Less than three weeks out from the ObamaCare enrollment deadline, and the president’s signature health care law faces predictable challenges far greater than mere website problems. The law’s failure to meet its goals has not only been predictable, but also unjustifiable, because only an ill-intent to cause Americans unnecessary pain for the glory of big government remains as a reason to support keeping this law.
The entire justification for the government takeover and remaking of the health care industry was supposedly to cover a claimed 47 million who were uninsured. That number, itself, was based upon misleading data, including people who lost health coverage and were statistically likely to receive Cobra coverage while in between jobs, illegal immigrants, and so on.
Forgetting the near impossibility to implement the law within its legally mandated timetable, prompting the administration to lawlessly wave or delay key elements of the act, or that the website’s security risks are borderline criminal and will likely result in the identity theft of an untold number of Americans, the uninsured are just not signing up.
Even with the “glitches” that previously blocked would-be enrollees supposedly “fixed,” as claimed by the administration, the unaffordable prices of health plans offered by the so-called “Affordable Care Act” still lays at the heart of the law’s inability to achieve its stated goal to insure the uninsured.
Friday, PeoplesPunditDaily.com reported only 1 in 10 uninsured Americans who qualify for private plans through the new health insurance marketplaces actually enrolled as of last month, according to a survey by the consulting firm McKinsey & Co., which had been corroborated by Gallup and the Urban Institute. Is there any wonder why the ObamaCare deadline is fast approaching and the administration is without the numbers needed to keep the program viable?
The numbers the Obama administration is using to boast about the law’s progress have been examined under a microscope by People’s Pundit Daily, The Washington Post and Sean Trende at RealClearPolitics.com. While administration officials continue to claim 4 million people have signed up for private insurance on the exchanges, which is still short of the 7 million needed by the end of March, many of them were previously insured. In fact, McKinsey & Co. found no more than a quarter of those who did sign up for coverage in the marketplaces were previously uninsured.
Further, according to insurers, as was also previously reported by PeoplesPunditDaily.com, of those who have selected a plan either through the FFM or SBM online Marketplaces roughly 20 percent have never paid the first month’s premiums, and an additional 2 to 5 percent haven’t paid the second month’s premium. Now, health insurers “participating in ObamaCare are a very worried group right now,” according to health insurance industry consultant Robert Laszewski.
Meanwhile, the administration is apparently claiming they have no clue how successful the program is when it comes to the core, stated goal and only justification for passing the law in the first place, which is insuring the uninsured. The National Journal reported that Gary Cohen, the health official overseeing the insurance marketplaces who will soon be stepping down, outrageously claimed the administration is not really tracking the ever-important data.
“That’s not a data point that we are really collecting in any sort of systematic way,” Cohen said.
Aside from that statement almost assuredly being false, it is suspiciously convenient for those who blindly believe Obama when he lies about the law’s true purpose, its progress or if premiums will necessarily rise. When asked about the McKinsey study, America’s Health Insurance Plans spokesman Robert Zirkelbach said that what “ultimately matters” is who signs up, not necessarily how many sign up.
But the insurance companies, who sold out to textbook fascist control of our health care industry, made the rookie mistake of believing big government cares any more about their interests than they do the interest of the American people. What “ultimately matters” to this administration, congressional Democrats and the law’s ruling class of supporters, is that they hook enough people on the program to ensure ObamaCare — or, rather a future single-payer system — is here to stay.
Whether or not Americans were previously uninsured or if they were hurt by having their affordable plans replaced with higher premiums, which even naive Kirsten Powers had the nerve to complain about, is irrelevant. Whether or not a nonexistent infusion of young and healthy people is sufficient to cover the soon-to-skyrocket costs associated with covering older, sicker Americans who are flooding the risk pool, which will inevitably result in even higher costs to consumers, is also irrelevant.
If Republicans turn out to be right about the risk pool, though that’s an “if” that’s no longer an “if,” then no worries. That’s why a taxpayer-funded bailout was intentionally and shamefully included in the law, itself.
Yet the insurance companies still made a gross miscalculation if they think this fascist arraignment will be preserved in the event a bailout is needed. Democrats already have plans to put the blame on them for hundreds of billions, if not trillions, in taxpayer funds being spent to bail them out, as scapegoating insurers was always the plan to make single-payer the only viable option for Americans who otherwise hate the idea. Step two, will be removing insurers from their privileged position with finely tuned Stalin-esque propaganda, and they have had plenty of practice.
Never mind that the Congressional Budget Office “revised” findings that forecast ObamaCare will destroy, at least, 2.3 million jobs, taking with it our unique and irreplaceable Protestant work ethic that has made us the military and economic power we are (or, were). Big government programs have long attacked traditional institutions and religion as a means to diminish this empowering national characteristic, which I have chronicled over the years. But rarely, if ever, has a progressive bureaucracy actually included the negative impact these programs have on labor in their findings.
And make no mistake, the CBO is a progressive bureaucracy created with the sole purpose to justify “Great Society” reforms in an era of massive government expansion. But shockingly, much to even my surprise, not even the CBO can justify ObamaCare any longer, unless you believe insuring millions of imaginary Americans — another CBO claim that needs revision — is worth the millions of jobs that will soon become big government’s collateral damage.
So, here we are with the ObamaCare deadline fast approaching. It’s nearly here, yet Democrats can’t even justify keeping the law amid the its failure to achieve its stated goals. Billions and soon-to-be trillions of dollars later, and all we have to show for it is an expansion of big government at a priceless expense to our freedom, and a dangerous president who refuses to obey his own oath by faithfully executing the laws of the United States and the Constitution.
