You know things are going poorly for the Obama White House when even the New York Times is writing about the “third world experience” of Obamacare.
Heck, it’s almost gotten to the point where I feel sorry for the President.
But I guess I must be a mean-spirited anti-government ideologue, because I can’t stop myself from mocking the President’s ill-fated healthcare scheme. Whether I’m sharing funny cartoons or sarcastic videos, I can’t resist the temptation to kick Obamacare while it’s down.
In this spirit of love and togetherness, let’s take a look at some recent news about the law.
McClatchy News has a big expose that reveals the magnitude of the President’s if-you-like-your-insurance-you-can-keep-it prevarication. Let’s review a couple of excerpts from the story, beginning with a comparison of the President’s promise and the staggering revelation that as many as 52 million Americans may have the rugged pulled out from under them.
Even as President Barack Obama sold a new health care law in part by assuring Americans they would be able to keep their insurance plans, his administration knew that tens of millions of people actually could lose those their policies. …report in 2010 said that as many as 69 percent of certain employer-based insurance plans would lose that protection, meaning as many as 41 million people could lose their plans even if they wanted to keep them and would be forced into other plans. Another 11 million who bought their own insurance also could lose their plans. Combined, as many as 52 million Americans could lose or have lost old insurance plans.
Amazingly, the President continues to be truth-challenged.
Obama insisted anew Thursday that the problem is limited to people who buy their own insurance. “We’re talking about 5 percent of the population who are in what’s called the individual market. They’re out there buying health insurance on their own,” he told NBC. But a closer examination finds that the number of people who have plans changing, or have already changed, could be between 34 million to 52 million. That’s because many employer-provided insurance plans also could change, not just individually purchased insurance plans.
Now let’s examine an example of what this means. The Weekly Standard reports on what has happened to some citizens from flyover country.
In North Dakota, only 30 people have so far signed up for Obamacare. Meanwhile, 35,000 people have already or will be losing their existing health insurance plans in that state alone.
But that’s not the only bad news for the President’s statist healthcare scheme.
It seems that Obamacare is a gold mine for crooks and con artists. Let’s look at parts of a New York Times story.
To the list of problems plaguing President Obama’s health care law, add one more — fraud. …State and federal authorities report a rising number of consumer complaints, ranging from deceptive sales practices to identity theft, linked to the Affordable Care Act. …Some level of fraud or abuse is predictable with any big government program… But now, the technical failures troubling the HealthCare.gov website, as well as the law’s complexity, threaten to make matters worse. …Authorities warn that in some cases the come-ons are merely a ruse to get people to divulge sensitive Medicare and banking information. …Medicare has also long been a magnet for swindlers, thanks to its sheer scale and complexity. The troubled rollout of the new health care law has amplified the problem.
By the way, this story doesn’t even mention the possibility and risk of hackers and identity thieves breaking into the massive government databases that will be created as a result of Obamacare.
And if you’ll allow me to briefly digress, the same danger exists if politicians create the huge tracking-and-monitoring database that would be necessary if state politicians get the authority to tax out-of-state Internet sales.
Returning to the topic of Obamacare, it’s also worth noting that the growing burden of taxes and spending isn’t part of the aforementioned stories. Yet can there be any doubt that the program’s failures will lead to even more spending?
Not that any of us should be surprised. That’s almost always been the case when politicians create new entitlement programs. Indeed, I would pat myself on the back for making exactly this predication about Obamacare, but anybody with a room-temperature IQ knew this would happen, so I can’t claim any special insight.
But this does give me a reason to share this new Lisa Benson cartoon.
Needless to say, I’m enjoying the ongoing Obamacare disaster. But not just for reasons of Schadenfreude. The cluster-you-know-what of Obamacare is good news because it increases our chances of repealing the law in a few years (just as I predicted back in April).
But not just our chance to repeal Obamacare. We may actually have a chance to deal with the larger government-caused problems in our healthcare system, all of which lead to third-party payer and undermine the efficiency and low costs that exist when there is a genuine free market.
