Obamacare’s Annus Horribilis

Michelle Malkin:

There’s no candy coating the truth: Obamacare has had a very terrible, horrible, crappy, none-too-happy year. What it really means is that the victims of Obamacare — taxpayers, health care consumers, health care providers, employers and employees — have had a hellish, nightmarish 2014.

Let’s start with premiums. President Candy Land promised that he’d “lower premiums by up to $2,500 for a typical family per year.” But premiums for people in the individual market for health insurance have spiked over the last year. In fact, Forbes health policy journalist Avik Roy and the Manhattan Institute analyzed 3,137 counties and found that individual market premiums rose an average of 49 percent.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services itself admitted this month that average premiums will rise at least five percent for the lowest-cost plans offered by federal Obamacare health care exchanges. Democrats’ reaction? Obamacare rate shock doesn’t matter … because government is redistributing the burden and taxpayers are footing the bill! HHS crowed this week that nearly 90 percent of exchange enrollees received public subsidies in order to pay their premiums.

“Affordable” doesn’t mean what White House truth-warpers says it means — just like everything else they’ve spewed about the doomed federal takeover of health policy in America.

As the White House tries to hype year-end enrollment numbers and hide Obamacare-imposed cancellations, just remember that the administration got caught this fall cooking the books by including 380,000 dental plan subscribers that have never been counted before. Innocent oopsie? The “erroneous” inflation just happened to push the Obamacare enrollment figures over the president’s 7 million goal, while fudging the attrition of more than 1 million enrolled in Obamacare medical insurance plans.

A “mistake was made,” HHS ‘fessed up after GOP investigators discovered the Common Core math antics. Lying liars. Caught red-handed.

So, how about: “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor?” Well, not if he or she isn’t practicing anymore. After scoffing at conservative warnings for years that socialized medicine-light would create doctor shortages, Obamacare cheerleaders can no longer whitewash the grim reality. The Physicians Foundation found that 81 percent of doctors believe they are “either overextended or at full capacity.” Another 44 percent said they “planned to cut back on the number of patients they see, retire, work part-time or close their practice to new patients.”

Analysts on all sides of the debate agree that massive cuts in Medicaid payments to primary care doctors, which take effect on Jan. 1, will reduce patient access. Meanwhile, a Commonwealth Fund survey found that 26 percent of American adults waited six days or more to see a doctor — with only Canada and Norway performing worse. A separate physicians’ staffing company’s poll, reported by the left-wing New York Times, found that patients “waited an average of 29 days nationally to see a dermatologist [,] 66 days to have a physical in Boston and 32 days for a heart evaluation by a cardiologist in Washington.”

Translation: If you like your doctor, it doesn’t mean you’ll get to see your doctor. Tick, tick, tick.

How about Obama’s pledge to lower costs? A Congressional Budget Office reported earlier this year that implementation will cost taxpayers $2 trillion over the next decade. That’s just the direct costs. Obamacare’s job-killing regulations continue to discourage businesses from expanding and force more bosses to slash hours to avoid the employer mandate.

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