Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Obamacare ALREADY a Failure

The liberal Center for American Progress today released a one-pager attempting to claim that Obamacare is already a success.  In reality, however, the law’s many flaws have become more manifest with each passing day:

Premiums Higher and Higher:  Candidate Obama said repeatedly his bill would CUT premiums by an average of $2,500 per family – meaning premiums would go DOWN, not merely just “go up by less than projected.”  The campaign also promised that that those reductions would occur within Obama’s first term.  However, the annual Kaiser Foundation survey of employer-provided insurance found that average family premiums totaled $12,860 in 2008, $13,375 in 2009, and $13,770 in 2010 and $15,073 this year.  In other words, while candidate Obama promised premiums would fall by $2,500 on average, premiums have already risen by $2,213 during the Obama Administration.

Millions Losing Coverage:  The Galen Institute last month released a paper discussing the havoc Obamacare is wreaking on insurance markets, and specifically the insurance many Americans had – and liked – before the massive 2700 page law was passed.  Dozens of carriers have left insurance markets, or gone out of business altogether – leaving millions in the lurch.  And millions more will lose their coverage; under the Administration’s own estimates, more than half of all employers – and up to 80% of small businesses – will lose their pre-Obamacare coverage by next year.

Millions More Exempted:  According to the latest data, the Administration has now granted waivers to over 1,700 health plans with more than 4 million people – more than half of them participants in union plans.  The fact that the Administration feels the need to exempt millions from the law’s mandates shows how onerous they are.  Even Democrat Senators have admitted the law is flawed – five Senators wrote to the Administration asking for another Obamacare waiver, because the law “may cause disruption for farmers and others in the agricultural sector” by causing members of farmer co-operatives to lose their current coverage.

Higher Taxes:  Several middle-class tax increases related to Obamacare have already taken effect: new restrictions on FSAs and Health Savings Accounts, and Obamacare’s first tax increase, on tanning products, which took effect in July 2010.  And in just a few months, more new taxes will take effect – including taxes on medical products and industries, which the Congressional Budget Office and other outside experts agree will be passed on to consumers, raising insurance premiums by as much as $5000 per family over a decade.  These taxes are collectively having an effect; in November, device manufacturer Stryker announced that it would be shedding “five percent of its workforce over concerns about the impending 2.3 percent medical device tax prescribed by” Obamacare.

Economic Uncertainty:  Multiple quotes from business executives have proven how Obamacare’s uncertainty is hampering economic recovery.  Analysts at UBS have stated that Obamacare is “arguably the biggest impediment to hiring, particularly hiring of less skilled workers.”  And the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta admitted he has “frequently heard strong comments to the effect of ‘my company won’t hire a single additional worker until we know what health insurance costs are going to be.’”

One Bailout Program Bankrupt:  Last month the Administration admitted that Obamacare’s early retiree reinsurance program would shut down at the end of 2011.  The program was scheduled to run through 2014, but ran out of money years ahead of schedule.  The program went broke because unions and state governments rushed to the federal government to receive subsidies; HHS data indicate that more than half of the money went to only 24 organizations – with the biggest recipient being the United Auto Workers union.

Another Unsound Program Ended Before It Began:  In October, HHS finally admitted that the CLASS Act long-term care program was actuarially and fiscally unsound, and decided not to go forward with the program.  This development should shock no one – the Medicare actuary said on Day One the plan would not work, and one Democrat Senator called CLASS a “Ponzi scheme of the first order.”  But the Administration was forced to admit that its sanctimonious claims that CLASS was not a “business-as-usual Washington gimmick” were utterly FALSE.

Burdens Crushing States:  Last month’s annual State Expenditure Report released by the National Association of State Budget Officers illustrated how Medicaid is a large – and rapidly growing – portion of state budgets.  Yet at a time when states face budget deficits totaling a collective $175 billion, Obamacare is imposing new unfunded mandates of at least $118 billion.  These burdens have forced states to spend money on Medicaid that could otherwise be used to improve education, transportation, corrections, or other priority areas.

Nearly two years ago, Speaker Pelosi famously said we had to pass the bill to find out what’s in it.   All the signs above show how the American people are not liking what they’ve found in the 2700-page health care law.