Saturday, April 12, 2014

It's Working , but is it?

Rolling Stone Magazine this month feature a article on Obama-care called  ' It's Working!'.  While this article went into print *** Kathleen Sebelius was stepping down as head of Health and Human Services, resigning her position as chief engineer of Obamacare’s implementation. The disastrous roll out did a lot of damage to her , and we’re now seeing accountability. Just what good is it? So far talking to people who have tried to get into the exchanges to get the so called healthcare , some of them have been denied coverage . I just was speaking to a friend of mine who is a chiropractor  who told me on the phone that some of his patients had to be turned away because the insurance coverage did not carry over as soon as some of the patients switched  to Obama-care.  While there appears to be some success stories as reported in the Rolling Stone article , 1 of ever 10th is not , that only limiting the fact if 7.1 million people signed up .  Again skeptics would say "How can you get an even 7 million when you weren't able to answer questions about sign ups just last month?" So, he crafted the number to "7.1". Again the decimal is critical. The .1 makes the number more real, as if someone is actually counting and that is what it came out at. The vast majority of them came from California which on a national level was more workable than the federal web site . The name 'Affordable Care Act' might be as misleading as saying you can 'keep your doctor' . Forbes Magazine reported that Health insurance premiums are $$ showing the sharpest increases perhaps ever according to a survey of brokers who sell coverage in the individual and small group market. Morgan Stanley’s healthcare analysts conducted the proprietary survey of 148 brokers. The April survey shows the largest acceleration in small and individual group rates in any of the 12 prior quarterly periods when it has been conducted. The average increases are in excess of 11% in the small group market and 12% in the individual market. Some state show increases 10 to 50 times that amount. The analysts conclude that the “increases are largely due to changes under the ACA.” Another thing that bothers me about the ACA is that it is still a big capitalist for profit health care scheme that Several big corporations have already reaped millions of dollars from "Obamacare" even as they have supported GOP candidates who vow to repeal the law. This condemn-while-benefiting strategy angers Democrats, who see some of their top congressional candidates struggling against waves of anti-Obamacare ads partly funded by these companies. There is a sly two fist-ted political game at work here , it's not just a sheer bait and switch tactic by the government to get everybody 'covered' in the exchanges, but a deceitful ploy to enrich the coffers of the big corporations involved in providing for profit healthcare . The WSJ's Peggy Noonan summarized it well in her April 5th Declarations :

Put aside the numbers for a moment, and the daily argument.
"Seven point one million people have signed up!"
"But six million people lost their coverage and were forced onto the exchanges! That's no triumph, it's a manipulation. And how many of the 7.1 million have paid?"

NOTES AND COMMENTS:

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***On the same day Sebelius resigned, we also learned Obamacare signups had hit 7.5 million. Jonathan Cohn has a balanced assessment of her tenure, asserting the website failure demanded accountability, but reminding us what matters most. The other problem as politics goes The GOP cooked it's goose for the last decade of Obama's term trying to repeal the ACA, they were so obsessed with the repeal that it cased the government to shut down . The Democrats are no brains either they spent all their political careers in office pushing the ACA while ignoring other issues that the nation is facing .---- more later as I put it to thought .

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