A.C.A aka Obamacare
What's going on with it in plain English
What it's supposed to do:
The Affordable Healthcare Act or Obamacare was pitched as a plan to insure the 30 million plus Americans that did not have health care insurance. It was going to lower premiums and deductibles by creating a "one stop shop" for insurance plans in one place where Americans can pick and choose the healthcare policy that best fit them from major market insurance companies. Obamacare was going to create a pool of individuals together so insurance companies would give out discounts for groups much like they do for large corporations and businesses therefore lowering the cost. It also was going to reduce costs by eliminating fraud, as well as the extra gross from people that did not have insurance.
Why it won't work:
Let's start with the easy one first, cost cutting from fraud. They'll never be able to eliminate fraud, why? What federal government program isn't plagued with fraud? NONE!! They all are, because they're too big. When policies and procedures have to pass through so many different hands things slip through the cracks. Now your healthcare has to go from being personal and intimate between you and your doctor, to you, your doctor and whatever amount of bureaucrats between HHS and the IRS to determine your treatment. Imagine having to take a course of action to treat your health concerns based upon individuals who's primary job is to follow the rules to the most strict adherence and to monitor cost. That's insane!!
The Roll out:
Oy Vey!! I believe we all know the disaster that is the roll out of healthcare.gov website. Weeks after the website went live it was revealed that preliminary testing showed it would crash after being accessed by only a few hundred users. It was also revealed that customers information was going to wrong places bringing into question the total security of the site itself. Turns out there is none, it has "limitless security risks" as stated by administration officials. This is unacceptable, unlike Amazon (one of the sites Obama compared healthcare.gov to before roll out) on the healthcare exchanges people have to submit ALL personal information including S.S. number before being able to view policies and prices. Imagine after you enter all your info the website has an error and leaves your information dangling there in cyber space or sends it to wrong place. Not good!
Insurance problems:
As of today estimates put the enrollment in the exchanges at around 50,000 for the 36 states using federal website and about another 50,000 or so for the ones using the exchange, to reach the goal of 7 million by March Obamacare needs 1.2million paid enrollments per month. Besides the concerns of website disaster why aren't people enrolling in this new law, the president said it would be better coverage at a lower price, no? Well he said that plus "If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor, PERIOD. If you like your healthcare plan, you can keep your healthcare plan, PERIOD" He made those statements over 30+ times in those words even though now he claims he "meant" something different. Turns out you can't keep either. A month or so after the A.C.A. was passed the HHS secretary Katherine Sebelius (we all know her) wrote regulations that require minimum coverages such as mandatory birth control, MANDATORY so if you're a male or a woman in her 60's etc….. you still have to pay for coverage, if you live a healthy life you still have to pay for MANDATORY coverage for drug rehab as if your the mayor of Toronto, Rob Ford. These mandatory changes to the minimum standard would require health care policies to be re-written, changing coverage and price (higher not lower as Obama claimed) and thus would be dissolved leaving current private policy holders uninsured. Why? Well, again regulations written after the law was passed by HHS under the command of Sebelius that if your policy changes in anyway it's gone. Another reason for the slower enrollment to the plan is the fact that 70+% of the 30 million the government wanted insured don't want insurance to begin with. The young…. why are they going to pay high premiums and deductibles for a service they feel is not necessary for them. Why would they buy a product that is unaffordable when they don't have to, the penalties are minimal compared to premiums and there is not exact language on how the government will collect penalties from them anyway. The ones with pre-existing conditions, costs are still sky high despite what the lefties claim or have claimed that costs have been substantially reduced. So far the overwhelming majority have experienced higher premiums and deductibles.
Conclusion:
In theory everything looks good on paper, I've seen some resumes from applicants that made me say "WOW" but in reality they were a huge disaster. We can see Obamacare is a huge disaster, 3 years of prep and the website is a flop, rules and regulations that have already caused 5 million policy holders to be dropped. The administration states its insurance companies fault, the republicans fault, the polar ice caps that are melting skewed the numbers blah blah blah. Personally, I believe this was done on purpose. As somebody who grew up when there was still a cold war I understand the ideology of the left and how they would go to ANY length to get their policies passed including bold faced lies to the American people from the president all the way down to his minions. Hopefully this law will weigh on the neck like a cinderblock to those that voted for it in the 2014 midterm elections not only when they passed it but when they voted NO on a bill put forth by senator Enzi (R Wy) in 2010 when he predicted the cancellations of individual policies.
Conclusion: