President Bush’s words about Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction—having seen the same intelligence reports he saw.

But in the case of Obama Care, they have proven themselves to have been lying, opportunistic weasels—just like their Boss.

Forget Operation Fast and Furious where Obama’s Attorney General sold guns to the Mexican Drug Cartels.  Forget the so-called Justice Department’s illegal investigation of Fox News executives.  Forget IRS (the same bunch who are supposed to enforce the individual mandate of Obama Care) targeting Tea Party and other conservative organizations.  Forget Obama and Hillary turning their backs on their own ambassadorial staff in Benghazi and letting them be murdered.  Forget their stonewalling Congress in all of the investigations of these matters.  Obama says he did not know about any of those scandals. 

Of course, he also said “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan---PERIOD.” In the past, Presidents have been held accountable for lying.  George H.W. Bush famously said: "Mark my words--no new taxes."  When he later raised taxes, the American People understandably and rightly held him responsible.  Obama has no more races to run, and it is doubtful that his own fall from grace will affect the coronation of Hillary Rodham Clinton.  We shall see.

But as I say, forget all that—Obama Care affects millions of Americans and it is now obvious to all that its creator and namesake lied.  He didn’t forget—he didn’t misrepresent—he didn’t mis-state—He Lied!  53 percent of the American People now believe he is not trustworthy.  Well, Yeah!  We Racist Republicans (RR) were trying to tell you the truth five years ago.

So Obama Care got passed—all 2,200 pages of it.  The website was contracted out to a Canadian firm that had been dismissed from many other projects for failed results.  They had 3 ½ years to build the goddamn site and screwed it up royally.  Not with glitches—but with a completely faulty architecture.  As of today, 40 percent of the underlying structure—the back end—is not even built—the part that uh, actually pays the premiums to insurance companies!

But forget the website as well—that is the least of it.  So far 5.5 million Americans—almost all in the individual market-- have received cancellation notices from their companies.  Why?  Because they do not meet the list of some ten or so non-negotiable coverage items required by Obama Care.  So a 22 year-old male in perfect health with no wife or children who had a policy that did not include mamagrams, pap smears, or birth control pills now gets his relatively cheap policy cancelled.  But what the hell?  All he has to do is find a “better” policy for him on healthcare.gov—(once it starts working in 2045).  Oh, sure, the price may be higher—gee, ya think?  Now it is obvious that when the shit hits the fan with the individual mandate (recently delayed by Obama until two weeks after the 2014 midterm elections in order to protect several Democratic Senators who are going ape-shit over their own vulnerability) as many as one-hundred-million Americans may well lose their “crummy” plans.

Soon after passage, Obama granted “waivers” to over 1,500 organizations, including AARP and many of the huge labor unions who had helped him get it passed.  Several important states were given exemptions in order to appease them politically.   Now the major unions are going ape-shit because they have read the bill and discovered they may have to pay a reinsurance fee for each of their covered members.  Oh, but I forgot, Obama is considering a waiver for that as well.  After all, they voted correctly—and that is the only important thing to him.

But why would Obama lie about: (1) the cost of the bill to the government, (2) the cost of the bill to individuals, (3) the ability of individuals to keep their doctors and plans, (4) the fact that deductibles would go sky-high, (5) the fact that the intention behind the bill was, from the first, to do away with the private insurance market,   and most importantly that (6) the bill was (now acknowledged by even the New York Times) a giant scheme for the re-distribution of wealth?

BECAUSE HAD TOLD THE TRUTH, HE WOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN ELECTED!

Now, the heathens are truly raging, the rats are leaving the ship, the lights have been turned on in the kitchen, the roaches are running under the stove, the insane are running the asylum, and the Democrats are pulling out all the political stops.  The Senate has changed the rules of cloture for filibustering, available in one form or another for over 200 years, so that a minority of Senators can no longer block appointees to the D.C. Court of Appeals—the second most powerful court in the land, because it is the court which decides administrative and regulatory cases and controversies—especially important to the cockroaches in today’s Washington--any challenges to administrative end-runs around Congress—including the Republican House of Representatives.  Hmmm.

Predictably Obama has chosen the strategy of blaming: (1) the insurance companies--(for cancelling the policies--even though it was his law that forced them to,) (2) the media (for having the guts to dare to question Him,) and (3) most hilarious of all, the Republicans--(even though not one voted for the garbage that became Obama Care and not one was consulted on either the content of the bill or the construction of His website.)

Obama is a sad, sad story.  Don’t get me wrong—he is enormously intelligent, apparently a great husband and father.  People who know him like him.  Until now, even with all the cynicism and incompetence, his likeability has kept his approval rating up.  And he is a political genius.  He knows how to campaign.  But to some extent he is either incompetent in the realm of actually governing OR in some ways, he is devilishly clever in governing in a radical way and then covering up the truth. 

Even sadder, as the first black man elected President of the United States, he might have been the inspiration even I, and others like me who knew where he came from politically and what he really stood for, (Chicago and the principles of Saul Alinsky) hoped he might be.   But sadly, a political hack from Chicago, black, white, or polka-dotted, is still a hack.  He promised to be a uniter—but no one has been more divisive.  And make no mistake—it is not white Republicans or Tea Party members who have created the division because he is black.  Rather, it is he and his race-baiting supporters who are vicious enough to claim that it is impossible to oppose the policies of a black president—UNLESS you are a racist.  There must, in short, be a double standard for blacks in that office.  And that, my friends, is by far the most damaging racist, paternalistic view one could hold. 

Black Americans of course support Obama by a factor of nearly 10-1.  But they make up only 15 percent of the country.  A very great part of white America elected President Obama.  (Fewer voted for him in 2012, so must one assume that they became racists overnight?)

It may be too late to stop the Democratic coalition in this country: too many checks are being written and there is, after all, the promise of all that wealth redistribution.  (Yummm!)  But at least, this train wreck that is Obama Care has proved beyond any doubt three things:

First, Barack Obama has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt to be capable of lying to the American People about anything and everything. 

Second:The kind of big government advocated by Barack Obama and his heir-apparent Hillary Clinton, is incompetent to either formulate sound policy or to execute it.

Third: Barack Obama is, whatever he may claim, attempting to introduce European Socialism into the United States, even as that ideology is being almost universally discredited.

The next step to "fix" Obama Cae will be single-payer socialized medicine--what they all said they wanted in the first place!

But now President Obama has turned from destroying the nation through domestic policies that are either naively incompetent or cynically socialistic—or both, in favor of the kind of pathetic foreign policy demonstrated by Neville Chamberlain in 1939—in the present case, leaving the Israelis to either attack Iran or allow themselves to be turned into a parking lot.  (But that’s another story.)  Or perhaps I am being unfair—The President of the United States says it is a good agreement.  But then he also said: “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan—PERIOD!”

My favorite post for the year.

+1

Mangomonkey wrote-

"It isn't great,but a step in the right direction" 

LOL!!!!

The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced it's a disaster - he should have gone whole hog and nationalized the system. :-)

Failing that, all he's done is enrichened the insurance companies and hospitals at the expense of the tax payers money.

Most hospitals are non profit.  Blue Cross is also a non profit.

And you can walk into any hospital, no matter who you are and get treatment. They can't turn you away.

So where is the broke?

This country has gone to hell..