Tag: policy

The future: Getting rid of health insurance and paying your doctor direct.

The only good that might come from Obamacare is that it will so mess up the healthcare insurance industry that medical treatment will be forced to return to the simpler and more efficient system where the patient buys the doctor’s services direct and no insurance is involved.

Four things the U.S. government did faster than building the Obamacare website.

I’ll give you a hint: None of them were done during Obama’s administration. And all of them were far more challenging that writing the software for a webpage.

Finding out what’s in it: State and local governments cut workers’ hours to under thirty to avoid Obamacare.

The Obamacare website is a deadly security hole for anyone that uses it.

On his blog, professional software tester Ben Simo began tinkering with HealthCare.gov shortly after it launched and uncovered security holes almost immediately. At first, the site processed an application that he had begun filling out but did not submit​—​meaning the site took the personal information he had entered and forwarded it to a state agency without his authorization. Next, he tried changing the email address associated with his HealthCare.gov account. With most websites, when you change your email, they send a notice of the change to your old address, so that if your account has been compromised by a hacker who changes the email, you’ll be alerted. Instead, HealthCare.gov sent an email to Simo’s new address about the change​—​a redundant step that provides no security for users. When doing another bit of routine maintenance on his HealthCare.gov account, Simo found that the site was sending information about his username via unsecure HTTP protocols, rather than the encrypted HTTPS. As anyone even passingly acquainted with shopping on the Internet would realize, this is, as Simo put it, “a huge security flaw” because HTTP information can be intercepted by anyone who cares to look for it.

This single paragraph describes just a few of the security problems at the website, which essentially puts your private information in the hands of numerous third parties who really shouldn’t have it.

Now, tell me again: Who wrote this law? Who shut the government down to make sure it would go into effect on time? Who created this failure of a webpage? And who will you vote for next November?

Finding out what’s in it: Only 22% of those who are uninsured are interested in signing up for Obamacare.

And that number has plummeted in the last month from 44%. It seems that having seen what Obamacare is like, the uninsured are fleeing in terror.

As I have noted before, Obamacare was sold as a way to get everyone health insurance. In the end, it is likely going to destroy the health insurance industry so that no one has it.

The lies keep coming: Even as President Obama issued a weak-kneed apology for his lie about keeping your health plan, he added a whole bunch of new lies and misstatements.

Update: Meanwhile, even today the White House official website still claims “if you like your insurance plan, your doctor, or both, you will be able to keep them.”

On the “If you like your healthcare plan, you get to keep your healthcare plan” front: 250,000 to lose their health plans in Colorado due to Obamacare.

Finding out what’s in it: An analysis across 49 states reveals that Obamacare cause premiums to rise by 41%.

Interestingly, a handful of blue states, where insurance is already the most heavily regulated, benefit from Obamacare, with their rates dropping. Most everyone else, however, gets creamed with higher costs.

Obama lies again, claiming in a speech yesterday that he never really said “If you like your plan you can keep your plan. Period.” dozens of times.

The dishonesty is breath-taking. Worse is the willingness of so many people to accept it.

Some minor news on the “If you like your healthcare plan, you get to keep your healthcare plan” front:

• 73,000 losing coverage in Maryland
• 280,000 Kentuckians lose their current health insurance policies
• 80,000 Louisianian health insurance policies canceled under Obamacare

I am sure all those people are thrilled by this news.

“The biggest failure of Obamacare: Increasing the number of uninsured.”

The author outlines in great detail the numerous failures of the law before noting how it will only increase the numbers who don’t have insurance rather than decrease those numbers as touted by Democrats. And it will do so just before the 2014 elections.

He obviously must be a racist!

And in related news, another expert estimates that only 129 million people will lose their health insurance plans because of Obamacare.

“This whole experience has converted a lifelong Democrat into a foot soldier for the Republican Party.”

The quote comes from an article in a mainstream newspaper, not a conservative new media website, which suggests that those low information Democratic voters might actually be rethinking their voting habits because of Obamacare. That article itself, a reasonably detailed, accurate, and generally negative description of Obamacare, suggests that even the mainstream leftwing press is recognizing the truth of the situation.

You also can’t keep your doctor.

Everyone now is clamoring about Affordable Care Act winners and losers. I am one of the losers.

My grievance is not political; all my energies are directed to enjoying life and staying alive, and I have no time for politics. For almost seven years I have fought and survived stage-4 gallbladder cancer, with a five-year survival rate of less than 2% after diagnosis. I am a determined fighter and extremely lucky. But this luck may have just run out: My affordable, lifesaving medical insurance policy has been canceled effective Dec. 31.

This fact must be repeated endlessly: None of this should be a surprise to anyone. Conservatives and tea party activists were saying that Obamacare would destroy the health insurance system for years, right from the beginning of the debate. They said that, as written, it would mean most people would lose their health insurance plans. They said that, as written, it would mean that many people would lose their doctors. And they said that, as written, it was going to force many doctors to retire or pull out of the insurance pool. All these things are happening. No one should be surprised by it.

What people have to do now is assign responsibility for this disaster on the people who caused it. And those people are the politicians in the Democratic Party, from President Obama down to every elected Democrat in Congress. They wouldn’t negotiate, they wouldn’t compromise. All they were willing to do was to force this piece of crap down our throats, whether we wanted it or not.

“This is a program that’s doing the opposite of what it was intended.”

Krauthammer hits the nail on the head. Obamacare was pushed hard by Obama and the Democrats as a way to provide everyone healthcare insurance. (How many times did they scream about the 40 some odd million uninsured?) Instead, the law is now forcing the cancellation of literally millions of insurance policies while at the same time it is impossible to sign up for insurance on the Obamacare website. And even if the website gets fixed, the available policies under the law are too expensive and provide the wrong benefits. Large numbers of people are going to refuse to buy (which might explain why the numbers enrolling have been so pitifully low).

The result: Fewer people will have heath insurance under Obamacare than before the law. And you can bet every one of those people who lost their health insurance — against their will — will be very pissed off come election day.

They own it.

It’s a little late to get or expect any Republican buy-in [to Obamacare], though. That would have required serious compromise back in 2009, when Democrats, at the high tide of their power in the Obama era, saw no reason to make any. They ignored the polls, they ignored Scott Brown’s shocking win in Massachusetts, and they ignored normal parliamentary practices to pass the single most partisan piece of major social legislation in a century.

They insisted on this particular law, at this particular time. They own it. They own every canceled policy, every rate increase, every unintended consequence and every unpopular intended consequence. It is theirs, lock, stock and two smoking barrels.

And they and Obama own every lie they told to get this law passed.

Let me also add that the Democrats and Obama reaffirmed that ownership in the budget battle in October. They forced a government shutdown rather than accept even the slightest revisions to Obamacare.