New census data confirms more Obamacare failure
Finding out what’s not in it: New census data has now confirmed that Obamacare has consistently failed to enroll the predicted numbers of the uninsured.
The population-wide uninsured rate fell from 14.5% in calendar year 2013 to 11.7% in 2014. The total number of uninsured dropped from 45.2 million in 2013 to 36.7 million in 2014–a net of 8.5 million who gained coverage.
While some, including President Obama, have bragged about these numbers, when we compare them with the predictions we find that Obamacare is significantly failing to insure the numbers it promised. Leftwing think tanks had generally predicted numbers 50% to 100% higher. The Obama administration however was even more optimistic.
For example, around the time Congress passed the bill, the Medicare actuary (at Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services or CMS) had predicted that the number of uninsured would decline by 23.8 million just in its first year! The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) had been somewhat more cautious, but nevertheless expected Obamacare to reduce the number of uninsured by 19 million in 2014 alone.
What these facts teach us is that the utopian dreams of ideologues rarely come close to reality. Often, they not only fall short, they often worsen the situation, which in the case of Obamacare is certainly true. Though more people now have health insurance, that coverage is generally far more expensive and covers far less than plans did prior to the law.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Finding out what’s not in it: New census data has now confirmed that Obamacare has consistently failed to enroll the predicted numbers of the uninsured.
The population-wide uninsured rate fell from 14.5% in calendar year 2013 to 11.7% in 2014. The total number of uninsured dropped from 45.2 million in 2013 to 36.7 million in 2014–a net of 8.5 million who gained coverage.
While some, including President Obama, have bragged about these numbers, when we compare them with the predictions we find that Obamacare is significantly failing to insure the numbers it promised. Leftwing think tanks had generally predicted numbers 50% to 100% higher. The Obama administration however was even more optimistic.
For example, around the time Congress passed the bill, the Medicare actuary (at Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services or CMS) had predicted that the number of uninsured would decline by 23.8 million just in its first year! The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) had been somewhat more cautious, but nevertheless expected Obamacare to reduce the number of uninsured by 19 million in 2014 alone.
What these facts teach us is that the utopian dreams of ideologues rarely come close to reality. Often, they not only fall short, they often worsen the situation, which in the case of Obamacare is certainly true. Though more people now have health insurance, that coverage is generally far more expensive and covers far less than plans did prior to the law.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
The law of unintended consequences says that thing usually backfire. In trying to protect the Burrowing Owl, legislation was passed to protect their habitat if one was found in an area. The result was farmers would lose the right to farm their land. Can you imagine what the farmers would do if they found one?
So millions more people insured is a failure? How about some balance. Do you agree with the republican governors who block the expansion of medicaid for ideological reasons? They reject federal funds and the poor suffer.
They could have done better by expanding our existing medicare/medicaid system.
Adding the new cost onto the fee/tax we already pay.
If they wanted to cover the last few percent of the most needy people. Instead of tossing our federal cash to the states as bait they could have just created an indigent program to cover those who have no chance of paying. Like the homeless and insane.
Instead they forced everyone to buy insurance. And do you know what happens when your forced to buy an unregulated product? Your forced to pay what ever those companies want you to pay.
They could have doubled my medicare/medicaid tax and it would have been cheaper than my insurance premium increases.
And as for those who were denied insurance because of pre-existing conditions. The government could have set rules about who could be denied insurance like terminal patients. Then the government could have covered them.
It would have been cheaper all around both federally and privately.
Can you find any part of Obama care that was bad for the insurance industry?
If not then guess who is profiting from it and guess who financed it in the first place.
The whole of the law was bought, paid for and written by the insurance companies for the insurance companies.
You fell for a feel good law.
And you think the republicans had a chance to stop this?
Desmond,
I agree completely. If the extra cost saved *just one* life, then it was all worth it.
Who cares that those forced into buying insurance are now living under the tyranny of a government that directs them as to how to spend their own money? Who cares that the skyrocketing costs may have been better spent by the millions of newly insured who are young and healthy and did not end up using their insurance? Who cares that everyone else now lives poorer lives because more of their money now goes to health insurance than used to? Or that millions of other people now work fewer than 30 hours per week — leaving them poorer and worse off, as well as having a harder time making ends meet after paying out of their own pockets for the mandatory insurance? Or that 36.7 million people are now scofflaws because of this heinous law?
Or that religious freedoms have been stripped from millions of people, their organizations, and their companies? Or that the freedom to speak out against the poor implementation of the law has been stripped from millions of companies. Or that our government freely ignores laws, procedures, and even the US Constitution in order to enact and enforce this horrid law.
Or that the Supreme Court now favors tyranny over liberty in order to keep this abominable law on the books. Or that the government sinks its hooks deeper into We the People, our organizations, and our privately-owned companies in order to enforce this jackbooted law.
It is comforting to know that poverty, mayhem, and lawlessness has saved a life. And it is all worth it.
Who needed freedom, anyway?
Get used to it, as it will never go away. Nothing ever goes away once the politicians start funding it, they merely keep the funding growing.
Your attitude is exactly the same as the Republican leadership in Congress. “We can’t get what we want so why try!?” (This must be said with the same whining tone of a six-year-old in the back seat of a car after four hours of driving.)
Things can always change. If I had said in 1986 that the Soviet Union will end up on the ash heap of history, I would have been called a fool and idiot. It can’t happen. If I had said in 1830 that slavery is an evil that must and will be eliminated from the United States, I would have been called a blind naive dreamer. It can’t happen. If in 1935 I had said that Nazi Germany must be destroyed, utterly, and that the Nazi scourge must be wiped from the Earth, I would have been called a wild-eyed madman. It can’t happen.
How many more examples do you want me to cite? Reagan, Lincoln, Churchill all said exactly what I describe above. All were ridiculed. All turned out to be completely right.
Right now, with this Presidential election, it seems to me that we are on the cusp of another one of these radical changes. The public is very pissed off, and wants things to change. In fact, they are so pissed off they are seriously considering electing people whom no one would have dreamed were qualified only a few years ago. In the end, I think the public will choose wisely, and not pick a superficial showman like Trump, but someone more substantial like Cruz. But if they do pick Trump, I will hardly be bothered. Change is in the wind, and it is going to happen, and a person like Donald Trump could very well be the vehicle for making it happen.