Remember in 2009 when Obama was pimping his Healthcare overhaul and he said this?
“If you like your health plan, you can keep your health plan.”
People who worked in the real world knew this statement was extremely misleading and we tried to educate the low information voter. Of course the Government wouldn’t forcibly remove Healthcare plans from existence but that doesn’t mean many people wouldn’t lose their healthcare plans. As the CBO recently reported, more people will lose their health insurance as previously thought.
“In 2022, by CBO and JCT’s estimate, 7 million fewer people will have employment-based health insurance as a result of the Affordable Care Act,” the CBO announced in its new budget outlook released on Tuesday. This is up from an estimate of 4 million last August, mostly reflecting the effects of tax changes.”
How could this be? Team Obama promised us it would be better after the Affordable Care Act was passed.
I have no sympathy for the useful idiots who supported Obamacare and now realize they were duped because there was ample evidence from other countries that this Socialized Medicine approach wouldn’t work. The unintended consequences of Obamacare are just another proof of Quinn’s 1st Law, as Hot Air pointed out:
“Many of us saw this coming, but were told we were spreading myths by drawing logical conclusions about economic incentives, moral hazard, and possible unintended consequences. Now, of course, the White House claims they just meant no one in the federal government would actually forcefully take your health care away, never mind that they set up a situation in which losing your health care would become inevitable. Even that’s not true, though, as the Affordable Care Act does actively prohibit certain affordable health insurance options like mini-med plans and high-deductible catastrophic plans. “Take away” and “regulate out of existence” are functionally the same thing.”
When you increase the regulations and make it more attractive for smaller companies to just pay the penalty instead of offering healthcare to their employees then you dump people on the street and they are forced to join the Public Option. Which was the goal of Team Obama all along.
Even before Obamacare kicks in fully, many have seen troubling changes to our healthcare plans – deductibles are going up, monthly premiums are going up and our responsibility for prescriptions is going up. But in my opinion, the most troubling consequence of Obamacare is that we are seeing experienced doctors choosing to leave the workforce rather than combat the new regulations. New graduates of Medical School are now lacking all important mentors and that will reduce the quality of the healthcare we receive once we are lucky enough to finally see a physician.
And today I was reminded how the changing healthcare landscape affects me personally. I’m due for my annual physical and I received the following letter from my doctor’s office that gives another hint of things to come.
My primary care physician has noticed that some insurance companies have stopped paying for lab work for annual physicals and now he must notify all patients to check with their insurance providers before coming in for lab work.
This is just the tip of the iceberg and once Obamacare hits America fully in 2014, we’ll see more services dropped by insurance companies until many people will come to the realization that private health insurance isn’t worth keeping since it pays for so little. Welcome to the new healthcare landscape courtesy of Obamacare!
In the future you can expect lower quality of healthcare, more out-of-pocket costs and longer lines but don’t say you weren’t warned.
cosmoscon 
Well put and all true, Cosmo.
We’ve been screaming about this for years, and it seems the LIVs are only veeery, sloooowly figuring out how bad Obamacare really is.
It’s not their fault, really.
-Logic?
-Reason?
-Common sense?
The Left has never asked these voters to use ANY of these skills before…
Well, Cosmo…..I agree with you that SOME companies will choose to drop their health benefit plans for employees as the cost of their current plans escalate in favor of the lower Tax (or is it a penalty, or what? IDK). However, just as younger folks may choose to NOT purchase their own plans, and just pay the $300 fine, you can BET THE FARM that these fines/penalties/taxes will ESCALATE in a BIG WAY as the years progress. It’s the ultimate scam: make it appear cheaper to opt out, wait for the insurance industry to atrophy into non-existence, and then jack up the fine/penalty/tax, etc.
My company is only about 28 full time employees. The cost of our benefits program has gone up 100% in the last 4 years, to the point that a “Family Coverage Plan” is over $16,000 PER YEAR to the company and employee. Even with the company paying 80% (which is good for the employees) the company’s cost is $12,800 per employee who has family coverage, which 24 of our employees have. That’s $307,200 of company expense. Throw even a $3,000 per employee fine at the company, and they STILL save over $223,000. You don’t need to attend the Wharton School of Business to know the outcome of THAT decision.
Of course, the cost of insurance company health plans MUST continue to increase due to mandatory coverages (think: Birth Control), and the fact that NO ONE wants to address Tort Reform, other than those pesky, Right Wing, Bible clinging, gun toting neanderthals in Texas.
It is an abuse of government overreach to the power of 100. Under current laws, etc, the private health system has no other destiny than collapse…….JUST as Obama wants.
Half of all US Doctors will be 65 years old in 2020. The days of the primary care physician are over. Get over it.
The new Obamacare models for service are the Department of Motor Vehicles and the Post Office. With an extreme shortage of PCPs, the work they used to do will be handled by nurse practitioners and physician assistants in clinics owned by failing hospitals.
Oh, and 10,000 new people are becoming eligible for Medicare every day and 30 million uninsured are going to be added next year. All will increase demand for expanded, government mandated “free” preventive services that can’t possibly be delivered because there will be no one to deliver them.
Have a nice day!
PS: The best way to help the sick is by not being one of them. Take responsibility for your own health now! Eat right and exercise and the odds are you won’t need to see the doctor as much. 80% of all heart disease, diabetes and strokes are completely preventable If you stop eating sugar, (average American eats 100 pounds a year) stop eating junk and fast food. Then exercise one hour a day, every day. A study done by the CDC in 2004 gave accelerometers to a representative sample of 10,000 people and found 95% of all adults did not meet the minimum 30 minutes per day exercise recommendation that almost all health care professionals agree is the bare minimum for good health.
If you are fat, unfit, sick and need to see a doctor, you have no one to blame but yourself.
You are right about the end of the primary care physician. http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2012/12/primary-care-doctors-longer-needed.html
There was another blog post by a doc that I can’t seem to recall that also stated how there is no primary physician responsible for people who are admitted to the hospital. A team of specialists go in and check their box but nobody is looking at the big picture and being , in a sense, a project manager for the patient.
Tough sledding for the US in the future and your advice about staying healthy is enthusiastically endorsed by myself.
Cosmo,
One big trend in the last 10 to 15 years are “hospitalists.” If your primary care doctor still visits you at the hospital, he is a dying breed. If he actually admits you, he is a dinosaur.
The fact is, with reimbursements being what they are, most primary care physicians can not afford to see patients in the hospital and if he actually admits you, he is doing it out of the kindness of his heart and dedication because it makes no business sense for him.
There are advantages and disadvantages to Hospitalists. One is it’s more efficient. A good hospitalist sees a lot of patients with a lot of different problems and knows the staff better. The problems, (and there are many): He or she may have a heavy accent and difficulty communicating and culturally relating to you. Hospitalists are on one week, off one week and like firemen, if you get them at the end of their 7 day double shift, you may not get them functioning at their best. Also, they don’t know you and if your PCP didn’t do a good job on your electronic medical record, he or she may not know enough about you to make a correct evaluation of what your problem is, especially if you are unconscious when admitted and unable to communicate..
Like it or not, we are evolving to a time where the “doctor” treating you is going to be a
Nurse Practitioner, Physician Assistant or a Hospitalist who doesn’t know who you are,
So, as I said in my previous post, the best strategy is to eat right, exercise, stay healthy and stay the hell out of the hospital. If you want to scare yourself, Google “hospitalist errors” and read the following on drug mistakes
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/14/medication-related-injuries-on-the-rise/
I think that the end times are here!I don’t know what we the people are supposed to do!The freedom of americans are being taken away because some people who cannot get a job cannot afford health insurance orjust because they have to meet their other bills,either that or have no place to live!!!!!!!