Get Ready! A new wave of Obamacare problems is heading into the shore this coming year. Since its founding, the federal government has used billions of taxpayer dollars to prop up the universal healthcare plan, but that funding is soon coming to an end. The healthcare initiative was built on a weak foundation and may not be strong enough to make the transition.
California’s state exchange, Covered California, just announced that premiums will rise next year by an average of 13.2 percent. The reason? Two federal government programs that were designed to provide funding to the state exchanges will expire in 2017. The most significant of these is the reinsurance program that covered the health care costs of the elderly and seriously ill members.
Another factor in the rate increase has to do with real accurate data. When Obamacare first started, budgets were created based on estimates and unrealistic enrollment expectations that never actually panned out. Now a few years into the program, insurers are able to more accurately evaluate patient claims and health status data. The insurers have determined that they greatly underestimated the number of sick people that would sign up for Obamacare, while also failing to predict the expiration of the various programs that propped up Obamacare.
Covered California has long been considered one of the better run state exchanges, so its coming rate increase raises considerable concern for weaker state exchanges. For example, Texas’s Blue Cross has already proposed a 60 percent rate increase. The rate premium increases will affect every American who purchase coverage through Obamacare — approximately 12 million people.
As Obamacare members see their rates dramatically increase, they will undoubtedly wonder where the “affordable” part of the Affordable Care Act has gone. The original intention of Obamacare was to provide healthcare to people who did not have coverage through their employer and could not afford to buy it themselves. This was seldom the case in practice. As rates continue to skyrocket, Americans may need to switch to less expensive plans that will offer lower care benefits, or worse — stop receiving any type of healthcare at all.
Even before the increase in premiums has taken place, many people are finding fewer and fewer options for their healthcare needs as state exchanges and their co-ops continue to fall apart. As with the larger insurers, the co-ops did not expect the huge imbalance of seriously ill members compared to healthy members.
Co-ops received hundreds of millions of federal dollars to set up the co-ops and keep them running for the first 20 years. Originally, 23 co-ops were established to provide reasonably priced services to the poor in their states. Today, just 3 years into the program, 14 co-ops have already closed down. 2 are suing the federal government to stay afloat, and many experts believe that the remaining 7 won’t make it through the end of the year. Each closing of a co-op creates more uninsured people scrambling to find new health insurance plans that they can afford.
Of course, in some cases, the state exchanges have failed its members through nothing more than incompetence and corruption. The most heinous of this situation is Oregon’s exchange, Cover Oregon. Oregon was given $305 million in federal loans to establish a state exchange that never made it through its first year of operation. The crony capitalists running the exchange habitually hemorrhaged this taxpayer money. Oregon’s governor at the time, John Kitzhaber, was in the middle of a re-election campaign for his unprecedented 4th term in office and saw the failing state exchange as a political liability. Instead of closing loopholes and fixing the nearly-finished exchange, Kitzhaber and his staff purposely allowed the exchange to fail so they could roll Oregonians onto the federal HealthCare.gov program. The $305 million in federal loan money set aside for Cover Oregon has disappeared without a trace. Kitzhaber is currently under a criminal investigation to determine whether he re-directed this money into his re-election campaign funds.
In the coming year, Obamacare will face many new challenges. The federal funding programs will soon expire, destroying the failed program’s safety net. If activist politicians truly want all Americans to have access to healthcare, major changes will need to be made to Congress’ Obamacare model — especially as the baby boomer generation grows older and sicker, needing more expensive medical services
Drew Armstrong is a 2015 graduate of California State University in Fullerton and a contributor at Red Alert Politics. He currently resides in Orange County, California.
Obamacare making going to the doctor more complicated with buracacy,redtape and stupid regulations
Although Obama set up Obamacare so we paid for it a full year ahead of getting any benefit from it, that wasn’t enough.
Although Obama gave states huge piles of money to set up exchanges and web sites, it wasn’t enough.
Although Obama used presidential memos and presidential orders over thirty times to change ObamaCare, it wasn’t enough.
Healthy families, paying into Obamacare are making mortgage-sized payments yet it is not enough.
Penalizing non-users is not enough.
Nothing will be enough.
Everything won’t be enough.
The aging baby boomers will be gone someday soon and this monstrocity, created as a permanent fix to a temporary problem will remain?
I hope not.
Hillary will keep it and use it to fund Dem favorites, as Obama has done.
Trump promises to repeal it, all of it.
Every prediction of the critics of obamacare has come true, while none of the proponents’ glorious propaganda have materialized.
If this horrible program is not repealed, the left will continue wailing for national socialist government takeover of all medicine. You know….like what the VA has done so poorly and inefficiently. With $20 trillion in national debt, the left will demand even more confiscatory taxation. Once the government has complete control of medicine, politics will determine who gets care, and who is denied. 55 in end stage renal disease? No dialysis for you. But serving a lifetime prison sentence for murder, and under the delusion that you are a woman trapped in a man’s body? Of COURSE the taxpayers will foot the bill for sex mutilation and hormone therapy. We can’t violate “her” civil rights, right?
Complete leftist insanity.
As I see it obozo put it in KNOWING it would fail letting his handlers get what they really want-single (government) payer.
Correction: The intention of Onamacare’s designers was NEVER to make healthcare “affordable.” It was what they SAID they wanted to do, but it was never their actual intention.
Their true goal was to drive up the cost of healthcare for all Americans as in order to eliminate middle America and drive everybody under the thumb of government masterminds. They wanted to drive health insurance companies out of business or into the status of mere government contractors, and they wanted all Americans to have no choice but government healthcare.
@Marco: @Marco:
I’d think the same but look at it from the normal greedy democrat point of view. Those insurance companies are BIG donors to the party and a governmental entity would take assets rather than contributing to the party coffers and member pockets.
Does anyone know a family who cannot afford the Obama Care premiums and therefore have no health insurance? I do. If they paid these premiums they would soon be without money for utilities, then rent and then homeless. The huge deductibles essentially leave them without health insurance. Unpaid medical bills is one, if not the primary cause of personal bankruptcy. This is all reality, not a political issue. Health care providers will not see you if you have unpaid bills with them, including hospital doctors like family practice and pediatricians.
All that is left is the ER who only treatment of the immediate problem and minimum treatment and sends you on your way. For example if you cannot breathe due to asthma and a respiratory infection, you get a breathing treatment and a recommendation to follow up with your physician for antibiotics, etc. Of course you have none.
Not to be an a$$, but did you mean ‘tidal wave’??
Obama’s approval rating is at hits highest since his election.
@Songbird:
After subsidy in 2014 the average cost paid by a family of 4 was 82 dollars a monthhttp://obamacarefacts.com/costof-obamacare/http://kff.org/interactive/subsidy-calculator/
I used to have a catastrophic policy-when I was in my 30s it was about $50/month. It didn’t pay a nickel until I racked up $7,000 in medical costs in a year. Then it paid 1/2 until $14,000 and after that paid 100%.
It slowly rose in cost to $220/month until it was canceled because of ObamaCare. Since then I’ve refused to buy any health insurance, I’ve refused to provide any medical information on my 1040 and continue, when it’s been necessary, to pay for any medical care myself.
I was perfectly happy with it. In all the years I had it, it never paid 1 cent of my medical care. It was in case I needed a head transplant, that’s what “insurance” means.
Placing a 3rd party in between the provider and the customer is the main reason health care costs are through the roof. It’s been sold as a right. It’s not. I don’t expect to have the government or my family going to extraordinary lengths to extend my life should that day come. And it will.
For all the 100s of billions spent, we could have set up care for those that truly needed the care. But that was never the point of The ACA. It’s all about control.
I monitor my health with frequent blood work but I’m under no illusions. When or if the disease that will kill me shows up, I’m ready.
I’ll miss this side, I’ve had a great life and have left 1,000s of pieces of my art behind. Very few regrets, traveled all over the world, sailed the Carib for years, jumped out of planes and dove The Great Barrier reef. Lived where I wanted and did what I wanted. Had some great dogs that I’m looking forward to seeing again at the Rainbow Bridge.
I’ve seen too many old people warehoused and I know I’m not going to end my days sitting in a wheelchair, drugged up and parked all day in a hallway.
No one lives forever and no one is entitled to OPM to keep your ass alive. Get used to it.
@MM:
MM it sounds like you don’t think that every American child has a right to healthcare
Is that correct ?
I and most Americans feel differently about that
That small amount of my taxes that go to keep others healthy or alive, I don’t begrudge them one iota
And that goes for the kids and the old geezers alike
MM sounds like he may have wanted those non existent “death panels” that Sarah Palin warned us about
@john: Who cares about some all drunken democrats opinions? Heeeees otta there! 160
days
15
hours
24
minutes
I pay doctors cash and since I am not sickly, I save big bucks, the shove this crap(opt out) fine sucks. I have asked Doctors what they think and Obamacare sucks. Medicare/Obamacareless has our doctors paid less than what they want minimum wage earners to get.
What part of “For all the 100s of billions spent, we could have set up care for those that truly needed the care” aren’t you understanding?
I also said “No one lives forever and no one is entitled to OPM to keep your ass alive”
Try a little reading for comprehension pal.
Doesn’t anyone realize that the Affordable health care plan is a plan for the undercover collection of Americas “JIZYA” tax. Think of all the wealth taken from Americans and it ends up in the islamic sovereign banks of the emirates.
Obaaaama care meets every requirement of being a “JIZYA” since islam has conquered America since 9/11 and their muslim placed in the WH.
This is a well written essay; although, because of the title, I was expecting an ironic twist of fate.
Keep writing, Drew!